Work Text:
“You’re engaged to Lord Bridgerton?” Edwina asked in mild shock as she burst through the door to their shared bedroom at Aubrey Hall.
“Bon, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened we were just-” Kate began to apologize as she stood from the window seat, meeting Edwina in the middle of the room.
“Kate, it’s okay!” Edwina reassures her older sister with a burst of laughter. “I am not upset with you. How could I be?”
Kate could only stare at her sister in shock. They had come to Aubrey Hall at an invitation from Anthony to Edwina. With the expectation that he would propose to Edwina by the end of the week. Kate had spent the entire carriage ride, and the better part of the trip listening to Edwina wax poetically about the life she hoped she would have has Anthony’s wife.
It was the reason this entire trip had been so difficult for her. Kate still didn’t know how to grapple her feelings for Anthony with the reality of her sister’s infatuation for the man.
In all honesty, it was probably the very reason the two were now engaged. For better or worse it was Edwina that had brought the two together.
“Now I know why Anthony spent so much time with me, he wanted to be close to you,” Edwina teased, not noticing Kate’s surprise at her lack of reaction to the news.
“That’s not-”
“Yes, it is,” Edwina cut her older sister off. “I’m not blind, Didi, I always saw the way he looked at you.”
She’d have to have been a bling fool to miss the way that Kate drew Anthony’s gaze whenever the two were in the same room. Even when he had been paying express attention to her, it was Kate that he was thinking of.
“But you wanted to marry him,” Kate protests. “And I’ve stolen your chance at happiness.”
Edwina was supposed to be upset with her. Edwina ought to scream at her, throw something at her.
Edwina had been half in love with Anthony from the moment the two had met. And even though she’d tried to dissuade the match, perhaps unknowingly due to the influence of her own feelings, Edwina had made her intentions clear.
She wanted to marry the Viscount.
“You saved me from a lifetime of unhappiness with a man who was in love with my sister,” Edwina replied. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to me, I should be thanking you.”
“Kate, I wasn’t in love with Anthony, I think I was just in love with the idea of being in love. The idea of a title. A big house. Being a Viscountess,” Edwina admitted to her sister. “I wanted to be able to take care of you and Mama, to provide for you through my advantageous marriage, the way you have always taken care of me.”
“Oh, Edwina,” Kate muttered as she pulled her little sister into a tight hug.
She’d never been more proud of the young woman her sister had become.
“I love you, Kate, more than anything in the world.”
“We’ll find you a true love match,” Kate replies as she pulls back from the embrace, meeting Edwina’s gaze with a determined look. “A prince.”
“He doesn’t need to be a prince, he just needs to love me, and for me to love him in return,” Edwina replies with a burst of laughter at her sister’s unwavering resolve.
“Not that I would be opposed to a prince,” She adds after a moment of contemplation.
“Now, enough of these tears,” Edwina says as she wipes at Kate’s cheeks with her fingertips. “We have a wedding to plan!”