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I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist
She’s looking at the light, the first time he sees her, looking up at a fairy concoction of tiny flames and warmth and shimmering crystal, a gorgeous thing of glowing prisms and fantastical architecture that he’s walked past every week of his life, hasn’t given a thought to, despite his supposed eye for beauty.
Yet he has only a moment for this new revelation, his eye for beauty returning unerringly to her like a compass needle to its rightful point. Perhaps the gleam of the chandelier only reflects her glowing face, he thinks, absurdly, drinking her in like the smoothest brandy he’s had in his life. She spins, silver skirt whirling in a starry afterimage he wants imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. She’s talking to Lord Napier; he wants her to be talking to him; he breaks free from gravity, strides forward.
(She’s looking at the light, the first last time he sees her, lit up by the windows and mist and moonbeam gown, a concoction of fairytale and warmth and shimmering dark eyes, leaves a glove and the imprint of a kiss and a mind spinning like the constellations, trying to find her in them.)
I kept calm and carried the weight of the rift
To say he keeps calm would be a kind overstatement, one he’s not sure Lady Whistledown will use.
He’s giddy, is what he is, mind whirling like he’s a child trying to beat Daphne in how long he can spin without falling down. He’s falling every time he remembers her calm voice, them circling the terrace.
He carries the weight of her in his pocket, silk glove and intake of breath and how she had said that won’t be possible— what did she mean, exactly, that she’s not looking for a husband; or ‘So that if I wish, I can escape here’? Where might she wish to escape?
He carries the weight of a mystery. (Will you wade out deeper with me?)
Pulled in tighter each time she was drifting away
His fingers are cramped with charcoal, lead pencil, not the fountain-pen accounting he’s meant to be devoting his time to. He pulls her back into his arms, the backs of his eyelids, onto the page, wants Lawrence to paint her and yet never to see her, wants to do her justice himself and knows he never can.
She stares out at him on his desk, half-faceless, an eye or a hand that has a little something of her, but he cannot capture her voice on the page, her poise, her kiss.
He looks for her in every crowd of faces, every reflection in chandelier crystals, every flick of his pencil, but she drifts out to live in only the deep waters of his mind, shadowed around the edges, silver star-shimmer dimmed by clouds of memory. He shoves her in a drawer, doesn’t want to see pale shadows of her any more when she doesn’t want to see him at all.
My spine split from carrying us up the hill
She’s nowhere, a figment of his imagination, a fantasy. Benedict is nowhere, a figment of his own imagination, a fiction in a too-warm room somewhere, someone’s brother’s parent’s house’s grounds, too close to London to see the stars, too far away if she should somehow appear on the back terrace again.
He’s too far away to see the details, but the broad strokes of sharp shadow, a maid trying to protect her friend from so-called gentlemen, are clear enough. He carries the weight of righteous indignation like a welcome burden, no mystery, no silk, no weight but a body he’s slamming into, an apology he strangles out of him, a pain in his side he’s earned from more than heartsickness.
He wants to carry her from this place, wants to place this girl he carries some déjà vu afterimage of. She’s a shade he might have seen in a painting, a hand that feels somehow familiar, her glance over her shoulder like some unfinished sketch in his mind. He convinces her, promises he won’t even look at her, realises, five minutes later, that he isn’t doing a very good job.
Wet through my clothes, weary bones caught the chill
It’s mist, like the night of the masquerade, a collection of mist, that she might still appear in, until he’s making an effort not to let his teeth chatter, can’t stop his chatter to Sophie, until they’re waiting in the downpour and he doesn’t have the key, until she opens his door, lit by the tiny flame of a warm candle and a tiny smirk of a knowing smile.
They grow the fire, ascend the stairs, Sophie safely deposited in the guest room, his coat safely deposited on a chair and his shirt grimaced off, a touch of blood Mrs Crabtree will fuss over, a restless sleep.
He’s chilled to the bone, blazing by the fire, by the chandelier, warmth of a thousand candles, pain in his side he groans at; he’d thought heartache would be rather higher up. She’s there, silver-bright mask, pink lips, and he thinks might finally be able to get her on paper, her whole sweet face, blue robe, dark hair—
=
How much sad did you think I had in me?
She wonders if he dreams of her now. Not her, she corrects. His silver fantasy, his ingénue, his lady. Things she is decidedly not. (His, or a lady.) He asks her, delirious—
(Kiss m— )
And what would she do if he remembered, in the morning? If he put the pieces together—that a girl who stole a single night of freedom stole more than she’d meant to— a dancing lesson, a kiss, a mutual infatuation she could never deliver a happy ending on.
She pictures the sudden fall from sparkling memory to sodden reality, wonders if he’d accept she isn’t everything he’s built up in his memory. Insult to injury, he is just as she remembers, the blue eyes, banter, Bridgerton-ness of him. A gentleman, in word and deed.
She sits next to him, no chaperone needed when she is no lady, just a maid caught in the wrong place and time. Watches the unintentional consequences of her sparkling night. His troubled sleep, furrowed brow, a little of his sadly ever after.
Oh, the tragedy
Not sadly ever after, she corrects herself. He’ll get over it, she imagines ruthlessly, stamps down the wrench it gives her.
It just won’t be her, dancing with him at every ball, coming to his ‘cottage’, sleeping on the other side of the bed. She’ll probably never see him again. He’d asked her, that night—
(If I can’t know your name, however am I meant to call on you tomorrow?)
It comes to her, as she fights with it, that if her father had lived, or had not remarried, or had named her with his surname, or claimed her as his ward, if he had done a little more— She leans back, closing her eyes for a moment against the sting. She might have known how to dance, had a name she could give him, be dreaming merely of the unlikely, and not reminding herself of the impossible.
So long, London
They wake in the same room. She dresses in some of the most beautiful gowns she’s ever worn, his sisters’ old things. He laughs at her like he might be flirting, like she’s in on every joke he makes. His housekeeper gives her a tour of My Cottage like she’s the guest Bened—Mr Bridgerton is so insistent on her being. She doesn’t know where to look, what to do, how to think of it.
They talk of mending kites, Michaelangelo burning his sketches, maids’ education. He asks her to call him Benedict, says I do intend to learn your secrets while we’re here without knowing the breath it snatches from her throat, the sense that she’s missed a move in a dance she shouldn’t know, the feeling that she’s tripped over a step coming down a staircase.
He stumbles over whether she reads, reads French, speaks French, asks her to forgive him like he’s sincere, like she’s a débutante. She laughs at him like she’s trying not to flirt, like she knows he’ll take the joke. She doesn’t know if he uses the familiar (on, vu) for informality or for rank, corrects him to the formal vous like she’s an equal, like she’s putting distance between them.
She touches him like she’s changed her mind, like she has the right to, rough cheek and warm breath, whispers watch me with the boldness only another language can give her, champagne-heady with the impression that he is not focusing on his lips so much as hers.
Had a good run
She runs, flees to her room to cool her cheeks, afraid she’ll repeat her last aborted disappearing act, interrupt it with a kiss. (Good night, Mr. Bridgerton.)
He gets the last word. (Will you please call me Benedict?)
Mrs Crabtree reminds her, more gently than anyone else would have, of her place. She thinks of My Cottage, chaperones, guests, first names, liminal spaces— terraces, stairs, carriages—; the French informal. Wonders if there’s a place she’ll ever belong.
A moment of warm sun
The kite falls. He tells her, as she presses her lips closed against amusement and disbelief, as it lies silently dented on the grass, that it will fly. It does.
The sky is blue, the sun golden, breeze cool and lively, kite dancing, Be— Mr Bridgerton glancing over too long, handing her the string as she protests. He protests (Benedict! Keep going—!) as she runs, gravity a little lighter when she tips her head up to the whirl of the patched diamond, higher than the woods, than the world, high as dreams.
She decides this isn’t quite real life; dares to wear a new dress, venture out of the gardens as the sun parts ways with the horizon. The shimmer of light is beautiful on the lake, on… Benedict. He laughs at her like she’s flirting, like he doesn’t mind. He tells her the water is temperate like she should believe him, provokes her like he’s waiting for her slip of the tongue.
His mouth is on hers, cool hand on her overheated neck, breath stolen, no silver but the lake.
But I'm not the one
He apologises, or maybe she does. They both apologised, she thinks, walking up the stairs in a daze.
She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She knows she cannot be his lady in silver. She doesn’t know how to be a lady of leisure. She had to steal into the laundry to work the mud stain out of the blue dress, wakes at sunrise because she’s done so for years, let him into his own house.
Work. That is what she needs. Something to remind her of reality, something for her hands and mind to focus on that is not Benedict Bridgerton.
He apologises again, when she sees him behind the easel, like— She calls him Mr Bridgerton, and he doesn’t correct her.
So long, London
He keeps his word. She keeps asking him questions. Her new employers are kind, have many children, they pull up at Bridgerton house, and for a moment all she can think of is that she was at this exact spot only a scant few months ago, in her aunt’s ballgown, the candlelight through the windows and the intoxicating scent of wisteria on the night air, short a glove, short of breath as Alfie handed her back into the carriage.
She ignores Benedict’s gloved hand as she makes the leap back onto pavement she never expected to cross again. She starts walking away. He stops her with stark practicalities, and they have done this before, too, haven’t they?
We will hardly see one another, he says. She remembers him saying I won’t even look at you.
He creates a place for her from thin air, looks at her all the way up the stairs.
=
I’ll find someone
He returns to society, to his family, to his life.
His Lady in Silver. He cannot give her up, cannot make out if or why she wishes not to be found. (There is an obvious fault in this, that she may not want to be found by him, but—) His mother gathers half the miniatures in London, and he studies the strokes of brown hair, too curly, rouged cheeks, too narrow, rosebud lips, too unfamiliar.
He paints her, or tries to, the sheen on her dark hair, the curve of her mask, the demi-moue of her lips, muddied shades and scattered dreams.
And you say I abandoned the ship
He sees Sophie half a step behind Hyacinth, passes her running lightly past the staircase, meets her in the hallway. (Mr Bridgerton, though there is no one but him to hear it.)
He steps to the side to let her past, made awkward with familiarity, when of course she steps aside to let him pass. He moves again, determined to be the gentleman, but she comes with him, a waltz with almost the proper amount of handbreadths between them. They might be there all night, and—
She skims past him, ships in the night, walks away, and he hesitates, blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. Watches her turn back, the cautious tilt of her lips.
They talk of his sisters, his feeling out of place; hurriedly, as he realises his mistake, half-strangles himself: his valet. Her hands are at his throat (May I?) and he can’t find the syllables to make into words to resist her.
But I was going down with it
He had mistaken part of his conversation with the lady in silver—feeling out of place—with what Sophie had said in amongst his abandoned canvases.
Her fingers brush against his collarbone like they had stilled his jaw, (focus on the lips) but he can’t think of a single French word, only how well-known her lips are to him, the realisation that he’s unconsciously added them beneath the white mask. That he’s bestowed the lady in silver with Sophie’s neck, that he can’t picture the ingenue any longer without blurring her with the maid, his watercolour-memory Lady in Silver disappearing behind the vivid oil paint of Sophie.
There you are, Sophie says, and here he is, standing in the hallway as distracted as when he’d been standing before a masked lady, the woman he thought he had been painting.
Stitches undone
Colin toasts to Benedict’s button, asks him about his search.
It’s going terribly, as everyone seems to know. He confesses, brandy-loosened, to barely being able to remember what she looks like.
Hiscox introduces him to his new lady love, rather more sweet and less wild than Anthony’s old flame. Somehow, Colin and Will are talking of love. He gets another drink.
He stares at the painting, later, tries to untangle it, bring it into focus, see what parts are reflections, which are shimmering crystal, which are the original light and flame. He cannot, cannot breathe properly, rips the button off and hears it skitter across the room.
Two graves, two guns
He paces, restless. Opens the drawer, pulls out the sketches.
He spreads them over the accounts, unearths Anthony’s pistol at the bottom of the drawer. His own lies next to it, like it was yesterday he was Anthony’s second in that ill-advised duel, silently terrified of losing his brother, becoming the Viscount, having to break the news to the family.
He tries to remember what he’d ended up doing with the letter Anthony had given him, wonders if it had contained farewells, instructions on how to care for everyone, or only his mistress’s name, anything he’d left to take care of her, outside his will.
The drawer is slammed shut, drawings stared at. She stares back at him, unreadable.
=
Every breath feels like rarest air
It’s evening, the room dim, when Benedict enters, coat and waistcoat long abandoned and shirt in disarray. She should leave. He tells her not to, not on his account.
They are lit in warm firelight, and she remembers how he had knelt to join her, when she had been the one to build the fire, he the one attempting to take over, to act the host to this stray girl he’d accidentally picked up.
She cannot help her smile, turns away, back to the stars she’s trying to see. He feels it too, the beauty of the world a little muted in Mayfair, the clouds closer, the sky further away.
It’s a mistake to glance down, the back terrace glowing dimly in the half-moon light like she can steal another night, another dance, if only she wants. He is at her shoulder, gaze warm, body barely grazing hers. She’s aware of the movement of his every breath, holds hers, moves to slip away. He asks her not to.
When you're not sure
I do not want you to go, he says as if it’s that easy. She tells him she might stay, on the outskirts of the beautiful chaotic whirl of his family.
He comes toward her again, and she thinks of moths to a flame, about to singe their wings, his hand large and warm, thumb gliding over hers, voice low, too sincere— you deserve more, Sophie, and she swallows, remembers all at once why this is a bad idea, tells him, barely audible, that she does not know if it is wise—
Because… ? he asks, quiet, smile angled toward her; tease, dare, invitation, she’s not sure, a question to which her mouth can’t give an answer, hovering precariously close, his eyes—
She hears him swallow, his uneven exhale, hears the blood thrum in her veins, slips by like she’s underwater; Good night, Mr Bridgerton.
I didn't opt in to be your odd man out
Hazel and Celia are elbow-deep in wet linens, a laundry emergency Gregory has precipitated, when the bell rings for one of the drawing rooms. Sophie sets aside Hyacinth’s gloves and looks expectantly at Mrs Wilson. The housekeeper sighs, nods at the second teapot, a murmur of thanks and an approving hand on Sophie’s shoulder as she exits.
She can hear Lady Bridgerton’s guests as she comes up the stairs, a lady laughing about how someone is a fool. And as she comes around the corner, a slight dip in the level of the tea as she realises Benedict’s in the room, amused despite herself at the furrow in his brow, a grimace at something before he sees her.
He’s dressed properly today, down to his cravat, tie pin, starched collar, must have found his valet instead of having to make do with Sophie. He grins as he sees her, eyes warming, and she smiles helplessly back, coming to pause almost across from him.
She glances at the level of the ladies’ teacups beside her, perhaps a mother and daughter— the daughter glances up, curious eyes, as she follows Benedict’s gaze— and Sophie feels as if she’s been dunked in the English Channel in midwinter, despite the warmth of the tea in her hands, mouth parted like she’s the fool the young lady was talking about. She sees him glancing away, looks everywhere but the pair sitting to her side, across from each other.
I founded the club she's heard great things about
He asks after Hazel, Celia, as if she shouldn’t be here (she shouldn’t), she calls him Sir (she should have, all along), Lady Bridgerton offers tea (again), Miss Hollis smiles politely at her, uncertain (accepts), and Sophie finally remembers how her feet work.
She serves tea, just barely steaming, feels the tap of Benedict’s foot across the rug like her hand is on his knee— Miss Hollis, who thanks her; Mrs Hollis; stands to the side so that she blocks nobody’s view of their companions.
He hardly looks at her, says something she doesn’t quite catch in time, a mirrored gasp of an inhale as his hand is scalded, teacup dropped on the floor, a curse he sounds sincere in making.
She hates the tremble she hears in her voice, the way she can’t see if the teacup is cracked through a sudden blur in her vision, how his head bends down with hers, hands colliding, brusque command to leave it. His fingers still hers, eyes catching; he repeats himself, an order, a plea, something overturned like the quickly cooling tea on the floor. She flees like she is the one that’s been burned.
I left all I knew
She almost runs into the Bridgertons’ guests leaving the room as she comes back, a shallow curtsy, the small mercy of not having to— Except he’s still in the room, moving too slowly, aimlessly, to be pacing, to be going somewhere else.
He asks if he can help. She, still flushed with vexation, embarrassment, something more painful, keeps her eyes on the carpet, tells him not to be foolish.
He sits too close to her, asks her for forgiveness as if he needs it, wants it, has done something he needs forgiveness for. She scolds him again: it doesn’t matter, is the way of things, ladies, gentlemen, maids—
He says highly unhelpful things, like he thinks of her as some young lady, like she left him her name instead of her glove. She can never compare, he says, as heated as a fire she taught him to start, but she doesn’t know what he compares Miss Hollis to, the lady in silver— or her—
You left me at the house by the Heath
He rises with her, steps back when she steps forward, her frustration leaking out like water through a cracking dam. She’s barely holding herself together, can’t also hold it in. He’s everywhere, morning, evening, in her dreams, drifting in as if the current that pulls them in won’t also dash them apart, like he lives in some fantasy he’s trying to paint her into. She’s like the kite, trying to tether herself to the ground, to reality, forever holding her breath, preparing for the fall.
She cannot stay, or else he cannot stay, drowning in this deep-water tide, about to be dashed on the rocks.
She had been the one to leave, the night of the masquerade. Should be the one to leave again, not all but ordering him out of his own home, as if she is the lady of it. Backtracking, all but begging, bewildered, somehow thanking him for his offer to all but disappear.
There is hard ground under her feet again, and she finds it in her to turn back, tell him to pursue something with Miss Hollis. Something inside her curls up and knots her stomach as she forces a smile. She seemed delightful. A perfect fantasy.
Because isn’t that the best kind? A fantasy that can become reality?
And I'm just getting colour back into my face
If she is to stay, she should make the most of it. She thinks of drawings she might put on the wall, agrees to read one of Hyacinth’s favourite books so they might discuss it, accepts Celia’s invitation to join them at the tavern.
She’s retaking the stairs to her room, footsteps echoing above her, slamming into a shoulder, Benedict’s intake of breath echoing above her, sentences trailing off as she tries to make sense of him.
Their mingled breathing sounds too loud. She had run too quickly, tries not to pant as they stare at each other. He looks at her as if he’s been shipwrecked and she’s dry land; as if he’s a candle, about to fall, and she’s kindling, and one wrong move will set the house alight.
She hardly moves, and he is there, her coat flung off, hands lifting her above him, mouth on hers like a burning reprise, the house alight, perhaps the whole of London.
I'm just mad as hell cause I loved this place
You consume me, he says, voice hoarse, like the staircase is truly up in flames around them, places her hand on his heartbeat so she can feel its uneven gallop.
You deserve better. As if it is simply a matter of what people deserve— the princess, her prince; the knight, his lady; her, if one is to believe Benedict, whatever she wants.
And I am determined to give it to you, and more. And then— the offer. From a gentleman, of a certain kind.
And she had suddenly remembered his reputation. Her reputation. The fragility of the place she had. Felt the wall pressing into her shoulder blades, the falling feeling in her stomach, like it had been dropped down the stairwell, the reality of it all.
For so long, London
He had said— The reality of you has become more tantalising than any fantasy ever could be, and one I cannot live without— And she had felt something shiver up her spine. She had slipped up, slipped free like a kite all the way to the stars, breathed— Benedict, as if she could simply call him Benedict, as if the servants’ stairs existed in a separate world.
For so long, she had thought of London as a place designed to anchor her to the ground, to her station— she stares at his lips, his collar— Are you coming, Sophie? Celia calls. They flinch in sync, and she feels a hot rush of shame, anger, incredulity, bleed into the shocked numbness, lend her legs movement.
She feels as if she clambers down the stairs like it’s a cliff, breath coming fast, coat struggled into as her boots clatter on the worn treads. She looks up only once, at the end, sews the picture into her memory. Bene—Mr Bridgerton above, Sophie at the bottom. His confusion, his expectation, the abrupt ending to a story trying to be a fairy tale. She goes out the servants’ door.
That is her reality, her world, and he has no place in it.