Chapter Text
CHAPTER I
The halls of My Cottage rumbled with the steps and voices of servants running up and down. After so many years, she still had trouble getting used to the summer hassle after spending the entire year on her own.
It had been strange to be alone at first. That first year without the Crabtrees had been tough, their voices and conversations had been the customary soundtrack of her life. They had spent years living together in that house, she’d met their daughter and grandchildren, and they had cared deeply for her, as if she were their daughter too. Then she had made friends in the village, visited them regularly, occasionally attended the small fairs they used to host, and every Sunday she went to church. In time, she had learned to appreciate the quiet of the house. She had grown comfortable with her solitude, and year after year, My Cottage had started to feel less like a refuge and more like a home.
She always remembered that—first? second first?—conversation she had had with him.
“The caretakers will be in attendance, and I assure you that Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree are not likely to let anything untoward occur in their house,” he had said to her.
“I thought it was your house,” she replied.
His smile had deepened. “I have been trying to get them to think of it as such for years, but I have never been successful.”
She smiled. Fourteen years later, she was now the caretaker of My Cottage, and she felt exactly as Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree had felt back then. This was her house. Even if on paper it was not under her name, she was the one living there all year round. She took care of it, she maintained the gardens, polished the floors, and prepared the rooms for the family when they visited. Every pipe, boiler and appliance she made sure everything was always working properly. She aired out the rooms in the morning and closed every window at night. She would wander through the house placing buckets on the floors to catch the drops of rain when there was a leak, and she would get someone to fix those leaks the very next morning. She had never been meant to become the caretaker, and she had certainly not been the one who bought this house, but it was hers as much as it was his.
“The shelves in the studio need to be dusted,” she instructed two young maids she crossed in the hallway. “And make sure to move the armchair next to the window. Mr. Bridgerton likes to have his late morning tea in there.”
“Yes, Miss Baek,” they both answered in unison.
She kept walking, dodging maids and footmen carrying sheets and towels, arranging furniture and dusting off surfaces. The family was not even here and she already missed her peace and quiet. Usually, she really enjoyed having them over. It gave her purpose, something to do. It was the only time of the year she got to manage a full staff, and it was fun. It was a challenge, and year after year she learned new things and perfected her technique. But today she was particularly anxious, and not the good, excited kind of anxious she used to feel right before they arrived. Today she felt unsettled, tense and a bit worried.
This was the first summer the family would spend at My Cottage after their mother’s passing. She didn’t have all the details. Eloise had written to her after she died last October. Apparently, it was fast and unexpected. One day she fell ill and the next she was gone.
She’d met Mrs. Bridgerton ten years ago. As much as she had wanted to hate her back then, she couldn’t bring herself to. She was a sweet woman, with a strong character but also quite modest. Even after years, she didn’t know much about their relationship. She normally avoided them and was only in their presence if it was absolutely necessary. For anything else, they had a fleet of footmen and maids who could take very good care of whatever they needed. She always seemed rather quiet and composed. She was a great mother to her sons and very kind to her husband. She ate when it was time to eat and slept when it was time to sleep. She woke up at the same hour every day, had the same breakfast every day, then would spend most of her morning embroidering, and afterwards she used to take a little nap after lunch. In the afternoons, she would have tea in the drawing room, sometimes with the children, sometimes with her husband, but most of the time alone. Then she would maybe play the pianoforte or simply keep embroidering, take a walk or read a book. After dinner, in which she always had a glass of red wine, she would go to bed at exactly the same time every night, and she would easily fall asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
Mrs. Bridgerton never had much to say. Most of her remarks were always about whatever her husband was talking about, and when he fell silent or asked her a question, she would rarely come up with any new topics to discuss. So most of the time, it was just him commenting on his work or sharing news about one of his siblings, and his wife would nod and say idle things like “How nice” or “I’m sure she is well.”
As caretaker of the house, she was always around, and so sometimes she overheard their conversations. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t avoid it either.
One night, he was talking about one of his paintings getting ruined right before he had to deliver it to one of his clients, but his wife simply said, “I’m sure you’ll work it out, dearest,” very sweetly and sympathetically. After that, he just stopped talking, and she never found out what happened to the painting.
Could he fix it? Did he have to ask for more time? Did the client get mad at him? Was it a funny story or a bad experience? Who was the client? What was the painting about? How many clients did he have? How well did his paintings sell?
All these questions just kept hovering in her mind, and she would never get the answers.
Even if she did her best to avoid the parents, she did spend much time with the boys. She tried to avoid them at first too, but one day, when she was having her breakfast all alone in the kitchen, very early in the morning right before the cook woke up and started preparing breakfast for the family, she felt someone staring at her from the shadows. When she looked around, she found little four-year-old Charles, standing in his pyjamas and staring at her.
“I can’t sleep,” he had said in his tiny voice.
She’d stretched out her hand to him, and he took it. “Come with me.”
She seated him at the servants’ table and gave him a cup of tea, and from a jar very high and very well hidden on one of the kitchen shelves, she took out some lemon biscuits for him.
“These are my favourite,” she whispered to him, as if she were sharing a secret. “I always hide them so no one else will eat them.”
Little Charles smiled at her and took a biscuit, excited to be part of her secret. Once he’d filled his stomach, he started talking. And talking. And then kept talking. And she couldn’t get tired of it. He was a child, so his stories did not always make sense, but that was the fun of it—trying to decipher how much was true and how much was just his imagination. He was witty, and funny, and clever. And more and more she enjoyed spending time with him, and she sensed he felt that way too, because after that morning there was not one day he wouldn’t ask for her, and not one day she wouldn’t take some time off her chores to sit with him in the garden and hear his stories.
The next summer after that, little Alexander joined them, and some years later, when little William was just learning to walk, he did too.
“Is the wood ready for the fireplaces?” she asked a footman who was carrying a large bouquet of flowers to the drawing room.
“It is, Miss Baek,” he replied. “Although, I doubt they will use it. We’re having quite a warm summer.”
“The children uncover themselves while they sleep and then get cold during the night. Their rooms need to always be warmed before they go to bed.”
It was always them she longed to see the most every summer. She took good care of My Cottage while they were away, but at the end of the day, they were the ones who brought the house to life every time they laughed, played, sang, and ran. It was always them, and it was for them that she cared so much for this place, because they loved it here, and she wanted it to be perfect for them.
She reached the kitchen, breathing a sigh of relief as she made sure that lunch preparations were going smoothly. She got to sit and rest her feet for only two minutes before a footman entered the kitchen, exclaiming, “They’re here!”
It was strange, how everything had come to be.
Fourteen years ago, she woke up one morning and her period had started. She was 22 years old, a maid at Violet Bridgerton’s house, and had made love with Benedict Bridgerton a few days before. After once again refusing to be his mistress, the following days were a whirlwind of emotions.
She knew she had to leave London, but what if she was pregnant? She swore she would never be any man’s mistress, and she vowed that her children would never have to live the turbulent life she had lived as a bastard. But if she were to have his child, then maybe her best option was to accept his offer. As much as it pained her, a child growing under the care and providence of a Bridgerton would surely have a better life than a child of a low-class maiden. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the only option she had if she were to face the consequences of her own actions.
But that morning, after waking up, she spent a long time staring at the dark red stains on her white bedsheets. The sharp contrast of colors somehow hollowed her heart even deeper, yet she felt as much relief as she felt pain. Deep inside, in one corner of her mind, she had started to imagine a life where she had a child—not just any child, his child. Even if the situation wasn’t what she had expected, she already loved that little baby, and she loved the life she would have had with it.
That was a sign, she thought. Life had given her a second chance. As far as she knew, she was a young and healthy woman, if she wasn’t with child, then maybe it was simply because it wasn’t meant to be. That morning, she decided she had to leave London as soon as she could, and she told him this.
One afternoon, over a game of blind man’s bluff with Hyacinth and some little Bridgerton cousins, he had entered the room. When he saw the scarf covering her eyes, he realized she was the same woman from his mother’s masquerade ball two years prior. He was aggravated. She’d never seen him so angry, but also so hurt. Somehow, in the midst of their argument, she found the strength to tell him that she was leaving the city, that she needed to stay away from him and his family. She wasn’t sure if he’d even heard her—he was so angry that he simply left, saying he needed to be away from her. But a few short hours later, an envelope arrived at Number Five.
It was from him, and it contained a letter and some money. It wasn’t a long letter, and it basically said that if she needed to leave the city, she could go back to My Cottage and work there. She rejected the idea as soon as she read it, but then the note said that Mrs. Crabtree personally asked for her, and now it wasn’t so easy to say no. Mrs. Crabtree had always treated her with respect and kindness, even when she had every reason to doubt her. She remembered how she and her husband would usually talk about how much work it was to keep the house up and running, even when no one was there. The phrases “We are getting too old for this” and “We are not as young as we used to be” would usually come up in their conversations. If they needed someone to help them with their work, and if they specifically asked for her, then she could never say no to them.
In a weird and confusing turn of events, the very next morning she was on a carriage on her way back to My Cottage, and from that day on, she never set foot in London again.
It was a temporary thing, of course. She would stay with them for some time until she managed to make sense of her own mind. Maybe she could even help them hire someone else to replace her. She thought she could talk to them and, without giving up too much detail, explain why she needed to leave. They would understand, she was sure, but that conversation never took place. She never found the right moment, there was always something different that needed to be done. So the days passed, and the weeks passed, and after two months, on one random afternoon, he appeared. He stayed for only four days, and it was a very weird four days.
She barely saw him. She would spend the entire time hiding from him, and when they finally crossed paths in a corridor, there was an awkward, loud silence between them until she realized he was staring quite insistently at her abdomen, failing at his intended discretion.
“I am not with child,” she said sternly, which caused him to dart his eyes back to hers.
He breathed out, and she couldn’t make out if he was relieved or disappointed, but his silence seemed to be enough, and so she left him, headed back to her room, and the morning after she heard his carriage leave the house, and for an entire year, she never saw him again.
She thought about leaving every single day since, more fervently after those strange four days he spent at the cottage, but she had already promised Mr. Crabtree she would help him arrange the greenhouse when summer arrived, and when summer finally arrived, she no longer felt the urge to escape anymore. So much time had passed, and by then this was her life already. She had a routine, and chores, and plans.
It was not a bad life. As time passed, she barely thought about him, and it was easier if she didn’t have to see him every day. She could even swear that he only visited the house for a few days a year just so Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree wouldn’t get suspicious as to why he was avoiding My Cottage.
Sometimes his family wrote to her. Every now and then a letter from Violet or Hyacinth would arrive, and Eloise wrote to her every two weeks. She’d married and moved nearby now, and she even invited her to visit Romney Hall one afternoon. She was scared and hesitant, yet Eloise was nothing but gentle with her. She never mentioned her brother in the four-hour conversation they had over tea.
Everything was well. It was not the ideal situation, yet it was all she had, and she knew undeniably that her life could be so much worse than this. She spent the next years of her life focused on her work, keeping her distance every time he went to visit, and being a company to Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree.
One Wednesday afternoon, a letter arrived from Eloise. As she sat on a bench in the garden to read it, something stirred inside her, as if this was not just another letter, and boy, if her suspicions were correct.
He was going to marry.
He was going to marry someone else.
She didn’t know what she had been expecting to happen. Of course, one day he would have to get married. It was his duty as an aristocratic man. Even if he had no title himself, he was both the second son and brother to a Viscount. There were certain rules in his society that he could not escape so easily without expecting further consequences.
But, for her, this felt like the last straw. This was it. This was as far as she could take it.
Two days after that letter, she had everything packed, and she had already found a position as a maid in an inn not so far from there. She only had to wait for a letter of confirmation to arrive and she would be gone for good this time.
Only her plans failed yet again.
Mrs. Crabtree caught a terrible cold. She was out of danger after two very long nights, but she stayed in bed for almost a month. Mr. Crabtree, of course, was not in his right mind to attend to his work, so Sophie decided to stay. That month was the busiest she’d been since she arrived at My Cottage, but it was also when she learned the most. During those days, she learned to manage the entire house just as Mr. and Mrs. Crabtree had done all those years before.
Three months later, when Mrs. Crabtree died after a relapse, she officially became the new caretaker of My Cottage.
Mr. Crabtree still visited her quite often. Almost every weekend he would be there to have lunch with her. But after five months he was gone too, peacefully in his sleep, and she was left all alone again.
After so many unfortunate events, it was easy to forget about him and his marriage. She genuinely barely thought about it. It seemed like such a silly thing to worry about when she had a whole house in her hands and a widowed old man who had just lost his lifelong companion.
Sixteen months after she received that fateful letter from Eloise, it was now finally her turn, for the first time, to summon a whole staff of servants to My Cottage: Mr. and Mrs. Bridgerton were coming to spend the summer.
By that time, there were so many things on her plate she barely had time to think about seeing him again, let alone with his wife. But her legs started shaking when she saw the carriage arriving, and her face paled when she saw her. Not entirely because she saw her, but mostly because she saw the five-month-old baby she was carrying in her arms. Eloise had been kind enough not to mention the baby in her letter, but perhaps a little heads-up would’ve been useful.
For the life of her, even after years, she still could not remember what happened that morning. For all she knew, she could’ve spat on his face, thrown the baby in the air, and dragged the wife by her hair back to the carriage and off to London. She didn’t know. Maybe that was what happened, or maybe it wasn’t.
What she did remember very clearly was how long she spent locked in her room that day, crying until she fell asleep.
And now, ten years later, she was standing outside the small portico of My Cottage, watching as a carriage stopped right in front of her, an image she was already so used to, it felt like déjà vu every time.
The carriage hadn’t even come to a full stop when the door swung wide open. A ten-year-old jumped—literally jumped—out and ran straight into her arms, loudly shouting, “Sophie!”
Up until that moment, due to the circumstances, she’d maintained a solemn expression, but when Charles collided with her, nearly knocking her to the ground and wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, she beamed. She hugged that boy back with all her strength, and when seven-year-old Alexander approached them, she crouched down to embrace him as well.
Five-year-old William took a little more time to climb out of the carriage, but he eventually reached them and received a tight hug from Sophie too.
“Look how big you all are!” she grinned, still crouched down, glancing at the three of them. “You’ve become such fine gentlemen already.”
“We missed you,” Charles said with a big smile.
“I know, I missed you as well,” she replied.
“We have so much to tell you about,” Alexander chimed in.
“Good thing we have the entire summer to catch up. But for now,” she said as she stood up again, then slowly leaned forward to whisper to them, “there’s biscuits for you in the drawing room!”
The three boys ran inside the house, disappearing through the doorway with cheerful screams.
Sophie watched them go, laughing at how excited they always got when there were biscuits involved. When she turned around, she found forty-four-year-old Benedict Bridgerton standing right in front of her.
“Welcome back,” she managed to say, trying to erase the smile on her face, but then she noticed he was smiling too. A very soft and gentle smile curved his lips.
He nodded at her words. “It’s good to see you again,” he said.
This was their default conversation every time the family arrived at My Cottage. Then Sophie would follow with some comment about the weather and Benedict would say something about how nice the place looked, and she would say something about the house being already prepared for them, staff hired and lunch ready. This was their routine every summer, but this summer was different, so she changed the script this time.
“I am so sorry… about… it’s a terrible loss…”
He cut her off with a glum nod.
“Thank you,” he said in a quiet voice.
“How are the children getting along?”
He glanced at the door through which they had disappeared a few moments ago before answering. “They’re hanging in there. You know, they have some good days and then some bad days…”
“It must be very hard for them,” she mused.
“But they were excited to come here, they were counting the days to see you.”
She smiled widely. “Yes, well, I think they were even more excited about the biscuits,” she quipped.
Benedict chuckled. “I wouldn’t take it personally, Mrs. Norton is quite a good cook.”
“Those are my biscuits,” she said, affronted but still with a smile on her face. “I baked them.”
“Really?” He looked confused. “All this time I thought…”
“Do not worry about it, I take it as a compliment.”
He made an apologetic gesture with his hands, and then they seemed to run out of things to say. Sophie was always uncomfortable with these weird silences between them, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He was idly looking around, then fixed his gaze on some distant point to his right, and Sophie could tell there was a lot on his mind just by the way he breathed and frowned.
“How are you hanging on?” she asked softly.
He took a moment to answer, his face still turned slightly to the side, before looking back at her. “I’m alright,” he said at last, nodding slowly, as if only just realising it himself. “It just… brings back some memories, you know?”
Sophie nodded in quiet understanding.
“The shock has worn off, I think, and now it’s…” He let out a sigh. “Now I’m just trying to bring back some normality for the kids.”
“Well, I don’t think things will ever be normal for them again, Benedict. She was their mother.”
He frowned, clearly not expecting that. “Yes, I know.”
“I’m just saying you cannot expect them to simply forget about her and act as if nothing happened…”
“Yes, I believe I know how to raise my children,” he said, his tone suddenly sharp, cutting her off.
Sophie fell silent at once, her eyes dropping to the floor.
“Yes, of course. Forgive me. I forgot my place.”
Benedict exhaled. “No, I—”
“Everything is ready for you inside, Mr. Bridgerton. We've hired a staff of four maids and two footmen, the gardens have been maintained, and the stables are equipped for you to use at any time. The rooms are prepared, and lunch will be ready in an hour…”
He waited for her to finish her speech, holding her gaze as he clenched his jaw.
“You’re still doing this?” he asked resentfully.
She frowned. “Doing what?”
“Acting all meek like a servant just to annoy me.”
“I am a servant.”
“Not to me—”
“But I am,” she said firmly. “And I am not ashamed of it, nor do I believe it lessens my worth. If it makes you uncomfortable, then you can simply avoid me like you always do, since you’re so eager to have everything back to normal.”
“Avoid you? You’re the one who always avoids me !”
“I do not avoid you, I’m simply busy doing my job! I have an entire house to attend to, I cannot spend the entire day following you around!”
Benedict didn’t answer, but his annoyed expression softened, giving way to one of his amused, crooked smiles.
“This is the longest conversation we’ve had in fourteen years,” he said.
Sophie softened her stance. “You’ve been counting too?”
His eyes turned grim. “Always,” he breathed.