Chapter Text
The breakfast room at Bridgerton House was, for the first time since the wedding, humming with a semblance of normalcy. Or at least, a carefully staged performance of it. The full Bridgerton brood had descended for a morning visit, filling the large table with their boisterous energy. Violet presided with gentle grace, attempting to weave threads of conversation across the chasm that lay between the Shawls and her son. Colin was regaling a politely attentive Edwina with a story about a particularly pungent cheese he’d encountered in his travels, while Benedict sketched idly on a napkin, his eyes occasionally flicking to Kate’s still form at the far end. Anthony, at the head, was engaged in a stiff discussion with Daphne about estate management, a safe, barren topic.
Kate had been silent, pushing a piece of kipper around her plate. The cacophony of Bridgerton cheer felt like a physical pressure against her skin. She existed here as a silhouette, a dark outline against their bright canvas. It was Eloise, in her typical, blunt fashion, who inadvertently tossed her a line.
“And you, Miss Sharma,” Eloise said, turning her inquisitive gaze down the table. “You are so quiet. Surely you must have tales more exciting than Colin’s odorous dairy. What did you do all those years in India? Beyond the obvious hunting and riding, which my brother has already exhaustively detailed.”
A slight hush fell. Anthony’s jaw tightened, his conversation with Daphne dying. Edwina’s serene smile became fixed. It was a question no one had dared ask directly, tiptoeing around the vast, unknown expanse of Kate’s life before them, a life that felt dangerously relevant to the tension in the room.
Kate looked up. She set her fork down with a precise click that seemed louder than it was. She felt the eyes of her family—Mary’s warning, Edwina’s apprehension—burning into her. The Bridgertons watched with curious, friendly expectation. In that moment, a spark of something long-suppressed flickered in her chest. Not defiance, precisely. More a simple, stark refusal to remain a ghost in her own story.
“I had many pursuits, Miss Bridgerton,” Kate said, her voice clear and carrying. It was the firm, anchoring tone she used with a spooked horse. “One does not simply ‘hunt and ride.’ One learns strategy, and geography, and survival.” She paused, letting the words hang. Anthony was staring at her now, utterly still. “But to answer your question more directly… I received a letter this morning. An old friend is sailing from the continent. She will be in London within the fortnight and intends to visit.”
“A friend! How lovely!” Violet exclaimed, always eager to foster connection. “We shall have her to tea. Any friend of Miss Sharma’s is most welcome.”
It was then that Kate delivered the name, not with flourish, but with the simplicity of stating a natural fact. “Azalea is coming for a visit.”
The effect was instantaneous and starkly divided.
The Bridgertons displayed mild, polite interest. “Azalea,” Colin repeated, tasting the exotic syllable. “Pretty name. Is she from your village?”
But at the other end of the table, the air turned to ice. Lady Mary’s teacup met its saucer with a sharp rattle. The color drained from her face, leaving her looking suddenly frail and ancient. Her eyes, wide with something akin to fear, locked onto Kate’s with a silent, desperate plea.
Edwina’s reaction was subtler but more profound. Her spine, always so perfectly straight, went rigid as an iron rod. The pleasant mask she wore for the Bridgertons did not crack, but it fossilized. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her cutlery. A single, violent tremor ran through her hand before she forcibly stilled it. She did not look at Kate; she stared at a point on the wall, her breathing so carefully controlled it was barely perceptible.
Francesca, ever observant, noticed the shift. “Is… everything quite alright, Lady Mary? Lady Bridgina?”
Edwina forced a brittle smile. “Quite. Forgive me, a momentary chill.”
Anthony saw it all. He saw his wife’s terror and his mother-in-law’s dread. His gaze shot to Kate, demanding an explanation she did not offer. “This… friend,” he said, his voice cutting through the sudden awkwardness. “She is from your past in India?”
“She is Ottoman,” Kate clarified, and the word seemed to drop into the room like a stone. “We were friends from a very young age. Closer than sisters.” She allowed that last phrase to linger, knowing Edwina would feel its sting like the lash of a whip. The envy Edwina had always harbored for this mysterious, formidable bond was an old, secret wound. “We have not seen each other in many years. She has been occupied with her… duties.”
“Duties?” Benedict asked, intrigued. “What manner of duties does an Ottoman lady have that keep her so occupied?”
Kate turned her dark eyes on him. There was no malice in her look, only a terrifying honesty. “Azalea is not a lady, Mr. Bridgerton. Not in the sense you mean. She holds a rank. She is a Miralay in the Sultan’s army.”
A baffled silence met her words.
“A… rank?” Colin asked, confused.
“A soldier?” Eloise clarified, her interest now fiercely alight.
“A Colonel,” Kate stated, the title falling with absolute clarity. “Miralay translates to Colonel.”
The Bridgerton men exchanged glances of sheer disbelief. Anthony’s brows drew together. The concept was so foreign, so utterly incompatible with his world of delicate ladies and drawing rooms, that it seemed a fantasy. “A female colonel? That is… unprecedented.”
“It is rare,” Kate acknowledged. “But not for her. She was born to it. Trained for it. She is the most formidable person I have ever known.” She said it not with boasting, but with the reverence one reserves for a force of nature. “People did not call her by her name. They called her ‘The Bride of Death.’ Kingdoms are aware of her reputation. Soldiers fear her. She does not suffer fools, and she has no patience for the… trivialities of society.”
With each word, Mary seemed to shrink further into her chair. Edwina’s fixed smile was now a grimace of pure panic. The carefully constructed façade of their new life—the respectability, the safety, the Englishness of it all—was being threatened by the specter of a warrior queen from their past.
Violet looked alarmed, but also deeply concerned for the palpable distress of the Sharmas. “My dear Kate, such a… fierce friend. Are you certain her visit is wise? The ton can be so cruel to those who are… different.”
“The ton,” Kate said, her gaze finally sweeping over Anthony and then Edwina, “does not concern Azalea. She does not seek its approval. She comes as my friend. And I have granted her my welcome.”
The finality in her voice was absolute. For the first time since arriving in this cold, gilded prison, Kate had asserted a piece of her own sovereignty. She had invoked a power greater than any viscountcy, a loyalty older than any marriage. She had summoned a storm, and the Bridgertons, for all their titles and charm, were utterly unprepared for it.
Anthony watched as Kate finally rose from the table, excusing herself with a dignity that felt more commanding than any of his own gestures. He looked at his wife, who was visibly trembling now, and at Lady Mary, who looked ill. The name ‘Azalea’ hung in the sunlit room, no longer just a name, but a promise of chaos. It was the sound of Kate’s world, brutal and real and entirely beyond his control, crashing into the heart of his own. And he understood, with a cold drip of dread, that the quiet torture of their arrangement was over. The real battle was just arriving onshore.
The days following Kate's announcement were not filled with the usual anticipatory bustle that accompanied a guest's arrival. Instead, a peculiar, low-grade dread permeated Bridgerton House, a silent hum beneath the surface of everyday life. It was a divide that ran along a fault line only the Sharmas could feel. The Bridgertons, in their well-meaning ignorance, exhibited a kind of fascinated curiosity. To them, "The Bride of Death" was a character from a Gothic novel, thrilling and impossible. They could not truly conceive of her.
Eloise, of course, was enthralled. She cornered Kate in the library two days later. "A female colonel," she breathed, her eyes alight. "What is her philosophy on the subjugation of women by the patriarchal structures of military and society? Has she written treatises? How does she command respect from men bred to see her as inferior?"
Kate, who was attempting to find solace in a book of botanical sketches, looked at the younger woman's fervent face. "Azalea does not write treatises, Miss Bridgerton. She issues orders. Respect is not commanded; it is extracted. Those who fail to grant it initially do not make the same mistake twice." She said it flatly, without pride. It was simply the mechanism of Azalea's world.
Eloise blinked, trying to process a power that existed beyond pamphlets and salons. "But how does she—"
"She breaks their noses," Kate said, returning to her book. The conversation was over.
Colin and Benedict treated it as a grand adventure. "Do you think she'll arrive on an elephant?" Colin mused over port one evening at their own home. "Or perhaps with a retinue of scimitar-wielding guards? I should like to see Lady Whistledown's face then!"
Anthony, who was drinking heavily, said nothing. His wife's palpable anxiety was a constant, silent rebuke. Edwina had developed a slight, nervous flutter in her left eyelid. She jumped at sudden noises. Her serene composure, once an impenetrable fortress, now showed hairline fractures through which raw terror seeped. She did not speak of Azalea, but her body spoke for her.
The true spectacle, however, was within the Sharma family itself. The frozen silence that had encased Kate shattered, replaced by a desperate, hushed urgency from which she was still excluded, but which vibrated through the very walls.
Mary finally broke her months-long embargo on meaningful speech with her eldest daughter. She did not seek Kate out in kindness, but in siege. She entered Kate's room without knocking, her face ashen.
"You must write to her, Kate. You must tell her not to come."
Kate, brushing her hair at the dressing table, did not turn. "I have already written. To tell her I eagerly await her."
"Kathani, you do not understand!" Mary's voice was a strained whisper, glancing at the door as if the name itself might summon the woman. "This is not some childhood playmate coming for cakes and tea. This is Azalea. Her presence here… it will remind everyone of everything. Of where we come from, of how we lived… of your father's… associations." The word 'associations' was laden with a lifetime of trying to scrub away the vibrant, complicated reality of Sheffield's life. "We have built something respectable here, fragile as it is. She will shatter it with a glance."
Now Kate turned. The anger in her eyes was cold, a product of long isolation. "You mean she will shatter the illusion you have sold to the Bridgertons. The illusion of three gently-bred ladies from a peaceful, palatable India. She will remind them that my world was not all parasols and poetry. That I was shaped by something stronger. That frightens you because it frightens them."
"It will ruin Edwina!" Mary hissed, her composure breaking. "Do you care so little for her now? The scandal of housing a… a soldier, a woman known by such a monstrous epithet… the whispers will destroy her position before it is even secure!"
"Her position is a gilded cage built on a lie," Kate said, standing. "And my life is not a sacrificial offering to be made upon its altar any longer. Azalea is my past. My truth. And she is welcome in my present, even if I am not welcome in yours."
The confrontation with Edwina was different. It happened in the upstairs parlor, a sunlit room that felt ironically cheerful. Edwina was attempting to play the pianoforte, but her fingers stumbled over simple scales. She stopped when Kate entered.
"You are doing this to punish me," Edwina said, her voice low and trembling. She did not look up from the ivory keys.
"I am doing this because I have a friend," Kate replied, weary.
"You have always had her," Edwina spat, the bitterness finally erupting. It was the envy, ancient and festering, laid bare. "Even when Appa was alive, it was always 'Azalea says this, Azalea taught me that.' She was the sister you chose. The fierce, brave one. I was just the pretty one to be protected and married off. And now, when I have finally secured something for myself, something you tried to take, you bring her here to show everyone what a real Sharma woman looks like. To show Anthony what you are truly made of, and what I am not."
The accusation hung in the air, sharp and true in parts. Kate felt a pang of old guilt. "It is not a competition, Bon. It never was."
"It always was!" Edwina stood, her small frame shaking. "And you are ensuring you win the final round. You cannot have him, so you will parade a monster through his house to prove you are more interesting, more dangerous, more alive than I could ever be. The 'Bride of Death' for the wife who is already dead inside." The self-awareness in that last sentence was shocking, a moment of stark honesty that revealed the profound emptiness of her victory.
Kate had no answer. She saw the pain in her sister's eyes, a pain that mirrored her own, but its source was a twisted reflection. She left the room, the sound of Edwina's ragged breath following her.
Anthony watched this silent war play out. He watched Mary jump at shadows. He watched Edwina’s perfect veneer crack. And he watched Kate. He saw a new, grim solidity in her. The drowning woman had found a piece of driftwood to cling to, and it was the memory of a warrior. For the first time since the wedding, color was in her cheeks—not from tears, but from a kind of defiant anticipation.
He approached her one evening in the conservatory. She was staring out at the twilight, not tending to the plants, just standing like a sentinel.
"Miss Sharma," he began, his formal address a habit that now felt like a lie. "This… Azalea. Her visit will cause a stir."
Kate did not turn. "The world of the ton is a pond, my lord. Azalea is an ocean. The stir will be temporary. The pond will settle again when she leaves."
"You are not concerned for your sister's standing?"
Finally, she looked at him. In the dim light, her eyes were fathomless. "My sister made her choice with full knowledge of the consequences. She chose a life where standing is everything. I am choosing to see a friend. I have little left to lose. She does. That is the arithmetic of our situation."
He wanted to argue. He wanted to forbid it, to protect the fragile equilibrium of the prison he had built. But the authority he wielded so effortlessly over everyone else evaporated before her. He could not command the tides, and Azalea, it seemed, was a tidal force.
"Do you fear her?" The question escaped him, born of his own gnawing apprehension.
A ghost of the old Kate, the one who challenged him on horseback, flickered in her expression. "Fear her? No. I understand her. She is the storm that clears the air. You, Lord Bridgerton, and everyone in this house, you should fear the stagnation, not the storm."
She left him there, amidst the jasmine and the orchids. Anthony Bridgerton, Viscount, patriarch, master of his domain, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. Azalea was not yet here, but her shadow was long and cold, and it had already stretched across his household, exposing every crack, every secret fear, every buried truth. Her arrival was not merely a visit; it was an audit. And he had the unsettling premonition that they would all be found desperately wanting.