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Anthony has always liked Kate’s hands.
They’re elegant and graceful, and these days whenever her left hand catches the light just right he likes to pretend that the diamond in her ring is winking at him.
That usually rare sparkle is almost constant tonight, flickering restlessly through the halo of every passing gas-lamp as their carriage ambles along the streets of Mayfair towards Trowbridge House.
“You’re fidgeting, Lady Bridgerton.”
Kate very slowly, very deliberately raises an eyebrow.
“And you, Lord Bridgerton,” she grumbles, “are stating the obvious.”
Anthony smothers a smile, watching her continue her efforts to smooth out what he suspects is an entirely imaginary crease in her dress. She’s been like this since they left Grosvenor Square, fussing endlessly over a dozen imaginary flaws in her flawless appearance and all the while refusing to concede that she’s even the slightest bit anxious about tonight, their very first appearance among the ton since they were married.
But that’s another thing about Kate’s hands – they always give her away.
She starts to twist her ring, sliding it back and forth over her evening gloves until Anthony says, not for the first time, “Lord, you really are nervous.”
Kate flashes him the funny little half-scowl that she seems to save for his teasing, the one that isn’t really a scowl at all. “As I said … obvious.”
“Oh, ‘obvious’, she says now,” he mutters to himself. “At the twelfth time of asking...”
Kate only shrugs, smiling sweetly. “I like to make you work for things.”
Anthony tips his head back against the cushioned wall of their carriage and laughs. “That you do, my dear wife. That you do.”
He’d never dare tell her, but her stubbornness is really rather charming.
Vastly irritating, but charming.
And really, isn’t that Kate all over?
Anthony laughs aloud again at the thought.
Honestly, what a woman.
Not for the first time in their journey, he wishes he’d taken the seat beside her instead of the bench opposite. It seemed gentlemanly to allow her the space to spread out her skirts but now he thinks it might also have been bloody stupid to willingly submit himself to over half an hour in a closed carriage without being able to touch her. The constant press of her hands across her thighs really isn’t helping matters.
“Kate,” he says, trying for something commanding and landing on something rather needy instead. “Stop all that fussing and come and sit beside me.”
“And let your wandering hands ruin my hair? No, thank you.”
“How do you know my hands will wander?”
Kate spares him a rueful grin. “It is not so dark in here that I cannot see the look in your eyes, my lord.”
“Suit yourself,” Anthony grumbles, trying and failing to stop staring at her restless hands. “But you’re going to wear a hole in that frock if you’re not careful.”
“Nonsense,” Kate says, though she does finally remove her hands from her skirt. “Madame Delacroix would never use such poor fabric for me.” She lifts her chin, waving an imperious hand around their well appointed carriage. “I’m a viscountess now. Or have you not heard?”
Anthony hums a laugh, telling himself he’s imagining the slightly brittle edge to her usual good humour. “I do believe I read some such thing in Whistledown,” he says, trying to read her face in the dim light. “Now that you mention it.”
Kate makes a noise in reply that should be a laugh and yet isn’t, not quite. It’s too strangled, too sharp and, when their carriage finally slows into the long queue waiting to alight at Trowbridge House, far too close to something that sounds like panic.
This time, Anthony knows he’s not imagining things.
“I do wonder what she’ll write about me after tonight,” Kate says, peering out of the window at the carriages lining the curve of the road ahead. “I dread to think.”
“We can still turn back, you know,” he says, not entirely joking.
“Do not tempt me.”
Anthony frowns, watching as she drums her fingers on her legs and then snatches her hands back, trapping them under her thighs instead. All this restlessness seemed rather sweet only half a mile back, just a little harmless trepidation for their debut as a married couple, but now there’s something in the set of her shoulders that he doesn’t like at all. She seems to pull them even further as the carriage trundles forward again, growing smaller right in front of his eyes.
“Oh, Kate,” he says, abandoning all his teasing for something softer. “Are you really so very nervous?”
Kate looks at him, hovering on the edge of something that he knows will be another denial, but then the carriage suddenly moves forward another space in the queue and the truth slips out instead.
“Of course I am,” she says, with a helpless smile that’s not really a smile at all. “Is that so surprising?”
“Honestly?” Anthony tilts his head, considering her. “It is rather. You’re usually so…” He waves his hand vaguely, as if the gesture might somehow encompass everything she is – how vibrant, how brave, how singularly brilliant. “So in control,” he settles on, “so confident. It’s one of the very first things I liked about you.”
Kate blinks at him the way she does sometimes when he compliments her, like she isn’t sure she heard him correctly.
“You do not understand,” she says, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “That week before we were wed … Lord, Anthony, have no idea what it was like.”
Guilt tightens Anthony’s cravat around his throat.
He wasn’t lying when he told her he had some estate business to take care of at Aubrey Hall that week but – he tugs at his collar, trying to find some room to breathe – he wasn’t exactly telling the truth either. He could have easily been back in London sooner if he hadn’t been so selfish, so consumed with his own concerns about their marriage that he didn’t stop to realise that he was throwing her to the wolves.
Because that’s exactly what he did, isn’t it?
For the first time, Anthony examines how it must have looked from the outside – the sudden betrothal, the announcement of a scandalously short engagement and then Kate’s return to London, alone – and he despises himself in a way he hasn’t done for weeks. Not since the night he threw that key onto the floor of his study and made her kneel at his feet.
“Was it–” He swallows over the restriction in his throat. “Kate, was it really so bad?”
“Yes,” she says plainly. “It was.”
Her words slice into him like a knife, sharp and swift, but he likes the honest pain of it, the way she never, ever dresses up the truth into a prettier lie for him.
Anthony didn’t realise how many people did that, until he met her.
He gets up and swiftly crosses the carriage to take the place right beside her, where he should have been all along. Then and now.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, taking her gloved hand and wondering idly if she’d mind him removing it to feel the touch of her skin instead. She’s so much softer than even the finest satin.
“It’s not–”
“It is,” he says firmly, without knowing quite what she was going to absolve him of. Whatever it is, he doesn’t deserve it. “I did not see how much the gossip had upset you. And I should have.” He knocks his shoulder lightly against hers, humming half a laugh. “Though in my defence, I’ve never got the impression that you cared much about what other people think.”
Kate snorts a laugh at that. “I don’t really,” she says, smiling wryly as she adds, “I simply wish people hadn’t become so very fond of saying what they think in carrying voices whenever I happen to be nearby.”
There’s something slightly wounded underneath her mocking tone that wounds him too, making him suddenly wish to turn the carriage around and take her home, back to the quiet sanctuary of their bedroom where no whispers reach her ears but the quiet worship he breathes into her skin every night.
“Well, you’re a viscountess now,” he says, as much to remind himself as her. “Surely no-one will be unkind tonight.”
Kate smiles at him, a pitying sort of smile that says he doesn’t understand and worse, that she did not really expect him to.
“Not when you are in earshot, my lord,” she says quietly. “Never then.”
Anthony freezes.
Her words are close – far, far too close – to a sentiment he heard once before and did not heed.
There is no-one that would dare say a thing.
No. Not to you.
Except –
Kate doesn’t look away, doesn’t scoff, doesn’t let go of his hand. Not for a second.
“Honestly, it would be rather funny if it wasn’t so irritating,” she goes on mildly, the good-natured grumble in her voice slicing right through the panic that’s gripping him.
Anthony stares at her, realising with a sharp rush of relief that he can’t find any trace of the disdain he imagined in her smile just a moment ago. Her annoyance is real enough but it’s a vague, directionless sort of thing, none of it’s sharp edges pointing at him.
“It–” He stammers, fumbling to catch the thread of the conversation. “What would?”
“The way people are with you!” Kate says, humming a disbelieving little laugh. “I swear the women of the ton turn into another species entirely when you are present, Anthony. It should be studied by scientists.”
Anthony hears the sudden, unexpected laugh before he realises he’s the one making the sound. Giving in to it, he knocks his head back against the cushioned wall of the carriage and lets the helpless shake of his shoulders scatter away the ghosts of the past.
Because that’s all they are really. Just ghosts.
This – Kate’s hand in his, her perfume floating on the air – is what’s real.
“Anthony?” she looks, looking at him curiously. “Are you quite alright?”
“You make me laugh,” he says by way of response, giving her a helpless shrug.
Kate glows at the compliment and a dangerous thought slides into his mind – that he’d do almost anything to keep that look in her eyes.
“When you’re not making me furious, of course,” he amends, rather hastily.
“Naturally,” she agrees, smiling like that was a compliment too.
Christ, this girl.
“And for the record,” he says, interlacing their fingers, “I will gladly stay by your side all night tonight if you truly think I have the power to turn the fishwives into something more friendly.”
Kate laughs at that, the sound genuine and warm, and Anthony knows that he was wrong before – utterly, completely, wonderfully wrong. The past is the past and this isn’t anything like it. He isn’t that broken man anymore and Kate is not Siena, trying to speak sense to his lonely foolishness. She is his wife and when she tells him her troubles it isn’t to wound him or to warn him away, it’s just to share the weight of them. It’s just because she trusts him to listen.
Anthony was never very good at that, before her.
Then again, he’s never met anyone else whose voice he wanted to hear quite so desperately.
He wonders if Kate knows any of that.
He wonders what it means that he really, really wants to tell her.
In the end all he says is, “I mean it. I won’t leave you alone for a second in there, Kate. Not if you don’t want me to.”
Nobody will be allowed to make her feel small tonight, not when she’s grown so big in his heart that it terrifies him.
“I shall hold you to that,” Kate says, her stern tone rather ruined by the way she melts into his side, the weight of her arm growing heavy against his.
“Good.” Anthony turns his face into her neck and breathes in deeply, inhaling that lovely scent that he’ll never, ever tire of finding on his pillows in the morning. “See that you do.”
Kate’s response is a quiet, obedient little whisper of, “Yes, my lord.”
Does she have any idea, he wonders vaguely, what she does to him?
And there’s that thought again.
He could tell her.
He should tell her.
“Strictly speaking,” he says instead, leaning closer still, “I’d actually been counting on hiding behind your skirts at all these things from now on.”
Kate laughs like she thinks he’s joking. Silly girl.
Moving one of her long earrings aside, Anthony brushes a featherlight kiss against her neck. “I’m serious,” he says, nudging at her jaw with his nose, encouraging her to tilt up her chin and give him more access. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
He kisses her neck, her jaw, anywhere he can reach, anywhere she’ll have him. He might not be able to give voice to everything that’s squeezing at his heart, but he can give her this – he can press his lips to her skin and show her all the things he’s too afraid to name.
“Anthony...” His name on Kate’s lips is half a protest, half a plea. “What are you–”
“Helping you relax,” he says, pressing his lips to her pulsepoint just in time to feel it jump. He takes her hand and presses it over her racing heart. “See? You clearly need my assistance.”
“This is–” Kate’s voice slurs into a moan as he licks a careful line of kisses along her jaw. “Anthony, this is not helping me calm down.”
“Is it not?” He runs his hand along her thigh, his palm tracing the same path across the soft silk that he watched her hands make earlier. “My apologies. I’ll endeavour to try harder.”
Kate hums a laugh at that and Anthony presses a kiss against the column of her throat, right over the vibration. When she moans her appreciation, he almost loses all control.
Almost, but not quite.
“Let me kiss you,” he says, whispering the demand into the shell of her ear. “Let me kiss you and I promise I won’t leave a single hairpin out of place.” He trails a hand along her jaw, turning her head to make her face him and finding the same heat in her dark eyes that he knows must be burning in his. “There won’t be a single crease on your dress, not even the slightest rumple.” He leans in, breathing his last words right against her lips. “Not unless you ask for it.”
Kate’s only response is to sink her hands into his hair and crash her lips down on his.
It is ever so slightly possible, Anthony realises as she tugs on his hair until he opens his mouth for her, that he didn’t think this through. If he’s to stand any chance of keeping his word, he can’t move his hands at all. If he gives himself an inch, he’ll take a mile, he knows he will. He’ll sink his fingers into her hair and then he’ll tug the bodice of her gown down, down, down until it falls lower than the swell of her breasts, and heaven help him, he won’t stop until he’s ruined her.
But he promised, so he doesn’t.
Kate, on the other hand, made no such promises.
Those clever hands of hers are everywhere, in his hair, on his throat, finding their way under his evening jacket to clutch at the fabric of his waistcoat, and all the while his remain trapped exactly where they started – one pressing the soft silk of her dress into her thigh and the other curled around her jaw, holding her to him while she kisses him breathless.
Anthony closes the hand that’s resting on her thigh into a fist, his nails biting into his palm.
He’s a man of his word, he reminds himself.
He’s a gentleman.
He’s –
Kate licks into his mouth, whimpering a low, needy sound in the back of her throat.
He’s an idiot, is what he is.
But then the carriage rolls forward again and Kate doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even notice it, and Anthony decides he’s very clever indeed, actually. So clever in fact that perhaps it wouldn’t be so very terrible to allow himself to move his hands, just ever so slightly.
“Anthony…” Kate squirms as he slides his hand from her thigh to her hip, stealing an arm around her waist. “You promised–”
“What if I’m very, very careful…”
She splutters a laugh that shouldn’t be remotely seductive and yet absolutely is. “Anthony, I’m not going to let you debauch me in the carriage–”
“No?” He pulls back to look at her. “No,” he concludes, and it’s not a question this time. He lets her go with a sigh, feeling the carriage roll forward again. “We probably don’t have time for it anyway. We’re almost at the front.”
“We – what?” Kate scrambles back from him, peering out of the window again. “Oh Lord, I didn’t even notice.”
“Yes, well that was rather the idea,” he says, using her distraction to take a moment to adjust his breeches, suddenly very glad that they’re only almost at the front. Stretching his legs out in front, he crosses his feet at the ankles and sighs. “I’ll just … save the rest of my ravaging for the way home then, shall I?”
Kate fixes him with that lovely little scowl again, the one that’s really a smile.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” she says primly, smoothing her skirts again. “I’d rather not give the ton anything more to talk about.”
“Perhaps the gossip mongers won’t even look our way tonight,” Anthony says, raking his hands through his hair to try and tame it back into some sort of order. “Did you consider that? The ton could well have found something else to interest them while we’ve been away, Kate. Two weeks is an age during a London season.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Kate says, leaning back against his side with a sigh. “We are quite the scandal, you know.”
She’s right of course. He’d be a fool to deny it.
And yet –
“I do not like that word.”
There’s something small about it, something tawdry and cheap that has no place in this fragile, precious thing they’re building.
“Nor I,” Kate agrees easily, “but that does not make it any less true.”
“Then we shall simply have to hope for some new and far more interesting scandal to come along tonight.”
“Wishing ruin upon an innocent, Lord Bridgerton?” Kate peers up at him, amusement dancing in her eyes. “For shame. I always knew you were a rogue.”
“Needs must, Lady Bridgerton,” he says, smiling shamelessly down at her. “And this could be just the place for it, you know. Lady Trowbridge’s parties are rather famously shocking, after all.”
Kate shifts in her seat, turning her whole body towards him. “Really?”
Anthony smothers a laugh. “You’re quite a gossip yourself, do you know that?”
“I know,” she allows, shrugging. “How do you think I knew so much about you before we met?”
“Of course. I quite forgot that Lady Whistledown was the source of your dismal opinion of me.”
“Not all of it,” Kate allows, tilting her head in mock consideration. “In fact most of it was quite your own doing, my lord.” She leans in, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “But I’ve revised my opinion more recently.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” he says, and beneath his joking tone he is – he is so absurdly, giddily pleased.
“Oh, quickly now,” Kate says, as their carriage rolls forward again, drawing closer to Trowbridge House, “what were you going to tell me about Lady Trowbridge?”
“Well for one thing,” Anthony says, really rather enjoying the way Kate leans forward, hanging off his every word, “she’s a far merrier widow than she ever was a wife.”
“Really?”
“Certainly. Her parties are always rather ... livelier than the usual, shall we say? I hear she has a boatload of fireworks for tonight–”
“Oh, I do hope so.”
“You do? I wasn’t sure you’d want to stay for them.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Anthony shrugs. “I was worried they might remind you of a storm, that’s all. The flashes and the noise, you know.”
“Oh.” The way Kate looks at him makes a hundred fireworks go off in his stomach. “That’s so sweet,” she says quietly, taking his hand and pressing a kiss to his palm. “Fireworks don’t bother me, funnily enough, but thank you for thinking of me.”
“I’m always thinking of you.” Anthony really doesn’t mean to say it aloud.
Kate squeezes his hand so hard it hurts. “And I of you,” she says, in a very quiet voice.
And just like that, he’s rather glad he said it after all.
He leans in to kiss her just before their carriage rolls forward to the front of the queue at last. Swallowing her nervous little gasp, Anthony holds her to him until he hears the creak of the door being pulled open, a slight chill sweeping in from outside.
“Now then,” he says, framing her face with his hands, “are you ready, Lady Bridgerton?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Kate says, with a nervous little laugh that doesn’t do much to reassure him.
Anthony tuts his disapproval, leaning in to kiss her soundly again. “And now?” he says, ignoring the impatient cough from the footman waiting outside for them to alight.
Kate tilts her head, considering. “Almost.” Without warning, she surges forward and kisses him again, so quickly he almost doesn’t feel it. “Yes,” she says, nodding happily. “Now I’m ready.”
Anthony winks at her. “That’s my girl.”
He steps down, batting the footman’s hand away when Kate emerges a moment later. “I’ll do it, you dolt.”
“Anthony,” she scolds, taking his hand and stepping down onto the gravel beside him. “Be nice.”
She keeps glaring until he finally nods at the man and says, without meaning a word, “My apologies.” Turning to Kate, he mutters, “Really though, what sort of gentlemen have been turning up here that this fellow doesn’t even expect a man to help his own wife down from their carriage?”
The footman gives him a look if to say, you have no idea.
Anthony snorts a laugh, rather warming to the impertinent man now.
He turns to Kate, offering his arm. “Shall we?”
She sucks in a fortifying breath, looking up at Trowbridge House. “Yes,” she replies, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow and all but dragging him forward. “I think we shall.”
There’s more defiance than anxiety in the set of Kate’s jaw and Anthony is so damn proud of her he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He lets her steer them towards the front steps, wondering just what on earth he did to earn this – this woman on his arm, this feeling in his chest.
“Now then, is there anything else I should know about our host?” Kate says, oblivious to the fact that Anthony is barely restraining himself from kissing her senseless right here in this courtyard.
“Yes,” he says, his smile fading as he follows her eyes up to the facade of Trowbridge House. “Don’t let Eloise or Edwina anywhere near her gardens.”
“Why–”
“They’re ... extensive. And unchaperoned. And rather poorly lit.”
“Oh.” A little crease appears between Kate’s eyebrows as she looks up at him. “Have you ever–”
“No!” Anthony says quickly. “God, no.” He gives her hand a reassuring pat. “Nothing like that.”
“But…”
“But,” he allows, blowing out a long breath as the unpleasant memory intrudes on his happy mood, “let us just say that I came across Simon and Daphne alone in the gardens here last year – unmarried Simon and Daphne–”
“Oh dear.”
“The next time I saw Simon was the following morning at dawn.”
Kate’s mouth falls open. “You duelled?”
“Almost,” Anthony says, telling himself that the slight chill in the air is what’s making him shiver, not the ghost of that pistol in his hand. “Something stopped it at the last moment.”
“What?”
“The fact that Simon and Daph were married three days later.”
Kate presses the back of her gloved hand to her cheek. “Good heavens.”
“I told you these parties were scandalous,” Anthony says, shoving the memory aside.
It’s over. Gone. Daphne is married and happy and that pistol is locked away in his safe, where he hopes it will stay for a long, long time.
Kate gives his arm a squeeze, as if she can sense the path of his thoughts.
“Well, let us hope that tonight is rather less dramatic,” she says, her smile giving him all he needs to finally banish the unhappy thoughts back to the past where they belong.
“Indeed,” Anthony agrees, leading her up the steps. “I’m sure it will be.”
He’s quite wrong, of course.
--
Everything is perfect, until it isn’t.
There are whispers, of course, and plenty of stares but for every Cressida Cowper there are at least two Bridgertons, sometimes three, and then there are the Sharmas and the Bassets and even little Penelope Featherington, all of them flocking to Kate’s side at the very first chance they get. Anthony stands quietly beside his wife, content just to listen as they shower her with compliments about her dress, her hair, and, in Colin’s case, her impressive ability to still be putting up with Anthony after nearly three whole weeks of marriage.
Anthony allows himself to object to that one. “Brother, you–”
“Now, now. He has a point, my dear,” Kate says placidly, earning a round of laughter from their assembled families and looking so damn pleased by it that Anthony quite forgets what he was even complaining about.
A weight seems to lift from Kate’s shoulders as the evening wears on, her laughter growing louder, her smile wider, and Anthony’s heart – God, his heart gets so light he thinks it might float away and land right at her feet, and what’s worse, he starts to forget that he’s trying not to let that happen. They dance – often and rather badly – and he finds himself loving it in a way he never, ever thought he could. During the quadrille he scowls at every forced separation and whispers that he missed her each time they come back together, and by the end of the dance Kate is breathless with laughter, missing half the steps and not caring a bit.
She is, he thinks, utterly magnificent.
The brightest light in this ballroom by far.
Really, is it any wonder he ends up tempting fate?
It happens just a few minutes after they leave the dance-floor. Anthony is standing beside Benedict, far too preoccupied with watching Kate to actually hear a word that his brother is saying. She’s wandered away from him to talk to Edwina and Eloise on the other side of the ballroom and he can see her laughing at something one of them just said. Her head is tipped right back to the ceiling, her face lit by the glow of the huge chandelier above her and she looks so happy, so blissfully content, that Anthony smiles to himself and thinks, innocently enough, she needn’t have worried about this evening.
And then the singing starts.
He doesn’t understand what’s happening at first. The ballroom hushes slightly as the music begins, but that’s nothing unusual. Then people start turning, some discreetly and some shamelessly, until it feels like more than half the ballroom is staring directly at Kate. Anthony knows the exact moment that she notices it, sees the way her smile turns a little strained as her eyes dart around in confusion even as she tries to keep her place in the conversation with their sisters. The murmur of chatter in the ballroom slowly starts up again but it’s different now, it’s all whispers behind hands and vaguely titillated laughter and still Anthony doesn’t understand what’s happening, doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s wrong, only knows that something is – something has to be. Nothing can be right if Kate isn’t smiling.
He looks around frantically, catching a slightly guilty look on Lady Trowbridge’s face, and then everything suddenly seems to slow down around him as the singer hits a particularly high note and Kate turns her head towards the stage.
Anthony watches – frozen in place – as her face falls.
It’s just for a second, quickly masked, but it’s enough.
Enough for him to know.
Enough for him to hurt.
Heart sinking, he follows Kate’s eyes to the other end of the ballroom and there she is – Siena Rosso, looking as beautiful as ever in a scandalously low cut scarlet gown, a black choker wrapped around her neck that he thinks he might have paid for once, back in another life.
Somewhere, under his dawning horror, Anthony finds a split second to feel vaguely surprised.
Oh, not that she’s here. That’s all too predictable now that he thinks of it. Lady Trowbridge likes to shock, after all, and what could be more shocking than inviting a woman half the ton know was his mistress to perform at the first ball that Anthony is attending with his wife. It must have been too good to resist.
No, Siena is not the surprise.
He is.
Anthony used to wonder, at first obsessively and then rather idly, what it might be like to find himself in the same room with Siena Rosso again, once he was a married man.
Never, in all his imaginings, did he think he wouldn’t even notice.
There was a time when he believed he could sense her anywhere, when she couldn’t take a breath in a crowded room without it feeling like the very air she breathed was being taken from his lungs, whether he wanted to give it or not. Back then he thought he knew her voice better than his own and yet right here, in this moment, in this room, it’s nothing but noise.
As if she can feel his eyes on her, as if she’s been waiting for it, Siena’s gaze moves across the room and settles on his. She holds his gaze for the span of one long, pitch perfect note and Anthony feels … nothing at all. And as she looks at him, singing a love song that he used to rather like, he gets the strangest feeling that she knows it.
Siena’s eyes flit to Kate and then back to him, and in the split second before he looks away from her, Anthony sees her lips curve into something that might be a smile.
It’s exactly the sort of gesture that would have kept him up at night once, staring at his ceiling and hearing every quiet tick from his pocket-watch on the bedside table as he tried to guess at her meaning. It could be anything – approval, disdain, amusement.
For the sake of their better days, Anthony decides to take it as happiness and finds, to his quiet satisfaction, that he’s content to leave it at that.
She has no power over him anymore.
But then he looks at Kate and it’s clear – horribly, terribly clear – that she doesn’t realise that. The Bridgerton diamond flashes a warning at him from across the room, scattering starbursts across the ceiling as she twists her gloves, her necklace, and with it all, his heart.
Frantically, Anthony examines the last few seconds from her perspective – the whispers, the stares, that fucking smile on Siena’s face as he looked at her – and a pit opens up in his stomach.
“Anthony,” Benedict murmurs in an urgent undertone. “Don’t.”
It’s only then that Anthony realises he’s started moving towards Kate. “What?” he snaps, glaring at Benedict and finding, to his surprise, an equal fury in Benedict’s face.
“Do not make it worse.”
“What?” Anthony repeats dumbly, staring at his brother. He didn’t even know that Benedict knew about Siena. God, he’s a fool. An indiscreet, idiotic fool.
“If you rush over to Kate you’ll only draw more eyes, more whispers,” Benedict says tightly, through the falsely cheerful smile he’s showing to one of his friends in the crowd. “So just bloody ... wait.”
Anthony hesitates, staring at Kate. She isn’t looking at Siena anymore, or even at him. Instead she’s staring resolutely at Edwina and Eloise, looking for all intents and purposes as if she’s listening closely to whatever her sister is saying. It’s really quite convincing, her act. Anthony doesn’t doubt that most of the room will have concluded that she isn’t at all bothered by the soprano up on the stage, despite her occasional glances in the lady’s direction.
And Benedict is right – if Anthony marches from one side of the room to the other right now then all the eyes that have wandered away from Kate will flick right back, and it’ll be all his fault.
“But…”
Siena hits a soft, sensuous low note and someone near Kate snickers a low, cruel laugh, exactly the sort he was supposed to shield her from.
But I promised, he thinks pathetically.
“It’s almost over,” Benedict says, as if he knows just what it’s costing Anthony to stand here and wait. “I think.”
“It is,” Anthony murmurs back.
He used to know most of Siena’s repertoire, of course. He even used to think he knew what it was to wait – impatient and desperate – for her to finish a performance. But right now, in the interminable minutes while he waits for the chance to return to Kate, he realises he never knew waiting at all.
It’s torture.
He keeps his eyes on Kate, wishing she’d turn to look at him and then, like a coward, wishing she wouldn’t. She seems to have reached the same conclusion as Benedict, deciding that the best response to this insult is no response at all. And so she just stands there, smiling benignly at her sister, while Anthony stands on the other side of the room, despising himself.
The second Siena hits the final note of her aria, Benedict steps aside to let Anthony pass and at the same moment, Kate makes her escape. As he moves through the crowd Anthony sees her make an exaggerated fanning gesture with her hands, as if indicating that she’s overheated, and then she starts to move – not towards him but away – over to the open doors that lead to the gardens.
Out of the corner of his eye Anthony sees Siena exit stage right just as Kate exits the room on the other side, disappearing out onto the terrace. It feels like half the eyes in the ballroom swivel in his direction and it’s only when he’s halfway down the steps to the garden that Anthony realises they were waiting to see which way he would go. As if there was a choice.
There’s a chill in the air as he dashes towards the garden but it’s nothing – nothing at all – compared to the chill that sweeps over him when he realises Kate is nowhere in sight. He takes the steps two at a time, staring at the paths that disappear into the hedges and praying for a glimpse of dark hair, a flash of the green silk of her dress, anything.
He gets only what he deserves – nothing at all.
Anthony clutches a fistful of his hair, pulling until it hurts, and curses out loud.
Just then, a slight cough sounds from behind him.
He turns on the spot, so fast it sets his head spinning, and finds himself staring at one of the Trowbridge footmen – the same one who opened the door to their carriage not two hours ago, back when everything seemed wonderful and Anthony’s only problem in the world was making sure he was the one to offer his wife a hand down from the carriage.
The footman just looks at him, taking in the way he’s standing there with his hand in his hair like a madman, and then, quite suddenly, the stranger uncurls a single finger under the tray he’s holding and points rather deliberately towards the third path into the gardens.
Anthony stares at him.
The footman rolls his eyes and points again, a little more forcefully this time.
“Viscount Bridgerton,” Anthony says shortly, “Grosvenor Square.”
“My lord?”
“Whatever Trowbridge is paying you, I’ll double it.”
And with that, Anthony abandons what’s left of his dignity and runs into the garden.
Kate hasn’t gotten far. He finds her quickly enough, wandering down a long walkway with her hands wrapped around the tops of her arms. Her shoulders rise towards her ears as he approaches and he hates it, absolutely despises that she’s so upset, but at the same time something like gratitude surges in his chest – because she’s not looking but still, she knows he’s there.
She must have known he’d come running.
“Kate,” Anthony calls out breathlessly, before realising that he has absolutely no idea what he’s going to say. “You – you shouldn’t be out here alone,” he settles on.
“I just needed some air.” Kate turns around, fixing him with a steady, direct stare. “And I did not much like the music.”
Anthony doesn’t look away from her, even as something in his chest cracks wide open at everything that’s hiding under her carefully neutral expression.
“No,” he says softly. “Nor did I.”
“Really, my lord?” She sounds dignified and proud, and underneath it all, so very, very hurt. “There was a time, not so long ago, when you were rather fond of the opera.”
“There was,” Anthony allows, sensing that one wrong move, one wrong word, could shatter her carefully calm facade. He’s not sure that would be such a bad thing. “Not as fond as I believed, as it turns out.”
Kate stares at him, a hundred things flashing across her face and not a single one of them good. Then suddenly she takes a step forward and cries out, the words ripping from her throat as if against her will, “Did you know?”
“Did I know–”
“That she’d be here!”
“What?” Anger is a welcome, familiar fire, licking at his common sense, and Anthony reaches for it like an old friend. “How can you even ask me that?”
“I–”
He hears the hesitation in her voice, sees the flash of regret in her eyes, but it’s too late – the accusation is out there and anger has always been far, far easier for him than guilt.
“How can you even think that?” he thunders, taking a step towards her.
“She was here last year!” She doesn’t back down, his Kate. She sets her jaw and stares up at him and Anthony is furious and he’s terrified and he’s – God, he’s a breath away from kissing her. Her eyes flick to his lips and he knows, right in his gut, that she’s thinking the same thing. Still, she clings to her argument. “I heard someone say so.”
“Yes,” he snaps, his patience worn thin by the warring feelings inside him. “And when has anyone in London ever thrown the same party twice?! Why would I–”
But Kate’s not listening to him. She staggers back, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Oh, God,” she mutters, her eyes wide. “That’s why you were in the garden last year, isn’t it? When you saw Simon and Daphne. You were with her.”
“No!” he cries out, and then, “How can you–” He strides towards her, taking two steps for every one that she takes back, until he’s looming over her and she looks small and mutinuous and –
“You’re jealous,” he breathes.
Kate stares at him, her chin jutting out, her chest heaving as she struggles to calm her breathing. She is beautiful and furious and so, so infuriating he doesn’t know what to do with her, with himself, with all these feelings in his chest, all the ones he didn’t ever want.
“You’re jealous,” he says again, a cruel edge to the accusation. “Aren’t you?”
Kate opens her mouth to argue, to deny it, and then –
Then the rain begins.
It’s only a light mist, the kind of spring shower that will blow through in a few minutes, but the touch of a single raindrop seems to drown all the fight out of Kate.
When she looks up at him, it’s not rain on her cheeks but tears. “Should I be?”
The tremble in her voice is what breaks him. All of Anthony’s anger drains away in an instant, leaving him empty and shaking and so, so sorry.
“No,” he says, his voice low, his heart in pieces. “God, Kate, no.”
“Are you sure?” she says, so very quietly.
“Am I…” Anthony lets the sentence trail away, horrified that she has to ask, that she doesn’t know.
And that’s his fault, he realises. All of this. It’s all his fucking fault. This doubt in her face, this genuine question on her lips – this is the price of all those times he kissed her when he really wanted to say something, all those times he was so desperate to protect his own heart that he didn’t even see he was wounding hers.
It was supposed to protect her too, this distance he’s been trying to maintain, but if this is the cost, what’s the point? What’s the point in shielding her after he’s gone if it breaks her while he’s still by her side?
And so, in the split second before he answers her, Anthony throws all his careful plans aside.
Not just for tonight, for good.
If he can’t let himself love her, that has to be his problem.
She cannot be made to suffer for it.
And she cannot ever, ever be allowed to doubt what she means to him.
She is, he’s starting to suspect, the other half of his soul. And it’s tempting – so very tempting – to think that he might just be the other half of hers. As much as he’s been trying to pretend that it isn’t true, that he can’t feel them filling up all the dark, empty spaces in each other, it’s getting hard to ignore that all his dips and hollows have started to feel like handholds made just for her.
And tonight, he’s going to tell her.
“Kate, I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“Anthony, I–”
But he’s not finished.
“You asked, now let me answer.” He walks towards her as she steps back, a mockery of the dancing he loved so much just a few minutes ago. “No,” he says, his voice low and fierce. “No you do not need to be jealous.”
Kate presses her trembling lips together.
“No, I did not know she would be here tonight.”
“Anthony–”
“No, I do not care for her now.”
“You–”
“And no, I never loved her back then.”
Anthony doesn’t know he’s going to say it, doesn’t even know it’s the truth, until the words leave his lips. The moment they do, something heavy – something that weighed on him so long he’d half forgotten it was there – lifts off his shoulders.
Then he looks at Kate and the hesitation in her eyes crushes something far, far heavier down on him instead.
“Kate, please believe–”
“Stop,” she interrupts, shaking her head frantically. “Let’s just go back inside, please. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s – it’s too much.”
“No.” He plants his feet, blocking her path.
“Get out of my way.” Kate folds her arms, a little of the fire returning to her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about your mistress, Anthony! I–”
“I think we have to.” He walks towards her carefully, holding up his hands like she’s dangerous. And she is. God, she is. She could break him, if she chose to. “I can’t have you looking like this every time you hear an aria.”
“I’ll survive.”
“I won’t!” He doesn’t mean to raise his voice. He sucks in a breath, trying to calm the frantic pace of his heart. “Please, Kate, I can’t bear it,” he says, quieter now.
Kate brushes impatiently at her cheeks, rain and tears soaking into the fingers of her glove. She looks so small and so miserable that he reaches for her without hesitation, one hand outstretched.
“No!” she cries out, lurching back. “Don’t – don’t touch me.”
Anthony freezes, his hand hovering in the space between them. Something inside him feels like it’s falling – down, down, down. “Kate–”
“No.” She shakes her head, her eyes wide. “If you touch me right now I think I’ll – I’ll break. So just – don’t, please. Not yet.”
He clings to that last sentence.
Not yet.
Not yet is not never.
“Alright,” he says soothingly, lifting his hands again. “Alright.”
Kate looks miserably up at him, guilt creeping into her expression. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It’s not you, I just – I will not show red eyes to anyone in that ballroom. That’s all.” The tiny half laugh she lets out is the best thing he’s heard in hours. Days. Years. “I refuse to give them the satisfaction.”
Anthony feels his lips curl into something that’s almost a smile. “Very well.” He settles into a spot just a few paces away from her. “I will stay right here. And in return, you will listen to me.”
Kate tips her head back to the sky, the soft fall of rain misting across her curls. “Very well,” she says, letting out a breath. “If I must.”
“Thank you,” Anthony says, faltering as he realises he doesn’t actually know how to tackle this.
He’s completely out of practice – or perhaps he never had any practice at all – in talking like this. Talking about how he feels. It’s always been so much easier to show her, but that’s exactly what got them into this mess.
Words might be the only way out.
“What you need to understand,” he begins, his voice low and quiet, “is that when I knew Siena, I was ... unhappy.” Such a little word, for how heavy that feeling weighed on him. “And when we were together, for a little while she – she made me forget.”
“Do I?” Kate asks, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear it. “Is that what–”
“No!” he blurts, horrified. “No, Kate, you…” He stumbles towards her and it hurts, actually physically aches, not to touch her. He stops right in front of her, keeping his hands at his side. Keeping his promise, whatever it costs him. “You make me want to remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Everything.”
Kate trembles, as if she wants to reach for him but something is holding her back.
“You don’t believe me,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t–”
“It’s not that,” Kate says quickly. “It’s only – you talk about her like it was such a long time ago–”
“It was.”
“That night in your study was not so very long ago, Anthony. I was there.”
“Oh,” he says. “That.”
“Yes.” Somehow, Kate manages a smile. “That.”
He tips his head up to the sky, letting the last of the rain cool the blush that’s spreading across his cheeks.
“Anthony?”
He groans at the clouds. “This is not going to paint me in a very good light.”
Kate actually finds a laugh for that. “Is any of this?”
Anthony hums a laugh in return, relieved to know her sense of humour is intact.
“Oh, very well.” He blows out a breath, delaying the moment he has to say it. “I know it’s disgraceful,” he begins awkwardly, not quite looking at her, “but the only reason that I took Siena to my office that night was – the thing that I – that is, the person I wanted to forget that night … was you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” Anthony risks a glance at her and hope surges in his chest – bright and wonderful and better than anything he deserves – when she doesn’t look away. “You.”
“I…” Kate shakes her head in confusion, her damp curls sticking to her cheek. “I do not understand.”
“I wanted you,” he says simply. “Even then, I wanted you.”
Kate’s lips part in a quiet gasp.
“I wanted you so badly I don’t think I heard a single note of that entire musicale, Kate.”
“Neither did I,” she whispers, the words slipping out as if she didn’t mean to say them at all.
Taking courage from that, Anthony risks a step towards her.
“I wanted you,” he says again. He’ll say it a thousand times if she’ll only believe him. “And I was scared. I – I didn’t know what to do with it – with you.” He huffs a helpless laugh. “I still don’t.”
“I always wondered…” Kate says slowly, her eyes suddenly far away – back in that office, perhaps. “Why you kissed me that night, I mean.”
Anthony opens his mouth, ready to say, you didn’t know?
And then he realises – no. Of course she didn’t know.
After all those years in Edwina’s shadow, always getting the second glance, always feeling like the second choice, of course she would assume he only kissed her because Siena wasn’t there.
And of course she would assume he only married her because he couldn’t marry Edwina.
Anthony screws his eyes shut, remembering their wedding night and the fear that slipped from her lips just after he told her she was beautiful. What was it he said?
I am only going to say this once.
I desire you.
What a fool he was. And what a liar.
He’ll never, ever stop saying it.
He takes the last step towards her, stopping so close that if he just breathed in, he could touch her.
“Listen to me, Kate,” he says firmly, ducking his head to hold her skittish gaze. “I kissed you that night because I wanted to kiss you. Only you.”
“Oh,” she says, so very quietly. “I see.”
“Do you?” he says, something desperate driving him now. “Do you see?”
This time when he towers over her she doesn’t step back, only tilts her chin up and holds his gaze, her eyes brave and fierce and a little bit frightened, just like he feels.
“You’ve ruined me, Kate. And I think you’ve saved me. And I won’t ever want anyone but you. Tell me you know that.”
Kate swallows hard, biting her lip, but it’s not indecision driving the gesture. The fire in her eyes tells another story.
Still –
“Tell me you understand.”
She nods, the motion almost frantic.
“Say it.” Heat swirls in Anthony’s gut, burning away the chill of the rain seeping through his waistcoat. “I need to hear you say it.”
“Yes,” she says, her voice reeling him in, dragging him the last few inches towards her. “I understand.”
“Good,” he says shortly, and then, with an exasperated sigh, “Now can I please, please touch you?”
“Oh.” Kate tips her head back and laughs. It really shouldn’t make him so weak, just that little glimpse of her throat, but his knees can barely keep him upright. “Yes, please.”
Everything in Anthony is crying out for her, his blood singing with need, urging him to take her – to claim her – to press his lips to hers and burn away all the unkind things they said to each other. But under her smile there’s still something slightly fragile in the way she’s holding herself, a mirror to the bruised feeling in the centre of his own chest, and so he pushes aside all his rough, desperate feelings and reaches for tenderness instead.
Slowly, so slowly it hurts, he reaches both his hands out and captures her cheeks, cradling her jaw beneath his palms. The humid air has loosened some of her curls, making her look younger and less put together, closer to the way she looks first thing in the morning when he wakes early and watches her sleep.
How is it possible, Anthony wonders, that he can ache for her even when she’s this close.
He lowers his head to rest his forehead against hers and Kate’s lips part in the softest of sighs, her breath sweeping across his lips like a kiss.
Together, they breathe.
Quietly.
Contentedly.
And Anthony has never, ever known peace like it.
“I hate fighting with you,” Kate whispers.
There’s probably a joke to be made there somewhere, considering how often and enjoyably they usually argue, but nothing about this is funny. And Anthony knows exactly what she means.
“Oh, my darling,” he says, gently folding her into his arms, “so do I.”
Kate melts against him, curling into his warmth and turning her cheek to rest against his heart. The peaceful noise she breathes against his chest is low and warm, almost a purr, and a fanciful thought floats across Anthony’s mind – that he could stay here forever, until the garden had grown all around them, if not for –
“Kate, you’re freezing,” he murmurs, tracing his hands over her damp dress, her chilled skin.
“You’re not,” she says, burrowing further into his arms, if that’s possible.
Anthony rubs his hands more vigorously over her arms, then her back, feeling heat spark everywhere he touches. Kate melts into him, groaning her appreciation.
“No,” she whines, when he pulls away. “Don’t.”
Anthony releases her, shrugging out of his evening jacket and beating a little of the dampness out of it. “Here,” he says, swinging it around her shoulders. “Put this on.”
“The rain has gone off now. I’ll be fine–”
“You’ll catch a chill,” he says, gently encouraging her arms into the sleeves and pulling the jacket up over her shoulders. “There.” He steps back, holding her by the shoulders. “Better?”
“Better,” she allows, a smile playing around her lips. “Though I’m sure I look quite ridiculous.”
Anthony stands back a little, considering her. The shoulders of the jacket are far too large for her, making the sleeves drop too long over her arms and leaving her hands only just peeking out from the cuffs. By rights, she really should look ridiculous and maybe she does but she also looks small and vulnerable and so desperately lovely that Anthony can’t seem to stop staring.
“Not ridiculous,” he manages to say, barely recognising his own voice. “Not at all.”
His mind strays, entertaining the idea of her in one of his shirts, only the shirt, the long hem just skimming her thighs, the open collar dropping from her shoulder.
“Is that so?” A smile plays around Kate’s lips, one that says she knows just how much he likes this. One that whispers that maybe, just maybe, she likes it too.
Something tightens in Anthony’s stomach, the twist of that pull he always feels towards her. Then Kate turns her head into the collar of his jacket and breathes in deeply, as if there’s a scent there she likes, one that soothes her. She hums a contented little sigh, touching the fabric against her cheek, and the last of Anthony’s self-control melts away like the rain.
Whispering something that might be her name, he drags her towards him by his own lapels and kisses her with everything he has.
This time, he does not keep his hands to himself.
With a groan that might be triumph, might be relief, might be a hundred other things he doesn’t quite understand, Anthony curls one hand into her hair, sinking his fingers into the damp strands and knocking a couple of hairpins to the garden path. Kate doesn’t complain, even as more of her hair tumbles free of it’s pins as he closes his fist around a handful of her curls and tugs – just enough to make her moan, never enough to hurt. He lets his other hand steal around her waist, grabbing greedy fistfuls of her dress as she clutches at him, whimpering something needy and desperate in the back of her throat.
Anthony shudders at the soft heat of her mouth on his, a sharp contrast to the chill of her skin, and he pulls her in closer, desperate for more – more of her softness, more of her skin, more of anything she’ll give him.
“I was, you know,” Kate says, the words tumbling out as a breathless whisper. “I was jealous.”
Anthony stiffens, pulling back, but before he has a chance to panic she lets out a quiet, embarrassed little laugh and says, “Don’t fret, I know it’s silly.”
“Very,” he says firmly.
With a smile, she traces her index finger down the side of his face, the cool satin of her glove gliding along his jaw. “I know it’s not sensible,” she says, tilting her head as she considers the thought, “to be jealous of someone just for knowing you before I did. But I’m afraid I cannot help myself.”
Anthony swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. “No?”
“No.” She leans in, kissing him again. “You make me greedy, Anthony Bridgerton.”
Anthony smiles against her lips. “I rather like that.”
“Oh, you would.”
Anthony hums a laugh, settling his hands on her hips. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I don’t think jealousy is ever a particularly sensible emotion. Take me, for instance. Lord Hardy was looking at you, that first night at Aubrey Hall, and I spilled a whole glass of brandy down his front for it.”
“You didn’t!”
“I made it look like an accident.”
“Anthony!”
“I don’t even know why I did it,” he says, reaching for her hand and running his finger over the diamond on her fourth finger. “You were not even mine then–”
“I was,” she whispers. “Even then, I think I already was.”
Something fiercely possessive surges in his chest at that quiet, guileless confession, so freely given.
“God, Kate,” he groans, dropping her hand and reaching for her hips again, hauling her against him. “When you say things like that…”
Something in his desperation seems to transfer to her, making her bold. She surges up onto her toes and kisses him, her lips moving with such a bruising, fierce urgency that Anthony actually hears himself whimper. Her hands drop to his backside, urging him closer, and when he snaps his hips up against hers the moan she lets out is shameless and free, the single filthiest thing he’s ever heard in his life.
“I think,” she says, breathing the words right into his open mouth, “that you should take me home.”
“Tremendous idea,” he says, making no move to release her. He steals a hand up between them and underneath the jacket he loaned her, closing his fingers around her breast through the fabric of her dress.
“Now,” she bites out, as he squeezes the soft flesh just the way she likes it. “Right now.”
“Agreed.” Where he finds the will to release her, he’ll never, ever know.
Kate runs her gloved hand over her lips, looking more than a little dazed. “Is there a way around to the carriages from out here?”
“No idea,” Anthony says, reaching for her hand, “but we are going through the ballroom.”
And with that, he starts towing her back towards the terrace.
“Anthony!” She digs in her heels but it’s no use, he’s far too strong. “We can’t!”
“Oh, we can,” he says, looking back at her with a slightly giddy grin. The relief at ending their argument is a powerful thing, making him feel reckless and stupid, and free in a way he hasn’t been for years. “And what’s more, we’re going to have one more dance before we go.”
“What?”
“Tonight is your triumph, Kate,” he says, really rather warming to his idea now. “And we are not going to slink off home.”
“That’s very sweet,” she mutters, hurrying to catch up so she’s no longer being towed behind him. “But unnecessary.”
“I disagree.”
“Look at me!”
He turns to the side, taking in her flushed face, her bright eyes. “You look stunning.”
“My hair–”
“Is a little damp from the rain, nothing more.”
“Yes,” she says, seizing on that. “The rain. What if it comes back? Turns to a storm? The last thing I need is–”
“It won’t,” Anthony says confidently, allowing himself a small secret smile at the knowledge.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do actually.”
“I did not realise viscounts could control the weather,” she says acerbically, looking so frustrated that it’s all he can do not to laugh.
“I never said I could control it,” he says, stopping dead and tugging on her hand until she spins to face him. “I can, however, predict it.”
“Indeed?” she says, rising to the argument just as he knew she would. “I wasn’t aware you possessed the gift of prophecy, my lord.”
Anthony gives up on fighting his smile. He grins at her, laughing out loud when she wrinkles her nose in irritation.
“What I possess, my dear wife,” he says, tapping the end of her nose, “is a barometer.”
“A barometer?”
“It’s a device for predicting the–”
“I know what a barometer is.”
“Oh.” Anthony folds his hands behind his back, rapidly reconsidering the wisdom of his confession. He’s not at all sure what expression is colouring Kate’s face, but it certainly isn’t happiness. “Well, I–”
“Anthony,” she interrupts, sounding more serious than she has at any point this evening. “Have you always owned a barometer?”
“No it’s new,” he says, not entirely sure if that’s the answer she wants to hear or not. “I sent for it when we first got engaged but it only arrived this morning–”
“You–”
“I could not stop thinking about what you said,” he says, rushing to explain, “you know, about how nervous you feel when it rains, and so–”
“You remembered that?”
He blinks at her. “Of course I remembered.”
“And so you ... bought me a barometer?” she says, the words sounding stiff and uncooperative on her tongue.
“I was going to tell you–”
“Where is it?”
“It’s in my study, at Bridgerton House. I did not want you to think you had to check it all the time.”
Maybe it’s true, Anthony thinks, what people say about couples picking up each other’s mannerisms. Right now, he cannot keep his hands still.
Kate, on the other hand, hasn’t moved at all since he said the word barometer.
“I thought I could just keep an eye on it for us,” he says, perilously close to babbling now, “and then if I knew the weather might be turning stormy I could make sure I was with you, that we did not have any engagements or…”
He trails off, trying to read the unfathomable expression in her eyes.
“You hate the idea,” he says flatly. “I can send it back, I–”
Kate’s hand flies out, her index finger poking into his chest with every word she bites out. “Don’t. You. Dare.”
“Oh.” Hope unfurls in his chest, right where she’s touching him. “So you ... do not hate it?”
Kate looks at him, pressing her lips tightly together as she very slowly, very carefully shakes her head. “You idiot,” she says, more affection in those three syllables than in any compliment he’s ever received.
And then, before he can say a word in reply, she promptly flies into his arms with enough force to knock him back into the nearest hedge. Anthony barely has time to recover enough to wrap his arms around her before she’s kissing him – his lips, his cheek, his neck – anywhere she can reach.
“Thank you,” she says, sounding suspiciously close to tears. “Thank you. No-one has ever–”
“It’s nothing,” he says, suddenly feeling quite unworthy of this display of gratitude. “Really, I–”
Kate holds up a hand, silencing him. “You,” she says, exasperated and fond all at once, “are truly terrible at accepting compliments, do you know that?”
Anthony huffs a laugh, opting not to tell her that he’s not exactly well practised in being complimented at all, but then something soft and almost sad flickers in her eyes and he thinks she might know it anyway.
“I love it,” she says, pressing one last, fierce kiss to his lips. “Thank you.”
He opens his mouth to wave off the sentiment again but the glare that she fixes on him is enough to make him reconsider. “You’re most welcome,” he says instead.
“Good boy,” she says, smirking slightly. “You’re learning.”
It’s embarrassing really, what the praise does to him.
“Home?” Anthony says hopefully, his voice a little strangled. “I do believe I’ve changed my mind about returning to the dance-floor.”
“That’s a shame,” she says, “because so have I.”
“You have?”
“Yes,” she says, straightening his waistcoat for him. “I want to dance with my husband.” Anthony’s stomach tightens at the possessive edge to her voice. “And I want everyone in that room to know that’s what you are. Mine.”
He groans, reaching for her. “Lord, Kate, you–”
“Oh, no, no – dancing first.” She ducks out of his grasp, grabbing his hand and towing him towards the house. “Debauchery later.”
Anthony laughs out loud, quite content to let her drag him along, wherever in the world she wants to go.
Until she takes three wrong turns and they end up further from the house than they started, that is.
“Perhaps I should have bought you a compass instead,” he quips, earning one of her lovely little glares. “I think we need to go left.”
“I know that,” she says sourly, despite having been halfway towards a right turn. “I can’t believe you got us lost.”
“Me?!”
The ensuing argument carries them most of the way back to the house until, just before they reach the terrace, they turn a corner and find themselves face to face with Daphne and Simon.
“Anthony!” Simon says, his voice a little strangled.
“Brother!” Daphne’s greeting is only slightly more measured.
“Evening,” Anthony says, eyeing them both.
He wasn’t exactly paying attention earlier but he’s fairly certain that Daphne’s coiffure is not quite what it was in the ballroom. Then again, neither is Kate’s, whatever he’s been promising her.
Simon scratches his cheek. “We were just…”
“Reminiscing?” Anthony suggests.
Kate splutters a laugh, turning her face into his shoulder.
Daphne looks at the sky. The floor. The hedge. Anywhere but at Anthony.
Simon, however, simply shrugs. “Something like that,” he says, grinning at Anthony as he takes his wife’s hand, pulling her away. “Now, if you’ll excuse us.”
“Hastings!” Anthony calls, just before Simon and Daphne turn the corner out of sight.
Simon freezes, turning very slowly back to face him.
Anthony smothers a smile, enjoying this far too much. He waits, just as long as it takes to make Simon sweat, and then says, “Will I see you at White’s tomorrow?
Simon barks a relieved laugh. “Oh, absolutely,” he says, grinning. “Vastly preferable to seeing you at dawn.”
“I quite agree.”
Daphne groans, grabbing her husband’s hand and muttering something to Kate that sounds suspiciously like, ‘boys!’
Anthony just laughs, watching them go.
“Anthony,” Kate says suddenly, and his laughter dies on his lips at the sudden urgency in her voice.
“What?” He turns back to her, finding a deep line between her eyebrows that certainly wasn’t there a moment ago. His heart in his throat, he looks around wildly for the source of her sudden disquiet. “What is it?”
“You must promise me,” she says fiercely, stepping into his path as if to block his way, “never to have another duel.”
“Oh,” Anthony says, laughing with relief. “You scared me, I thought–”
“I’m serious, Anthony,” Kate says, her eyes flashing. “Promise me.”
He looks at her, drowning in his evening jacket, her hands planted firmly on her hips, looking so very fierce and so very upset.
About the hypothetical duel he isn’t going to have.
He’s really not sure whether to shake her or kiss her.
“Anthony,” she says, batting one of her tiny little fists against him, the blow muffled by the long sleeves of his coat. “Promise me.”
“Kate,” he scolds gently, closing his hands around her shoulders, “you know I can’t do that.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“An affair of honour cannot always be avoided.”
For a long moment she just stares at him, her jaw set, and then she says, rather too calmly, “I see.”
Anthony is not a stupid man – he knows this does not bode well. Kate loops her arm through his and walks on as if she’s let the topic drop, and still he doesn’t relax. He knows his wife far too well for that.
They make it five whole paces before she says, “You’ll name me as your second then.”
“Never.” Anthony stops, going cold at the thought. “Never in a million years.”
“I’d be far better than Benedict or Colin. I’d find the other gentleman and then I’d knock your silly heads together and–”
“You will never set foot on a duelling field.”
“I should like to see you stop me. If you think for a minute I’d just lie in bed and let you slip out to get yourself killed, you’ve got another thing coming, Anthony Bridgerton!”
It should probably worry him, all this talk of his death, but he can’t find the feeling anywhere. Whatever it is that eventually steals him away from this wonderful life they’re building, it won’t be a duel. It won’t be anything he has any modicum of control over. Three weeks of marriage is more than enough to know that. Hell, three days was more than enough to know that he will never, ever choose to leave her.
“Ah, but you are assuming I would tell you,” he points out, knowing he shouldn’t provoke her further but finding himself quite incapable of resisting. It’s really rather sweet, how protective she’s being. He likes it far more than he’d ever let on.
Kate scoffs. “As if you could keep it a secret from me.”
“I have many secrets. I did not tell you about the barometer…”
“That arrived today and you have already given in and told me.”
“Yes, well,” he says testily, “that doesn’t count. That was not really a secret and–” He groans, pulling at his hair. “Why are we even having this argument? I’m not planning any duels.”
“Of course you’re not,” she says approvingly. “Glad that’s settled.”
Anthony splutters something vaguely disapproving, the sound turning slightly rougher as she steps in front of him, resting her hands on his chest. She’s still wearing his evening coat, the shoulders slightly lopsided now, and it really shouldn’t be so bloody attractive but, Christ, he can’t think straight.
“No duels,” she says, something slightly fragile hiding under the steel in her voice.
“No duels,” he dutifully repeats.
“Good,” she says, and there’s that strange flutter in his chest again, the spark that always catches fire at any hint of praise from her lips. Kate smiles, toying idly with the buttons on his waistcoat. “Now ... I want you to take me dancing. And then I want you to take me home.”
Anthony swallows hard. “And then?”
Kate bites her lip, as if she’s not sure she can say it.
“And then?” he prompts.
“Then I just want you.”
Anthony leans down, kissing each of her heated cheeks in turn. “And you shall have me.”
Kate turns her smiling face into his shoulder, tucking herself against his side as they move towards the murmurs of conversation and snatches of music that are spilling out from the ballroom. Anthony is so preoccupied with the feeling of her body, molded so perfectly into his side, that he doesn’t register quite how loud the conversation is. Or quite how close.
When he does, it’s far, far too late.
When they finally emerge from the garden, engaged in a heated debate about the merits of hiring footmen on a whim without so much as a reference, they find themselves face to face with what looks like most of the party – dozens and dozens of the ton, all of them assembled on the terrace just above where Kate and Anthony are standing.
And all of them staring.
Anthony freezes, glancing quickly at Kate. For all her plans to return to the ballroom, he’s quite sure she meant to attend to her appearance first, but there’s no time for that now. Half of London society is staring at her, eager eyes taking in the evening jacket around her shoulders, the fall of her hair over her shoulder, the laughter frozen on her lips.
When Anthony looks down at himself, he finds three of his waistcoat buttons undone.
Before he has the chance to really, truly start to panic, Kate smiles brightly up at the assembled aristocracy on the terrace and says, quite calmly, “Ah, it seems we’re just in time for the fireworks. What luck.”
And with that, she sweeps forward and sits down on the nearest bench, placing herself right in front of every single person up on the terrace.
“Do sit down, husband,” she says sweetly, patting the space beside her. “We would not want to miss the show Lady Trowbridge has so kindly put on for us all.”
Anthony will never, ever know how he manages not to burst out laughing.
--
There are no more unkind whispers that night, or any that follow.
And six days after Lady Trowbridge’s ball, with the barometer on his wall promising fair weather, Anthony opens the top drawer of his desk – where he once kept a scrap of paper bearing Siena Rosso’s name – and folds away the latest edition of Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers.
There it stays, growing more dog-eared each year, until the day that four year old Charlotte Bridgerton clambers into his lap and declares that she wants to work like her papa and can she please, please, have something to draw on.
Anthony hands it over then, watching her scribble happily over the words that he has long since known by heart – this author is of the firm opinion that theirs was a love match.
--