Chapter Text
London stirs. The knockers are going back up on the doors of Grosvenor Square, the modistes of Bruton Street have not slept in a fortnight, and the annual migration of the marriageable has begun in earnest. This Author, who would never presume to fill the shoes of a certain retired legend, will content herself with the humbler task of telling her readers who has arrived, who has not, and who ought to have known better.
Among the awaited: the household of Viscount Bridgerton, whose eldest daughter, Miss Charlotte Bridgerton, is to be presented this Season. She is not the first of her sprawling generation to come out, the Basset girls saw to that, but she is the first to carry the Bridgerton name into a ballroom as a young lady in want of a match, and the ton has waited for a Bridgerton daughter with the patience of a cat at a mousehole.
One wonders what has kept them. The family is famously, almost defiantly prolific, and yet they seem forever to be down in Kent about some business or other, as though Aubrey Hall itself were reluctant to give them up to Town. This Author has a theory as to what occupies them there, but a lady does not speculate about another family’s lawn.
A final observation, offered in the spirit of public service. The Viscount possesses two unmarried sons, aged five-and-twenty and three-and-twenty. That either remains unwed is a curiosity. That both do is beginning to look like a stratagem.
-From The Fashionable Intelligencer, being the society column of An Anonymous Lady, 20 April 1840
There were seven mallets in the Bridgerton set, and only one of them mattered.
It was black, its paint chipped down to pale wood at the grip, and it had been called the mallet of death for longer than Charlotte had been alive. Possession of it conferred no advantage whatsoever. The head was warped, the balance was wrong, and anyone who struck a ball with real conviction ran the risk of sending it sideways into a hedge. None of this had ever mattered. What mattered was that her mother had claimed it first, some twenty-six years ago on this very lawn, and had never entirely forgiven anyone who dared reach for it since.
Which was precisely why Charlotte had risen at dawn to steal it.
She stood now at the head of the course with the black mallet resting against her shoulder like a soldier’s rifle, watching her brothers argue about the placement of the third wicket, and she thought, with the particular clarity that came only on mornings like this one, that she would like to stay exactly here forever.
She would not, of course. In eleven days she would be in London, and the entire machinery of her first Season would grind into motion, and she would spend the summer being looked at. But that was eleven days away, and the sun was out, and she had the mallet of death, and her eldest brother was about to lose his temper.
“You cannot simply move the wicket, Miles.”
“I moved it two inches.”
“You moved it two inches to make my shot impossible.”
“I improved the course,” said Miles, with the serene conviction of a man who had improved a great many things in his three-and-twenty years, most of them to his own advantage. “You are welcome.”
Edmund, who at five-and-twenty was the heir to a viscountcy and comported himself accordingly for approximately half of every hour, looked as though he was counting silently to ten. He was very good at looking like that. He had learned it, Charlotte suspected, from their father, who was at this moment sitting on the terrace with their mother and being visibly, magnificently miserable.
“Charlotte,” Edmund called, not turning around. “Tell him.”
“I am staying out of it,” said Charlotte, who was not staying out of anything and never had in her life. “I have the mallet of death and I intend to keep my head down and win.”
“You are eighteen years old. You cannot keep winning simply because Mother taught you to be vicious.”
“I can, actually. That is rather the point of it.”
From somewhere near the second wicket came a small, aggrieved voice. “I want to play.”
They all looked down. Mary, who was ten and had spent the better part of the morning following the game around the lawn at a distance of roughly four feet, had planted herself directly in the path of the course with her own mallet, which was nearly as tall as she was, held in both hands like a staff.
“You are playing, dearest,” said Charlotte.
“I am following. It is not the same thing.” Mary lifted her chin, and in the gesture Charlotte saw their mother so exactly that she had to bite the inside of her cheek. “I should like an actual turn. A real one. Not the pretend kind where you all let me tap the ball and then say well done, Mary and go back to trying to murder each other.”
“That,” said Miles gravely, “is the most accurate description of Bridgerton pall-mall I have ever heard.”
“She may have my turn,” Edmund said, in the voice of a man making a noble sacrifice, which fooled no one, as his ball was currently in a rut behind the elm and his position was hopeless.
“She may not have your turn,” came a new voice, “because then she will be five strokes down before she has struck a single ball, and I did not raise daughters to hand them lost causes.”
Their mother had abandoned the terrace.
Kate Bridgerton crossed the lawn with the unhurried menace of a general surveying a field she had already decided to take, and Charlotte watched her brothers instinctively close ranks around the mallet rack, which was empty, because Charlotte had the only mallet that counted.
“You are not permitted to play, Mama,” Charlotte said.
“I am aware of the rule.”
“You wrote the rule.”
“I wrote it under duress.” Kate stopped at the head of the course and regarded the black mallet against her daughter’s shoulder with an expression of such naked longing that Charlotte nearly, nearly, handed it over. “I wrote it because your father cannot be trusted to lose gracefully, and neither, it emerged, can I, and last spring your uncle Colin required a physician, and the family agreed that the two of us would henceforth supervise.” She said the word as though it were an obscenity.
“It was a very small injury,” Anthony called from the terrace.
“It was his foot, Anthony.”
“He has another one.”
Charlotte turned. Her father had not risen. Her father, Anthony Bridgerton, Viscount Bridgerton, five-and-fifty years old and still, on a morning like this, entirely capable of looking like a boy who had been sent inside while the other children played, sat with one arm along the back of the empty chair beside him and an expression of profound personal injury on his face.
“I could referee,” he offered. “From here. I have an excellent view of every way in which you are all cheating.”
“We are not cheating,” said Miles.
“You moved the third wicket. I watched you do it. I said nothing because I have made my peace with the fact that I have raised people of low character.” He paused. “Your mother, however, is about to do something, and I want the record to show that I tried to stop her.”
Kate had picked up Mary’s mallet.
“Mother,” said Edmund.
“I am merely demonstrating,” said Kate, “the correct grip. For Mary. Who has asked, quite reasonably, for a proper turn, and who deserves proper instruction, and if in the course of that instruction I happen to strike a ball, that is incidental and cannot be helped.”
“Kate,” said Anthony, and something in the way he said it, low and warm and terribly amused, made Charlotte look away, because after twenty-six years her parents still spoke to each other in a private language that she was not sure she would ever be lucky enough to learn, and it seemed rude to watch.
“Charlotte.” Her mother turned to her, mallet in hand, eyes bright. “Set the ball for your sister.”
Charlotte looked at Mary, who was vibrating with hope. She looked at Edmund, already resigned. She looked at Miles, who had begun, very quietly, to reset the third wicket to its lawful position, on the theory that if Mother was playing then the game had entered a state of nature and it was every Bridgerton for himself.
And she looked, last, at her father, who caught her eye and lifted one shoulder in a gesture that said, as clearly as speech, there is nothing to be done, she was always going to win, we may as well enjoy it.
Eleven days, Charlotte thought. Eleven days and she would be in London, and everyone would be very kind to her, and she would smile until her face ached, and somewhere in a ballroom a man she had not yet met would decide whether she would do. And she would be a credit to her family, because she loved them, and because that was what the eldest daughter did.
But that was eleven days away.
She crouched and set the ball for her sister, and she kept, for now, the mallet of death.
“Right,” she said. “Mary. Feet apart. And when you swing, aim for Edmund’s ball, not the wicket. Trust me.”
“Charlotte,” said Edmund.
“Mother taught me to be vicious,” Charlotte said, and grinned, and stood back to watch her small sister wind up like a woman with a grudge. “I am simply passing it on.”
Miles had won.
No one had seen him do it, which was the truly maddening part. While Kate was demonstrating the correct grip and Mary was taking her revenge upon Edmund’s ball and Charlotte was refereeing the ensuing dispute over whether a struck ball that came to rest against one’s foot could be considered “in play,” Miles had quietly, methodically, and without comment sent his own ball through the final three wickets and tapped the stake.
He had said nothing about it until the carriage. He had, in fact, waited until they were all seated at dinner, at which point he lifted his wine, surveyed the table with the benevolence of a monarch, and said, “I should like to thank my family for the diversion. It made the winning restful.”
“You did not win,” said Edmund.
“I struck the stake. Charlotte watched me do it.”
Charlotte, who had watched him do it, addressed herself with great interest to her soup.
“Charlotte.”
“I am eating.”
“You are a witness.”
“I am an unreliable witness,” she said. “Mother has raised me to serve the family interest, and the family interest is that you did not win, because if you won, we shall never hear the end of it, and we are about to be trapped in a townhouse together for the length of an entire Season.” She looked up. “I am protecting us all. You are welcome.”
Down the table, their father made a sound into his wine that he attempted, unsuccessfully, to convert into a cough.
“Anthony.” Kate did not look up from her plate. “Do not encourage them.”
“I said nothing.”
“You made the noise. The noise is encouragement.”
“I have made that noise at this table for thirty years and I will make it until I die,” said Anthony, with dignity. “It is the only power left to me. You have taken pall-mall. You will not take the noise.”
Charlotte watched her mother fight a smile and lose, and felt, beneath the warmth of it, the small persistent ache that had been with her all week. This. She was going to miss this. Not the house, though she loved the house, and not Kent, though she loved Kent. She was going to miss the particular sensation of sitting at a table where every single person knew precisely who she was and had known it her whole life and required nothing further of her. In eleven days she would sit at other tables, and be charming, and every person there would be deciding something about her.
“You have gone quiet,” Edmund said.
He said it lightly, but he was looking at her the way he sometimes did, the way that reminded her he was seven years older and had been watching her since before she could walk. Edmund noticed things. It was inconvenient.
“I am contemplating my triumph,” she said. “I had the mallet of death and I finished second. It requires reflection.”
“You finished second because you spent the back nine teaching a ten-year-old to commit violence.”
“And it was worth every stroke,” said Mary, with tremendous satisfaction, from her end of the table.
“It was rather well struck,” Edmund admitted. “For a first proper turn.”
Mary glowed. Charlotte watched her sister glow, and thought: she has no idea. She is ten, and she thinks the worst thing in the world is being told she is too small to play. In eight years it would be Mary at this table on the last week before London, and Charlotte hoped, fiercely and out of nowhere, that she would be there to steal the mallet for her.
“You are quiet again,” said Edmund.
“I am going to be quiet for the entire Season if you keep announcing it to the room.”
“Now that,” said Miles, “I should like to see. Charlotte. Quiet. In a ballroom.” He shook his head slowly, marveling. “The ton is not ready. They think they are getting a nice Bridgerton girl who will blush and dance and marry an earl by June. They have no idea what is coming for them.”
“Miles,” said Kate.
“I mean it as the highest compliment.”
“I know you do. That is why I am stopping you.”
But Charlotte had caught the thing under the joke, the thing the whole family had been carefully not saying all week, which was that they were proud of her and frightened for her in exactly equal measure, because she was clever and sharp and entirely herself, and none of those were qualities the marriage market had ever been designed to reward.
Her father set down his glass.
“She will be precisely as quiet as she wishes to be,” Anthony said. The teasing had gone out of his voice. “And any man who requires her quieter than that is not a man we need trouble ourselves about. There. That is my ruling. I am still permitted to rule on some things.”
“You are permitted to rule on that,” Kate said softly.
For a moment no one spoke, and Charlotte felt her throat go tight, and then Mary, who was ten and had no patience for a silence she did not understand, announced that if this was a celebration of Miles winning then she did not see why there was no pudding, and the table came apart into noise again, and the moment passed, and Charlotte was grateful for it.
She would think about it later, though. In London, on the bad nights, she would think about her father saying any man who requires her quieter than that, and she would hold on to it, and it would take her a long time to understand that he had told her, at that table, exactly how the whole thing was supposed to work.