Chapter Text
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The weather turns slowly, and then all at once.
The threat of rain arrives long before the clouds do, an invisible pressure that seems to hang over London for days, like some great weight pushing down from the sky.
Anthony doesn’t like it — the way the thick air seems to pulse against his temples, slowly prodding him to fear that the coming storm will be too strong, the deluge flooding dangerously fast over the parched fields around Aubrey Hall.
There are measures to ease the drainage, he knows, and his tenants will surely have already taken them, but still, he can’t quite shake the memory of his father’s tired, worried face, one particularly wet summer when Anthony was still just a boy, and couldn’t understand why his papa didn’t want to splash about with him in the enormous puddles springing up all over the grounds. Instead Edmund took him up to the roof, squeezing them both out onto a small, uneven patch of terrace without so much as a guardrail — a fact he made Anthony promise on his honour never to mention to his mother. Holding his greatcoat over their heads, Edmund pointed out the flooded fields of the farms bordering the estate, patiently explaining all the ways that an excess of rain could be every bit as ruinous as a drought.
After that, Anthony never much felt like splashing around in puddles anymore.
There's no particular reason to think that this storm will be anywhere near as bad as the rains of that dreary summer but that doesn’t matter; Anthony has never much needed a reason for worry. The feeling always seems to find a way in on its own, like the rain seeping through his father’s coat that afternoon, dripping a chill right down the back of his neck.
And then there is Kate.
She never actually comes out and says she’s uneasy over the changing weather. She’s too proud for that, or too embarrassed perhaps, even with him. But he remembers her quiet admission in the library that night — remembers every second of those precious few minutes actually, from the way the candlelight flickered in her eyes to the swish of her nightdress across the floor as she ran from the room — and as the humidity slowly rises across London he imagines he can sense the shift in her.
It’s a small, barely perceptible thing. A slight strain to her smile. An uncharacteristic clumsiness on the dance floor. A half-finished meal.
She speaks of her father more often than usual, looking nervously towards her mother and sister every time, as though she’s afraid that even the smallest, simplest anecdote will somehow upset them. They never stop her, never even try, but sometimes she stops herself. Those silences make him want to weep.
When she does speak, he listens patiently, hoarding up little pieces of her childhood with a quiet, guilty sort of greed, and wondering if she’ll stop telling her stories when the rain finally begins. Or if she’ll give him more.
The rest of the time, he just tries to make her smile.
He borrows a dozen of Colin’s maps of the continent and spreads them all across the drawing room floor at Danbury House, luring her to sit beside him and plan their honeymoon. They bicker more than they agree, but she smiles more than she has in days, until he doesn’t even care that his leg has gone to sleep beneath him or that Newton has chewed off the edges of their route across the channel.
The next day, when she grows quiet beneath the humid skies, he distracts her by stealing her fan right in the middle of Rotten Row, grumbling loudly that it’s not fair for gentlemen to have to go without. He makes such a hash of unfolding it that he almost snaps the thing in two, earning himself a brilliant flash of her laughter and a lengthy, unsolicited lecture on the utterly useless — Kate’s words — etiquette of flirtation via fan.
She admits, later, when he spirits her away from their chaperone into a quiet copse of trees, the handle of her fan pressed firmly against his lips as he gently eases her up against a tree trunk, that perhaps it isn’t quite so useless after all. Then she kisses him firmly, snatching the fan back and immediately pressing it against her left ear. He laughs so loudly that their chaperone immediately finds them but it’s only Kate’s maid and since she’s doing a roaring trade in bribes at the moment Anthony just shrugs at her and says, “this one is going to cost me, isn’t it?”
It does.
The next time he steals Kate away, it’s from a ballroom. She complains all through their waltz that the room is too hot, the crowd too heavy, her dress too thick, so he whisks her outside the moment it ends, stealing into the cool quiet of Lady Cowper’s gardens before anyone can miss them. They get lost on the way through the hedge maze but it’s worth all the wandering for the smile on Kate’s face when they reach the huge fountain in the centre, where he stands guard while she strips off her slippers and stockings and cools her feet in the water for a few minutes.
He maintains that all their wrong turns were her fault.
And she kicks pond-water all over his second best waistcoat.
It’s too dark for either of them to notice the gathering clouds.
The next morning however, there’s no missing them. Anthony tries to concentrate on the papers in front of him but it’s no use, he can’t keep his eyes from the windows for more than a minute. And he can’t keep his mind from Kate for more than a second.
It isn’t long before the clouds turn black, darkness spreading like spilled ink across the sky. In the gathering gloom, he caps his own inkwell and methodically puts his papers in order, closing ledgers and locking away his seal, pocketing the key. Then he wanders closer to the window, methodically rolling down his sleeves before shrugging back into his jacket, buttoning it up over his waistcoat.
Grosvenor Square seems oddly calm, the pavements quiet, the air still, like a held breath. When the storm finally begins, Anthony lets out his own.
The rain has barely dampened the steps of Bridgerton House before he’s pounding down them, striding out into the empty street.
Barely ten minutes later, as he stains the carpets of Danbury House with the imprint of his own wet boots, he’s starting to feel ever so slightly foolish. And like he ought to have paused for an overcoat. Or at least a hat.
“Lord Bridgerton, my lady, for Miss Sharma.”
The butler’s pronouncement is met with a series of slightly startled gasps and a disapproving grumble that Anthony is almost certain came from Lady Danbury herself. He can’t be sure, however, because he’s not looking at her.
He’s looking at Kate.
She’s hidden herself away in the corner, her tall frame all curled up on the sofa beside the fire. Her knees are bent, her feet tucked away under her dress, almost as if she’s trying to make herself smaller, to take up less space. The idea is laughable; as if she could ever be anything but the bright centre of every room.
“Anthony!” She closes the book in her hands as she sits up straight, her feet slipping back down to the floor. “I did not— That is, were we expecting you this morning?”
“No.” He goes straight to her, murmuring quietly, “I left as soon as the rain began.”
Though the words are directed at Kate, it’s Lady Danbury who answers. “I think that much is obvious, my lord, but the question I am sure we are all wondering is why?”
Instinctively he looks at Kate, her nervous, wide-eyed gaze revealing something that hadn’t occurred to him until this precise moment — that there isn’t a single other person in this room who knows how she feels about storms. In fact, he’d be willing to bet his father’s old pocket watch that there isn’t a single other person in the world who knows it. Only him.
He absently rubs his hand over his sternum, as if that might ease the sudden ache in his chest.
“Oh, ah — well, you see…” he hedges awkwardly, trying to conjure an excuse for her.
Kate interrupts before he has the chance. “Lord Bridgerton knows that this sort of weather tends to make me melancholy,” she says plainly, her voice softening as she smiles up at him, patting the seat beside her. “I imagine he thought his presence might cheer me.”
He drops into the seat she indicated, his lips kicking up in a tiny, barely there sort of smile. “You’ll break my heart if you say it does not…”
“Whatever do you mean?” Edwina’s voice suddenly intrudes, sharp and troubled. “Storms upset you? Since when?”
“Oh … since Appa died, I suppose,” Kate answers, not quite looking at her. “When I was a girl he used to soothe me when the weather grew violent. I hated this sort of weather, you see. And now…” She clears her throat, flipping the cover of her book back and forth, open and shut. “Well, I suppose it is more complicated now.”
“You never told me any of that.”
“No,” Kate agrees quietly. “I never told anyone.”
“You told me,” Anthony says gently, inserting himself back into the conversation before he can think better of it.
“So I did,” she says, smiling faintly. She does look up then, giving her sister a rueful shrug. “He caught me unawares, during a summer storm. I confessed my weakness before I could think better of it.”
Before Anthony can contradict her, Edwina does it for him. “It is not a weakness, Didi.”
“It is hardly a strength,” Kate mutters, wincing as a flash of lightning illuminates the room.
Anthony flinches slightly, as if his own body is trying to absorb the blow that just rolled across hers. “Kate, you mustn’t talk like—”
“I myself am rather frightened of ducks,” Lady Mary suddenly puts in. “All that horrid quacking.”
The statement is so cheerfully absurd that it instantly pierces the tension, releasing a quiet ripple of amusement across the room. When Anthony looks at Kate, she’s smiling again.
And he’s never liked Lady Mary Sharma more.
“It is bees for me,” he tells the room at large, his heart warming at the swift, concerned glance Kate throws his way.
“Spiders,” Edwina supplies after him, her shoulders rolling in a shudder. “I hate how they walk.”
When all the eyes in the room turn to look her way, Lady Danbury simply rolls her own and says, “You cannot imagine I will admit to fearing anything, surely?” She sets her teacup back in its saucer and sniffs delicately, her chin held stubbornly high. “Though I will say this: you shall never find me in a butterfly house. Make of that what you will.”
Kate smiles again at that, but the gentle upward curve of her lips doesn’t linger for long. A sudden boom of thunder rolls through the sky, rumbling like a boulder rolling downhill, and it seems to snatch up all her happiness in its wake. Something twists in Anthony’s chest at the way she flinches so minutely, so carefully, like she’s trying to contain her reaction. Or hide it, perhaps.
“Kate…”
“Don’t,” she mutters tightly, not quite meeting his eyes. Her fingers close around her book again, tapping out an anxious rhythm as she holds every other part of herself unnaturally still, barely breathing. “I am all right.”
When the thunder cuts off, the rain only seems to fall harder, lashing against the window as if rushing to fill the sudden silence. There must be a break in the gutters somewhere because a heavy fall of water begins to fall onto the sill, the steady staccato merging with the incessant tapping of Kate’s fingers against the hardcover of her book.
Gently, Anthony takes it from her nerveless fingers and places the slim volume down on the side-table. Despite the fact that he’s the one who just dashed across Mayfair in the pouring rain, it’s her hands that are chilled.
And just like that, he suddenly feels the cold himself.
Frowning, he takes her hands in both of his and lifts them to his mouth, blowing a warm stream of breath across the backs of her fingers. Her quiet, almost whimpered sigh goes straight to his heart. He can’t resist lifting her hand a little higher, brushing his lips gently over her chilled skin.
“Forgive me for intruding the way I did,” he says in an undertone, glancing back towards her mother and sister. “I did not mean to force you into disclosing matters you have not shared with your family.”
He wonders, vaguely, what he might have done that night in the library if he realised she was telling him something she’d never told another soul. Would he still have let her leave? Or would he have snatched hold of that little wrap she clung to and pulled her into his arms right then and there, and kept her safe until the storm had quietened and her candle had burned away to nothing?
He should have done that anyway.
He should have read her that story.
Silently, he adds the weight of the book she left behind to the burden of regrets that lie heavy on his heart, even now.
“No, do not apologise,” Kate says, her decisive voice snatching him back to the present. “There have been enough unspoken things in my family. This need not be one of them.”
“Then … you do not mind my being here?”
He can’t help the question, even as his cheeks heat at the obvious weakness in his voice. One day, perhaps, he won’t need this sort of reassurance but for now he still hasn’t shaken that quiet, niggling fear that she could suddenly tire of him, his presence becoming more of a hindrance than a help, the way his family always seem to feel it.
“Do I mind?” Kate repeats faintly. “Anthony...” She sounds the syllables so gently, softer than anyone has ever spoken his name. “I love that you are here.”
The quiet honesty in her voice dissolves his worries in an instant, like champagne bubbles on his tongue — a fleeting shock, swallowed up by sweetness.
“Good,” he says, settling more comfortably into his chair, “because—”
“What I do not love,” she interrupts loudly, with a welcome flash of her usual spirit, “is that you appear to have left home without a hat or overcoat, in the middle of a storm…”
“My departure may have been slightly impulsive,” he allows, trying to charm her with a small, sideways smile.
It doesn’t work.
“You could have been struck by lightning,” she says, her lips folding into a flat, unimpressed line.
“The storm had barely begun when I left,” he explains patiently. “And as you see, I am quite well.”
“You won’t be,” she says, frowning as she pinches the damp fabric of his jacket between her fingers. “Look at you—You are soaked through!”
“It is only a little rainwater.”
“It is a lot of rainwater,” she counters, brushing determinedly at his wet sleeves. “You’ll catch a chill if you do not remove this jacket soon.”
“What?” He hardly hears her. His attention is quite gone, lost to anything but the brush of her hand up and down his arm, long, swift strokes that start at his shoulder and sweep to his wrist.
“Your jacket,” she repeats, her movements becoming even more familiar now, her hand straying to brush down the front of his chest. “You’ll have to remove it.”
“I am perfectly fine as I am,” he says, trying to pull away from her ministrations. It’s not that he’s not enjoying them. It’s that he is. And what’s worse, her eyes seem to be straying to his breeches now. God help him, if she starts touching him there he’s liable to dry off so fast that he lets off steam. “There is no need to fuss—”
“Kate is right, my lord,” Mary puts in from the other side of the room, her intrusion an uncomfortable reminder of the fact that although it feels as though he and Kate are the only two people in the room, they decidedly are not.
Kate’s hand, thankfully, snatches back from where it was hovering over his thigh.
“I cannot countenance sending you back to Violet with a head-cold,” Mary finishes, her face pinched with motherly concern.
“Be that as it may, I am not sure it would be appropriate for me to—”
“Oh, never mind that,” Mary says, waving a hand. “After all, we shall be family in less than two weeks. And it is not as though we haven’t seen you in damp shirtsleeves before. You were quite waterlogged that day you saved Kate in the park, you know.”
“Oh.” Anthony blinks at the reminder. “I … I forgot about that.”
How odd. It wasn’t so long ago that he thought he’d never escape the memory of that awful morning. He couldn’t close his eyes without it playing out like a Drury Lane melodrama in his mind, encore after encore, the curtain refusing to fall. And yet here he is, almost soaked to the skin again, in the very same room he waited for Kate that morning, and he hasn’t given it a moment’s thought. There is only today. The steady drip of rainwater on the sill. Kate’s cold hands. I love that you are here.
His lips are already tugging upward before he realises he’s allowed himself to smile.
Unfortunately, Kate seems to take this as permission to start trying to strip him of his coat.
“Wait! That — that was an exceptional morning,” he says hastily, batting her hands away. “I am not sure Lady Danbury would like me to make a habit of—”
“Oh, I think my nerves can handle the sight of your shirt sleeves, my lord,” Lady Danbury says dryly. “After all, I did once witness you toddling around Bridgerton House in naught but one of your father’s top hats.”
“Did you really?” Kate asks, beaming in pure, unabashed delight.
Anthony hangs his head. “No, don’t encourage her.”
“I did indeed, Miss Sharma. I remember he was so little that the hat fell right down over his brow and completely covered his eyes. He kept bumping into things.”
“Oh.” Kate presses her lips together, looking back at Anthony. “That is—”
“Humiliating?” he supplies.
“The sweetest thing I have ever heard,” she finishes, giving him a look that seems to warn it would be pointless to argue.
“I grew into the hat,” he says, rather pointlessly.
“Of course you did, meri jaan.”
Mollified, Anthony finally starts to remove his coat. A mild skitter of panicked pleasure trembles along his veins as Kate starts to try and assist him again, her small hands slipping beneath the collar and curling around his shoulders to push the jacket free.
“No,” he murmurs desperately, trying to shrug off her touch. “Do not try and help me.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he bites out, lowering his voice so they can’t be overheard, “I’ll like it too much.”
“Oh.” She sits back in her seat with startling alacrity, humming a little laugh.
Finally free of the coat, he looks down at his shirt-sleeves, frowning at the small, randomly placed spots where the rain has found a way through the fabric. There’s a particularly large patch right over his right bicep, the damp fabric sticking indecently close to the top of his arm.
When he looks back up at Kate, her eyes flick guiltily away from the very same spot.
Suddenly he can’t think why he tried so hard to avoid removing his jacket.
“Look at the state of you,” she mutters, pointedly ignoring the knowing look he throws her way. “You really are soaked through. Here—” She gets up, manoeuvring herself beyond him. “Take my seat beside the fire.”
He’s about to protest that it’s not necessary but then her hands are on him again, not-so-gently pushing him until he grumbles and shuffles himself along into the spot she just vacated. Any further thoughts of resistance dissolve the second he catches a hint of her scent on the cushions, sweetened by the heat of the fire and the lingering warmth of her body.
“Your hair is wet too.” She ruffles the damp locks as she settles herself beside him again. “What were you thinking, not even putting on a hat…”
From anyone else, this amount of fussing would surely be an irritation but Anthony finds himself gently pushing his head up into her touch, like a cat stretching to be stroked. It’s only when a bright flash of lightning illuminates the room, flickering stark and white in her eyes, that he suddenly remembers he’s here to comfort, not to be comforted.
He reaches up and removes her hand from his hair, keeping it held in his. “Are you all right?” he says, holding her gaze. “Truly?”
“I am well.” He relaxes a little to hear the honesty in her answer. “It is strange…” Her eyes wander over her shoulder to the window, where the rain is still pouring steadily. “When a storm builds for days like this one did, I feel … uneasy in advance, I suppose. I know I am going to be unhappy, so my mind tries to get a head-start on the feeling. When it actually starts to rain, I still do not like it, but it is almost a relief.”
“What can I do?”
Alike as they are, he understands the flicker of hesitation that crosses her face. And he knows what it must cost her to ask, quietly, “Could you … just distract me? Please.”
It’s almost laughable, really, how unnecessary that question is. That little please. One day she’ll realise that she never has to make it a question; there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her. And none of it requires manners.
“Distract you?” he repeats, giving her hand a squeeze. “I am quite good at that actually.”
“So I’ve noticed,” she says wryly.
This time when the thunder sounds, her smile flickers but doesn’t completely disappear. For some reason, that gives him the courage to ask, “Shall I read to you?”
She stares at him for a moment, working her jaw a few times before she says, quietly, “That is what my father used to do.”
“I know,” he says. “You told me.”
She doesn’t respond to that, only blinks at him rather oddly, her hand going strangely limp in his.
“I do not want to intrude on the memory,” he hastens to add, panic clawing up his chest at the thought of having upset her. “If it is precious to you, something that belongs just to you and your father, I—”
“No.” She suddenly seems to come alive, her eyes glittering with some unspoken emotion. “It is not that. It is just … you remembered.”
“Kate…” He sounds her name the way she did his earlier — softly, like the weight of it is too precious to be set down carelessly. “Of course I remembered.”
“It was only a passing remark,” she says, shaking her head slightly, “I—”
“One of these days,” he says, shaking his head right back at her, “you are going to realise that nothing you say to me is only a passing remark. And nothing is ever forgotten.”
Her grip on his hand tightens, so much that he can feel the cool brush of her betrothal ring touching his palm. For a moment he thinks she might cry but then, in a quicksilver blink, the shine in her eyes is a different sort altogether.
“What?” he says. “What is amusing?”
“Oh, only you,” she says, her voice fondly mocking. “Nothing is forgotten, you say?”
“Of course not!”
“That is interesting…” She pulls her hand free of his and taps it exaggeratedly over her chin. “Because I distinctly recall telling you I did not need four new riding habits for my trousseau and yet when I was at the modiste last week she was quite certain that your order was for—”
“Ah,” he interrupts, snatching her hand back and brushing a kiss against her knuckles. “I’m afraid you misunderstand me, my love. I said I remember the things you say. I said nothing about heeding them.”
She hums a laugh at that, the quiet sound catching pleasantly in her throat. “Clearly.” She leans in slightly, as if afraid of being overheard. “Because I am quite sure I also told you to avoid using that endearment until we were wed. For my sake.”
“You did,” he says cheerfully, a smile tugging at his lips as he remembers their conversation at the opera. “But for my sake, I decided to ignore you.”
“Impossible man,” she huffs.
“Incredible woman,” he counters, smiling irrepressibly.
“Oh, enough.” She rolls her eyes, picking up her book and batting it none-too-gently into his chest. “Here. Stop being romantic and make yourself useful. Read me a chapter.”
“Only one?”
“That depends, I suppose. How long can you stay?”
“I am not leaving you until the storm ends.”
Her mask of cheerful calm slips a little, revealing a wealth of emotion in her eyes. “But that could be hours.”
“I know.”
“Days.”
“Better ask the maids to make up a guest room then,” he says, leaning closer as he adds, with a wink, “and you had better lock your bedroom door.”
She winks back at him, or tries to. The failed attempt is desperately charming. “Whyever would I do that?”
His amusement rumbles up in a deep, throaty sort of chuckle, the uncommon sound drawing the attention of the other ladies in the room. He colours slightly, dampening the sound with some effort.
“As it happens,” he says, forcing himself back to being sensible, “I do not believe the storm will last more than an hour or so. Assuming it is the same one that hit Kent yesterday.”
“How do you—”
“I had an express from my steward this morning. The storm broke over Aubrey Hall yesterday morning and was gone by lunch-time.”
“Oh, good, so there was no flooding on the farms? I know you were worried about that.”
His surprise at the question must show on his face because she grins at him, raising her eyebrows in a gentle, mocking challenge.
“You are not the only one who remembers passing remarks, my lord.”
It staggers him, sometimes, how he keeps finding ways to fall further in love with her.
Lost for words, he reaches blindly for her hand, giving it a quick, fond squeeze.
“For once, I will be glad if you are right,” she goes on, glancing over her shoulder to the window again. “Not just for my sake, but for your sister’s. I hate to think of her ball being spoiled by poor weather tonight.”
“Oh, I doubt she would mind. Her ball closed out the season last year as well, and the dancing was held outside on that occasion. By all accounts it ended in a total washout, and yet she often remarks that it was one of the best nights of her whole life.” He shifts awkwardly, adding quietly, “I was not there.”
“She is a better woman than me then,” Kate says, her lips curling with a faintly self-conscious smile. “If our first ball is rained off, you will probably find me curled up in a ball under the supper table.”
“Nonsense,” he says briskly. “There is no better woman than you. And providing there is room for me under that table, we will do just fine.”
She shakes her head, half exasperated, half fond. “I thought I told you to stop being romantic?”
“Oh, I heard you. But I simply—”
“Did not heed me?” she supplies, looking amused despite herself.
“Good, you understand now.” He gives her a stern look, nudging her with his elbow. “Now hush, please, I am trying to tell you a story.”
“I am all ears, my lord.”
“You, Kate Sharma, are all heart,” he contradicts, smiling gently at her. “And I love you for it.”
When she smiles at him, it feels like the sun just came out.
He clears his throat, picking up the book. “Now then… show me what page to start from.”
Despite this being his suggestion, a crushing wave of self-consciousness sweeps over him as he opens the book and flicks to the page she directs him to. There’s hardly anyone to hear him, only Kate and her family, and Lady Danbury in the far corner, working on her correspondence, but he can’t remember feeling this nervous before even the most important of his parliamentary speeches.
“What is your book about?” he asks, trying to delay.
“It isn’t mine,” Kate explains. “I borrowed it from Mama when the rain began. It’s a romantic drama of some sort. Not a particularly good one so far, to be honest.”
“Do you want to choose something else?”
“No need.” She presses a cup of tea into his free hand and settles herself against his side, her slight, soft weight relaxing on a sigh. “I just want to hear your voice.”
“Oh.” His anxiety dissolves like dew on the grass, melting under the morning sun. “Well in that case…”
He wets his dry throat with a sip of the warm, spiced tea she loves, and tells her the story.
He’s not sure how long he reads to her for, losing count of the pages and the chapters, his whole world focusing down to the next word, the next page, and the feel of Kate’s body against his, her soft cheek slowly coming to rest against the top of his arm, heedless of the damp fabric there.
It’s almost too sweet, the way she leans herself against him like this. Nothing like a suitor and his intended. More like a man and his wife. Like a family.
The novel isn’t a sad one but his eyes grow a little wet, all the same.
After a while he begins to realise that she’s not the only one listening. The scratch of Lady Danbury’s pen has stopped and he can’t pick out the rasp of a needle piercing Edwina’s embroidery hoop anymore. Even the rain seems to have quietened to hear the story he’s telling, a romance that’s more poetry than prose.
When his voice has almost given out, he slowly closes the book, shifting slightly to look carefully over his shoulder to the window without disturbing Kate’s position against his shoulder.
“I think the storm might have passed over now.”
“Oh…” Kate stretches like she’s just come awake, her limbs pliant and soft against his side. “I think you are right.”
Before she straightens up, he could swear she brushes a swift, barely there kiss against the top of his arm.
“You are very good at that,” she says, taking the now-empty teacup from his hands. “Do you read aloud to your family often?”
Anthony can’t help but scoff at that. “Never. It is not very often that we are all quiet enough at the same time to hear anyone read, and on the rare occasions that we are, it is usually Benedict that does it. He has the voice for it.”
“I prefer yours,” she says promptly, her eyes fluttering closed as she lays her palm over the cover of the book, as if she’s trying to chase the warmth of his hands upon it.
He smiles at her while she’s not looking, affection blooming like an ache under his skin.
“In truth, I have not read aloud for anyone in years,” he says, covering her hand with his for a moment. “Not since Hyacinth and Gregory were small enough for bedtime stories.”
That seems to charm her, for some reason. She turns her whole body towards him, her slight smile blooming into something radiant.
“You used to read to them?”
“Sometimes.”
“What sort of stories did they like?”
“Gregory preferred fairytales, mostly. The bolder the better. Brave knights on white horses who rescued beautiful princesses from the dragon’s lair, that sort of thing.” His lips quirk as he adds, dryly, “Hyacinth was always more interested in the dragons herself.”
Kate smiles, her fingers tapping lightly against the cover of her book again. There’s no anxiety in the gesture now, only a slight restlessness.
“What sort of stories did your father read to you?” he asks quietly.
“All kinds,” Kate says, softly nostalgic. “Love stories, most often. And adventures. Sometimes, in Appa’s tales, the princesses made friends with the dragons.”
“Hyacinth would have liked that.”
Her expression falters, ever so slightly, turning a little more thoughtful. “I tried to find those storybooks after he passed. I looked through his library for months but I only ever found a handful of them. I suppose he must have sold the rest when I got too old for them. Or he’d only borrowed them in the first place.”
“Perhaps.”
“Sometimes, even years later, I’d find a cover that looked familiar … but the words inside were never what I remembered. Perhaps I’d simply forgotten the stories.”
“I’m sorry, Kate.”
“It’s all right.” She shrugs, the motion not quite as careless as he thinks she intends. “I remember the telling of them, and that is more than enough for me.”
He sighs, his mind conjuring up the image — Kate as a little girl, her long hair all tangled from sleep, curled up against the solid, steady presence of her father. With no portrait to refer to, the only pieces of Milan Sharma that exist are the ones she has told him about — the moustache that used to quiver when he laughed, and the thick dark hair that curled like hers when it was long enough to need a cut.
“Thank you for today,” she says quietly, after a long moment. “I hardly noticed the thunder once you opened that book.”
“It was my pleasure,” he tells her quietly, meaning every word. For all he fills his days with endless tasks and duties, he’s never felt so damn useful.
“Will you stay for luncheon?” she asks, nodding to the clock on the mantel. “They’ll be serving it in a moment.”
“Is it that late?” He pulls out his own watch, frowning as he realises the time. “Actually I think I must be off, if you think you can spare me? I need to finish some work this afternoon. And Daphne will have my head if I am late for her ball tonight.”
“Hang your sister, I will have your head for that,” Kate says, helping him back into his jacket. “You owe me a waltz, Lord Bridgerton.”
“As my lady commands,” he says, standing up and stretching out his back, his still damp coat pulling uncomfortably across his shoulders. “You are sure you’ll be all right now?” he adds in an undertone, glancing to the sky beyond the window, where grey clouds are still hanging over London, letting out a light, barely visible drizzle.
“Perfectly,” she assures him, standing up and taking his hands in hers, clasping them gently between them. Carefully, she rises up onto her toes and kisses his cheek. “I’ll see you tonight.”
Like a fool, he reaches up his hand to touch the spot her lips just touched, as if he can capture the kiss. “Until then.”
He bows his farewells to the other ladies, pausing only when Edwina stands to meet him in the doorway, stopping him with a hand on his sleeve.
“Nothing but account ledgers, you said?”
She doesn’t sound annoyed, only rather wryly amused.
“Perhaps I am branching out,” he says, risking a smile.
To his relief, she smiles faintly back at him. “Good for you.”
He nods at her in farewell, flashing a quick smile to Kate over his shoulder before he goes.
A mere few seconds later, her voice follows him right out into the hall.
“Anthony, wait a moment!”
He stops in his tracks, turning back to find Kate hurrying towards him, holding out what looks like a handkerchief.
“You forgot—” she cuts herself off breathlessly, pressing the scrap of cloth into his hand.
“This?” he says, smiling quizzically as he rubs his thumb over the neatly embroidered initials — KS — in the corner of the fabric. “This is not mine.”
She grins, looking quickly over her shoulder, left and then right. “I know.”
And with that, she flies into his arms and crushes her mouth to his.
Anthony staggers slightly, his hands hovering uselessly at his sides for a split second before he wakes up to the fact that Kate is touching him — kissing him — and he is doing nothing at all. With an inarticulate noise, he crushes the handkerchief in his fist and wraps his arms around her, his hand splaying wide across her back, pressing her close.
It’s hardly the first time they’ve collided like this, crashing together in a frantic, stolen moment.
But these days it’s fun.
There’s no peril in being caught anymore; the worst they are risking is a scolding perhaps, or a disapproving lecture. And with the danger gone, so is the guilt. There’s nothing to sour the sweetness of her hands on his face, nothing to stop him from laughing messily against her mouth, all the smooth, suave moves of his youth forgotten in one giddy, breathless moment of pure joy.
For a moment he thinks, wildly, that the storm has started up again but it’s only his own heartbeat, thundering madly in his ears, and hers — thudding wildly against his chest where they’re pressed together.
“You—” Kate suddenly tears her lips from his, quickly glancing around to check they’re still alone. “You ought to go.”
“I was going,” he mutters, stealing another kiss, then another, until she laughs and shoves at his chest, pulling away.
“Go. Before someone catches us.”
“Fine,” he mutters, “but I am taking this.”
She laughs as he waves her handkerchief at her.
“It’s yours,” she says, leaning in to steal another quick, fleeting kiss. “As I am.”
“Christ, Kate.” Impulsively he pulls her close once more, his hands flexing on her hips as he kisses her one last time, hard and fast. “Get back inside the drawing room before I debauch you against the hall stand.”
She slips out of his grasp, disappearing with a wave and a smile, and the faintest hint of quiet, smothered laughter.
He has to stand in the hall with her handkerchief balled up over his face for at least three solid minutes before he can bring himself to walk away.
It should be an uncomfortable walk home, perhaps. His clothes are still a little damp, pulling at his skin as he walks. The residual rain is that irritating sort of invisible drizzle that still manages to wet you quite thoroughly. He can practically feel his hair starting to curl up with the moisture of it, and the sudden change from the warmth of Danbury House to the wet street has left him oddly and uncomfortably chilled.
Still, if there was anyone about to see the Viscount Bridgerton crossing the quiet, empty streets of Mayfair that afternoon, they would undoubtedly spot an unmistakable lightness in his step.
They might even wonder if he crossed the pavement to splash his way through that one particularly large puddle on purpose.
--