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Anthony Bridgerton was ninety-two years old, and he was dying, and the strangest part, the part he kept turning over in the long quiet of it, was how little afraid he was.
He had spent so much of his life afraid of this. That was the thing his children would never fully understand, his grandchildren less, his great-grandchildren not at all, because they had only ever known him old, known him as the ancient smiling patriarch at the head of the impossible table, and they had no way of knowing that the man they climbed on and teased and adored had spent the whole of his young life certain he would be dead before forty. He had been so sure. His own father had been the strongest, kindest, most alive man Anthony had ever known, and a bee had killed him in an afternoon, at eight-and-thirty, in the prime of everything, and eighteen-year-old Anthony had stood at that graveside and understood, with a certainty that had shaped every year that followed, that a son could not hope to outlast a father like that, that he too would be struck down young, that his time was borrowed and short and running out.
He had lived his whole young manhood in the shadow of it. He had refused, for years, to marry for love, because he could not bear to leave a woman he loved the way his father had left his mother, could not bear to make a widow of someone he adored and children he cherished, and so he had resolved to marry sensibly, dutifully, without his heart in it, to spare everyone the grief he was certain was coming. He had got his affairs in order absurdly young. He had lain awake, at twenty, at twenty-five, doing sums against a death he was sure was nearly upon him.
And then Kate.
He could still see her, if he let himself, and he let himself now, here at the end, because what was the end for if not for seeing her, the way she’d been, sharp and furious and unimpressed by him, the wrong sister, the unsuitable one, the woman he was absolutely not supposed to want and had wanted with his whole terrified guarded heart. Kate, who had walked into his careful doomed life and made him want, for the first time, to live, to actually live, not to brace for death but to reach for something, because she had made the reaching worth the risk of the leaving. He had married her knowing it might mean leaving her young. He had decided she was worth being left. It was the bravest thing he ever did, and he had done it for love, the very thing he’d sworn he never would.
And he had not died young.
That was the miracle he had never quite gotten over, in sixty years of turning it in his hands. He had not died at thirty-eight like his father. He had not died at forty, or fifty, or sixty. He had lived, and lived, and gone on living, past every age the frightened boy had been certain he’d never see, until the fear itself had worn away to nothing through sheer disuse, until he was old, genuinely old, ancient, a man who had outlasted his beloved father by more than half a century, who had seen his children grey, who had held great-grandchildren, who had gotten, against all his certainty, the one thing he’d been most sure was denied him, which was time. An ocean of it. A whole long full overflowing life of it, every year a gift the terrified young man had never dared to count on.
He was dying now. He knew it, and the physicians knew it, and the family knew it, gathered somewhere beyond the door of the bedroom, quiet, waiting, the whole vast impossible clan of them, come to see him off. But he was not being struck down. That was the thing. He was not being torn out of the middle of his life by a bee on a summer afternoon, leaving everything unfinished and everyone robbed. He was going the other way, the slow gentle way, at the far end of everything, with nothing unfinished, with a life so complete that there was, when he examined it, hardly anything left he wished he’d done. He had loved. He had been loved. He had built something enormous and warm and lasting out of a fear that had told him not to build anything at all. He was leaving full, not empty. He was leaving late, not early. He had beaten the thing. He had spent his whole youth afraid of dying, and he had won, because he had lived first, he had lived everything first, and now there was nothing death could take from him that he had not already had in full.
He turned his head on the pillow. It was an effort now, everything was an effort, but he turned it, because he wanted to see her, and there she was, where she had been the whole time, where she had been for sixty years, right beside him.
Kate was old too. Of course she was; they had grown old together, that was the whole point, that was the gift. She was small and silver and lined, and her hands, when they held his, were not the strong brown hands that had gripped a pall-mall mallet and beaten him fair on a lawn a lifetime ago, they were thin now, and spotted, and they shook slightly, and they were, Anthony thought, looking at them, the most beautiful things he had ever seen in the whole of his long life, because they had held his through every single year of it.
“You’re looking at me,” Kate said. Her voice was old, and rough, and there were tears in it she was refusing to let fall, because she was Kate, and she would be dry and fierce right up to the very end and grieve properly only later, in private, where he couldn’t see and be pained by it. “Stop looking at me like that. You’ll make me cry and I’ve told you I won’t, not while you can see it.”
“I’ve earned a look.” His own voice was barely there. “Sixty years I’ve been looking at you. I’m not going to stop now, at the end, when I’ve only got a bit of looking left.”
“Anthony.”
“I have to tell you something.” He gathered what he had. It was not much, but he gathered it, because this mattered more than the effort. “When I married you. You knew, I told you once, that I was sure I’d die young. That I’d leave you. That I nearly didn’t let myself love you because I couldn’t bear to make a widow of you, the way my father made one of my mother.”
“I remember.” Her hand tightened on his. “You told me on a terrible night. You were so certain. You’d done sums.”
“I’d done sums.” A ghost of a laugh, which cost him. “I’d done so many sums. And Kate, I want you to know, here, at the end, that I got it wrong. Every one of them. I was so sure I’d leave you young and robbed and I’ve, look, I’ve left you old. I’ve left you at ninety-two, after sixty years, after everything, after a whole life, I’ve left you full, Kate, not empty. The one thing I was most afraid of, leaving you, it’s happening, it’s happening right now, but it’s happening at the end, not the beginning, and that’s, do you understand, that’s everything. That’s the whole difference. I got to give you all of it first. Every year I was sure I’d never have, I had, and I spent them all on you.” His eyes were wet now and he didn’t care. “I was so afraid of this my whole young life. And it turned out to be the gentlest thing. To leave you like this. Old, and finished, and having had all of you, for the whole of a life. I beat it, Kate. The fear. I lived first. I beat it.”
Kate was crying now, openly, the tears she’d sworn she wouldn’t shed, and she was gripping his hand hard, and she was, even now, even weeping, unmistakably herself.
“You did,” she said fiercely. “You beat it. You stubborn, frightened, magnificent man, you were so sure you’d die and leave me and instead you got old and slow and impossible and you drove me mad for sixty years and you’re not, Anthony, you’re not leaving me robbed, do you hear me, I won’t have you thinking you’re leaving me robbed. I’ve had all of you. Every year. Every argument I threw so you could win. Every child. Every, everything. I’ve had the whole of you and you’ve had the whole of me and that’s, that’s not a thing to grieve, that’s a thing that worked, Anthony, we, it worked, the whole impossible thing, it worked, for sixty years it worked.”
“It worked.” He could barely say it now. “The wrong sister. Best thing I ever did.”
“The wrong sister.” She laughed, wet and broken and true, and pressed his hand to her cheek, the way she had a thousand times, ten thousand times, across all the years. “Everyone thought you’d marry Edwina. God, what a catastrophe that would have been. You’d have bored each other to death in a decade.”
“I’d have died young of sheer tedium.”
“You would have. It would have served you right.” She was smiling through the tears, and he was smiling back, the two of them making their oldest jokes at the very edge of it, because that was who they were, that was how they had always loved each other, sharp and dry and teasing, right up to the last. “Don’t you dare make me laugh. I’m trying to say goodbye to you properly and you’re making jokes.”
“We never once said anything properly. Why start now.” He was fading, he could feel it, the room going soft and distant, but she was still there, still bright and clear, the last clear thing, the way she had been the first clear thing sixty years ago in a world that had been all fear and shadow until she walked into it. “Kate.”
“I’m here.”
“I’m not afraid.” It was the truest thing, and he wanted her to have it, wanted it to be nearly the last thing. “That’s the, all those years I was so afraid, and now it’s actually here and I’m not afraid at all. Because you’re here. And it’s late. And I had all of it. I got everything the frightened boy was sure he’d never get, and I’m not afraid, and you’re holding my hand, and that’s, Kate, that’s exactly how, if I’d known at eighteen it would end like this, old, and unafraid, and holding your hand, I’d not have been frightened for a single day of my whole life.”
“I’m holding your hand,” Kate said, through her tears, gripping it, both of hers around his one, the way she had held it through everything, through births and deaths and sixty years of an impossible magnificent life. “I’ve got you. I’m right here. I’m not letting go. You go on, my love, when you’re ready, you go on, and I’ll be right here holding your hand the whole way, you won’t be alone for a second of it, not one second, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’m right here.”
And Anthony Bridgerton, ninety-two years old, who had spent his whole young life terrified of dying and had, in the end, lived so completely that death held nothing over him at all, looked at his wife, the wrong sister, the unsuitable one, the best thing he ever did, holding his hand at the end of everything exactly as she had held it through the whole of it, and was not afraid, and let go, gently, at the far end of a long full life, unrobbed, unhurried, complete, with her hand in his and her face the last thing he saw.
He had lived first. He had beaten it. And he went, at the last, the way his father had not been allowed to, slow, and old, and ready, and loved, with nothing left unfinished and nothing left unsaid and his hand in the hand of the woman who had made the whole long unlikely life worth every year he’d been so sure he’d never have.
Kate did not cry, at first, after.
She had cried at the end, holding his hand, the tears she’d promised she wouldn’t shed while he could see, but the moment he was gone a strange dry calm came over her, and she sat holding his hand a while longer, in no hurry, because she had never once in sixty years been in a hurry to let go of it and she was not going to start now. The room was very quiet. Beyond the door she could hear the family, the enormous family the two of them had made out of one stubborn frightened impossible love, waiting, and she knew she would have to go and tell them soon, and she would, in a moment, but not yet. For a moment more he was hers, and only hers, the way he had been on a lawn sixty years ago before any of the rest of it existed, and she sat with him, and held his hand, and was not, quite, ready to share the news that would make it real.
She looked at his face. It was peaceful. It had been peaceful at the end, and that, she thought, that was the thing she would hold onto, in the long strange years that were coming, the years she would have to spend without him, which she could not yet imagine and did not try to. He had been so afraid, her Anthony, all those years ago, so afraid of exactly this, and at the end he had not been afraid at all. He had gone unafraid, and full, and ready, and he had beaten the thing that had haunted his whole young life, and he had known it, he had known it as he went, that he’d won. That was worth everything. That was worth the grief that was coming, all of it, the whole crushing weight of a life without him that she would have to learn to carry. He had won. He had been so sure, at eighteen, that he’d die young and robbed and afraid, and instead he’d died old and full and unafraid with his hand in hers, and if she had done nothing else in her life, she thought, if she had done nothing else at all, she had done that, she had been the reason the frightened boy grew into a man who could let go without fear.
“You beat it,” she told him, quietly, one last time, in the quiet room, alone with him the way she had started, alone with him the way she would end. “You stubborn, frightened, magnificent man. You beat it. And I got to watch you do it, for sixty years, and it was the best thing I ever saw.” Her voice broke, finally, alone, where he could not see it and be pained by it, which was the only way she had ever been willing to break. “Thank you for being brave enough to love me. Thank you for all of it. Thank you for the whole impossible wonderful life. I’d not have traded a single day. Not one. Not even the ones I threw at pall-mall.”
The four of them came in before the rest, because of course they did, because they were the last, and the last have privileges the others don’t yet understand.
Kate had not sent for them; they had simply known, the way the eight of them had always known things about each other, some old wordless sense forged in a shared nursery seventy-odd years ago, and they had come up the stairs ahead of everyone, the four remaining, and they stood now in the doorway of the quiet room, and Kate rose to let them have him.
Colin first, leaning on a stick now, still with the ghost of the charm in his face that had disarmed all of London for eighty years, but the charm gone very quiet. Then Eloise, sharp-eyed and straight-backed even at her age, refusing to be bowed, though her chin was trembling. Gregory behind her, the youngest son, who had spent his whole life the baby among the brothers and looked, suddenly, in the doorway, exactly like the frightened boy he must once have been. And Hyacinth last, the baby of them all, relentless and formidable Hyacinth who had terrorized three generations, standing very still now, her fierce face come undone.
They looked at their eldest brother, dead in the bed, and for a long moment none of them said anything at all.
“He was the first thing I ever remember,” Colin said finally, quietly, to no one, to all of them. “Anthony. Bossing us round the nursery. He was always so, he took it all so seriously, even then, even before Father, he thought it was his job to look after us. And then Father died and it became his job, and he was, what, eighteen, and he just, he picked us all up and carried us. All seven of us. He was so sure he’d die young, you know, he told me once, he was so certain, and I think that’s why he was so, why he held on so tight to all of us, because he thought his time was short and he wasn’t going to waste a minute of it not looking after us.” Colin’s voice cracked. “And he outlived half of us. Isn’t that the thing. He was so sure he’d go first and young, and he outlived Benedict, and Daphne, and Francesca, and he went last, at ninety-two, the eldest and the last. He’d hate it. He’d absolutely hate it, having to be the one who saw us all go.”
“He hated it enormously,” Kate said softly, from the corner. “You’re right. He grieved every one of them terribly. He never got used to it. He kept saying it was the wrong order, that the eldest was meant to go first, that it was unnatural to bury his little brother and his sisters.” She wiped her eyes. “Benedict was the worst, I think. They were so close in age. He never quite forgave the world for taking Benedict.”
“How long has it been now,” Gregory asked. “Since Benedict.”
“Six years.” Eloise answered, because Eloise always had the dates. “Six years this spring. He went in his sleep. Do you remember? Sophie found him in the morning, gone, quite peaceful, and there was, she said there was a half-finished sketch on the table beside the bed, he’d been drawing something the night before, some view from the window, and he just, he finished the day and went to bed and didn’t wake, with the pencil still, they found the pencil still in the blankets.” Her voice was steady but her eyes were wet. “It was the gentlest death I ever heard of. Anthony said, I remember Anthony saying, that Benedict had always been the one of us who knew how to be at peace, and that of course he’d found the most peaceful possible way out, drifting off mid-sketch like it was just another afternoon. Trust Benedict to make even dying look easy and artistic. Anthony was so angry and so proud of him, both at once, the way you could only ever be about Benedict.”
A ripple of something moved through them, grief and a helpless fondness, the particular way you smile at the dead.
“And Daphne,” said Hyacinth, very quietly. “Two years now.”
“The winter after Simon.” Kate nodded. “The winter right after.”
She’d nursed him through his last illness, she wouldn’t leave his side, and when he went she just…seemed to fold up. She wasn’t ill, exactly, the physicians could never say what it was. She just done her great job of loving him for fifty years and when it was finished, she was tired. She went quietly, in the spring, surrounded by every last one of her children and grandchildren, dozens of them, the whole enormous Hastings brood packed into the room, and she smiled at all of them and said something about how she’d had the best of everything and then she just went, the way devoted wives sometimes do, once they’ve seen the person they loved settled. As though she’d only been waiting to be sure Simon was all right on the other side before she followed him over.
Kate’s voice was thick. “Anthony held her hand at the end, the way I’m, the way he, he held her hand, his little sister, the first girl, the one he’d carried through her own first Season worrying himself sick over her, and he held her hand while she went, and then he came home and didn’t speak for two days. He loved Daphne more than he ever let on. The pall-mall and the teasing, it was all, underneath it he adored her.”
“He adored all of us,” said Gregory, roughly. “Under all the bossing. He adored every one of us and he’d have died before he said it plainly, which is why we always knew.”
“And Francesca,” Eloise said, the last of the three, the quietest of the departed, and the room went quieter still, because Francesca had always been the one a little apart, a little harder to reach, a little more herself than the rest of them.
She’d passed four years ago. She went the way she did everything. Quietly. Without troubling a soul. She was at the pianoforte. Her wife had found her there. She’d sat down to play in the afternoon, the way she always did, and she’d played, the servants heard her playing, and then the playing stopped, and no one thought anything of it because she stopped and started all the time when she was composing, and it was only later, when she didn’t come to dinner, that Michaela went to find her, and she was sitting at the pianoforte, gone, her hands still, quite peaceful.
“In the middle of a piece. She never finished it. There’s a page of it somewhere, unfinished, breaks off in the middle of a bar.” Eloise’s composure finally cracked. “She spent her whole life drifting off in the middle of things, going somewhere the rest of us couldn’t follow, and in the end she just, drifted off one last time, mid-phrase, and didn’t come back. Anthony said it was the most Francesca thing she ever did. He said she’d probably heard something better than the rest of us could hear and simply followed it.”
They were all crying now, the four of them, the last four, standing over the fifth, and Kate stood apart and let them, because this was theirs, this grief, the specific grief of the last siblings left, and she was, for all her seventy years among them, still and always the one who’d married in, and there were rooms in the Bridgerton heart that even seventy years didn’t quite give you the right to stand in the middle of.
“We’re nearly the last now,” Hyacinth said, and her fierce voice was very small. “Do you realize. The four of us. Benedict, Daphne, Francesca, and now Anthony, that’s, we’re down to four, out of eight. Half of us gone. And Anthony was, he was the first, he was the one who was always there, the one who took over when we lost Father, he’s, without him it’s, who’s the eldest now?” She looked around at them, lost, the baby of the family suddenly aware there was no one older left to lean on in the way Anthony had always let them lean. “Colin. You’re the eldest now. God. That’s, Colin’s the eldest Bridgerton now. When did that, how did that happen.”
“I don’t want to be the eldest,” Colin said, with a wet broken laugh. “I’ve spent eighty years being the charming one who didn’t have to be responsible. Anthony was responsible so I didn’t have to be. That was the whole arrangement. He can’t just, he can’t leave and hand me the responsibility, I’m eighty-nine, I’m too old to suddenly become the sensible one—”
“You’ll be terrible at it,” Eloise agreed, through her tears, and it was so exactly the kind of thing they’d have said to each other in the nursery seventy years ago that they all, helplessly, half-laughed, even now, even here, because that was what Bridgertons did, they made the joke at the edge of the grave, they’d learned it from the man in the bed who’d made his last jokes an hour ago with his wife.
“He taught us that,” Gregory said softly, watching them all laugh through their tears. “That, exactly that. Laughing when it’s worst. He learned it after Father died, I think, he had to, someone had to make the rest of us laugh or we’d all have drowned, and so he did, he made us laugh through the worst thing that ever happened to us, and now look, we’re doing it over him, we’re standing here making jokes over his body because he taught us how, because it’s the only way this family knows how to survive losing someone.” His voice broke completely. “God, I’ll miss him. I’ll miss him so much. My whole life he was just, there, older, ahead of me, showing me how it was done, and now there’s no one ahead of me anymore, there’s no one older, I’m, we’re the old ones now, we’re the ones the young ones look to, and I don’t, I don’t know how to be that without him going first and showing me how.”
And the four remaining Bridgertons stood over the body of their eldest brother, the one who’d carried them all when their father died, the one who’d feared dying young and instead outlived nearly all of them, the one who’d taught them to laugh through grief because he’d had to learn it himself at eighteen over another grave, and they grieved him, together, and loudly, and with jokes breaking through the tears, exactly as he’d taught them, exactly as this family did everything.
Kate watched them from the corner, the last four of the eight, and thought that Anthony would have been undone by it, the sight of his brothers and sisters gathered round him one final time, still teasing, still laughing, still refusing to let grief have the last word, and she thought that of all the things he’d built in ninety-two years, this was perhaps the finest, that even now, even at the very end, even down to four, the Bridgertons met death the way he’d taught them to meet it, together, and unafraid, and laughing through the tears.
She gave them a while longer. And then, when they’d had their time, when the four of them had said their private goodbyes to the last of their eldest, Kate wiped her own eyes, and squared her shoulders, and went to the door, to gather the rest of them, all the generations, the whole enormous family that these eight impossible children had grown, and to grieve him the way this family did everything.
Together. And loudly. And in the light.