Work Text:
Tulips
“If it rains on Sunday,” Kate sullenly tells the grey sky, “I shall be very disappointed in you.”
At the sound of her voice, Anthony raises his head to look at her from his place on one of the settees of Lady Danbury’s drawing room: she’s standing by the open window, with her back to him and a fresh cup of tea between her hands (she will grimace after each sip but for some reason, she continues drinking it), and apparently, scolding the lead-coloured clouds above their heads.
It's impossible to contain a smile at such a scene –but then again, that’s been a recurring theme for Anthony where Kate is concerned, that inability of his to control his own facial features and body whenever she is in his presence –or indeed, his mind–, especially in the past month of their engagement.
“Are you talking to me or the good Gods of Weather?” he inquires, amused.
Kate turns her face away from the window, towards him, and smiles, a mirthful twinkle in her dark eyes that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand.
“Them, I suppose,” she replies. “But also, you, a little. It’s very cloudy today.”
He’s called on her today at teatime, under the pretence of discussing colour schemes for the wedding (as if he knew anything about that… As if their respective mothers and sisters would ever allow them to change any of their minutely planned arrangements). Her mother was supposed to accompany them, but Lady Mary kept getting called away by this or that, and finding excuses to leave the room –the last one, locating a book in the library that she believes might interest him–, so at this point, Newton’s actually been a more effective chaperone, if only because the crafty furball keeps yapping for attention.
And now, here they are, on opposite sides of the drawing room, with a sea of expensive furniture between them, talking about the weather –never let it be said that Anthony has poor impulse control (hear that, Simon?), the past month has been torture, absolute torture, and even now, when he could have kissed her a thousand times already –and more–, he’s still on his best behaviour.
(Five more days, he tells himself, just five more days.)
“I like cloudy days,” he cheerfully informs her, resuming his previous scratching behind Newton’s ears –Anthony has recently come to learn that, excellent judge of character or not, the dog can be easily bribed with a firm patting of his fur, or a good belly rub.
“I should think you would,” Kate remarks, finally tearing herself away from the window. “Since it was you who insisted on having our wedding in the middle of September.”
That hadn’t been because he wanted a cloudy-day wedding exactly, but because it was the earliest they could marry without having to ask Her Majesty for a special licence –it’s very likely that she would have granted it, considering her support during the Featherington ball, but Anthony had refused to go through the painful experience of a royal audience yet again, even if, ever since the bans were read and posted, he’s been beating himself for making such a plainly stupid decision.
But Anthony reckons Kate already knows all that, so he simply hums in response and waits for her to reach him and sit down.
“What remains a mystery to me,” she continues, taking a seat on the other end of the settee, with Newton’s outstretched body between them, which immediately sends Anthony’s mind racing for ways to move the dog, “is why you like them so much.”
He’s still pondering on a polite manner to remove Newton and reduce the distance between them, so he hums distractedly in response again.
“Anthony,” she calls out, and when he glances at her, she looks half-stern and half-amused, as though she was reading his mind, as though silently telling him, ‘Yes, this was on purpose, my mother can come back any minute, and no, you cannot throw that biscuit so Newton will run to catch it, this is a civilized house and you are a dignified Viscount, or so you claim’.
He can practically hear her, as clearly as he is hearing her now say his name.
“Yes, darling?”
“Why do you like cloudy days?” she asks, studying him with curious eyes, her head slightly tilted to the side.
Even after months locking gazes across ballrooms, drawing rooms and parks –and especially, after the last few weeks, when they have been able to fully indulge in the habit without needing to tear their eyes away at the first threat of someone discovering them–, being the sole focus of Kate’s undivided attention, of her dark clever eyes, still manages to send shivers running up his spine.
He shrugs nonchalantly, trying to mask the reaction. “No one likes cloudy days.”
Also, his father died on a fantastically sunny day with excellent weather.
Kate’s head tilts a bit more to the side as she considers his words.
“So you like them because they’re no one’s favourite?” she surmises and suddenly, in a flash, her thoughtful expression shifts into a wicked grin. “Shall I draw the same conclusion regarding myself and our engagement, my lord?”
Anthony narrows his eyes at her: now she’s just being aggravating on purpose, teasing him into the only possible appropriate answer he can think of for addressing such provocation. With a chuckle, he moves like thunder, reaching for one of her gloved hands (stupid gloves) and pulling. Gravity and inertia make her upper body tumble forward, and she throws out her free hand with a gasped squeak to break her fall and avoid crushing Newton (his dog instincts swiftly kicking in and making him leap away from the fire zone, and look at that, seems like Anthony hasn’t needed to throw that biscuit after all), but it’s all a bit futile, because he’s already there to catch her, cupping her jaw between his hands and kissing her soundly.
“Minx,” he hisses against her laughing lips, biting into her mouth as it curves against his. “Fishing for compliments, are we?”
Her fingers dig into his arms, and she moves away an inch, still laughing. “What?” she asks, feigning innocence. “I only mean, I’m no diamond of the first wat–” He cuts her off, pressing his lips to hers again.
You’re a diamond to me, he thinks, but doesn’t say, because while Benedict likes to wager that love will make a poet out of him yet, he’s quite busy right now and he’s always been a man of action, anyway. And act, he does, kissing her breathless and relishing the way she moves closer to him, gliding across the free space vacated by Newton, her nimble hands playing with the tiny hairs above the collar of his jacket.
Way too soon, he hears loud footsteps coming up the stairs, but he still takes his time to press one, two, three more kisses into her mouth, because he has just remembered Thomas Dorset sniffing around her skirts, and taking her hand in the Serpentine, and he simply cannot help himself.
(As if he needed an excuse…)
He pulls away exactly seven seconds before a footman comes into the drawing room with a fresh pot of tea, a tray of scones, and a message from Lady Mary informing them that she is close to locating his book and will join them momentarily, and Anthony congratulates himself because he could not have timed the whole thing better to avoid eliciting whispers and leave Kate just on the right side of flushed.
While the footman changes the tea service and rearranges plates and trays, Kate busies herself with sipping and grimacing at her tea, earlier forgotten on a side table, and Anthony busies himself with watching her. Even with her cheeks tinted pink and while studiously avoiding his gaze, she looks exceedingly smug, like Newton after rolling around on a big muddy puddle (he’s two-parts pig, Anthony swears), like she herself looked that very first morning, after their race-not-race in the park. The cat that ate the canary and got away with breaking a half a dozen societal rules in the process.
For some reason, her air of self-assuredness sends his blood racing almost as much as kissing her does, so Anthony takes the prudent decision of focusing on the pattern of the Arabian rug under his feet, at least until the coast is clear and they can… resume their previous activities.
Kate, however, appears to have different plans.
“I have a question,” she announces as soon as the footman has left the drawing room, her face looking a mix between curious and determined now. Uh-oh.
“You seem to be full of them today,” Anthony remarks, good-humouredly.
“Yes.” Her eyebrows raise to her hairline. “And you shall endure them, I’m afraid.”
Again, if Anthony were a man of poetry, or even remotely keen on embarrassing himself with trite verses, he would say something along the lines of ‘I shall endure anything for you’, but because he decidedly is not, he simply makes an inviting hand gesture (quite gallantly, if he may say so himself) and replies, “Fire away.”
“Is there a tulip garden at Bridgerton House?”
“What?” The sound that escapes his mouth is the perfect combination between a gasp and a laugh, the sputtering product of his perplexity. Of all the questions he would have imagined her asking –ranging from a sweet-but-trivial ‘Are you looking forward to the wedding?’, to the more philosophically-charged but still diverting ‘How are you so vexing?’–, that certainly wasn’t on the list.
“Well?” she encourages.
“You’re serious…” Anthony blinks at her, but when she merely raises her eyebrows again, he makes an effort to give her a proper answer, “Umm, not that I know of? The gardener plants different things depending on the season, and my mother has some favourites, I think, and then there’s the lilacs and the wisteria, of course…” He’s rambling now. “But a whole garden of tulips? No, I don’t think so.”
Before he can inquire about her sudden interest in the state of the gardens at Bridgerton House, Kate shoots him a new question, “Are tulips native to England, then?”
If this were coming from any other person –any of his siblings, per instance– he would have snapped already with a ‘How the hell should I know?’ and then, demanded an explanation for the sudden questioning on flowers, of all things. But because this is Kate, and because Anthony usually finds himself equally fascinated and intrigued by the way her brain works, he plays along.
“Holland, I believe.”
“Actually, they come from the Hindu Kush…” she points out, but it sounds like she’s speaking to herself, more than him. She shakes her head, looks at him with an impish grin. “Apologies, I phrased that wrong. Truly, I wanted to know if it’s typical to grow tulips, here in England.”
“Well… You spot them around, yes. But, um, I would not say they are typical, like roses or, say, climbing plants…”
Anthony is getting more and more confused –does Kate wish to plant a tulip garden at Bridgerton House, once they marry? Is this her roundabout way of asking if she can? Or is she somehow under the impression that he is a flower expert? Maybe his brothers have told her something in jest, he wouldn’t put it past them… On the other hand, Kate is too sharp to fall for their infantile pranks, so that doesn’t make sense either… Unless she is the one pulling a prank on him?
He watches her bite her lip, her face contorting into a pensive expression, and tries to decipher whether it’s honest. It seems so, and she also sounds earnest when she formulates her next question, “Has there been a sudden surge in tulip imports, perhaps? Are there more of them in the shops lately?”
Alright, this is getting ridiculous now –more ridiculous, and the prank theory is gaining weight…
“I don’t know, Kate,” he replies, annoyed. “Shall I call for the papers? We might find the answer there. Or maybe Lady Whistledown has written about it!” he adds, with mock-enthusiasm. “She must have, seeing it’s such a vital piece of information…”
“There is no need to be angry, you know,” she replies around a chuckle, sounding way too giddy for his liking. “It was only a question.”
He heaves a sigh, scowls at the carpet. He loves Kate dearly, but she can be so, so aggravating sometimes… And if all this has been to rile him up… He sighs again.
“Where is this sudden obsession with tulips coming from?” he asks, summoning every drop of patience in his body to avoid snapping, or starting the familiar game of accusations that, he knows by experience, will lead them nowhere.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Kate retorts, quick as a gun.
It takes him aback, her reply, and now it’s her turn to heave a deep breath.
“You keep bringing me tulips.”
“What?! I have nev–”
“Today,” she cuts him off, pointing to the vase placed on the table in front of them, which is, indeed, full of buttery-yellow tulips. “The day before yesterday, last Friday, last Monday, the week before that.” She gestures to other vases scattered around different points of the drawing room, all of them containing tulips, in varying colours. “You also brought me tulips after my accident. I have one in my room, pressed into a book; I can go fetch it if you’d like…”
Bloody hell, he thinks, as the part of his brain that isn’t busy cursing scrambles for something to say –Kate is way too observant for her own good. For Anthony’s own good.
“What about those?” He signals a pretty bucket of pink roses, which he cannot recall gifting her but which he might have, nevertheless. “They look like something I’d send you.”
Kate smirks, shaking her head. “Wrong Bridgerton,” she says. “Your mother sent those, as a thank you for taking Hyacinth and Gregory with me to cake-tasting.”
“They must have loved it, especially Gregory. He’s crazy about cake…”
“Anthony.”
He is aware that she cannot be distracted, and will never be deterred when she puts her mind to something, but that doesn’t mean that Anthony won’t try, anyway.
“I should be offended that you believed I would just pluck flowers from my own garden instead of actually buying them for you,” he says, with intentional loftiness. “I’ll have you know, florists in this town adore me. I’d daresay I’m their favourite client, even.”
She gives him a supremely unimpressed look. “Not the point.”
“To florists, people paying for flowers is very much the point.”
Kate sighs again, but he catches the way the corners of her lips have twitched slightly, as if she was fighting to hold back a smile.
“Why tulips?” she insists, however. “Are you aware of their significance?”
“Yes,” it’s his tight-lipped response.
Great passion.
His quiet, blushing admission has the curious effect of softening her completely, from the wrinkles on her forehead to the stubborn set of her straight shoulders. This time, she is the one reaching for his hands, curved into tight fists on his lap, and she traces with a finger the apices and dips of his white knuckles, a sweet smile blooming on her face, the light caress arising a new wave of tingles up Anthony’s spine.
They are quiet for a couple of minutes, her fingers stroking his hand so softly and deliciously that Anthony almost believes he could fall asleep, then and there, until Kate speaks again, “Is that the only reason?”
Her question –or rather, the pointed, caustic way in which she’s uttered it– implies that she at least suspects the answer, and Anthony almost throws his hands up in the air (he doesn’t, if only because that will stop the caresses), almost lets a curse escape his lips, because this woman, this fantastic and incredible woman, knows him better than he ever gave her credit for, apparently. It’s comforting, realizing she will walk down the aisle on Sunday perfectly aware of who he is, how he is, and what she is getting herself into, but also terrifying, to think about what the next twenty years will look like.
“Fine,” he sighs, defeated, but his honesty is quickly rewarded when Kate moves her hand to brush her fingers across his neck, her thumb softly swiping his jawline. “It was something my mother said– mind you, I only remembered it a couple of days ago, so the majority of those,” he gestures to some of the vases, “I chose subconsciously, or so Colin claims.” Recently, Colin is always saying things like ‘You only know that you know nothing’ and ‘That’s because your soul informs your mind’. He has become a tad unbearable since his travels.
“What did your mother say?” Kate asks, stirring the conversation back to its original point when Anthony starts mumbling about his brother’s annoying philosophical outbursts.
“It’s not a very exciting story,” he warns her, heat rising up his neck, under her fingers. “In fact, I’m embarrassed even talking about it…” he leaves it there, gives her his best cow eyes. Maybe she’ll take pity on him.
“But your embarrassing stories are my favourite!” she declares with a cheeky smile.
In revenge, Anthony lowers his face to nip at the thumb that was resting on his chin. She scratches the back of his neck in response and probably, to get him to focus.
“Fine,” he says again, but takes a moment to move his hand to her knee –that’s much better now, the two of them touching, anchoring each other. “It happened last season, after that bungled affair with Daphne and Berbrooke… I told you about that, did I not?”
“Lord and Lady Hastings told me about that,” Kate corrects him. “You kept interrupting them with your unnecessary corrections and being a nuisance in general.”
She smirks, satisfied and quite proud of herself, and Anthony questions, not for the first time, the intelligence of his decision to introduce Kate and Simon way in advance of the wedding and in private, instead of simply rejecting all of Daphne’s invitations to tea and dinner and thus forcing his brother-in-law and wife-to-be to meet in some social function or another, with multiple buffers and distractions.
It's not like he could have prevented it, he constantly tells himself in an effort to ease his mind, because Daff already knew Kate and, apparently, the only reason why Hastings had deigned to move his arse from Clyvedon was, not Anthony’s impending wedding –some urgent pig dispute had kept him away from the first one, and while Anthony had raged at his best friend missing his nuptials, in hindsight, he is quite grateful for the absence of yet another ‘I told you so’ from a Basset–, but to see with his own two eyes the woman who had gotten ‘the Viscount Bridgerton so smitten’.
And seen her, he had, three times already in the past week, and four the one before, which had resulted in, as Anthony had feared, the two of them getting on like a house on fire, which, considering both Kate’s and Simon’s characters, will eventually result, Anthony fears, in his actual house being on fire.
Right now, however, he sets aside those frightful premonitions and simply lets his displeasure at Kate’s interruptions –or maybe, at her ganging up on him with Daphne and Simon– show on his face.
“Do you wish to hear the full story or not?” he grumpily huffs, squeezing her knee in admonishment, before he internally admonishes himself for passing up the chance of distracting her from the wretched tulips topic. He should ask Colin what his Greek philosophers say about self-sabotage.
Once again, Kate responds by lightly scratching the back of his head, but it’s so soft that it feels like a peace offering, an olive branch that she completes when she smiles kindly and says, “Sure. My apologies. Go ahead.”
He takes a moment to collect his thoughts, to resign himself to his self-imposed fate, to enjoy the feeling of her dainty fingers in his hair.
“As I was saying,” he eventually resumes his retelling, “after scandal chased Berbrooke away from London, I went to see my mother, because I knew she’d had something to do with it, and I wanted to apologize for my less-than-spectacular contribution to the whole mess…” He flinches now, remembering how he had insisted on Daphne marrying that odious man.
“I found her by the fireplace, with her embroidery. She was angry at me– or perhaps not angry at me exactly, but frustrated with the roles that society has assigned us both within our family… I mean, I understand, she had just proven how wrong I was, and how she and a few servants, as I came to learn later, had found and produced the whole solution to the problem, while I could only come up with a duel, of all things...” He shakes his head.
“I see,” Kate says gingerly, and Anthony knows her enough to appreciate that she does see.
“Anyway, she more or less told me off, and then showed me what she was embroidering. It was a hem for Daphne’s wedding gown, I think, and it had tulips. She explained their significance –that’s how I know–, and then…”
He halts, takes a deep breath, looks away from her attentive gaze for a second, because here comes the hard part, the embarrassing part.
“And then she told me that perhaps…” Another deep breath, his eyes finding hers. “That perhaps my bride would like them too.”
For a moment, they remain quiet and motionless, silence covering the drawing room like a cloak, except for the noises that reach them from busy Mayfair under their feet, for the sounds of the Danbury servants scurrying through corridors, going about their daily duties, and of Newton’s paws clicking against the wooden floors as he finds them once again. Through it all, Kate and Anthony remain still and silent, just looking each other in the eye, never breaking contact or even breathing too hard.
And then, a flash of golden light appears in Kate’s black eyes, and she smiles, wide and lovely, before she moves to pull at his jacket, her hands pressing on his neck to bring him closer, her mouth finding his with unsurprising accuracy and soul-shattering sweetness. Bullseye. Anthony allows himself to be enveloped by it all, her hands and lips and fluttering eyelashes, drowns himself willingly in the scent of lilies and loving softness, and just when he is feeling the perfect sort of light-headedness, that magnificent petit mort, Kate pulls away an inch and her eyes open to his.
“She does,” she informs him, and Anthony smiles against her lips.
FIN