Work Text:
i should just tell you to leave
cause i know exactly where it leads
but i watch us go round and round each time
She knew of him, of course. It was in her best interests to gather what information she could about her clients, and their families and relationships were top of the list. To that end, Lady Whistledown had been quite a pleasant surprise, and the Bridgerton name was never missing from Whistledown’s letters.
She’d seen him at the Bridgerton residence, once or twice, when personally delivering a dress to one of the ladies. He was handsome, as both his adult brothers were, and charming. He clearly loved his family, but it was equally clear that he longed for an escape. His older brother escaped into booze and women - she would not get involved in that, Siena’s business was her own - and his younger brother longed to escape into the world, to travel far and wide.
What did Benedict Bridgerton want to escape into?
That was the thought running through Genevieve Delacroix’s mind when she saw him wandering through the party at Granville House. She had been wrapped up in Lucy, one of her favourite places to be, but her mind was elsewhere and she had taken a walk, was gazing around the party when she saw him, looking both like he belonged in this world but also as if he was a beautiful stranger stumbling upon an unknown land.
She took a drag on her pipe and enjoyed the sight of him drinking her in, like he was lost in the pleasures of the room, and couldn’t resist needling him.
He kissed like the rake he clearly was, although rumours of his exploits were never as prevalent as those of his brother. While Gen knew of several women who had entertained Anthony Bridgerton in the months before he’d met Siena, she knew of no one who would say the same of Benedict and so it was unclear where his passions had been honed.
Still, Genevieve was no fool. If he wanted to escape, she would provide an escape.
She tugged him down the stairs, back to the landing where she had left Lucy some thirty minutes prior. He dropped her hand as she made her way to Lucy and for a couple of minutes, she lost track of him and of all her senses in Lucy’s kiss. As she came back to herself, she saw Benedict backing out of a doorway, an unreadable expression on his face.
‘Bridgerton,’ she called, deliberately omitting his salutation, and Lucy’s hand stilled on Gen’s thigh. Gen liked him, and wanted him, but she would not bow to him - not here, where they were all equal in status and pleasure. His eyes lit up first as he saw where she’d moved to, and secondly at the sight of Lucy draped so closely, and Gen smiled, beckoning him over.
He sat between them, not a word said, and Gen knew Lucy would go with this instinct. Lucy was more inclined to women than to men, but she had an appetite for both, as did Gen, and this was not an uncommon situation for them. But there was something drawing her to this man.
It was perhaps a curse of her occupation that she was inclined to notice an elegant dresser and Benedict Bridgerton fit the bill. He wore not the austere blacks of his older brother, nor the playful baby blues of his younger brother, but richly coloured silks and brocades, gold and green and orange and purple, a veritable rainbow of waistcoats and cravats. By nature of the trade, Gen was friendly with a number of tailors servicing the Mayfair gentleman and so she knew the Bridgerton men were as exacting and yet still pleasant to work with as their mother and sisters.
She hoped those qualities followed Mr Bridgerton into the bedchamber.
Following the party, Lucy had no particular interest in Mr Bridgerton, except as a means to tease her husband, which was followed with teasing Mr Bridgerton himself, apparently. Lucy relayed this to Genevieve as they shared a drink the night following the Queen’s luncheon, and Lucy was watching her speculatively.
‘You are interested in him,’ she said bluntly. ‘Will you see him again?’
‘Perhaps,’ Gen said, a small smirk lurking at the corner of her mouth.
She did not wait long.
He came to her, waiting on the street outside her storefront, arm extended like the gentleman he was, and Gen shook her head at him.
‘I am no gentle lady, Mr Bridgerton,’ she said, locking the door behind her. Benedict shrugged and waved his arm regardless.
‘We are headed to the same place, are we not?’ he asked. ‘It would be remiss of me to leave you unescorted and lonely.’
He was wearing dark red today, shot through with gold and as she took his arm, she noted how well it matched her dress. She waited only a moment, and then:
‘We match,’ he said, pleased, and Genevieve laughed. Men were so predictable.
They found themselves at adjacent easels during the evening. Gen was no artist, but it was occasionally important for her to sketch a design. She had been caught one day, swearing at her sketchbook, as Lucy entered the modiste for a gown fitting, and the lady had laughed heartily at Gen’s language, before inviting her to a gathering with her husband, noted artist Henry Granville, that evening. Gen had initially been embarrassed to show her rudimentary artwork, but had found a community willing to encourage and teach and assist her, in exchange for the occasional mending on an evening gown.
Benedict was untrained as an artist but had talent that far outstripped hers. Gen was content if her figures had proportional limbs, but Benedict crumpled discarded sketches with regularity.
It was reasonably late into the evening when she watched him crumple up one final drawing, throwing it across the room, dismay and anger on his face. He took a breath, and she watched the calm flow across his face as he gathered himself, then grinned at her. ‘Shall we get out of here, then?’ he flirted, and she wondered what other secrets lurked behind that facade he showed the world.
Other times, he has obligations to society, and he shows up late at parties, late at the modiste, smelling of flowers and perfume and champagne, and she slowly unties his cravat, unbuttons his waistcoat, stripping away the many layers he uses to cover himself.
Only once, he bought his carriage past her house to pick her up. He was impossibly sweet and Gen should stop. She should not encourage him, she should not kiss him, she should not want him like she does.
She slipped into the carriage, ready for a kiss or a tumble or even just a touch of his hand and stopped abruptly at the sight of his smirking sister.
Gen kept her pleasant, modiste smile on her face until Eloise was well out of the carriage and into the house. Then she turned on Ben and exploded.
‘Really? Your sister ? Was that entirely wise?’
He laughed. ‘What on earth would Eloise do? She is not some empty headed gossip and she understands that we are friends.’
She should stop. She knows this will not end well if she does not stop.
He slid her glove off her hand, and they did not make it to the party that night.
Each time, she tried to make him leave, and tried to not want him to stay. She never lets him into her lodgings - she has a small apartment that she keeps, separately from her storefront, but she also has a small room above the modiste with a bed and water closet. She doesn’t stay there often, but occasionally when orders are backing up and she does not finish her work until midnight, or when Siena needs a spare bed, or she simply needs a rest during the long afternoons of pacifying the Cowper or Featherington ladies, the room comes in useful.
In times like this, when Benedict shows up after the modiste is closed, as she is preparing to go home, his hair a mess and his cravat as crooked as his smile, she can’t help pulling him up the stairs and pushing him onto her bed.
Afterwards, she tried to make him leave. He grinned at her, sleepy and sated, shirt over the doorknob and waistcoat at the end of the bed, and pulled her back into his arms.
‘Sleep,’ he said. ‘Leave later. Sleep now.’
She came to regret that decision when his sister barged into the modiste, making sly comments and accusations and Gen could hear Benedict banging around upstairs like a baby elephant. Miss Eloise did not seem to hear him, all too concerned with her Whistledown preoccupations, and as she left, he poked his head around into her back room.
‘Lock the door,’ he said, a grin still plastered to his face, and she had not done enough to guard her heart from this man.
‘You cannot fall in love with me,’ she had warned him, on that first night, smoking her pipe and beckoning him into her arms. ‘I will not fall in love with you. I will not fall in love with any man. This cannot end in marriage, nor do I have any notions of other arrangements. Your society will not allow you to be my husband, and I will not allow myself to be a mistress.’
‘Who wants love?’ he joked, but she could see in his eyes that one day, she would need to break his heart.
It came quicker than she’d expected. His eyes would soften when he looked at her, his smile a little more gentle, his caresses a little more warm. The season came to an end, and with it, her business dwindled. This time of year was ripe for her to plan for next season, to order fabric and sketch out new designs, to take note of the upcoming debutantes and the whims - and treasuries - of their mamas. Gen liked to travel, when she could, to the Continent, to Paris. She called it education but used it as the chance to have time alone, without customers or lovers or friends taking up space in her mind. She broke the news to Benedict one evening as he walked her home, after they’d left the Granville house, and he’d grinned at her, his charming crooked smile, and told her to enjoy her trip and he’d see her when she got home. He was on the cusp of another sentence, and she didn’t want to hear it, whether it was I’ll miss you or I want you or I love you and so she stopped his words with a kiss, long and sweet and slow, and she knew it was a farewell.
She would break his heart before he broke hers.