Work Text:
--
There are somewhere in the region of twenty-five stairs leading from the entrance hall up to the first floor of Anthony and Kate’s home in Grosvenor Square.
From the sounds of it, Kate is having trouble with every last one of them.
Anthony’s first instinct – quite understandably, given the last few months – is to panic. He scrambles off the bed, the novel he borrowed from Kate’s beside table slipping from his nerveless fingers and bouncing painfully off the top of his foot as it falls to the floor.
“Oh, for the–” He bites off the blasphemy, punching a fist into the mattress.
Perfect. Just perfect. What a pair they’ll make now.
Half-walking, half-hobbling, he moves in the vague direction of the door, silently cursing all the things that are sent to try his patience in life–
Miss Austen’s heavy novels.
His own bad luck.
His stubborn, stubborn wife.
Damn it to hell, he knew it was too soon to let her out of his sight.
She absolutely cannot say he didn’t try and warn her. In fact he spent most of the morning and the best part of the afternoon slyly dropping hints that it was an uncommonly bad idea – dangerous, even – for her to venture out all alone and spend the entire evening without his arm to lean on when she got tired. Well … not hints so much as anvils, really. Much good it did him.
Even when he eventually came right out and asked whether she’d be better off staying at home, she merely patted his cheek and said, in that maddeningly superior voice that never fails to make him want to tear every last stitch of clothing from her body, “I’m playing cards in Lady Danbury’s parlour, Anthony, not running away to join the navy. I’ll be quite safe.”
Having no response to this, he proceeded to try and convince her in an entirely different manner, one that obligingly allowed him to take her upstairs and give in to the aforementioned and rather persistent desire to remove all of her clothing. What followed was – or so he thought – a really rather persuasive argument for staying at home. Preferably in bed. And yet afterward, while he was lying there naked as the day he was born, feeling boneless and rather pleased with himself, she simply put every last one of those layers of clothing back on again, kissed the furrow in his sweaty brow, and went out anyway.
Honestly. The sheer nerve of the woman. He was hard again in an instant, just watching the sway of her hips as she swanned out of the room and left him alone in the middle of their bed.
But that’s not the point.
The point is he was clearly in the right and she was clearly in the wrong and now he can’t even enjoy that, not when it means she’s in pain. And she has to be, it’s the only explanation for her slow, shuffling progress up the stairs. She’s clearly gone and re-injured her bad leg at the party and now she’s making it even worse by trying to get to the bedroom all by herself instead of just swallowing her pride and calling for his help.
Infuriating girl.
Impossible woman.
Christ, he hopes she’s alright.
Something painful twists in his chest as a muffled whimper floats along the corridor, followed by a few more shuffling steps. Forgetting all about the dull throbbing in his foot, Anthony hurries towards the door, his imagination conjuring a dozen possible reasons for every one of her quiet little moans, each worse than the last. She’s hurt. She’s in pain. She’s in agony. She’s–
Laughing?
He stutters to a stop, half-convinced that he must have imagined it. Hovering awkwardly in the middle of the bedroom floor, he strains his ears, barely even daring to breathe, and then his pounding heart leaps because there it is again – his favourite sound in the whole damn world. There’s absolutely no mistaking it now. Whatever is happening out there, Kate really is laughing at it. In fact, she might even be giggling.
And that’s what does it.
His momentary panic melts away as he grins at the closed door, suddenly quite certain that he was wrong before – utterly, completely, brilliantly wrong.
Because Kate isn’t hurt at all.
She’s absolutely foxed.
In her cups.
Drunk.
Out on the landing there’s a gasp and then a wobble, the unmistakable teetering sound of glass against wood – the vase on the side table, Anthony thinks, clapping a hand to his mouth to stifle the sudden splutter of laughter threatening to spill from his lips. Next comes a quiet thud from right outside the door, the sort of noise that can only be her leaning some part of her body against it. Her forehead, most likely. He can practically see her standing there, leaning her spinning head against the cool wood, stifling her giggles and willing herself to calm down. To be sensible.
“Kate?” he calls out, trying desperately to keep the laughter out of his voice. “Is that you?”
The door handle rattles once, twice, three times, but it doesn’t twist.
“Everything alright out there?”
Silence.
And then–
“Door,” she says, her voice a muffled whine through the wood.
“Yes?” It’s ungentlemanly, really – how much he’s enjoying this. He doesn’t care a jot. She’s never going to live this down. He’s never going to let her live this down. “What about the door?”
“It won’t – oh, hold on – there!”
Anthony jumps backwards as the bedroom door suddenly flies wide open, clattering against the wall with a resounding, teeth-rattling, wake-the-neighbours sort of bang.
In the ringing silence that follows, he says, as mildly as he can manage, “Hello, wife.”
Lord above, a little intoxication suits her. She sways slightly as she slinks into the doorway, her hips moving to some melody that only she can hear, one that he’d very, very much like the sheet music for. Her usually sharp gaze is a little unfocused as it wanders over the room, her overbright, red-rimmed eyes making her look tired and lazy and ready for bed. Or bedding, preferably.
Anthony gives himself a little shake, telling himself not to stare.
He stares anyway.
How can he not, when every single thing about her is just the right side of disheveled – her cheeks flushed and her skirts mussed in that lovely end-of-the-night sort of way that always makes him want to pull her closer and crush the silk a little more, not letting go until she’s rumpled and breathless, and all the creases in her gown belong to him. A few curls have escaped her coiffure and now they’re coiling against her neck, just begging for him to reach out and wrap them around his finger. He wanders vaguely forwards, thinking of doing just that, and her gaze suddenly sharpens and snaps to him.
“Anthony!” she says, like she didn’t even see him there until he moved. “There you are!”
She smiles at him, humming a happy little note in the back of her throat, and his daft, besotted heart skips a beat, the way it only ever does for her.
“Here I am,” he says, a sudden surge of fondness threatening to make him do something foolish, something like telling her she’s the prettiest drunkard he’s ever seen.
“I was looking,” she says, in what she clearly thinks is a whisper. It’s very much not a whisper. “For you.”
“Where?”
She heaves a huge, heavy sigh. “Everywhere.”
Anthony laughs, suddenly feeling a little light-headed himself – drunk on the colour in her cheeks and the total nonsense she’s talking, and the fact that she’s his. His to love and his to protect and right now, his to tease. Mercilessly.
“You cannot have looked so very hard,” he says, shaking his head in mock disapproval. “Since I am right where you left me.”
She flicks a look over at their bed and grins. “Not quite.”
He bites back a groan, not quite sure who is teasing who anymore. “D’you know...” he says, trying to wrestle back the upper hand, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in your cups before. It’s really rather entertaining.”
“I am not in my cups,” she says, looking highly offended. “I’m entirely ... out of my cups, thank you very much.”
He snorts, laughter bubbling up in his chest. It used to feel so foreign – this urge to tip his head back and let himself laugh. It was something to be fought. Not to be trusted. Now he just lets it out. And God, it feels wonderful.
“Why are you laughing? I’m serious! I am perfectly sober.”
“You are perfect, my love,” he says, shaking his head fondly at her. “But not perfectly sober.”
“I have never – not once in my whole life – been intoxicated.” She pulls a face at him, letting out an unladylike snort. “Unlike some people, I’d wager.”
“Until tonight, you mean.”
“Well…” She drops the pretence of annoyance in favour of a smile, impish and unrepentant. “Perhaps.”
“Am I to take it you enjoyed the party then?”
“Not particularly, to tell you the truth.” She leans her whole body against the doorframe, watching him with bleary, tired eyes. “I missed you.”
“Oh.” He could tease her for that. He could fold his arms and roll his eyes and say, you’re the one who wanted to go out. Instead he says, “I missed you too.”
“And that,” she says, snapping her fingers in mid-air, “is precisely my point. Do you see?”
“I’m not sure I do see,” Anthony says, smiling anyway. He can’t help it. She’s so damn charming when she’s talking rubbish.
“Kitty Langham hasn’t seen her husband since Michaelmas last year!”
“Err ... indeed?” he says, since she’s looking at him as though she expects some sort of reply to this.
“Michaelmas, Anthony!” She picks up her skirts with a huff and hobbles into the room. “Michaelmas!”
“Kate,” he says sharply, his eyes immediately flicking down to her bad leg. “What’s–” He cuts himself off with a laugh. “Where’s your other slipper, love?”
She follows his eyes down to her feet, one still wearing a satin slipper and the other left in just her stockings. “Oh,” she says, wiggling the toes on her free foot. Then she suddenly narrows her eyes and looks over at him. “Where’s yours? Hmm?”
Anthony looks down at his bare feet and barks a laugh. “Lord, woman, how much did you drink? You’re going to have such a sore head in the morning.”
“Oh, that’s no fun,” Kate says, a slightly dangerous smile playing around her lips as she saunters closer to him. “I was rather hoping for sore thighs…”
He splutters a vaguely choked sound. “You–”
“The thing is…” she says, stopping right in front of him and reaching out a hand to toy with the end of the tie for his robe, “I have been thinking–”
“My lady, I asked you to wait for me!” Emily, Kate’s maid, suddenly appears in the doorway, effectively silencing whatever proposition Kate was about to make. Anthony isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed by that. Relieved, probably, since Kate is surely too drunk to follow through on any of her little teases tonight. Still, it might have been fun to hear them.
“Oh!” Emily adds, blushing to the tips of her bright red hair as she spots Anthony, “begging your pardon, my lord.”
Anthony bats Kate’s hand away from his robe, suddenly quite aware that he’s not wearing a shirt beneath, only his breeches. He tugs the banyan a little tighter over his chest, nodding awkwardly in acknowledgement towards Kate’s maid.
“I just stopped into the kitchen to see if there was any boiled water left on the stove,” she goes on, glancing anxiously at her mistress. “I thought my lady could use – that is, I wondered if perhaps Lady Bridgerton might be glad of it.”
“Sensible girl,” Anthony mutters, with a rueful glance at Kate. “Could you–”
“Emily!” Kate interrupts loudly, peering around Anthony at her maid. “What on earth are you doing up at this hour? You ought to be in bed.”
“And I will be, my lady,” she says, with admirable patience. “I’ll just get you settled and then–”
Kate waves a hand. “Oh, Anthony can do that.”
“My lady, I don’t think–”
“No, no, he can.” Kate smiles at her, humming a happy little sigh. “He’s very good at taking care of me, you know.” Anthony only has a split second to enjoy the sweetly pleased way she says that before she suddenly leans towards her maid and adds, in another attempt at what she clearly thinks is whispering, “And he’s really very good at taking off my frocks.”
“Kate...” Anthony groans, running a hand through his hair. “Stop it, you’re embarrassing the poor girl.”
“Am I?”
“You’re certainly embarrassing me.”
She only shrugs. “It was a compliment. You are particularly good at the ones with–”
“I think,” he says loudly, turning to address Kate’s maid, “that you had better leave us to it. I’ll see to Lady Bridgerton tonight.”
“If you’re quite sure…?”
“Quite,” he says firmly.
“Very good, my lord,” she says, looking over at Kate with an expression that’s half amusement, half concern. She hesitates, then hands him the glass of water and Kate’s discarded slipper, not quite meeting his eye. Anthony can’t be certain but he rather thinks he hears her whisper, “Good luck,” on her way out.
“Goodnight, Em!” Kate calls cheerily, a good thirty seconds after the girl has left the room and closed the door behind her.
Anthony snorts a laugh, looking down at the contents of his hands and then over at Kate, taking in the way she’s swaying slightly on the spot, humming in a strangely out of tune sort of way.
Marriage, he thinks, tossing the slipper into the corner of the room, really is a series of absurdities.
He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Right then – drink up,” he says, handing Kate the glass. “You’ll be glad you did in the morning.”
She does as he asks, tossing the water back in one go and then, bizarrely, kneeling down and discarding the glass on top of the novel that’s lying on the floor.
“Will I really have a very sore head tomorrow, do you think?” she says, rubbing absently at her temples as she kicks off her other shoe.
“You tell me,” he says, removing the book and glass from the floor before she actually does trip and hurt her leg. “How much did you drink?”
“I’m not sure I know. I was not paying close attention.”
“That’s not like you.” He sits down on the edge of the bed, suddenly not sure that any of this is very funny at all. “What possessed you to over-indulge like this anyway? That’s not like you either.”
She shrugs, dropping down beside him. “Whenever I had nothing to say … I drank.”
“What do you mean?” he says sharply, the spark on his temper igniting immediately. “Were the ladies unkind? Did they not include you in their conversations? Tell me who it was and I shall make sure they never receive another civilised invitation in–”
“Oh no, nothing like that.” She waves a hand, almost hitting him with it. Then she turns to look at him and everything in her suddenly softens. Everything in him softens too, his momentary anger melting away under the warmth of her gaze.
“You are so sweet when you get all protective like that, you know,” she says, a fond, slightly reluctant smile tugging at her lips. “I know I tell you off for it sometimes, but I like it really.”
It’s silly, really, how happy that makes him. “Is that so?”
She hums her agreement, dropping her head to rest on his shoulder. “It makes me feel loved.”
“You are loved.”
“I know.” She sighs happily, leaning all her weight into his side as he wraps his arm around her waist. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Anthony smiles down at her, forgetting for a moment that she’s still dressed in all her finery and he’s supposed to be sobering her up and getting her into bed. She’s just so warm pressed up against him like this, her head a familiar weight on his shoulder, and even though he can’t see her face, he can feel her smile somehow, like it’s changing the very air in the room. It seemed a little dark in here before she came home, the candles casting shadows in the corners, but now that same candlelight seems rather cozy, painting the whole room in shades of gold. And there are never any shadows when she’s beside him.
Yes,” he agrees, pressing a kiss to her hair. “It’s the best.”
“Anthony…” she says quietly. “I want you to know something.”
She pulls back a little to look up at him, and something pleasantly possessive aches along his bones at the thought that he is the only one who gets to see her like this – sleepy and soft at the end of the day, whispering secrets in the quiet of their bedroom.
“What’s that, love?”
“It’s actually all your fault that I drank so much,” she says, quite spectacularly ruining the moment.
Anthony barks a laugh. “Oh, this should be good! I was not even there.”
“You do not understand...” She falls back against the coverlet with a huff, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. “They were all complaining! And I had nothing to say.”
“I see,” he says though he doesn’t see, not really. “And this is my fault because...”
“Because they were complaining about their husbands!”
“And what, you had no complaints?” He scoffs a laugh, manoeuvring himself to sit back against the headboard, his knee resting up on the bed between them. “Kate, you scolded me for ten minutes straight this morning because I forgot to tell you that my mother was coming for luncheon.”
“Yes, because Cook had no warning! Thanks to you, I could only offer one kind of cold meat and–”
“And? It’s not as though I told you the Queen was coming.”
“I wish you had! She’s far less important than Violet,” Kate says, sounding quite serious about that. “I don’t mind what her Majesty thinks or does not think of me. I want your mother to like me.”
“She does like you. She loves you.”
Kate turns her head towards him, shooting him a superior look. “And perhaps that is because I always make such a fuss when she comes for luncheon. Did you ever consider that?”
He groans, knocking his head back against the headboard. “I highly doubt that is the reason.”
“You never know.”
“All this is doing is proving my point,” he says, nudging her shoulder with his foot. “You, my dear wife, are full of complaints.”
“Oh, not really,” she says, shoving him off. “You know I don’t have any real complaints. You make me so happy.”
She says it so carelessly, like it isn’t the most remarkable thing in the world. Like it’s just a fact of life, known and accepted and unchanging. The sky is blue, the earth is round and he makes her happy. Anthony presses his lips together, embarrassed by the sudden rush of emotion in his chest.
“Which put me at a bit of a disadvantage tonight, you see,” she goes on, and he knows she’s doing this on purpose, for him – ploughing on with her chatter, giving him a moment to collect himself. He loves her all the more for it. “Every time those ladies looked at me to add to their cacophony of complaints, I simply didn’t have anything to say.”
“So you drank.”
“So I drank,” she repeats, smiling sheepishly. “And I listened.” She blows out a long breath, staring up at the canopy above their bed. “And my God, Anthony, you should have heard some of the things they were coming out with!”
“Really?” he says, surprised to discover that he’s rather intrigued. It’s not a particularly charitable sentiment but his pride rather likes the idea of sitting in his club with the secret knowledge of all the other chaps’ marital shortcomings. “What sort of–”
“And as I was listening to all these stories,” she goes on, as if she hasn’t even heard him, “I realised that ... well, that there are husbands, and then there are ... Husbands. And they’re not remotely the same thing.”
“Which am I?” he says, knowing her answer and wanting to hear it anyway. “The good one, I hope?”
She rolls her eyes, but indulges him anyway. She always does. “You’re the best one, my love.”
“I try.”
“You succeed,” she says, humming a thoroughly inebriated but thoroughly happy sort of sigh. “For instance, I bet you would never sell our London home and purchase another one halfway across town without so much as mentioning it to me.”
“Who did that?”
“Lord Hunter.”
“That’ll be the gambling debts,” Anthony puts in, glad to have some gossip of his own to contribute.
“That wasn’t even the worst of it.” She lifts her hands, starting to count the others off on her fingers. “Mrs Archer’s husband keeps his mistress in the family home–”
“No!”
“Yes. He tried to pass her off as his ward.”
“Christ, his poor wife.”
“Oh, don’t feel too bad for her. Mrs Archer has taken her husband’s valet as her lover.”
“Now you’re just making things up.”
“I am not!”
“Go on then, what else?” She looks so damn sweet, lolling there on the bed, her legs dangling off the side, that he can’t bring himself to suggest she get up and get ready for bed yet. Besides, he’s rather enjoying himself. “This is better than Whistledown.”
“Well, Mr Smythe-Smith is more interested in breeding his many dogs than in talking to his wife. They live hundreds of miles apart for most of the year ... which nobody seemed to think was unusual at all.”
“It’s not, I’m afraid.”
“I know that. But it makes me sad all the same.” She rolls onto her side, staring intently up at him. “I couldn’t bear it if you ever went away.”
“Oh, Kate.” His heart clenches, as if she’s just reached one of her graceful little hands inside his chest and twisted, hard. “You know I never would.”
“I know.” There’s something a little vulnerable beneath her smile, that raw edge of emotion that too much drink can sometimes draw out. “But sometimes I even miss you when you’re in another room.”
“You – you do?”
It still floors him whenever she says something like this, something that is so precisely the same as the way he feels about her. He thinks about the pathetically dull evening he just spent without her, the poor company he made at dinner with his family, the way the numbers on the accounts had blurred into nonsense until he’d eventually given up and come home to wait for her, even reading the damn book off her bedside table, just to touch something of hers.
“I know it’s silly–”
“No,” he interrupts. “Well, maybe it is.” He spreads his hands helplessly. “But I do it too.”
“But apparently that’s just us!” she goes on blithely, suddenly shifting right back to levity, the way only a thoroughly inebriated person can. “I mean, look at Kitty Langham! She hasn’t–”
“Seen her husband since last Michaelmas,” Anthony finishes with her, trying desperately to keep up with her mercurial moods.
“Exactly!” she says, and then, “And I’ll tell you something else – Kitty and the general have three children together and yet she said he has never – not once – given her … well, you know.”
She waggles her eyebrows at him, and it’s endearing and sweet and somehow – damn it, he doesn’t know how – really rather seductive.
“Given her what?” he asks, knowing full well what. The devil on his shoulder just wants to hear her say it.
Kate rolls her eyes at the question, turning onto her belly and propping herself up on her elbows as she looks up at him. The movement does something really rather wonderful to her breasts – crushing them into the bed, pressing their perfect shape almost indecently tight against the confines of her bodice, and it’s just … it’s so damned unfair. She’s so deep in her cups that he can’t possibly do anything about how utterly breathtaking she looks right now, even though she’s staring at him with that knowing look in her eyes, the one that says she wouldn’t mind at all if he reached out and –
Not tonight, he tells himself, the words repeating over and over. Not tonight.
And then, good Lord, she actually answers his question, and the sensible voice in his head gets very, very quiet.
“You know...” she says meaningfully, lowering her voice to a whisper, successfully this time, “la petite mort.”
“Oh,” he says. It’s not quite a word, but it’s the best he can do.
Kate smiles wickedly, like she knows precisely what she’s doing to him. Even intoxicated, the damn girl still wants to win. And he’s always so very happy to lose at this sort of game.
But bloody hell, not tonight.
“D’you know,” she goes on, humming a thoughtful little note in the back of her throat, “I’ve never really understood why they call it that. It always makes me feel alive.”
Anthony groans quietly. “Lord, woman,” he manages to say, his voice rather strangled, “is this really the sort of thing that you ladies talk about when you’re left to your own devices?”
“Oh, don’t try and pretend you and Simon do not talk about such things at your club.”
“Since Simon is married to my sister, I assure you we do not.”
“You don’t talk to him about me?” she says, looking rather wounded by that.
Anthony groans again, opting not to point out that on any other day he’d probably be in trouble for admitting that he did talk to Simon about her.
“Yes,” he says, slipping off the bed and taking hold of both her hands, pulling her upright, closer to him. “I tell him that you vex me endlessly.”
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says, letting him pull her all the way to her feet. She winds her arms around his neck, sounding slightly hesitant as she adds, “Isn’t that so?”
“Of course,” he agrees, settling his hands on her hips.
Her smile brightens her whole face, like that first shaft of sunshine burning through a raincloud. “I love you, you know,” she says, almost conversationally.
And he does. He does know. Right down to his bones, he knows that she loves him. And yet every single time, it still feels like he’s never heard those words before. It still leaves him with that same strange combination of feeling like he can’t quite catch his breath and somehow like he also just took the deepest, cleanest, fullest breath of his life. He hopes it never stops feeling like that. Like something new.
“That is, I know you know,” she rambles on, playing idly with the short hairs at the back of his neck, “but I just want to say it. I love you. I adore you, actually. And I–”
Anthony cuts her off, dipping his head to kiss that rambling, pretty, drunken mouth of hers. She hums her appreciation against his lips and he’s not sure if it’s the alcohol or his kiss that makes her knees weak but either way, she seems to turn to liquid in his arms, melting her whole body into his, warm and soft and pliant under his hands.
“I love you too,” he says, trying not to cough as he pulls away slightly. He feels his lips quirk, quite beyond his control. “But Christ, Kate, you smell like a public house.”
“Oh,” she says, clapping a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“Sherry, was it?”
“How can you–”
He leans in, pressing a kiss to her flaming cheeks. “I can taste it.”
“Oh no!” She ducks her head, hiding her face against his neck. “Sorry!”
“Don’t be,” he says softly, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “You always taste sweet, love.”
Kate lets out a quiet little laugh, half embarrassment and half pleasure, her breath warm against his bare chest above the edge of his banyan.
“Come on,” he says softly, dropping a kiss to the top of her head, “let’s get you into bed so you can sleep off your scandalous excesses, shall we?”
“I think that might be for the best.”
He moves his hands to her shoulders, steering her to turn around, and something tender surges in his chest at how easily she moves for him, the quiet trust in the way she yields to the pressure of his hands.
He starts on her coiffure first, pulling out the pins one by one, and Kate rolls her neck slightly, groaning in relief as her curls tumble loose. The bedroom suddenly seems so very quiet, enough that he can hear his own breathing, rough and slightly ragged as he sweeps the fall of her hair aside, and hers too, catching slightly as his fingers brush her neck while he works at the clasp of her necklace.
Anthony swallows hard as he removes the necklace and sweeps it aside, silently telling himself not to move, not even an inch, not to lean down and press his lips to the smooth, soft skin of her neck, even though everything in him is aching to do just that. His breath quickens and he knows she must be able to feel it rushing over her bare skin. He can see it raising goosebumps in its wake. She sighs softly, like perhaps she likes that, and that’s when he gives in – just a little, because he always does, because he’s always weak when it comes to wanting her.
He allows himself one kiss, just a quick brush of his lips against the soft, warm skin at the back of her neck, and then he straightens quickly, afraid of what will happen if he lingers long enough to inhale the familiar scent of her hair. Kate sighs again when he moves away, and the sound is so very soft, dangerously close to a whimper, that Anthony almost loses his grip on the last vestiges of his self-control.
It’s the sweetest, strangest sort of torture, to stand here and undress her like this, knowing that this is as far as he can go tonight. In the end he decides he rather likes it, finding a quiet contentment in simply taking care of her, with nothing else in mind. He savours all the things he would usually rush through, taking his time to slip every button from it’s loop, to listen to the swish of the silk when she slips the dress down over her hips, holding his hand as she steps out of it.
“Anthony…” she says quietly, as he turns his attention to loosening her corset. “I’ve been thinking–”
“Oh no,” he jokes, not looking up from his task, “that never bodes well for–”
“I want you to fuck me.”
His suddenly nerveless fingers slip on the lacings of her stays.
“What?” he says, so very carefully. Not moving. Barely breathing. “What did you say?”
“I want you to fuck me.” And then, because apparently she’s trying to destroy him, she turns around and looks at him, all wide, innocent eyes, holding up her half open stays with one hand as she says, “I just learned that word tonight. Did I use it properly?”
The sound he makes in reply is barely intelligible. Barely human.
“Anthony?”
Somehow he finds his voice. “There is nothing proper about what you just said.”
She smiles. God help him, she actually smiles. “Is that a yes?”
She reaches for the tie on his robe and he doesn’t stop her.
He can’t move.
He can’t catch his breath.
He can’t give her what she’s asking for.
Christ. Not tonight.
“No,” he says, closing his hand over hers before she can undo the tie. “Don’t.”
Her brow furrows, hurt flickering in eyes. “Don’t you want me?”
“No!” he blurts and then, frantically, “I mean yes! I do, of course I do.” He runs a hand through his hair, clutching at it. Oh, he’s going to kill Lady Danbury. “Kate, you know I always want you–”
“But then what’s wrong? Is it my leg? Because I’m alright now, Anthony, really. You’ve been so careful since I got better, and that’s been lovely, really it has…” She peers up at him, earnest and plaintive and so desperately alluring he wants to scream. “But I won’t break.”
“It’s not–”
“Please, Anthony.” She steps in closer and lifts up onto her toes, breathing the words against his ear. “Tell me you’ll fuck me.”
“God, Kate.” He groans, staggering back from her. “Don’t.”
Now is absolutely not the time to realise he has a proclivity for lewd talk but his body doesn’t seem to give a damn about the timing. His arousal strains against his breeches, the ache of it threatening to make him forget all his good intentions. Just the thought of his clever, sensible wife – who takes tea with his mother and plays games with his little brother – coming home to him with this filthy demand on the tip of her pretty little tongue … it’s too good. Too much. But if she says another word, it won’t nearly be enough. He’ll want more. He’ll take more.
“Please,” he says, almost begging now. “Please stop saying that.”
“Oh,” she says, her cheeks starting to flush. She steps back, staring down at her feet. “I’m sorry, I – I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s immodest–”
If she didn’t look so upset, he might have laughed. As if he cares about modesty here. As if he isn’t harder right now than he’s been in months.
“It’s not that,” he says hurriedly, tucking his hand under her chin and lifting her face to look at him. He almost wishes he hadn’t. It hurts – actually physically pains him – not to kiss that little frown off her face. “Kate, it’s not that at all.”
“But…” she whines, adorably, drunkenly confused. “I don’t understand.”
Anthony lets out a groan, and the sound seems to contain every last thing he’s feeling. Lust. Frustration. Hell, even a little amusement. She’s his, only his, and she looks about five seconds away from getting on her knees and begging for it, and he – God, he can’t. Not like this. Not when she’s liable to cast up her accounts before he’s even finished undressing her. If he doesn’t laugh he might well cry.
“It’s just that when you say … that,” he says, choosing his words carefully, “It makes me want to do that.”
She bites her lip, reaching for him. “Then why don’t you–”
“Because, my love,” he says, catching her wandering hands and pressing a kiss to her knuckles, “you are completely foxed right now. You probably won’t even remember any of this in the morning.”
“But I still want–”
“Trust me,” he says, pouring all his frustration into this promise, “when I give you what you want, you’re going to want to remember it.”
“Oh,” she says, her lips curling into a smile. He can’t tear his eyes from the little indentation where she bit down on her bottom lip a moment ago. “So it’s just a no for now?”
He nods, his breath catching at the hungry, desperate look that flickers in her eyes.
“I want you to ask me again,” he says quietly, leaning in to speak the instruction right against her lips. “When you have your wits about you. Ask me again.”
He only means to tease her, intending to pull away again quickly, but just like the very first time – like so many times since – he loses control. Though when it comes to her, losing control never feels much like losing anything at all. He tightens his hand on her arm, growling a low, impatient noise in the back of his throat as he leans down and kisses her – just once, hard and rough and far too quick.
“Anthony…” she whines, chasing his lips as he pulls away. “Please–”
He shakes his head gently, running his knuckles slowly down the line of her jaw. “Ask me again,” he repeats, his voice low and strained, “and I promise I will bend you over the nearest hard surface and fuck you until you scream.”
He tells himself he means it to shock her – to make her blush and mumble and change the topic, and save him from any more of this torture.
But she only smiles, looking at him like he just promised her all the stars in the sky, and says, breathlessly, “Oh, yes please.”
And that’s when Anthony, Viscount Bridgerton, respected land-owner and member of the House of Lords, actually whimpers.
Suddenly he’s very glad she won’t remember any of this tomorrow.
“Nightdress!” he all but yells, staggering back from her before he does something he really can’t take back, something like ripping her chemise in half right from that tiny little bow right between her breasts. “You need a nightdress!”
Preferably a long one.
With a high neck.
And very long sleeves.
“I’ll go and find one in your dressing room,” he says, the words running together in his haste. “You – you see to your toilette. Brush your teeth. Splash some cold water on yourself.”
He closes his eyes against the sudden, unwelcome image of her chemise, soaked through and clinging to her curves.
“Just,” he grits out, “go on, please.”
Kate gives him a slightly bemused smile but does as he asks, pulling off her loosened corset on her way.
He tells himself not to turn and watch her go.
He tells himself not to follow her.
And really, he reasons as he watches her walk away, her chemise almost sheer in the candlelight, one out of two isn’t so very bad.
He finds a nightdress in her dressing room almost immediately. And then he spends the next several minutes pacing the small room, counting to five hundred in French and waiting for one of the most inconvenient erections of his life to subside.
“Marrying the girl was supposed to put an end to this sort of thing...” he mutters, addressing his complaints to one of Kate’s hairbrushes. Then he groans, looking ruefully at his reflection in the small mirror. “Pull yourself together, Bridgerton.”
By the time he returns to the bedroom he’s fairly sure he’s done just that. He’s calm. Collected. He is not a randy young boy anymore. He’s not even the smooth, sophisticated rake he was in his early twenties. He’s a serious, respectful, married man whose wife is––
Wearing nothing but his shirt.
God in heaven, she’s going to end him.
“What–” He’s not sure his voice has reached a pitch this high since before it broke. “What are you doing?”
“Getting ready for bed, of course,” she says, looking at him like he’s the drunken one. It’s starting to feel that way. “Like you told me to.”
“But–” He waves his hand vaguely at her, feeling a flush of heat warming his cheeks. “That’s my shirt.”
It’s barely long enough to cover her modesty, the ends skimming indecently high at the top of her thighs. And her legs – Lord, her legs seem to go on forever. He’d almost forgotten how long they are, after so much time with one always strapped up and immobile. Now is a terrible, terrible time to be reminded.
“Oh, this?” she says, tugging at the hem. “You were taking too long to bring me a nightdress.”
“But it’s mine,” he says dumbly.
“With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” she intones. “Isn’t that how the vows go?”
“I don’t think this is what the Bishop had in mind.”
She shrugs, reaching for the hem. “I can take it off if you’d prefer…”
“No!” He jumps forward, seizing her wrists before she can lift the blasted thing over her head. “No, no, keep it on, please. Or at least, put this on instead.”
“No thank you,” she says, taking the nightdress from his hands and tossing it over her shoulder. “I’d rather sleep in this.” She turns her head into the edge of the collar of his shirt, breathing in deeply. “It smells nice. Like you.”
Anthony groans, wondering if perhaps he should’ve stayed in the other room until he reached a thousand. Twice. Maybe he ought to just sleep in there.
“Are you alright, Anthony?” She stares at him, swaying slightly on the spot again. “You’re acting rather oddly.”
“I’m acting oddly…?!” He huffs a quiet, strained laugh, rolling his eyes up at the ceiling.
She giggles. “More than usual, I mean.”
It’ll only encourage her if he smiles.
He does it anyway.
“Come on, you,” he says, steering her to take a seat on the stool in front of her vanity. “Let’s get you ready for bed before we find ourselves dealing with the ‘in sickness’ part of those vows, shall we?”
“We’ve already covered that,” she says, rolling the ankle on her healed leg. “And you were marvellous.”
“And here I thought I was ‘overbearing’ and ‘overprotective’–”
“Oh, you were unbearable,” she says, but her eyes are fond as she watches him in the mirror. “But you were there. The whole time I was cooped up in the house, when I was bitter and bored and snapping at you. You stayed.”
“Of course I stayed.”
“‘In sickness and in health’,” she says, sighing in pleasure as he begins to carefully untangle her curls with his fingers.
“Precisely.”
“But do you realise how rare that is?” she says, turning slightly to look at him over her shoulder, “After tonight, I’m not convinced that marriage vows matter very much to anyone else in the ton.”
“I’m afraid that’s probably true,” he says, steering her to turn back around.
“I mean … I have always known – you know – that not all marriages were like ours. But until this evening I didn’t really know-know…” Her reflection blinks back at him in the mirror, her tired eyes wide and so very earnest. “Do you know?”
“Err–” He pulls a face, trying to sort her rambling sentence into some semblance of sense. “I think so.”
“It’s not just the ones who didn’t get on, either.” Suddenly she looks really quite sober. And really quite sad. “Even the ladies who seemed fairly happy with their lot … I don’t know how to explain it, but everything about their marriages sounded just … less, somehow. When they were talking about their husbands, I could tell they weren’t really friends.”
“Are we friends, then?” he jokes, trying to steer her away from the melancholy turn of her thoughts.
“Of course,” she says lightly, a fond smile tugging at her lips. “I wouldn’t let just anyone braid my hair, you know.”
Anthony chuckles quietly, taking a moment to study the pretty picture they make in the mirror – tired eyes and matching smiles.
“When Daphne was in her first season,” he says, returning his attention to her hair, “my mother told her that was the key to a happy marriage. To marry your dearest friend.”
“Wise woman, your mother.”
“She told me I should marry the person who made me feel most myself. She wanted me to marry the girl who made me laugh again.”
“I do hope that was me or this is a terrible story.”
He laughs, tugging lightly on her hair. “Of course it was you, you daft girl. She told me – not at the time but later – that she’d heard me laughing.” It’s so much easier to talk about this when he’s not looking at her, when he’s just concentrating on the three pieces of hair in his hands, one turn, then another, then another. “That night we met, she heard it all the way across the ballroom. She knew I’d been dancing with both the Sharma girls, but she didn’t know who it was that made me laugh. She spent weeks trying to figure out if it was you or Edwina.”
“When did she realise?”
“She guessed at Ascot, apparently,” he says, huffing a laugh at the memory of that day. What a terrible, terrible suitor he’d made for Edwina, ignoring the poor girl all afternoon. “But she says knew at Aubrey Hall.”
“Before you did.”
“Long before,” he says, shaking his head. “What a fool I was.”
“Do you ever …” She stops, looking down at her hands. “Nevermind.”
“Go on – do I ever what?”
She sucks in a breath, still not looking at him. “Do you ever wonder what it might have been like if you’d married Edwina instead? Like you planned?”
“Oh.” Something drops in his stomach.
Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that.
“No,” he says, quite honestly. “Never.”
Kate hums a vaguely interested sound, fidgeting idly with her wedding ring. She does this sometimes, rolling it back and forth with her thumb when she’s thinking hard, keeping it up until he puts his hand over hers and says, penny for your thoughts, and she tells him, whatever it is. Always. Tonight he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to hear that she’s wondering how that diamond might have looked on Edwina’s dainty ring finger.
Silence stretches between them, thick with all the things they’re not saying. Anthony concentrates on finishing her braid, trying to soothe himself with the neatness of it. The order. But when he glances up and catches her eyes in the mirror, he can feel every tidy thing inside him starting to unravel.
It seems impossible that not five minutes ago he was aching for her, halfway to picking her up and throwing her down onto their bed and now – now all he wants is to scoop her up and lay her down there gently, to tuck the covers around her and kiss her goodnight, and pray she doesn’t dream about the lonely lives they might have lived.
As he ties off the end of her plait, he realises his fingers are shaking.
And he knows he has to ask.
“Do you?” he says, his voice carefully even. “Do you think about it?”
“Sometimes,” she says without hesitation, because they don’t lie to each other. Even when it hurts. And God, this hurts. She flicks a cautious look at him in the mirror, trying to smile. “I had a dream about it once.”
“Sounds more like a nightmare,” he blurts, surprising a little laugh out of her. “Do not mistake me,” he goes on, “you know I’m very fond of your sister … but we would never have made each other happy. Not like you and I do.”
Kate smiles at that, and it almost reaches her eyes. Almost.
“Perhaps she’d have been right at home at Lady Danbury’s tonight,” she jokes weakly, turning around again to face him. “Full of complaints about your dull marriage and–”
“I never would’ve married her,” he says, his voice quiet but firm. Certain. “You know that.”
“I withdrew my objection,” she says quietly, rolling her ring again, twisting his stomach in knots with every little movement. “That morning, I–”
“That’s not why,” he says, leaning down slightly, just enough to close his hands over hers. “Even with your blessing, I would never have gone through with it. I’m sure of that. If it wasn’t that damned bee, it would’ve been something else.”
“I like to think so,” she whispers.
“I know so,” he says, without hesitation. “From the first moment I met you – when you stood on my foot and you called me out on my nonsense and you made me laugh – Kate, I was never marrying anyone else. Not after that.” He crouches down, bringing himself down to eye level with her. “I think I loved you, even then.”
She rolls her eyes at that, but he can see the faint hint of colour coming back into her cheeks. “Every time you tell that story, the moment you fall in love with me gets earlier and earlier, do you know that?”
“I know,” he says quietly, cupping her cheeks in his palms. “Sometimes I think I was born loving you. I just didn’t know what to do with the feeling, not until I met you.”
“Oh, Anthony,” she whimpers, pressing her trembling lips together.
“Don’t cry, my love,” he says softly, brushing the tears from her cheeks. “No-one likes a maudlin drunk, you know.”
She sighs, her smile wry and a little embarrassed, but pleased. Charmed. “It’s rather hard not to melt into a puddle at your feet when you say things like that, you know.”
“Melt into my arms instead,” he says, straightening up and offering her his hand to stand up. “Sounds far more comfortable.”
For once in her life, she does precisely as he asks.
“I’m sorry,” she says, the words muffled against his chest as she burrows into his arms. “I don’t even know why I brought that up.”
“It’s alright.” He squeezes her a little tighter, pressing a kiss against her hair. “Strong drink makes people do all sorts of daft things.”
“It was just … all those lonely marriages, and then you mentioned Edwina and I – suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about how that could have been you.” She pulls back, peering up at him with glassy, red-rimmed eyes. “I can’t bear to think of you being unhappy like that.”
“Oh, my love.” Anthony pulls her closer, a little roughly, too overwhelmed to make the gesture gentle. He buries his face in her hair, glad that she can’t see him as he falls apart, just a little, over the realisation that this – God, this – is what upset her. Not the thought of what it might have cost her to see him marry someone else. Not all the things she would have lost. Just the thought that he would have been unhappy.
I don’t deserve her.
It’s an old thought, an old guilt.
He carefully moves it aside.
Because that’s the thing about Kate’s particular sort of grace. It isn’t earned. It just is. And everyday he’s getting a little better at accepting that, learning to simply count his blessings instead of trying to cling on to them tight, afraid they’ll slip through his fingers.
“I am happy, Kate,” he says, ducking his head to kiss her, hoping she can taste the truth of it on his tongue. “Don’t waste your worries on what might have been. I’m happy. Edwina is happy. You’re happy.” His lips quirk. “Newton is ecstatic.”
She hums a laugh at that, the sound vibrating pleasantly where her chest is crushed against his. “When you put it like that…”
“See? Everything turned out for the best. Although,” he allows, “I do wish I’d given you a proper courtship.”
“Who says you didn’t? You gave me flowers ... You stole a kiss.”
“But you didn’t get a proper proposal. You deserved that.”
“I don’t care.” She steps back, waving a vague hand around the room – over her things and his, all mixed up together. “You gave me this. You gave me a proper marriage. That’s more than enough.”
Anthony opens his mouth, closes it again. Then he says, simply, “Come here.”
He folds her back into his arms, peace washing over him as he smooths his hand over her hair, his finger running down the ridges of her braid. Kate sighs out a quiet sound that might be his name, slowly leaning all her weight against him, and not for the first time, it occurs to him that he could hold her like this for hours – days, weeks, every night for a lifetime – and still not be ready to let go. The thought used to scare him, that ticking clock in the back of his mind seeming to chime the hour, but now he rather likes it – the thought that he loves her so much that nothing will ever be enough. He’ll always want more tomorrow.
“Put me to bed, Anthony,” she says, her voice rough with tiredness. “Please.”
They’re standing right beside the bed, three paces away at most, but he picks her up anyway. She wraps her legs around his waist, her chin resting on his shoulder. On another night it would be something else, something sensual, but right now there’s nothing in his heart but tenderness, and she clings to him like a child, trusting and sweet, as he makes the short journey to her side of the bed.
He sets her down carefully, peeling the coverlet back and holding it up as she slides inside.
“Well?” he says, as he tucks the sheets around her. “How did I do, my lady? As your maid?”
Kate laughs quietly. “Passable, I suppose,” she says, watching him with undisguised appreciation as he sheds his banyan and trousers on the way round to his side of the bed.
He doesn’t preen at the attention. Much.
“But I think…” she says, staring quite openly at his nakedness as he slips into bed beside her, “that I’d better keep Emily. I have other duties in mind for you.”
He inclines his head deferentially. “As you wish, my lady.”
“Although this plait is rather good, I’ll give you that,” she says, toying with the end of her braid. “Have you done this before?”
“Don’t you remember? When you hurt your leg, I–”
“No, before that,” she says, still staring at the neatly knotted strip of muslin. “Where did you learn to braid hair like this?”
“Oh, well...” he says awkwardly, thumping his pillow into shape, “Hyacinth gets these terrible tangles, you know. And she went through this phase of not letting the maids touch her hair, so…”
He trails off, suddenly afraid to look at her. More afraid to look away. Kate goes very still, dropping the end of her braid, and for a split second Anthony steels himself for laughter, his cheeks already starting to burn. Then suddenly she launches herself across the space between them, throwing her arms around him and burying her head in his neck, and he realises that the little hitch he heard in her breathing wasn’t laughter at all.
“That,” she whimpers, “is the sweetest thing I have ever heard.”
He laughs, wrapping his arms around her. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says. “You’ll ruin my reputation.”
“I won’t,” she says, pulling back to look at him, a soft smile playing around her lips. “I like keeping your secrets.”
He leans over to blow out the light before pulling her back into his arms. “I like it too.”
“Tell me another,” she whispers into the darkness, her lips brushing against his collarbone, soft and sweet. “Tell me something no-one else knows.”
“There’s nothing,” he whispers back. “You know all my secrets.”
It’s almost funny, really, how much that thought used to scare him. It didn’t seem possible that he’d ever find someone who would come to know him like this, inside and out, and still want to stay. Still want to know more.
But she’s an exception, his Kate. One of a kind.
Or rather, one of a pair. A matched set. Twin fools. Twin souls.
God, he’s so lucky he found her.
“It doesn’t have to be something big,” she says, her voice thick with sleep. “Just something.”
“Alright,” he says quietly. “Alright.” He hugs her close, whispering in her ear. “When Hyacinth decided she was old enough to braid her own hair, I came home and cried.”
It’s true, of course, but he can admit that he says it mostly to earn a smile. Perhaps a kiss.
It’s a surprise then, when she shoves at him and rolls away and onto her back, groaning.
“Kate?” He turns over, studying the lines of her face in the gloom. “What–”
“What are you doing to me?” she whines, huffing a small, quiet laugh.
“I–
“You cannot get into bed — in the nude! —and then say things like that and not expect me to want to make a baby. Immediately!”
“Oh.” He throws his head back against his pillow and laughs, not even stopping when she throws out an arm and hits him. “Sorry?”
“You will be,” she says mutinously.
He laughs again, dodging her next blow.
“Come here,” he says, and she does, grumbling all the while. “Sleep now. Babies tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow…” she says dreamily, burrowing further into his arms, her breathing starting to slow as she slides towards sleep.
Anthony closes his eyes, assuming she’s almost dropped off, but then she says, in a very small voice, “We’ll still be like this tomorrow, won’t we? Tomorrow and tomorrow and the next day?”
“What–”
“I just…” She sighs, more than half asleep. “All those marriages … all those unhappy people. That – that won’t ever be us, will it?”
“No, my love,” he says soothingly, running his hand along her spine, pressing her closer to him. Then he kisses her, soft and quick. “That will never be us.”
“I didn’t think so,” she whispers, the sherry still sweet on her breath. Then she giggles, very quietly. “Just checking.”
He hums a tired, quiet laugh, settling her more comfortably into his arms, her head pillowed lightly on his shoulder.
“Shall I tell you another secret?” he whispers, listening to the sound of her breathing, slow and steady against his chest. He sets his heartbeat to that now – to her, keeping time to the familiar rhythm of her breath, barely hearing the tick of his watch at all.
“Shall I tell you what I really tell Simon about you, when we’re at our club?” He smiles, though she can’t see it. “I tell him that you are the very best thing that ever happened to me. And then, usually, I tell him goodnight, because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than at home with you, holding you in my arms–”
She snuffles a soft, unmistakable snore.
“Talking to myself,” he finishes, smiling into the darkness.
--
The next morning, Anthony wakes to bright sunshine, the smell of fresh, strongly brewed tea, and the feeling of Kate’s index finger insistently poking him in the shoulder.
“Ah, good morning, wife,” he says, stretching through a yawn. “And how is my little drunkard today?”
“My head hurts.” She works her jaw, like she’s trying to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She probably is. “Why does my head hurt?”
“I suspect that’ll have something to do with you trying to drink all the fortified wine in Lady Danbury’s cellar last night.”
“Ugh.” Kate falls back onto the pillow beside him, groaning. “And why am I in your shirt? Did you do that?”
“Oh no, that was all you, my love.” He rolls onto his side, wincing in sympathy as he takes in the sorry state of her. Red eyes. Dry lips. Pillow creases on her cheeks. “Don’t you remember?”
“Bits and bobs,” she says, running a hand over her temples, like that might smooth the pieces back into place. “Was I really very ridiculous?” She removes her hand, peeking over at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you going to tease me all day long? Oh God, you are, aren’t you?”
He could. He thinks of her staggering up the stairs, fumbling the door handle, swaying into the room. A glass of water on top of a book on the floor. I am entirely out of my cups thank you very much.
But then–
A giggle. A tired, soft smile. I even miss you when you’re in another room. Her hair slipping between his fingers. Tell me something no-one else knows.
“No,” he says softly. “I’m going to take care of you.”
“Oh.”
And then, because he might be a good husband but he’s certainly not a saint, he winks at her and says, “I’ll wait and tease you tomorrow. When you’re feeling better.”
He expects her to groan. Maybe roll her eyes. Possibly throw something at him.
But she only laughs, a little of her usual spirit sparkling in her eyes. “Oh no, no,” she says, tutting softly at him. “When I’m feeling better we’ll be doing something else entirely.”
“You…” His voice does that thing again, reaching a pitch he’s never heard before. “You remember that?”
“Why don’t you ask me again,” she says, in a passable imitation of his instruction from last night. “When you have your wits about you.” Then she smiles at him, reaching for her cup of tea from the bedside table. “Not that you ever do, really.”
He laughs so loudly that she tells him off for hurting her aching head.
--