Chapter Text
She was fuming.
How dare he create a rift in her relationship with her sister? His plans cannot come into fruition, she will not allow it. He may have beguiled everyone in that room with his quaint speech—Kate included, for a second there, but she will never admit such a thing—but she can see right through him!
Kate will certainly prevail over his tricks. He better wise up and prepare everything he’s got because nothing will stand in her way of protecting Edwina. Not a thing!
She takes out the clips in her hair, grumbling as she oils through the strands. Her reflection in the mirror looks back at her with a furrow in her forehead.
She hisses at it. “What are you looking at?”
When she finally prepared for bed, one thought reverberated in her mind. The viscount will not get the better of her ever again.
Sleep finally took over, even in her livid state.
Kate does not remember leaving the curtains open, nor does she remember children being in Lady Danbury’s home. She slowly opens her eyes, and sees that she is no longer in her bedroom.
This is definitely larger, and a thousand times more stylish…
Not that there’s anything wrong with her room in the Danbury house, but that room is more suited to her than this… which seems to be a master’s bedroom. Did she pass out somewhere else last night? She remembers the poetry reading, then the Viscount—
A knock startles her, which is followed by a young woman’s voice, “My lady, I apologize for disturbing you. The lord instructed me to let you sleep in, but the younger lordship wishes to see you. I told him what His Lordship, the elder, said, but he will not listen—” She sighs. “Well, I’m here to ask if you need help dressing today, my lady.”
Had that maid just call her—No, perhaps Kate just misheard.
Not one word from her seems reasonable to Kate. She looks at the strange contents of the room she’s in, and she finds that cannot recognize a single thing. Her hand lifts the coverlet from her belly and legs, and what she sees made her scream.
The door immediately opens, then enters a woman she has never seen before in her life. The maid hurries to help her. “What is it, my lady?!”
Kate throws her legs off the bed to stand. She feels a bit wobbly, but she succeeds in walking towards the maid. “What has happened to me?!” gasps Kate, hands cradling her head.
A child?! A child, at her age, at her circumstance, and out of wedlock? This is beyond transgressing propriety. She must be a stain on her family’s reputation.
The maid blinks in confusion. “Pardon me, ma’am?”
Kate swallows nervously, as if she does not wish the words to leave her mouth, then she closes her eyes and groans in defeat. “What has caused this,” she points at her bulging belly, “to happen?!”
The maid is silent for a moment, before laughing. “My lady, I have always admired your wondrous sense of humor! Now, shall I grab the purple dress, or… the blue one your husband recently bought?”
Kate could not help but gawk at the woman, gasping to herself. “Husband?”
So it was not out of wedlock after all.
It appears that the maid does not hear her say this. Instead, she fetches a pale blue frock, and starts undressing a befuddled Kate.
“I must be dreaming,” whispers Kate, letting the strange woman remove her sleeping gown.
The maid tuts, clearly mistaking her tone to be amusement. “Oh, my lady, these past eight years have been a dream alright! Two sons, and another one on the way. Where did the time go, no?”
Two?!
“Oh, good God!”
This is a dream, so that means Kate is still in control of her surroundings. Mind prevails over matter, and all that. To be frank, this is quite divergent from her usual abstract dreams about texts she read or food she has eaten, but this is not so bad.
She easily picks up on the work her dreamself has tasked her to accomplish. It is not so different with her past experiences in handling matters in their household back in India. Not even one sweat broken, even with the… watermelon wrapped around her stomach that hinders her visibility from the waist down.
She decides a break would be best after being thrust upon such responsibilities. She takes a chilled glass of lemonade, quickly chugging two glasses. On her third, she hears a tiny petulant voice call out, “There you are! I’ve been looking for you all day, mama…”
She immediately spits out the lemonade, then turns to face this intruder of her peace.
There’s two of them.
God help her.
“Mama, is something wrong?” The shorter one asks—he is definitely her son, judging by his curls and his huge dark brown eyes. Almost black. Kate had never really given thought to how her eyes appeared. She saw them in the mirror. She knew it was pleasant enough to suit her face, but seeing it in another’s… she is certain that he must be truly spoilt by his parents. For who could say no to those eyes? She slowly lowers herself to their level, and he quickly goes to touch her cheek as if seeking to soothe her. “Mama?”
What a strangely sweet child.
The older boy huffs. Clearly envious. “What’s wrong, Miles, is that you’re bothering her!”
Miles pouts. Adorably thick eyebrows push together in anger. “That’s not true, Edmund!”
“It is!”
“It’s not!”
“Yes, it is!”
“No, it’s not!”
“It is!”
“T’s not!”
Edmund sticks out his tongue. “You’re such a big baby!”
This causes Miles to erupt in tears, and both Edmund and Kate gape at the sight.
“Why did you say that?” admonishes Kate, holding Miles’ small head to her shoulder, while his arms are wrapped around her.
Tears start to gather in Edmund’s eyes. “You always side with him!”
He runs away before Kate could even open her mouth. She had not even sided with anyone yet, she merely asked why he would say—she lets out an exhausted sigh. She did not even know these children! Why must they be her charges?
She couldn’t exactly recall what Edwina was like as a child, because at the time Kate too was in her youth. She didn’t deal with a crying Edwina. Edwina hardly cried or showed any unpleasantry as a child.
Spinsterhood seems more and more like the perfect option to Kate.
This… emotionality must come from her husband’s side of the family, Kate thinks. Then she slaps a hand on her forehead. She must be going insane if she’s getting too involved in the complexities of this dream. She must wake up before her mind gets corrupted.
“Mama?”
Pulling away from their embrace, she looks at Miles, who has a confused expression on his face. “Did you just slap yourself?”
“No,” she sputters. “There was… there was a mosquito, darling.”
“Oh, that’s a relief!”
Hearing that come out of the mouth of a babe makes Kate chuckle. “And why is that?”
“It’s good that it was only a moist kitty,” Miles says to her. “And not a bee.”
“A mosquito,” Kate corrects. “What’s wrong with a bee, darling?”
The suspicious up-and-down look on Miles gives her would be hilarious, if it did not alarm Kate. “Mama, you don’t know?”
Kate lifts herself up from the floor, then worries her lip while she thinks of an excuse. “Let’s play a game, shall we?”
Miles tilts his head to the side. “What kind, Mama?”
“I’ll ask you questions, and let’s see if you can answer them without questioning me back.”
Miles lights up at the challenge. “Let’s do it, Mama!”
“First,” Kate begins. “What’s wrong with bees?”
“Bees are evil, Mama,” Miles whispers, as if he’s a villain in their game. “They’re monster critters! Father hates them, and so do you!”
“I do?”
Miles nods enthusiastically.
“Will Edmund be fine? He seems to be upset that I hugged you.”
“He’s fine!” The child grumbles, folding his arms in front of his small body. “He was looking for you earlier.”
“Why?”
Miles blinks. “Because of Father’s birthday surprise.”
“What’s that?”
His tiny shoulders shrug. “I dunno. You said you wanted us all to work on it today, while Father’s still in Kent.”
“So we are still in London,” Kate muses to herself. At least she hadn’t been kidnapped.
Miles thinks this is another question, and he jerks his adorable little head in agreement.
“Am I…” Kate hesitates, before continuing, “a good mother to you both, Miles?”
“The best!” yells the small boy, wrapping himself to her leg. “You’re the best Mama, Mama!”
Her heart hurts when he says it with such conviction. A tiny part of her wishes that this maternal life was a possibility outside of this dream. That maybe… she could try, that it’s worth trying to become. But her situation in reality is different, she cannot consider herself before her family. The family that she has, she must fight for.
But for now, she lets this tiny dream child hold on to her for a minute longer.
Being pregnant is not the miraculous state of being most women brag about. It’s painful, it’s horrifying, and it makes you eat the strangest of food. Kate knew being pregnant would mean cravings, but she hoped it would be tasteful ones. Not… mixtures and combinations, she would have never dreamed of eating in real life.
She finds that being pregnant means being tired all the time after just a few hours of walking around the house. Granted, it’s a very big house. But she’s still in her twenties, she should be able to walk longer without being out of breath. She thinks of passing the time through horse-riding. But as she tries to strip on her own, the dress gets stuck around her belly because she could not unbutton it all the way through. She feels even more pathetic as she turns to look at herself in the large mirror in the master’s bedroom (she refuses to call it hers).
Kate looks older in this dream.
And she hates it with a fire of a thousand suns. Would she look like this if she continued on her spinster path? Tired and bedraggled? Circles have formed underneath her eyes, surely from nursing her sons during late night. This dream—she has a house to manage and two sons to take care of. But she had hoped her youth and vitality wouldn’t leave so easily.
Edwina would look lovely, would smile pleasantly, and never complain about such a situation. Even with child, Kate was sure that Edwina would be a diamond.
She spends the rest of the afternoon in her room, sulking, napping, and stroking her belly. Oddly enough, the sensation calms her down. How could her husband leave her in this state? Kate wagers that he probably has a string of mistressess. She feels a pang in her chest, thinking about it, although she doesn’t know exactly why. When she reached marrying age, she always thought that if she did marry, it wouldn’t be a love match.
So why is it painful to think that her husband does not love her?
She stiffens when she hears voices nearing her doorway. The voices linger. The door knob jiggles. Kate quickly turns to all corners, looking for a hiding place.
Kate closes her eyes, still as a plank, her back facing the door as she hears it open and…
“My beautiful Viscountess.” Her husband instantly clings to her from behind, burying his nose in her neck, inhaling her deeply. “How is your day, sweetling?”
Kate’s eyes open in shock, then she whips her head towards the smiling man behind to her. That voice betrayed his identity—she can pick out that insufferably smug tone anywhere!
Viscount Bridgerton is her husband.
This infinitely deranged dream has gone too far!
Kate screams, pushing him away with all her strength, then immediately rushing to the opposite side of the room. She instinctively throws everything she could grasp at his head. “What are you doing here?!”
Anthony dodges, putting his hands up to catch some of the trinkets from their bedside table that Kate had thrown at him. “This is our bedroom!”
“How could you?!”
She takes him by surprise, when she throws her riding cape at his head, limiting his visibility and movement. Then she starts whacking him in all directions with her arms. When she finally tires of assaulting him, then she starts crying. “Sweet mother of God,” she curses under her breath.
He peeks at her from underneath the coverlet, looking unharmed and amused. “Our bedplay has never been that strange, painful, or blasphemous, but I like to think that I am an open-minded gentleman.”
She rolls her eyes. “You bloody pervert! How could you do this to me?!”
”Cursing already, and we’ve barely even started. Kate, my dearest, what is the matter?”
Before Kate could even muster up a response to such a heavy question, Anthony throws up his hands in surrender.
“Whatever I’ve done as of late,” he begins, as he carefully walks to her direction. “I’d like to say that I apologize sincerely and whole-heartedly.” He rubs her arms, then waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Now… shall I close the curtains?”
She boxes his ear, and moves far away from him once more. “What would Edwina think?!”
He rubs his sore ear, wearing a confused expression. “What?”
“You are courting my sister!” Kate explodes, throwing a pillow at his face.
Anthony catches the pillow easily. “That was eight years ago!”
Kate cries out. “Well, it feels like yesterday to me!”
He walks closer to her, and she takes a step back. “Kathani, what is going on?”
“How do you know that?”
“Know what?”
“How do you know my name?!”
“Kate, we’ve been married for eight years,” Anthony answers, nonplussed. “I don’t think my memory is that horrible, that I can no longer remember the name of the woman I’ve been sleeping next to for the last decade.”
“Eight years isn’t a decade,” she counters.
“What is two years?” Anthony huffs. “Now tell me what’s going on, my love?” His expression betrays his genuine concern for her, that she actually lets him near. He cups her cheeks lovingly. “Please tell me.”
“This is madness.”
He grins. “Well, that is the certain flavor of love we’re known for, Kate.”
When she opens her mouth to protest, he kisses her, and surprisingly, she lets him. And she kisses back, just as passionately. It’s as if her body thoroughly knows this man, and judging by her belly and the two boys outside of the room, it knows him very intimately indeed.
He pulls away first, brushing away hair from her face. “It wasn’t an easy road for both of us. Eight years…”
“Is a long time,” she finishes. “How did we get here?”
“If it were up to me, we’d be here the moment we met.”
She finds herself smiling. “Racing at the park?”
“You were so gorgeous, I almost fell from my horse. What a woman!”
Her smile turns bitter. “Not much to look at now, am I?”
Anthony’s face turns stormy. “Do not say that ever again. Banish it from your mind.” He takes her hand and puts it against his chest. “You still haunt me night and day. I look forward to waking up and coming back to your arms. You radiate life, you’re my personal Demeter, my fertile goddess.”
She pinches his side. “Stop being so blasphemous.”
“Heaven will just have to understand,” he argues, “that I’ve found a piece of it here.” He presses a kiss to her lips.
She scowls at that. This must be the line he feeds to all of his mistresses. A stomp on his foot offs his balance, and Kate runs to the door, opening it wide.
“Get out!”
Anthony sighs, finally giving in to the tantrums of his pregnant wife. “At least come to dinner—“
She slams the door on his face, and goes back to bed.
She closes her eyes, forcing herself to fall asleep, so she could return to her own reality. A reality that does not include being Anthony Bridgerton's wife.
The next morning mocks her, as Kate wakes up to the same excessive master’s bedroom. She blows hair away from her face, infuriated. She cannot exactly hog this room from its rightful owner forever.
One day, she’ll have to actually share this room with him, she shudders at the thought.
She makes her way to the breakfast table, and everyone turns their heads to look at her. The pressure awfully feels overwhelming, especially since she's clearly outnumbered.
Edmund takes her hand and tugs her to her seat next to the head of the table. “Momma, I’m sorry for being mean yesterday.”
“Edmund’s just saying that because you didn’t have dinner with us last night,” Miles mutters, picking at his potatoes.
“Shut up, Miles!”
Kate grins, taking the seat her son pulled out for her. She kisses his cheek. Kate notes how red Edmund’s ears turn when she does it. “Thank you, my dear. I was not feeling well last night, that’s all.”
Anthony clears his throat, to get her attention. “And do you feel better now?”
She smiles at him, in the polite manner he loathes. “Much, my lord.”
Kate swears the vein on his forehead could have exploded in anger.
“Very well,” he grits out. “Have it your way.”
Kate’s plans of avoiding the viscount, while accomplishing her daily tasks are being put to the test. Since he follows her around... all day.
She tells Yolanda to hold down the fort for her, while she stomps out to the gardens. And being the dutiful husband that he is, Anthony comes along as well.
“What is wrong with you?”
Anthony looks at his nails. “I could very much ask you the same thing.”
“Do you not have a job to accomplish?” Kate groans in frustration. “Is there no meeting at Parliament today? No tenant to visit? No roofs to fix?”
“Is that what this is about?” He asks. “Do I no longer have time for you and the children? Because I will make time—“
“No!”
“Then what is it? God, Kate, just tell me what this is about?!” Anthony bursts out. “I cannot take being far away from you. I didn’t sleep a wink last night, thinking about how cold you must have been, all alone in our room.”
Kate slept quite comfortable actually. She could not imagine ever sharing a bed with anyone. Especially not this man.
He continues on. “Do not ask me to leave you like that again. I cannot stand it.”
“Am I a good viscountess?”
“What?”
She rephrases her question. “Am I a good wife to you, my lord?”
“Kate—“
“I just…” She paces in circles in front of him. “I don’t think I’m fit to be a wife.”
“We have been married for—“
“Eight years, I know.” Kate sucks in her teeth. “But I have no idea what I am doing. I never thought this life could be possible for someone like me, and I would never think it on my own.” She breathes out. “It just doesn’t make sense! I…”
“What?”
“I don’t deserve this. This is not for me.”
“Kate, you are my wife.” He says with a tone of finality, as if it was a fact that everyone should respect. “We chose to marry, because we love each other more than anything in the world. When I kiss you, it is not out of duty. When I make love to you, I don’t do it to get you pregnant.”
Kate could not process what he just said, let alone the fact that being pregnant right now meant that she had lain with this man.
He stops. “Maybe part of it is. After all, I do enjoy seeing you round with my child. But that is not the point. Our life, our family exists because of our love.”
Her breath hitches when he yanks her into an embrace. “Love is the first thing we gave ourselves, after years of living for others.”
“You chose me?” Her voice comes out as a weak whisper.
“There is no one else,” he says. “There is no choice to make, not when my heart is completely and utterly yours, Kathani Bridgerton.”
That night, the viscountess sleeps next to her viscount in bliss. She watches him fall asleep, counts the breaths he takes, speculates on what he's dreaming. When sleep finally takes her, she feels herself detaching from this fantasy world, but it clings to her skin. It clings to her being.
When she wakes up to Edwina’s excited expression, hurrying to load their baggage to the carriage as they make their journey to Aubrey Hall, she finds herself looking down at her body at odd moments. She half-expects to have a full belly. Her head turns when she hears children down the street. She holds Newton close, pretending that his beige coat is dark curls instead.
Kate curbs the urge to pull Anthony into a kiss when they arrive. She savors the laughter they share, even when they’re deep in mud. She tamps down the heat that coils in her belly when he finds her in the library.
Kate ignores the pain in her chest, when everyone at the table expected him to propose to her sister. She scolds herself for hanging onto a fanciful dream, concocted by atrocious brain chemicals and exhaustion. There is no Edmund, and there is no Miles. She is not his, and he is not hers.
But why is it that when she gets stung, it feels like it hadn’t been a dream at all?