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(And saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia)
Michaela’s head knocked the wall close to the door with a loud tud, and before Francesca could kiss her again, the giggles coming out of both women interrupted the heated moment.
“Are you laughing at me, Frannie?” Michaela questioned, as both of her hands rubbed the tangled gold hair in front of her.
“You can form a sentence after that knock in your head, darling?” A wicked smile concealed the crimson red that covered Francesca’s face due to the unrestrained round of kisses shared. They had barely slept last night, yet their energy could definitely move mountains.
“Well, you’re laughing at me now, Frannie, but you were just moaning my name” Michaela murmured, enjoying the way her Francesca’s crimson face hide herself in Michaela’s neck crook. “Come on, darling, there’s a long day ahead of us and….”
Two knocks startled both of them, and soon enough the laughing returned their faces.
“Ms Bridgerton? Are you awake?” The maid in the other side of the door murmured, knocking again.
Fran made a gesture of silence towards Michaela, who just laughed, as both of her hands began to move towards the back of her night dress, the one that spends most of the time in the floor than in Fran herself.
“Good morning, Alice, is everything alright?” Francesca coughed to cover Michaela’s laugh at the obviously high and fake voice.
The old woman looked unimpressed, but still, smiled at the Bridgerton lady.
“Is there any chance you may have seen Miss Stirling this morning? We have entered her room, but it appears untouched.” Her eyes darted towards the room, but Francesca stretched the door even more, almost no showing her face at all.
“Michaela? No, Alice, I’m afraid I haven’t seen her since dinner last night. Perhaps she spent the evening elsewhere?” She murmured, even though the mere thought of Michaela being with someone else, her spending the night in another woman’s place made her blood boil.
“Miss Stirling’s been barely spending the nights here at all” the blonde woman commented.
“Well, what a shame, right?” Francesca nodded. “I have to go, Alice, but thank you for the notification”
The moment the door was shut, Francesca’s dress fell to the ground, and as she turned, she realized Michaela’s body in all her glory was also naked in front of her.
“Thank god” Francesca murmured, and took a step further to Michaela, her hands immediately found the warm waist, her nails leaving little moons in the skin. “And just to be clear, you were also moaning my name, dear” She murmured against the soft skin. “Three times just this morning if I remember correctly”
“Just kiss me already, you know we’ve got a lot of things to do this afternoon” Michaela whimpered.
“We’re not leaving here until Alice goes to buy the food for lunch, so I hope you’re ready, Michaela Stirling” Francesca growled softly.
Michaela smiled. “Greedy”
Francesca didn’t respond and just fiercely kissed her again.
Things between them had started slowly painful to Francesca’s opinion. Her jealousy towards anyone that step too close to Michaela was inevitable to her the moment she saw her in a red dress one night.
She knew right then that every confusing feeling had come to the exact moment where Michaela had smiled at her.
The moment they had kissed, she knew she was done forever. No one in history had made her feel that dizzy with just a kiss. And suddenly it was painfully clear that all this time she’d been a rage that in just seconds became… desire.
The unbearable lines became blurry and every pinnacle she searched for years came in the clear shape of Michaela Stirling.
She knew they were usually reckless. Deliciously, but very stupidly reckless. Sometimes spaces or places didn’t matter and all Francesca wanted to do was kiss the soft lips that always smiled at her. She just wanted to feel the flush and the agitated voice of Michaela when she was at the edge.
"If we get caught," Francesca had whispered once, while being pressed up against the rough brick of the garden wall of Kate and Anthony’s house in the moonlight obscured by a large and old oak tree, "people are going to talk about us forever”
She should be scared of the posible consequences, but the truth was, she couldn’t bring herself to care, not even a bit.
The only thing in her mind was Michaela playing with Colin and Penelope’s kids in the floor of their home, being completely devoted to both of the kids. They looked at her as she hung the moon, and Francesca couldn’t deny she looked the same.
She wanted to drag Michaela to the nearest room possible.
"And then we’ll let them talk," Michaela murmured, her lips ghosting over the sensitive skin of Francesca’s neck. "It would be the most exciting thing to happen in this ton in decades." She laughed as she heard a whimper from the other woman.
Francesca had laughed inevitably, a sound that raised up from the end of her chest, a sound that for her, felt light and free.
Michaela swallowed the sound coming out of Frannie’s throat with a deeply hungry, an very dazzling kiss, feeling the way her own hands gripped Francesca’s waist with a lot of force as if she were the only solid thing available in the universe. “I like when you’re laughing”
“Well, you do make me happy, darling” she murmured and realized that for the first time in her life, she didn’t have anything to hide, no real doubt behind of her words.
Just pure and genuine love. The one Violet had mentioned years ago, the one Francesca herself had seen in her five older brothers throughout the years. The one she cherished and desperately wanted.
Two days later, Francesca had the weekly dinner at Violet’s house, Michaela would join her as usually, but the duty of keeping the Killmartin house working made her decline.
“But there will be lots of food, and my brother’s antiques and Kate’s special treats and kids, thousand of kids everywhere” Fran had murmured in the morning, tugging Michaela’s cape for her horse. “And most importantly I’ll be there”
“And I’ll follow you until the end of the earth, my beautiful, but this needs to be done today so we can have vacation in Ireland” Michaela, once again, explained.
Eloise would often joke about how they were attached to the hip. All of her sisters would agree and Francesca would only nod, too embarrassed and flustered to even comment about it.
In the daylight, three hours later, with Michaela painfully away, the change in Francesca’s behavior was undeniable for every Bridgerton in the house.
"You’re glowing, Frannie," Hyacinth noticed over breakfast that same morning, eyeing her older sister suspiciously. "Did you change your routine or something like that?”
"I think she’s just finally sleeping again," Colin chimed in, stealing a piece of toast in the big table with a giant smile on his face. "You look... present, Fran. More present than I’ve seen you in years, It’s good to see."
“Thanks, brother” she answered back.
Francesca shyly smiled, playing with the edges of her dress without looking at her two brothers, her heart happily beating in her chest.
She knew Colin was right, she was more present, she felt more present than she’d been in years. Since John went together sleep and never woke up again, since the moment she thought her life was over forever.
Her broken heart had healed with Anthony’s quiet presence and Eloise’s books, with Colin’s jokes and Daphne’s care.
But mostly with Michaela’s care, with her understanding devotion, with her smile and her love. She had picked her from the ground and stood there in the ground with her until the moment Francesca was ready to stand up.
“It’s okay, Frannie, we’ll be okay” She had softly murmured the nights where she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
But then, as the sunlight filled every window in Violet’s house and as her brothers joked with her younger siblings, she looked across the table at the empty chair where Michaela usually sat when visiting the Bridgerton.
She realized she felt utterly, extremely and undeniably happy. Like a smile had finally been blasted in her face.
“Mama, Colin’s making fun of me again” Hyacinth shouted from the couch.
“Colin Bridgerton, stop” But before her mother could step in, Penelope raised her head from the table to her husband’s sight. “Don’t do that to your sister”
“Yes, my love” He answered, and immediately stood up.
Francesca giggled and her heart felt finally okay.
Eloise and her husband had arrived soon after everyone did. Penelope had seated with her, Colin and Benedict started their usual banter until Sophie had to intervene. Daphne, Simon, Kate and Anthony had seated at the table to chat with Violet, who seemed thrilled to have all her children with her.
The happiness lasted exactly four hours longer.
Francesca was arranging flowers that Anthony had put in the top of the piano with Daphne, who was visiting from Clyvedon with her husband. Anthony had been called almost twenty minutes ago, and he hadn’t returned until then.
“Something happened” Francesca observed, but didn’t dare to look back at the person standing in the door.
“Maybe is not something bad” Daphne chimed with hope.
Anthony appeared in the doorway. He looked a little paler than usual. His usual calm way of talking was hidden under the trembling lip. He looked at Francesca immediately, his eyes filled with a pity that made her knees buckle immediately.
"What is it, brother?" Daphne stood up, sensing the shift in the air. “Is everything alright?”
"There’s been an accident in the park," Anthony said, his voice tight. "From what I’ve been told, a horse spooked, and It got reared. The rider of the horse…. The force was a lot, and was thrown against the stone wall."
Francesca didn’t dare to look back at her brother, she just watched Daphne stepping up quietly. The rest of the room slowly stopping their own activities to observe each other.
There was Violet at the top of the table. Simon, Daphne and their kids. Eloise and Phillip’s kids were also there. Benedict, Colin, Penelope and Sophie’s family. Hyacinth and Gregory.
In that house, there was only one person missing from their usual family.
Francesca immediately dropped the vase with every flower in it when the realization hit her head in waves, reaching every part of her frozen body. The disgustingly known feeling in the top of her stomach made her nauseous in a second.
The vase shattered, her vision blurred and the sound startled the rest of the family, but she didn’t hear the common gasp. The loud ring in her ears was deafening.
“It’s her, isn’t she?” Her small voice and her now rimmed red eyes looked back at Anthony’s pity eyes. “It’s Michaela. I always make fun of the way she rides her horse. Fastly and unbothered, like nothing is ever going to happen to her.”
Her body knew, her soul, the one profoundly attached to Michaela’s kindly soul, knew immediately.
“I’m so sorry, Frannie” He whispered, and a quiet desperate sound came out of her throat without hesitation. “She’s already at the Killmartin house. From what the maid told me, the doctor is already there, but they said…. Frannie, they said it’s bad.”
“Is she…?” Her usual composed self shattered right there in front of the piano that had seen both of them laugh for long time, it shattered in a million pieces at just the thought of her being dead.
“No” Anthony denied. “But she’s delicate, you should go there immediately before…..”
Before she dies.
That’s what Anthony wants to say, but he doesn’t. He knows how important is Michaela to her sister, to his whole family too. They were all grateful for Michaela and her care for Fran. Instead, he just stand stills and see his little sister get paler and paler with each second.
Francesca knows she can barely breathe, her knees barely work, and as she open her mouth to speak, to order her older brother to retract his words, to take her immediately to Michaela, she realizes instead she’s gasping for air.
Her lungs felt on fire in a hard way that made her gets desperate, her vision went blurry in a second, and before she could hopelessly fell to the floor, two little but strong hands stopped her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay my sweet, you’re okay” Daphne quietly murmured. “I’m here, breathe with me” She fell quietly with Francesca to the floor. She hated the attention, she hated everyone’s eyes in her but in that moment, the attention couldn’t be more insignificant.
“Okay, everyone, I think is for the best if we all leave Daphne and Francesca alone” Violet announces, standing up immediately an clapping her hands for faster movement. No one dared to say anything, they just quietly complied. “Honey…..”
“Mama, it’s okay, I’ve got this. Go to prepare the carriage for us, I’ll take Frannie to the Killmartin residence” Daphne muttered softly but firm. Violet just smiled and nodded.
Years ago, the grief of losing John had almost eaten her alive, she could barely exist for the first nine months of his absence. The silence, the one she loved the most, had dragged her to a darkness she’d never met before.
And then, Michaela brought her back to life. She took her out to a silent walk every day until after a month she decided to mutter a word. Michaela began to cook for her every meal and took it to her room and eat with her on the dark floor.
No.
"Frannie?” Daphne murmured. “Francesca, look at me”
She couldn’t do it again.
"I can't, Daphne" Francesca choked out finally, tears streaming down her face, hot and fast. "I can't do it again. I can't lose her. I can’t go through all of this again. Don't make me. Please, God, don't make me."
She curled herself into her sister’s tight and warm embrace. The only thing that seemed to tie her to earth.
“She’s going to die, and I’m going to die with her. I can’t do this again, Daphne, I can’t. She’s the reason I woke up every day. She can’t be buried because it’ll mean I’ll have to be buried with her” She murmured.
Daphne gently ran both hands in circles across Francesca's back, seeking to offer her some comfort. “No, my sweet, Michaela is not going to die and you are not going to die”
Daphne knew deep down there was something under the words of Francesca, a deep, quiet and undeniable love that irradiated every pore of her little sister’s being.
“You love her” Daphne murmured, it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. One loud and clear. She had seen Francesca grieve John. But that feeling and the mess in her arms was utterly different. This wasn't just the grief of a cousin or a friend.
This was the terrified, visceral panic of a lover losing their other half. She could see it. She could clearly see it.
Francesca froze for one second before the tears fell down her face again, nodding in her sisters arms. “For months I felt guilty for everything; every time I ate and every time I slept. My…. My barely, almost no existence, was enough for her. I was enough for her.” She whipped her tears and stood up from the floor. “And now that I’m finally okay with existing in this life with her, she……”
“She’s not going to die” Daphne answered for her. “She’s going to be okay. Let’s go to see her, okay?” Daphne muttered following her in a whim.
Francesca just nodded.
The travel in the carriage was quiet. Francesca as per usual was far away from that space. Daphne kept looking back at her sister.
The moment they stepped out, Francesca froze for a second in the quiet and giant door.
“If she loves you as half as I think she does, she knows she can’t get away from Francesca Bridgerton” Daphne softly smiled. “Go to see her and don’t let her even think that she can go without a fight”
The house, the one they shared every night, the one that’s been home for two years by then, was quieter than usual. The maids where always laughing at something Michaela said, or filled up with hours of Francesca sat up in the piano.
Michaela lay in the massive bed right in the middle. Her beautiful and always taken care of hair was lay untidy on the white pillow.
“Michaela…” she murmured. Michaela was always so full of live, so full of light and brightness that shined into everyone’s bodies. But in that bed she seemed smaller somehow, and in the top of her stomach, Francesca remembered every time she made fun of her lover for her height.
Her shoulders showed a few open wounds that were still raw. Specially in the crook of Michaela’s neck, the one where Francesca had laid thousand of times.
“She’s been unconscious for about an hour, she was in pain when she first arrived but she’s resting now. She probably will be sleeping for a few days until her head is a little more healed.” The doctor murmured, but Francesca didn’t even look at him, she just stayed her eyes in the golden skin she had memorized by then.
“Is she going to be okay?” Francesca murmured, the pain laced in her voice.
“We don’t know yet…. She has to wake up and we’ll go from there. I’ll keep visiting her every day to check her, but you’ll probably need a maid to be with her every hour in case she has fever or…..”
“I’ll take care of her” Francesca answered immediately. “Every hour of every day, I’ll keep notes of her symptoms so you can see if it’s bad”
The doctor nodded. “Good. Then I’ll leave you two alone. Good evening, Mrs Bridgerton”
Daphne entered the moment the doctor left. “Do you need anything else, Frannie?” She asked.
“No, I’ll be okay. You may go to Simon, I bet he’s preoccupied you disappeared for so long” Fran forced a smile. “Thank you, Daphne, for everything you’ve done for me today”
Daphne smiled. “I’ll check on both of you in a few days, don’t you think I’ll leave you alone”
When she turned back, she pulled a chair in Michaela’s desk and put it right next to her, immediately collapsing on it.
“Dear, if you wanted my undivided attention you could’ve done something else entirely” She whispered to the quiet body. “I told you your horse was as wild as you. You need something more calm. Like me.” She draw patterns in Michaela’s cold arm very softly.
She adjusted herself putting her head softly in Michaela’s right leg.
“I miss you already. I know it’s only been a couple of hours, but we’ve never been apart that long.” She murmured as her eyes shimmed through the tears. “I want to know what you were thinking the moment you hit the wall. My darling, were you scared? Were you sad?”
The fear in her chest didn’t disappear at the sight in front of her. Michaela, her sweet and cocky Michaela, wasn’t moving, wasn’t putting Francesca’s nerves to its limits.
She was just breathing.
And that’s what Francesca did with her for five days. She breathed for Michaela. She calmed the fever that seemed to spike up at night, and she read Michaela her favorite book every night.
“I miss you” She had murmured in the third day. “Now it is been too much. In three days you could travel to places, you could learn new songs or read new books. I don’t want you to miss any other day, Michaela” Francesca said, caressing the locks in Michaela’s face, the one she loved and memorized. “I miss doing your hair after a night together” she whispered to the air.
But the air gave no response back.
Not in the fourth, the five or the sixth day.
“There’s nothing else I can do, I’m afraid. She just has to wake up, now” The doctor quietly mentioned. He wasn’t usually that careful with his words, but the woman in front of him seemed barely standing.
“Thanks doctor” Fran murmured back. “I’ll call you when she wakes up, because she is going to wake up. I’m sure of it” She mentioned, but her voice seemed to lose strength with each passing day.
Not that Francesca noticed the passing of the days anyway. Every single one of them looked the same, the same walls, the same unresponsive woman and the same broken heart.
The maids used to knock up the door only to let Francesca some food. She barely touched it.
“She barely eats, Mr Bridgerton” Alice worriedly said to Anthony, who every morning visited the residence to see Michaela and her sister.
The seventh day, she had forgotten that her legs worked, that her hair needed to be washed or that her piano needed to be touched. The wounds had healed a bit, and with each passing day the doctor had loosened up more the bandage that covered part of her face and hair.
“You can’t do this to me, you hear me, Michaela? I’m mad now, and you know how terrible I get every time I’m mad.” She whispered at the air, just like she had done for the past week. “There are a hundred of places we haven’t met and words we haven’t said. You cannot leave me, please don’t leave me, because I won’t survive it, you hear me? If you leave, you’ll have to take me with you”
The tears burned into her tired eyes. Every time she felt like her body had no tears left to drop, it only took one ghostly memory of Michaela’s jokes to drop hot tears all over again.
It was a never ending cycle.
“You are my home, you are my love, and you are my heart. I love you, Michaela Stirling, you gave me a reason to live, please don’t be the reason be the reason I want to leave”
A watered laugh crossed her throat.
“That is like a poem, isn’t it?” Francesca murmured after minutes; or hours, she wasn’t sure, as she rested her head in Michaela’s right arm. She closed her eyes to sleep for even an hour or two, just like she did every night.
But a shift in the mattress froze Francesca in the best possible way.
“Frannie?” The moment Francesca moved her neck, she immediately looked out for those eyes she had missed desperately. “Are you a poet now?” She questioned.
Michaela was looking her a little distracted, as if she couldn’t focus her sight too long.
“Why are you crying, dear? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost” she tried to joke, but her raspy voice and a quiet whimper showed her pain.
And Michaela was right, because Francesca hadn’t even realized she had been awfully crying until her hot tears fell in Michaela’s dress.
“Please tell me you’re not a fooling invention of my tired mind” The quiet tears became loud sobs when she put both of her hands carefully in Michaela’s head and a little more warm had received her. “You’re here. You’re truly here…”
“Don’t cry, Frannie, I’m here” Slowly she put her hand in Michaela’s to soft caress it. “Why does my brain tell me it’s been only a minute, but my heart tells me I’ve been missing you for too long”
“I missed you too, Michaela, God, you have no idea how desperately I have missed you” Fran kissed Michaela’s knuckles as her lips began to tremble.
“You look….. terrible, dear. In what fight did you get into?” Michaela raspy laughed as at the same time, winced because of the pain.
“Well, you look like you got into a fight with a horse and you definitely lost” Fran gambled back with a smile, the tears rolling down but this time, for a completely different reason.
Oh, how terrible her life would’ve have been without Michaela in it.
“Oh, the horse” just then, Michaela’s behavior changed a little bit, she seemed to remember everything in a flash of her eyes. “I remember that”
“You nearly killed me” Fran whispered. “You can’t do that again, you are going to live fifty years more and then, in the end of our lives, I am going to die first. Because I won’t survive the possibility of losing you” She murmured immediately. “I love you with every fiber of my heart, your name is shaped in my soul, so you cannot leave me now”
Michaela softly smiled. “I love you too, Francesca Bridgerton,” little tears pricked up her own eyes. Before speaking up again. “You were the last thought in my mind, when everything inside of me hurt, you were the light that brought me back.” She whispered kindly. “I came back because of you, because my heart called yours desperately, because the only thing that frightened me in the last seconds I was conscious was…. You. It’s always been just you.”
Francesca smiled, this time, a wide and bright smile that covered her whole face.
“It’s settled, then” Fran nodded. “I can die first”
“¿What? We did not settle that” Michaela groaned.
Francesca hummed. “We definitely did, my dear” but soon enough, Francesca’s behavior softened as she kept looking at Michaela. “Thank you”
“For letting you win this fight?” Michaela chimed.
“For staying, my dear” Francesca answered back.