Work Text:
1830
i.
It started with a cough.
It was so small that it barely registered at first, nothing but a tiny tickle unworthy of being noticed. A clearing of the throat as Anthony read Francesca’s most recent letter; an almost silent wheeze as he descended from his horse after a lunchtime ride; a polite ahem in the middle of a conversation.
It had been so minor - so inconsequential - that Kate had thought nothing of it. Even when she had replayed each cough in the days that followed, she was certain that none of them had been noteworthy enough to cause alarm. People coughed. To acknowledge each one would be impolite and bordering on the ridiculous.
Perhaps she should have said something at dinner once she noticed that the small coughs that had littered the days preceding did not seem to be fading away. Anthony had paused between bites to cough quietly into his napkin, each course accompanied by a medley of throat clearing that persevered all the way through dessert. Maybe she should have said something but she knew her husband well enough to know that he would brush off her concern. After all these years, he still struggled with the idea of someone caring for him, much like Kate herself did. They were a stubborn pair, equally determined to look after the other while rejecting any worry directed towards themselves. It was something they strived to do better at but they were still works in progress.
Instead of raising the topic with Anthony and earning herself some supposedly witty comment on whether she was going to insist on a doctor’s visit for every small ailment that pained him - she could hear his sardonic tone and picture his eyebrow raised in mocking with ease - she snuck downstairs while he read Miles the next chapter of Robinson Crusoe, a firm bedtime favourite.
“Mrs Jenkins,” she said, padding into the kitchen in the hope of not startling their cook at her unexpected presence. However, the woman still jumped and Kate gave her a warm smile. “I was hoping you would be able to spare some honey and ginger to add to my husband’s tea tonight.”
“Is his lordship unwell?”
“It seems he has developed a small cough, not that he would ever admit it. I remember my father always used to add those to my chai when I was unwell as a little girl and it worked wonders.”
“Very good, my lady.” The cook paused for a moment, deliberating over something, before leaning closer towards Kate. “May I also suggest some lemon and whiskey too? That always seems to clear everything right up.”
“An excellent idea.”
ii.
The tea looked different.
It looked different, it smelled different and Anthony was bound to notice.
Nevertheless, Kate aimed to appear nonchalant as she brought it to Anthony’s study where he was pouring over papers, a familiar deep crinkle settled between his eyebrows and accompanied by the same quiet cough. She handed him his tea before picking up a letter from one of their tenants and pretending all of her attention was focused on it rather than him. However, he gave her a suspicious look after his first sip and she returned it with a faux innocent look of her own, perching on the edge of his desk.
“Did you think I would not notice it tasted different?” She shrugged and he frowned at her. “It is just a cough, Kate.”
“I know. But you will drink the entire thing without complaining because you love me and you know that if you do not drink it, I will find some far worse cure to inflict upon you tomorrow. And you would not wish to upset your pregnant wife, would you, Anthony?”
His frown told her he was considering arguing with her but the deep sigh that followed left her satisfied that she had won. He sipped his tea begrudgingly, which she rewarded with a soft kiss, before retiring to the sofa to keep him company while he worked, her hand drifting to her small bump and the life that was growing inside her.
Their nightly routine was quite possibly her favourite part of the day. When it was just him and her, their children safe and fast asleep above them, she felt a peace unlike anything she had known before.
She curled up on the sofa and read while he scribbled his signature on endless documents and eventually the two of them drifted upstairs, peeking their heads through bedroom doors to check on their slumbering children, a tradition Edmund claimed he was far too old for now but which she knew he secretly treasured whenever he was home from school. In their bedroom, they undressed each other, their valet and maid used to being dismissed after all these years, and climbed into bed together.
Some nights were filled with a passion that had not faded after sixteen years - Kate thought sometimes of the young woman she had been, so certain that what existed between her and Anthony would fade in time, and she wished she could hold her and let her know that what they had was not fleeting but rather something rare and special which would only grow stronger. Other nights, however, were soft and comfortable, like her favourite pair of house slippers or the first moment when she slipped into a warm bath.
Tonight was the latter and she fell asleep the way she always did, curled into Anthony’s side with his arm wrapped around her and her face pressed into the crook of his neck. She had fallen asleep like that thousands of times with barely a thought, something so familiar that it did not need to be remarked upon. Later though, she thought that, if she had known how long it would be until they did this again, until she fell asleep with his heart beating beneath her palm and his steady breath tickling her hair, his body warm and content next to hers, she would have treasured every second, remembered every sensation. She would have filled her memories up with every inch of that moment, savouring each and every one. But she didn’t know and so she did not. It passed, an ordinary moment in a life filled with nights just like that one.
Kate’s eyes closed, her breathing evened out and she fell asleep, blissfully unaware of everything that was to come.
iii.
Kate dreamed she was outside.
She was standing in the shrubbery, gazing up at a colossal tree so thick with leaves that she could barely see above the first few branches. Yet she was certain that there was a cat trapped up high above her; she could hear its whimpers. She simply had to reach it and reassure it.
“I’m coming,” she called and she tried to clamber up the tree but her grasp kept slipping and she could not seem to climb any higher. Its whimpers grew louder and she tried again and again to reach the cat that she knew was up there, her grip slipping every time.
When she awoke, her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness of their bedroom and she wondered what had woken her so early. Then she heard it. Whimpering.
The cat was her first thought and it took her brain, heavy with sleep, a moment to remember that there was no cat. However, the whimpering continued and she became aware of movement next to her.
Anthony.
She lit a candle beside their bed and turned to face her husband. Her heart stopped. He was tangled up in their bedsheets, writhing back and forth, moaning as if he was in pain. His eyes were closed but his brow was furrowed far deeper than she had ever seen it and when she pressed a palm to his forehead, she yelped at the heat radiating from him.
“Anthony.”
She shook him gently, trying to stir him, but to no avail. He merely continued to whimper and she noticed the sweat that was starting to form along his brow. She shook him again, firmly, but he simply cried out like he was in great pain and Kate felt her heart clench in its own agony.
Inside, she felt paralysed at the sight of her husband’s suffering but her body seemed to take over and she found herself tossing aside the covers, hurrying out of bed and ringing the servants’ bell to alert someone - anyone - to what was happening.
By the time help arrived in the form of one of the younger maids, Kate had already pulled the covers from the bed and opened the curtains and windows to try and cool Anthony down. His skin was burning and sweat was making his sleep shirt stick to his clammy skin. However much she called for him, she received no response, forced to listen as he continued to whimper pitifully.
“Call for a doctor,” Kate demanded. She did not need to explain the situation. Anyone with eyes could see that something was terribly wrong. “And I need cold water and cloths. Now.”
There was no time for pleasantries and she didn’t care if the young girl was alarmed by her harsh tone. Nothing else mattered now but Anthony.
It was Rose, Kate’s own maid, who hurried in next, carrying with her a basin of water and an armful of towels which Kate took gratefully. She soaked one in the cold water and frantically pressed it to Anthony’s forehead, praying that it would do something to help ease his misery. He whimpered again but it was quieter this time and she could feel him leaning into her cool touch so she clambered up behind him and soaked another towel, pressing this one to his scorching chest.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” It took her a moment to realise that she was crying. When did she start crying? “I don’t know.”
iv.
An infection.
That was the doctor’s diagnosis as he examined her suffering husband.
It started in the villages a fortnight ago, he told her. Only a few cases, not enough to cause alarm, but more were cropping up daily.
“Has Lord Bridgerton had any interactions with the villagers recently, my lady?”
“He insisted on coming down early last week to help repair the damage from the storms,” she said, bemused that titles and formalities were required even now when the doctor had examined Lord Bridgerton in the near state of undress she had stripped him to in an attempt to cool him down and while she stood before him dressed in only her nightdress and gown. “I know he met with quite a few of our tenants.”
She had stayed behind with the children to make sure everything was in order at Bridgerton House before they departed to Aubrey Hall and Anthony had acquiesced at their separation only because he was so keen to help those who had been affected by the terrible storms which had raged through Kent. Her husband had been trying to help those who needed it and this was the result.
“Are others ill with it?”
The doctor seemed to deliberate over his answer and Kate felt her stomach churn. “Some are. They all share common symptoms - headaches, coughing, fever and vomiting. Most are drifting in and out of consciousness.” There was silence. “One has died so far and it is likely more will follow.”
Died.
Kate knew that the polite and proper thing to do would be to ask who had died. It could easily be someone they knew, one of the tenants Anthony helped or one of the families that Kate always made sure to check in on during her visits to Aubrey Hall. She was the viscountess; it was her duty.
But right then, she was selfish and she could not spare a thought for the person who had died or for her duty towards anyone beyond her husband because all she could focus on were the doctor’s ominous words: so far, more will follow.
Anthony could die.
The thought came to her sharp and quick, piercing her with its viciousness and stealing the breath from her very lungs.
Anthony was her fixed point, the centre of her universe, the sun around which everything else orbited.
To think that he could die…
She vowed to herself then and there that she would not talk of his death; she would not allow any talk of his death. Death could come for Anthony when he was an old man of two and ninety and not a moment sooner.
He was fit and healthy. He was not going to die. He couldn’t.
“There will be no talk of death in this house.”
“My lady, I was only saying that there is the possibility-”
“There will be no talk of death. In. This. House.” Her voice was steady, strong and unwavering. She had been Viscountess Bridgerton for sixteen years now and she had never felt the purpose of her title as much as she did right then. “You have delivered two of my three children and I fully intend for you to deliver this one at the end of the year. I respect you and I appreciate everything you have done for my family. However, if you insist on talking about the possibility of my husband dying, you will find yourself unwelcome at Aubrey Hall for as long as I am Viscountess. Do I make myself understood?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Good. Now please tell me what you are going to do to help my husband.”
v.
Kate was alone.
Anthony was dosed up on laudanum to ease his pain, asleep and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. His fever showed no signs of breaking and his breathing was becoming increasingly laboured. Maids drifted in and out of the room sporadically, replacing the basins of water and cloths with new ones that Kate could press to his damp, sticky skin. She noticed their shivers but none of them complained about the chill in the room due to the open windows. The doctor had departed as daylight broke through, promising to return by midday after he had written to his peers in London for advice on further treatment. He had advised Kate to keep her distance but after seeing the furious look on her face at such an idea, he ordered her to keep Anthony cool, leaving her with nothing to do but futilely try and cool her husband’s feverish body.
There was no one to sit beside her and hold her hand. No one to offer words of advice and encouragement. No one to hold her as she wept at the utter helplessness she felt at being unable to do anything while her husband suffered.
She had woken Charlotte’s nursemaid early and ordered her to take the children out for the day. She had flinched when Jane suggested a trip to the village and had instead encouraged a picnic out in the countryside. They could take their horses and make a day of it, she had said, trying to force some joviality into her tone and failing.
“I have not told the children about their father yet. When they ask after us, please tell them something important has come up and I will explain everything tonight.”
She was sure it was cowardly for her to hide from her own children but she did not know what she should say. Edmund felt that he was almost an adult now that he was fifteen and he tried so desperately to act like one but he was still her little boy, her first-born, and she had no idea how to handle all the questions he would inevitably ask. Miles was her sensitive soul, always the first to worry about an injured animal or to comfort those in need. His empathy was his greatest strength but she could not bear the idea of him carrying her own pain. And Charlotte, her firecracker, already so sure of herself at almost six, had been utterly devastated at the loss of her grandmother, Mary, six months prior. In the aftermath, she had become fearful of every ailment and injury that could hurt those she loved. How would she handle the sight of her father felled by a sudden illness?
Kate was alone and she felt helpless.
Losing Mary had shaken her to her very core. She was her mother in all the ways that mattered and their relationship had grown deeper ever since they had settled in England and gained a new understanding of one another after the debacle that had been Edwina’s debut season. If Mary was here, she would hold Kate’s hand when she spoke to her children and she would know what to suggest to help Anthony.
As Kate clung to her husband’s hand, desperately wishing for him to hold her own tight and squeeze it back the way he always did when he saw that she was struggling, the way he had from the very beginning to the very end of Mary’s funeral, she wept for the mother she so desperately needed beside her.
She was a grown woman of forty-two yet she had never felt so much like a lost little girl.
She needed her mother to hug her and kiss her hair and promise that everything would be okay but that was impossible.
Wiping her tears, she called for Rose to bring her letter writing supplies from the library.
She could not have her mother. The world had cruelly robbed her of that option six months prior. But she could have a mother, one who would understand Kate’s helplessness and who would watch over Anthony with her.
She wrote to Violet Bridgerton.
vi.
“Is he in pain?”
Of course that was Miles’s first question, her little boy who insisted on hopping over snails on the path and who had nursed an injured bird for days until it had finally flown again.
Kate could not lie to her children. Perhaps that was what a good mother should do but she could not bring herself to deceive them.
“He is but the doctor is giving him medicine to help.”
Miles nodded and did not speak again. His brow was furrowed, just like Anthony’s did when he was working through a particularly taxing document, and she knew he would ask more questions when he was ready.
“If we talk to him, will he be able to hear us?” was Edmund’s question.
“I do not know but I like to think so. All I know is that it brought me great comfort to talk to him while I sat at his bedside today so perhaps it will do the same for you.”
“I think it would comfort me too,” he replied and she watched as his face crumpled, his bottom lip wavering, and he tried to hold back his tears. “I should not cry.”
“My darling, I would be more worried if you did not cry,” she said, reaching forward to squeeze his hand. “I have cried today and I will cry tomorrow. It is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of how much we love your father.”
She knew that Edmund was striving to be an Eton man and that his school aimed to force all emotion out of its students but Kate refused to allow her son to become closed off to his own heart and his own feelings. Anthony had talked of how hard the aftermath of his father’s death had been, how closed off he had become due to the pressure of his new title and the need he felt to support everyone else, and she had vowed then, as a tiny Edmund kicked inside of her, that she would never allow the same to happen to their son.
Edmund gave her a watery smile and Kate allowed her own tears to fall. “I do love him very much.”
“I love papa too,” piped up Charlotte, and Kate nestled her daughter closer to her.
“I know, sweetheart. And he knows. We must make sure to tell him over the next few days to help him get better.”
Charlotte’s voice was tentative when she spoke again. “What if he does not get better?”
“He will.” Kate would not lie to her children. It was not a lie. “He will get better. I promise.”
Charlotte was satisfied with her answer and Kate pressed a kiss into her daughter’s hair. However, she felt Edmund’s eyes on her and she looked up to meet her eldest son’s worried gaze. She could see the scepticism in his eyes, too much of a pragmatist just like Anthony, and she knew he was thinking of her mother who had visited for Miles’s birthday, the picture of health, only to pass one week later of a sudden illness. There had not even been enough time to say goodbye.
As much as she liked to view Edmund as her little boy still, it was impossible to ignore the signs that he was on the cusp of adulthood. He stood taller than her now, his deep voice often caught her off guard and he knew his own mind in a way that spoke not of stubbornness but rather learned experience. He knew how the world worked. People fell ill and people died, no matter how much their loved ones wished for them to get better.
She made sure to look him in the eye when she spoke again, her gaze and voice steady. “Your father is going to be fine.”
vii.
Violet Bridgerton arrived on the second day.
Kate made sure to be out of the room when she first saw her son. If it was Edmund lying there, she could not begin to imagine the devastation she would feel so she busied herself with the children, arranging for Edmund and Miles to take Charlotte out riding with the promise that they could visit their father on their return.
By the time she arrived in their bedchambers, Violet’s eyes were red and she immediately swept Kate into a fierce hug. Kate stood frozen for a moment or two before she crumbled, her tears soaking her mother-in-law’s skin and her sobs muffled by her shoulder. She cried in a way that she hadn’t in years, the sort of cry that felt like it would never end, and Violet did not say a word. She merely hugged Kate, holding her tightly as she wept, rubbing soothing circles on her back. And in that moment, Kate ached keenly for her appa who had hugged her so tightly whenever she cried and she found herself sobbing even more, until she pulled away sniffling, tears soaking her cheeks and hiccoughing as she tried to catch her breath.
“I apologise,” she said, frantically trying to wipe away the mess that her face had become.
“Do not apologise,” Violet said, passing her a handkerchief.
“I want to be strong. I need to be strong. But I cannot seem to stop crying.”
“Kate,” she said, taking her hand and leading her to the chairs that have become stationed beside hers and Anthony’s bed. “You are incredibly strong. Crying does not change that.”
She sniffled and allowed herself a small chuckle as she reached forward to hold Anthony’s still hand. “I told Edmund yesterday that crying isn’t a sign of a weakness.”
“Well I suspect you need to start taking your own advice. No one is making it through all of this without crying.” Violet’s gaze was now fixed on Anthony and the painfully slow rise and fall of his chest. “Do not let anyone tell you that you are not strong, Kate. You possess incredible strength.”
“I am not so sure.”
Violet reached for Anthony’s other hand and the women watched him sleep.
It was unnerving seeing her husband so still. Anthony Bridgerton was in constant motion, his body an extension of his hurried mind. Over the years, she had become bewitched by the way he moved with an unexpected gracefulness and she loved how easy it was to read his moods from the way he sat in a chair in the drawing room to how he descended the stairs on their way to another ball. She delighted in cataloguing his movements, the way he was always fiddling, looking, talking, gesturing, watching, touching. It was her own secret game. She firmly believed that her husband was art in motion and she would never tire of watching the way he could make anything beautiful, even something as simple as eating.
Seeing him still and silent felt horribly wrong as if she had her shoes on the incorrect feet.
Kate was pulled from her thoughts by Violet talking to her. “When Edmund died, it broke something inside of me. He was the other half of me, the air that I breathed, and I did not know how to go on without him. I am ashamed of it now but I was nothing after we lost him. I could barely eat or sleep let alone be there for my children.”
“Violet-”
“My point, Kate, is that you are so very strong. Anthony lies here like this yet you find the ability to sit beside his bed for hours with no reprieve even while a new life grows inside of you. Your staff told me how you have barely left his side. And you were with your children when I arrived. It is shameful of me but it is more than I managed when I was in your shoes.”
She appreciated Violet’s vulnerability but she could not easily accept her praise. “Our situations are not the same. Anthony is still here…”
“That is true. But you are feeling heartbreak just as I did. To see the man you love felled by something so easily is a truly horrific thing. I could barely breathe. Leaving my bed seemed insurmountable. Yet you managed it yesterday, you managed it today and I am certain you will manage it tomorrow.” Violet looked her in the eye, her gaze fierce. “You are strong.”
This time, she did not fight Violet’s words.
viii.
Medicine was barbaric.
It had been five days and Anthony showed no signs of improvement. In fact, his condition only seemed to be worsening. He was barely conscious and when he was awake, he showed signs of deliriousness and misery as he was subjected to whatever new idea the doctor wished to try.
“No,” Kate said, using her body as a shield between Anthony and their doctor. “I will not allow it.”
“It is not a case of what you will allow, Lady Bridgerton. It is a proven method of ridding the body of illness.”
“It is cruel.”
“That may be but if it cures your husband then it is necessary.”
“Kate.”
It was Colin who interjected from his seat by Anthony’s bed. Violet had sent letters to her children before her departure from London informing them of Anthony’s sudden illness. She swore she had told them not to come but those who could make the journey had descended on Aubrey Hall with the others promising to follow on as soon as they could. Kate was sure that Anthony would hate for his siblings to see him like this but there was little arguing with the Bridgerton clan who could all be as stubborn as her husband when they wished to be.
“You cannot agree that this is required.”
“I am not a doctor but should we not try everything in the hope of healing him?”
She loathed the satisfied look on the doctor’s face when she stepped aside and she rubbed her bump, swearing to herself that she would find anyone other than the sadist in front of her to deliver this baby when the time came.
“You may wish to leave the room for this, my lady. It will not be pleasant.”
Anyone else would deliver this baby.
She gave him a withering look as she got onto the bed and slid behind Anthony, lifting him up so his head rested against her chest. He was a furnace and she yearned for the nights when she had grumbled about his cold feet pressing against her legs.
When the doctor made the first incision, Anthony cried out and she frantically pressed kisses into his hair, clutching him tight even as his body burned against her.
“It is alright. It is alright. I am right here. I love you.”
She muttered nonsense into his ear while the blood seeped out, trying not to listen to his pained cries or look at the dark red blood pooling in the bowl.
“It is alright. This will make you better. You are going to be alright.”
She felt terrible. She was causing her husband pain when his suffering seemed never ending.
“You are going to be alright. This will work.”
When it was over, she felt no relief as she watched one of the maids take away the bowl filled with her husband’s blood. Anthony was unconscious again, his body still burning and his breathing unsteady.
“We should start to see an improvement by tomorrow.”
The doctor’s voice was pompous and Kate felt an overwhelming urge to slap him. However, Colin intervened, picking up on her obvious fury, and led the doctor from the room with a question about children and croup.
“He is not delivering our baby,” she said, pressing a new cooling cloth to his forehead. “You can argue with me about it but we both know I shall win.”
Anthony was silent and, despite her dislike for the doctor, Kate prayed that he was right and that tomorrow would bring with it good news.
ix.
Kate was in awe of her children.
It had been over a week now yet each of them continued to watch over their father with a determination that she could not help but admire.
“Do you remember when you first taught me fencing and you forgot to remind me that it was forbidden indoors?”
Kate hovered outside the bedroom door at the sound of her eldest son’s voice. She had planned to wile away the afternoon talking to Anthony but it appeared that Edmund had beaten her to it.
“I got so carried away that I slashed right through the drapes amma had just purchased for the dining room. I swear I thought she was going to murder us both with my own fencing sword.”
She heard Edmund chuckle but it caught in his throat and quickly changed into a sob.
“Please don’t go. We need you, papa. I need you.”
She peered around the door to see Edmund’s dark head nestled next to Anthony’s own as he cried and she was about to hurry in and comfort him when he raised his head, wiped his tears and continued talking. “What about the time Miles and I stole into your office because we wanted to try your whiskey?”
Content that husband and son were as okay as they could be, she silently slipped away, allowing Edmund his privacy as he sat beside his father while his heart broke.
Miles was an equally frequent visitor at Anthony’s bedside and Kate began to elongate her time spent putting Charlotte to sleep once she spotted her younger son shuffling into their bedroom with a book in hand.
One night, she pressed her fingers to her lips as her and Charlotte stole down the corridor before settling themselves on the floor just outside.
“I was something impatient, as I have observed, to have the use of my boat, though very loath to run any more hazards, and therefore sometimes I sat contriving ways to get her about the island.”
The two of them sat in the corridor, listening to Miles read Robinson Crusoe to Anthony just as his father had done for him countless times before, until Charlotte’s breathing grew heavy and her daughter drifted off to sleep. She was about to scoop her up when Miles paused.
“You must wake up before I finish. I cannot choose the next book without you. And there are so many books. We have so much more to read. You cannot go. You mustn’t.”
Just like his brother, there was the sound of crying and, just like Edmund, before Kate could gather herself to comfort him, he sniffled.
“Now where was I? In this kind of dress, I went my new journey, and was out five or six days.”
Charlotte was a more reluctant visitor to Anthony’s bedside, uncomfortable at the sight of her father still and silent, but she watched over him in her own way. Kate found her on a Wednesday afternoon, Anthony’s tenth day of illness, sitting at his desk in his study, a stack of books set underneath her to reach the necessary height.
“It was Uncle Benedict’s idea,” was her response when Kate queried her presence in the room that she herself had not visited since that fateful night. “Papa would not want his office to be lonely so I am looking after it for him.”
“I am sure he will be most grateful to you for taking care of it.”
“I am even doing work for him.” Kate ambled over to the desk to find it littered with colourful pictures. “Uncle Benedict gave me his pastels. I’m drawing papa and I and all the adventures we shall have once he is better. I thought we could put them by his bed to cheer him up.”
There were scribbles of a blob with brown hair - Anthony - and a smaller blob with black hair - Charlotte - feeding the ducks, riding horses, reading stories and dancing. It took everything in Kate not to start crying again at her daughter’s beautiful optimism.
Then she looked closer at the drawings.
“Charlotte, where did you get the paper for your drawings?”
“I told you,” she said in that delightfully disappointed tone that only children could manage. “I am doing work for him. I used the papers on his desk.”
Covering the desk were legal documents, letters from tenants and notes from parliament that Anthony had been working through before he fell ill. Now they were all covered in Charlotte’s colourful scribbles leaving them virtually unreadable.
And for the first time since her world had fallen apart, Kate laughed, a loud, rich laugh that rose from deep within her and echoed through the study.
Their children were determined, optimistic, brave, empathetic, kind and strong.
They were the best parts of her and Anthony.
x.
Kate loved the Bridgertons.
They had welcomed her into their family with open arms, pulling her into their loud, messy, overwhelming lives with a kindness and warmth that had blown her away. With Edwina living on the continent, Kate had cherished being so warmly brought into her new family. They embraced her competitive, opinionated spirit and she had never felt like she needed to be less around them. She always enjoyed their company and thrived on being part of the Bridgerton family.
Today though, she could not bear to be around them.
She became aware of it twelve days after Anthony had fallen ill.
Violet had insisted she go downstairs to eat, promising that the change of scenery would do Kate some good before adding that she would be grateful for some time alone with her son. She could hardly deny a mother such a request so she had made her way downstairs to break her fast.
Except, when she had reached the dining room, she had found herself unable to go in.
The dining table was filled with the Bridgerton siblings who were refusing to depart from Aubrey Hall until “Anthony is well enough to kick us out himself” as Eloise had proclaimed. She had not minded their presence, their lively chatter and boisterous personalities doing a little bit to fill the gaping void left by the lack of Anthony.
However, Kate had not fully taken note, until that exact moment, that it was not just the Bridgerton siblings who had descended but a number of their spouses too. All of a sudden, it felt as if everywhere she looked, there were husbands and wives.
She noticed it all day.
It was the way Sophie held Benedict’s hand as the two of them sat at Anthony’s bedside together. It was the way Simon reassured Daphne when she left their bedchambers weeping at the sight of the doctor forcing Anthony to vomit - another barbaric medical treatment to which Kate’s protests had fallen on deaf ears. It was the way Penelope made sure Colin ate and Eloise wrote to Phillip to keep him informed and Lucy sat with Gregory even as she looked after their children too.
They all had someone by their side to help them through this.
All of them except Kate.
She made her excuses in the late afternoon, slipping away upstairs and ushering the maid out of the room, requesting not to be disturbed for the next hour.
The sight of Anthony lying still in their bed had become horribly familiar. His waves of consciousness were becoming more sporadic, barely staying awake long enough to eat or vomit depending on the doctor’s demands for that day, and never showing any real recognition of where he was or what was happening. Often he called for Kate, other times for his mother or his father but he never seemed to recognise her or Violet. The way his eyes looked through her when he was conscious, his gaze hazy and unfocused, had broken her the first few times but now she felt numb to it.
She dreamed of the day her husband would look at her again and know her.
Removing her shoes, she lit a candle by their bed before pulling the heavy curtains closed, shutting out the bright daylight. She did not wish to call Rose back to help her out of her dress so she settled for climbing into bed as she was. Anthony would not care.
His body still burned so she kicked away the bedsheets and settled herself next to him, lying next to her husband for the first time in almost a fortnight. The constant rotation of maids, doctors and family visitors had left her with no choice but to move to the unused viscountess’s rooms and she could not remember a worse period of sleep since the end of her second pregnancy.
She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, not caring about the heat that radiated from him, and placed her hand over his heart, feeling the reassuring beat of it beneath her palm.
“I miss you. Nothing feels right without you. I do not know how to do this without you.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she remembered the vow she had made on that very first day, that she would not allow any talk of Anthony dying. She had felt so sure that her husband would make a full recovery. But now, as the days dragged on and he became more and more lost to her, she allowed herself to finally acknowledge the fear that had been gnawing away at her since the moment she had awoken to his whimpers all those nights ago.
“Don’t go. Please do not leave me. I cannot do this without you. I do not want to do this without you.”
For the first time in her life, Kate cried in her husband’s arms without a single word of comfort falling from his lips.
xi.
The baby kicked.
Kate had worried she might be less excited considering this was her fourth child but every kick sent a flutter of joy through her, a delightful reminder that there was a tiny human inside her who was the perfect mix of her and Anthony.
She desperately wanted to share the joy of it all with him. He had been so excited to feel each of their children move, finding any excuse to touch her bump and talk to their son or daughter.
“I want them to know my voice,” he had said when he took to reading that day’s newspaper to her bump with his head resting on her lap, her fingers trailing through his hair.
It was a tradition he had started with Edmund and which had continued with Miles and Charlotte.
She could not bear to think that it was one that this baby - Mary as she had taken to calling the little girl she was sure she was carrying - would never know.
Settling herself against the headboard, she perused the front page of The Times before selecting a story about the Duke of Wellington’s reform bill that she was sure Anthony would be interested in although it would bore her to tears.
She was barely through the first paragraph when there was a soft knock at the door and Hyacinth appeared. Even though she was older now than Kate had been when they first met, and a wife and mother herself, Kate still always saw the exuberant child she had been at the Bridgerton's Harmony dance.
“I am not disturbing you, am I? I hoped to sit with him for a while.”
“You are welcome to join us. I was only reading to him.”
Hyacinth settled herself and they chatted amicably about George’s upcoming birthday and Isabella’s desire to hide herself in every nook and cranny. It was only when Hyacinth took note of the paper that the conversation shifted.
“It would not be my first choice of reading material,” Kate explained. “But he read it every day to the other three and I do not want this one to feel left out. It is not quite the same but it shall have to do.”
Hyacinth nodded in understanding and Kate braved the question that she had been too scared to ask and which only three people would truly understand, two of whom were in that very room.
“What if she never knows his voice?”
It was a question that had begun to haunt her as the doctor’s words took on an air of pessimism and people began to fall quiet when she walked into a room.
The sigh Hyacinth let out was long and slow and Kate could not imagine the torrent of emotions whirling through the younger woman’s head.
“I apologise. I should not have asked-”
“It is alright,” Hyacinth reassured her before falling quiet, looking at Anthony who lay silently between them. “I suppose I should lie to you. I should tell you that I feel like I knew my father, that all the stories my brothers and sisters spent so long telling me made me feel as if I knew him myself. But, to me, he has always been a story. A wonderful one but a story nonetheless.”
“That is my deepest fear. I do not want Anthony to be nothing but a story to our child. I do not want my children to have to bear the responsibility of telling their sibling about what a wonderful man their father was.”
“I wish I had known my father,” Hyacinth said, glassy tears in her eyes. “But I am thankful I was lucky enough to have a brother who could do his best to be that for me. Anthony is the one who raised me, who did all the things a father was supposed to.”
Kate reached over and took Hyacinth’s hand in hers, squeezing it tight as the two of them sat there, connected by their love for the man between them.
“I know how grateful Anthony is to be such an important part of your life but I do not wish that for Edmund. He should not have to raise this baby.”
“And he will not. Anthony will be this baby’s father because my brother is too pig-headed to let anything stop him from being there for you and this child.”
Kate chuckled. “Your brother’s stubbornness has driven me mad countless times but I have never wished for it more than I do at this moment.”
“Have faith, Kate. My stubborn brother will be back tormenting you before you know it. He will not be a mere story to your child.”
xii.
Two weeks. A fortnight. Fourteen days.
Their bedchambers had begun to take on a morbid air which seeped into everyone who visited the room and if it was not for the ever-increasing number of days that had passed since Anthony had taken ill, time would seemed to have stood still at Aubrey Hall.
The doctor had tried to talk to her twice now about what would come next but each time, when he had talked about there being nothing further they could do and how they must simply wait, she stormed out of the room, infuriated and distraught.
Waiting.
All those years spent studying medicine at Oxford and the best the man could do was to suggest waiting to see which way Anthony’s fate would fall - life or death.
No one dared to talk to her about what might come next, not even tentatively, although she suspected some of the family might have raised it between themselves but she had no wish to hear it.
She caught one of the newer maids, Beth, gossiping in the corridor about “What will become of Lady Bridgerton when he dies?” and it had taken all of her self-restraint not to scream at the silly girl.
Daphne had stepped in and handled it. Rose had whispered to her later that day that the girl had been reprimanded. Kate did not care.
The one time she forced herself to have a necessary conversation about the what ifs was on the fourteenth night since Anthony had taken ill.
Benedict was sitting sketching in the parlour and Kate made herself join him. She denied having favourite Bridgertons but she had always had a soft spot for Benedict and his artistic passions. In usual circumstances, she would have enjoyed an evening in his company but tonight she wished she could have had a stiff drink before talking to him.
“I do not wish to have this conversation,” she said and he looked at her in surprise, a grin on his face and a no doubt witty comment on his tongue, before he registered the grim look on her face.
“Ah.”
He knew what this was about. Of course he did. Benedict’s ability to read people was one of her favourite things about him.
“I must talk to you because, while I hope this conversation will prove utterly unnecessary, if we wait until we reach a point where it is necessary, I am certain that I will be in no fit state to participate in it.”
“Kate.”
She felt sick.
“I do not wish to discuss it as I promised myself I would never talk of him dying. But my duty is not just to Anthony but also to Edmund and I would be failing my son if I did not prepare for what his future may be.”
The grim expression Benedict now wore was a match for her own as were the tears she could see glistening in his eyes.
“If…if Edmund inherits and becomes Viscount Bridgerton at fifteen, he will need someone at his side to guide and support him. He likes to pretend that he is grown but he is still a child. You saw what the title did to Anthony and he had three years on Edmund. He is not ready to be the viscount and he will need someone he can turn to to ease the burden, a man who can walk with him through this. I know you have your family but I am asking you to help mine.”
She knew that being the spare had always been somewhat of a weight around Benedict’s neck and she could guess the relief he must have felt when her and Anthony had produced both an heir and a spare, freeing him from his obligation to a title he did not want. And here she was asking him to pick up that responsibility again. It was selfish but she would not let her son bear the burden of the viscountcy the way her husband had at eighteen.
“I will be there for Edmund, Kate,” he said solemnly. “But he will not need me for he shall be old and grey by the time he wears that title.”
“I desperately hope that you are right. And I also hope we never have to speak of this conversation again.”
“As do I.”
She took her leave promptly, the guilt she felt for allowing herself to discuss even the possibility of Anthony’s death overwhelming her. In fact, she did not breathe properly until she had dismissed the maids and curled herself into her husband’s side, reassured that he was safe and breathing and alive.
xiii.
The waiting was unbearable.
With every treatment having failed and the doctor’s attitude having shifted to one of inevitability, Kate refused to be anywhere but at Anthony’s side. She demanded meals be brought to the bedside and she slept fitfully beside him, frequently disturbed by maids checking in on him or Anthony’s sweltering body heat.
She did not care what anyone said. She would not leave him.
They tried to persuade her, to convince her that this was not what Anthony would want, but she did not listen. They could not tell her what her husband would want. She would move when he told her to and not a moment before. And even then she might refuse. Never let it be said that she was good at taking orders.
Violet was the only one who did not try to compel her to move. Instead she sat silently next to Kate, embroidery in hand, never making an attempt to convince her to leave him.
Her companion that evening, however, was Edmund.
“Amma, I am worried about you.”
“It is not your job to worry about me, my darling.”
“If papa cannot worry then I shall worry for him.”
His words weighed heavy on her, her sweet little boy already trying to fill his father’s shoes, a pressure that neither she nor Anthony ever wanted for him.
“Do not strive to do what your father would.”
“He would worry though. This cannot be good for the baby.”
Kate let her hand drift to her bump, feeling the baby kick against her palm, a sign that there was a fighter in there. They were a family of fighters and the newest addition would be no different.
“You are right,” she said and she enjoyed the look of surprise that washed over her son’s face. “I can admit that others are right.” The sceptical look he gave was such a delightful mimicry of Anthony’s own face that she could not stop a delighted smile from forming. “It has been known to happen!”
Edmund chuckled and she beckoned him over to join her on the bed. It was a squash now that he had overtaken both his parents in height - a fact that frustrated both of them beyond measure - but he cuddled into her and, for a moment, he was her tiny boy all over again. He was not though. His childhood was rapidly coming to an end, and she could do him the honour of speaking to him like the adult he was on the brink of becoming.
“I know that sitting here is not always the best thing but I have no choice. I must be here when he wakes up, for him and for myself.”
“What if he does not wake? What if we lose him?”
The fear that was laced through Edmund’s voice sent shivers down Kate’s spine and she clung to him, wishing she never had to hear her son sounding so lost.
“I do not know.” She breathed and spoke the thought she had been too afraid to say out loud. “I am so uninterested in a life without your father.”
It took her a minute to realise that Edmund was crying. She held him as tight as she could, scratching at his scalp the way she did when he was little and too scared to sleep.
“I love you and your siblings dearly but I have loved him for sixteen years and the idea of living the rest of my life without him is agonising. I cannot allow myself to even think about it because the concept is too awful for me to imagine.”
There was nothing more to say, nothing more that they could do, so the two of them sat there waiting, praying that the man beside them would return to them and terrified to consider what would come next if he did not.
xiv.
The bedroom was silent.
Kate had summoned her most authoritative Viscountess Bridgerton voice and dismissed the doctor, the maids and even the family. She had demanded a night alone with her husband and no one had dared to disagree.
Anthony lay, as he had for the last sixteen days, silently on his side of the bed. Cool cloths were draped over his forehead and chest but, beyond that and his feverish skin, she could convince herself he was simply sleeping.
She lay on her side, curled up against him, idly drawing patterns on his chest, trailing her fingers under his shirt and pausing every so often to feel his heart beat beneath her hand. It was the way that they had spent so many nights since they had wed, just the two of them tangled up in one another, and she tried to ignore how lonely it felt to feel his arms lying still at his side.
“You told me once that you had tried to avoid love because you thought the pain of losing someone would be too unbearable, that you would not wish to inflict such suffering on someone else. Well I want you to know that you were wrong. It is unbearable but if this is the price I must pay for loving you for all of these years, I will pay it. It will have been worth it.”
She kissed his cheek and held him closer. His usual scents had long faded but there was still the scent of him, something indescribable but which was utterly Anthony, and she breathed it in, desperately savouring it.
“You have been the best thing in my life and I would take all these days of suffering if it meant I was able to love you. You were worth all of this pain in the present, and all the pain that came before we stopped being such fools all those years ago; you were worth every bit of it.”
She felt herself beginning to cry again and she made no effort to stop. It was just Anthony and her and he had never given her a reason to be anything but her most honest self in front of him.
“I love you. I love you in a way I did not realise you could love someone. The idea of my life without you is too awful to bear but perhaps our love story was simply a short story rather than an epic novel.”
The unfairness of it all bit at her. She wanted forever with him. Did they not deserve that? Did they not deserve a lifetime?
“But I am greedy and I want the novel. I want an entire saga with you, one that could fill a whole library. I want poetry and plays and operas of our love. None of it will ever be enough. Sixteen years is not enough.” She was selfish and she was greedy and she wanted a million lifetimes of loving Anthony Bridgerton. “But I know how hard you have fought to come back to us and I know that if this is your time then it will not be because you did not try to stay. We are powerful but sometimes the world is simply beyond our control.”
She shivered and pulled herself closer to him.
“Know that we love you. I love you.”
She wanted to tell him that it was alright, that he could go and they would be alright.
However, she remembered a night in a garden, a lifetime ago, when the two of them had finally learned that it was alright to be selfish and to want things for themselves. It had been a difficult lesson to learn but it had been so very worth it. She would not betray the lesson that had brought them together now.
“Please do not leave me.” Her eyes fluttered close, the exhaustion of the last two weeks draping over her and tugging her towards sleep. “Anthony, do not leave me.”
Kate fell asleep beside Anthony, falling into her first deep sleep in weeks.
A sleep so deep that she did not notice her husband’s fever falling nor the first time his eyes blinked open, free of the fog that had clouded them for so long.
“Kate.”
xv.
Someone was stroking her arm.
It was an absent-minded thought which woke her, her brain thinking it before she was awake enough to fully register the tickling sensation trailing up and down her left arm.
“Stop it,” she mumbled, her voice heavy with sleep. “Go back to sleep.”
She curled in closer to Anthony, determined to claim at least a few more minutes of slumber before the day began.
Anthony.
She jolted awake, the impossibility of the last thirty seconds washing over her, and sat up to find Anthony exactly as he had been, only his eyes were open and he was looking at her.
He was seeing her.
He knew her.
The joy she felt was immediate and visceral and she could not stop herself from throwing herself at him, earning a quiet oof as they collided, before squeezing him.
“Kate,” he croaked.
Tears were already spilling from her cheeks onto his before she realised she was crying. “I had started to believe I was going to lose you.”
Words failed her after that and she crumpled into him, sobbing into his chest. She knew she should alert someone, summon the doctor, inform their family but she could do nothing but cry as she felt his heart beating beneath her cheek: solid, reliable and strong.
Anthony held her as best he could and she cherished the feeling of his arms around her, a sensation she had been bereft without.
“I am alright, Kate. I am alright.”
His voice was raspy from disuse but it was his and she wondered how she had survived so many days without hearing it. It set off a new round of sobs, guttural, noisy sobs that she could not control, and it was only when she pulled away that she became aware that he was crying too.
It did not take long for her cries to alert the others and Kate would never forget the look of abject fear on Gregory’s face when he found her weeping over her husband’s body for as long as she lived. It took until he saw her grin, and her husband’s eyes blinking as he looked at his youngest brother, for him to shriek with joy and soon the bedroom was awash with visitors and voices and tears.
Edmund, Miles and Charlotte raced into the room still clad in their nightclothes and the trio burst into tears at the sight of their father awake before all trying to clamber onto the bed at once, paying no heed to Kate’s warnings that their father had just woken, leaving them a sobbing mess of Bridgertons which Kate had no choice but to join.
The Bridgerton siblings were equally emotional, with Hyacinth the worst of all, and they crowded around the bed, each desperate to be close to their brother who was blinking owlishly at them, rather overwhelmed at the deluge of emotion he had inspired.
And Violet, Violet stood in the doorway, tears silently streaming down her face at the sight of her son not just alive but surrounded by those who loved him.
Later, after the crowds had been cleared away, after the doctor had ordered Anthony to remain on bed rest and under strict instructions to not do anything that could further endanger his health until he was fully recovered, and after Edmund, Miles and Charlotte had settled themselves in their parents’ bedroom for the day, reluctant to part from their father, Kate sat next to her husband and passed him the newspaper.
He raised an eyebrow at her and she gestured to her bump.
“It is tradition,” she said. “A tradition I feared this one might never know,” she added quietly.
His eyes were glistening with tears and she knew her own smile was watery as she clutched his hand in hers before helping him shift so his head was in her lap.
“Parliament was in crisis again yesterday,” he began, his voice hoarse.
Tears welled in her eyes and she made no effort to swallow them away but rather let them fall because these were the good kind of tears, tears that signified that everything was finally alright.
Anthony’s voice rumbled through her, the low vibrations soothing her while she threaded her fingers through his hair. She could hear Edmund and Miles talking quietly in the corner, their voices low, and could see Charlotte scribbling away on her next masterpiece at the bottom of the bed. A spring breeze drifted in through the window and a firm foot kicked against her belly, earning a chuckle from Anthony.
“Yes, the Duke of Wellington is a fool,” he murmured before continuing to read.
It was an ordinary moment, the first of a million more ordinary moments if they were lucky, but Kate soaked in every second, cherishing it.
Life was fleeting and unpredictable. There were moments of joy and there were moments of pain. You could never know which was waiting for you over the next hill.
But this was a moment of joy and Kate was going to savour every second of it.
She was at peace.