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Sophie moved through Bridgerton House, barely making a sound, a small stack of freshly laundered towels balanced against her hip. They were warm from the airing cupboard and perfumed with lavender. She was fetching them for Miss Eloise and Miss Hyacinth, who had returned from their afternoon walk drenched, having been caught in an untimely London rainstorm.
She reached a bend in the corridor where the family portraits hung in orderly procession, Bridgertons of past generations gazing down upon her with composed expressions. Late afternoon light slanted through the tall windows at the far end of the hall, gilding the frames in soft gold. The house lay otherwise quiet; the family retired to their rooms until supper, the servants below stairs. Everything was as it should be. Well, almost.
The study door stood slightly ajar. But Sophie did not think too much of it; the Viscount was often at his desk at this hour. Perhaps the door was left open for a breath of air. She adjusted the towels against her hip and prepared to slip by without so much as a glance. However, as she drew closer to the study, she noticed:
Voices carried through the narrow opening. Low at first, indistinct. Then someone spoke rather sharply.
“I am not speaking of a passing fancy, brother.”
Benedict.
Sophie stopped, tripping slightly over her own feet before managing to steady herself. The towels shifted precariously; she clutched them tighter, pulse leaping into her throat. Her first instinct was retreat. She had no business listening; a lady’s maid survived by knowing when not to hear conversations, to make herself invisible. And yet, she could not help but creep closer to the study, careful to remain out of sight.
Inside the study, the Viscount’s voice answered, measured and steady. “I do not doubt that you believe so.”
She heard Benedict exhale sharply. “This is not infatuation. I am not eighteen.”
“No,” Anthony replied. “You are a grown man. Which is precisely why I expect you to understand the severity of what you are proposing.”
Sophie shifted closer to the wall, pressing herself into the shallow recess between gilded portrait frames. She could see only the edge of the mahogany desk through the sliver in the doorway. Nonetheless, she was able to imagine them clearly: the Viscount sitting rigid behind his desk, his posture carved from responsibility and logic; Benedict restless, hands running through his hair, pacing perhaps, all feeling and fire. All-consuming.
“She is not of our social standing,” Anthony continued. His tone was neither cruel nor dismissive, merely factual. “You have said as much yourself.”
Sophie took a single step back, but her heel brushed the skirting board. The faint sound seemed deafening in her ears. She froze, heart thudding.
No one opened the door.
“I have,” Benedict answered evenly. “And I do not care.”
There was not the slightest hesitation in his voice.
Sophie’s fingers tightened in the linen.
“You may not care, but society will.”
“Society?” Benedict repeated with a bite of disdain. “The ones who are nothing more than tedious, idle gossips perpetually starving for the next morsel of scandal? Give them a week, and they will have found another family to snub.”
“Yes,” came the answer. “That society. The one that determines whose daughters are invited and whose are quietly overlooked. The one that decides which names remain unblemished and which are ridiculed.”
Sophie swallowed.
She was a lady’s maid for a noble family, and she knew her place well within such walls. She ironed silks. Dressed hair. Laced stays and pinned ribbons and fastened pearls. She stood two paces behind the family and a world apart from the exuberant life she helped assemble.
She did not marry the second son of the house.
Inside, Benedict spoke again, a little quieter now but no less resolute. “I will not pretend she is anything other than what she is. But neither will I allow you to diminish her.”
A sound cut through the air. It sounded as if someone had set down a crystal glass with more force than was wise.
“I have not diminished this woman you speak of.”
“You imply her to be a liability,” Benedict argued.
“All I imply,” Anthony said, his voice revealing strain at last, “is that marriage into this family is not a solitary act of passion. It binds more than two people.”
“Anthony–”
“Hyacinth will debut in two years. Eloise, though she does her best to frighten suitors away, will need to marry eventually,” Anthony continued, talking over his brother in a brisk, clipped tone Sophie imagined he used frequently as the Viscount. “Every alliance, every invitation, every future prospect of theirs will be weighed against this decision.”
She pictured Hyacinth from that morning, cheeks flushed from her walk, chattering about ribbons and a Miss Smythe-Smith’s new pug. Eloise’s face loomed before her too, speaking passionately of a pamphlet she had been reading as Sophie dressed her hair, those clever Bridgerton eyes alight with ideas no ballroom could ever hope to contain.
The girls treated Sophie kindly. They spoke to her as a friend, shared their ideas and tea with her. Invited her laughter into their private jokes. And they had done so without a trace of the distance ladies naturally maintained from those that served them.
How could she repay all that generosity by ruining their future?
“You are not being fair,” Benedict insisted. “She is not a scandal like you fear.”
“She is, in the eyes of the Ton, precisely that, unfortunately.”
A faint scrape of chair legs suggested one of them had moved.
“I am not ashamed of her,” Benedict insisted.
“And I am not accusing you of shame,” Anthony pointed out. “I am asking you to look beyond yourself.”
“Beyond myself?” Benedict echoed. The sound of feet pacing. “I am asking to marry the woman I love, not to set fire to this grand estate of yours.”
“You are asking to alter the standing of this family,” Anthony returned with a sharpness Sophie had not known he possessed. “Do not pretend they are not connected.”
Silence.
She should move. Should leave them to their conversation. It would not do her any good if anyone were to spot her lurking in the corridors thus.
“Love,” the Viscount started, his voice more calm now, “does not exist in isolation, Benedict. It touches everyone around it. You are a Bridgerton. Whether you like it or not, that name carries others with it, and it brings responsibility, one that you cannot shun anymore than I can.”
There was a stinging behind her eyes, and Sophie blinked rapidly, staring at the weave of the towel beneath her fingers.
Sophie had spent her entire life trying not to touch anything that was not hers. To not stain, to not intrude. She had survived this long by making herself small and careful. Yet in loving Benedict, she had been reckless in ways she had never permitted herself before. And perhaps it had been a mistake, a foolish daydream, to harbor thoughts of crossing into his world without disturbing its very foundations. How could they ever stand a chance against the whole world?
Benedict’s voice broke through her reverie. His voice cracked as he whispered, “I cannot unlove her.”
There was a pause before—
“I know,” was all the Viscount said.
Silence again.
Her breath held, she tried to will her feet to move but they would not listen to her.
“Anthony… please.”
Sophie’s eyes fell shut.
“If you have convinced yourself that she is reason enough to risk everything,” Anthony continued, speaking as if he weighed every word before releasing it, “then I cannot change your mind.”
Her heart stuttered violently.
“But you must understand,” he went on, “that there is more at stake than your feelings, strong and true as they may be. There is this house, this family. Our mother, and our unmarried sisters. There is the stability I am sworn to maintain, and which I shall for as long as I live.”
Benedict let out a long suffering sigh before he answered, “You think I have not considered all that?”
“I think,” Anthony said, “that you are in love. And I know from experience how easily love can persuade a man that his heart is wiser than his judgment.”
“I will not abandon her,” Benedict said, his words striking somewhere between her ribs, achingly precious and destructive in equal measure.
He would stand beside her. He would bear the whispers, the slights. He would endure the narrowed invitations and the ruined reputations. And he would do it all for her. That someone would go to such lengths to choose her, was a dream Sophie had long since given up on.
Her eyes snapped open.
“Be certain, Benedict. Be certain that you and this woman can live with what your union will mean for everyone. That is all I ask.”
Sophie did not stay to hear Benedict’s response. She could not.
The portraits watched her pass, their painted expressions unchanged as she hurried by. Each step cost her something: a delicate thread of hope unraveling; some fragile vision of the future cracking open. She willed her haggard breathing to steady. A single tear still slipped free despite her efforts, and she brushed away at it impatiently.
A maid did not weep in the corridors of her employer’s home.
I will not abandon her.
His words echoed within her.
No, she thought, resigned. You would not.
But she would not have him choose, either.
With her spine straight and expression composed into the serenity expected of a well-trained lady’s maid, Sophie climbed the stairs and moved toward the girls’ rooms, her heart breaking as she reached her decision.