kanthony bridgerton

She feels his arm go suddenly rigid as he turns them back the way they came at Lady Trowbridge's ball and Sophie frowns. “Brother?” 

“Mm.”

Sophie tilts her head at him. “Did you see some sort of ghost?” 

“One from my brother's past you need not concern yourself with,” he tells her. 

“Well, now you have my attention,” she grins, stopping their turn about the room to face him. 

“Sophie-”

“Which one?” 

“You need not concern yourself, Sister,” Anthony stresses. 

She stares at him expectantly. 

He deflates, sighing heavily. “The mouse-haired woman. Short. Loud.”

“Yes?” 

“Lady Emily Chatham. Formerly Miss Emily Dorset. The first young lady Benedict ever courted,” Anthony explains. 

“Oh,” Sophie says quietly. “It…it did not end well…?”

“She rejected him," Anthony nods. “She was only interested in titled gentlemen. Used him for gifts. Attention.” He pauses and lowers his voice. “Other activities.”

Sophie blinks in silence. She thinks about their first conversation on the terrace. How Benedict had thought the ton's young ladies searching for a husband had little to do with him. 

It now makes sense as to why. 

Sophie attempts to head back towards Lady Chatham, and Anthony tugs her away again.  

“No.”

“I merely wish to talk to Lady Chatham.”

“No.”

“Anthony-” 

“Speaking to Lady Chatham will not change the way she treated Benedict,” he tells her quietly. “I can assure you that she feels no remorse for her actions. The best thing you can do is leave her be, and let the past stay in the past.” 

Sophie huffs but nods. “Fine.” 

***** 

And it’s not that Sophie doesn’t listen to Anthony. She does, of course she does. Head of the family, Benedict’s beloved older brother. She listens.

But she just…

Happens to get some lemonade later in the evening, close to where Lady Chatham is squawking with her friends. 

And it truly is squawking.

“...Believe he’s married now? Who would ever settle for a second son? And a weak one at that.” 

Sophie takes a deep breath, and sips her lemonade. 

“Clearly, being from the country, she knows no better,” one of the other women comments.”Pretty as she is, she could have anyone. And I’ve heard she’s quite clever as well. The new Lady Penwood speaks most highly of her.” 

“Well, at least Benedict is a decent lover,” Lady Chatham comments. “Maybe that’s all she was hoping for.” 

“Emily!” another woman cries, scandalized. 

“What?” Lady Chatham giggles. “I am a married lady now. It hardly matters. And he was so very easy…I bet he still is.” 

For a moment, Sophie worries that she’s gripping her glass of lemonade so hard it may break in her hand, but she doesn’t make a sound; doesn’t let on that she’s standing right next to them.

She is noticed, though. One of the other ladies spots her standing there, and clears her throat awkwardly, getting everyone else’s attention. 

Lady Chatham smiles venomously. “Mrs. Bridgerton. I did not see you standing there.” 

“Yes, well, you do not seem to notice very much beyond your own nose, Lady Chatham,” Sophie responds without thinking.

The other woman blinks, her smile falling a little. 

Sophie just smiles. 

“Is your husband not here with you tonight?” Lady Chatham asks, trying to regain some composure.

Sophie shakes her head. “He is home, finishing up a painting. He is quite dedicated to his art.” 

Lady Chatham seems to think she has regained the upper hand. “Oh, how nice. I knew he doodled in sketchbooks, but had not realized he had graduated to something less childlike.” 

“The curators for the National Gallery do not seem to think his work childlike at all,” Sophie responds coolly. “Considering they selected three of his completed paintings to display.” 

More silence falls over the group.

“He is still a second son,” Lady Chatham snaps. “And not even a spare anymore, since the Viscount has a new heir.” 

“Well, in matters of love, one hardly thinks about those kinds of things,” Sophie shrugs, sipping more of her lemonade. 

Lady Chatham scoffs. “Love.” 

“Yes. It is that thing one feels in their bones,” Sophie nods. “Have you not experienced it, Lady Chatham? How sad for you.” 

The other woman looks infuriated by the pity, which is when Anthony rushes over.

“Sister!” he cries, trying to look composed. “There you are. Are you well?” 

Sophie smiles at him. “Quite. I was just chatting with Lady Chatham and her friends.” 

Anthony looks at the other women, some of whom look a little stunned and Lady Chatham herself, who still looks outraged. “...Very nice to see all of you.” He turns to Sophie again. “I would very much like your opinion on a conversation I was having with…with Colin! Yes. Colin. This way.” 

Sophie gives the other ladies a curtsy with a sly grin. “So nice chatting with all of you,” she says as Anthony leads her away. 

“Sophie…” 

“I did nothing wrong, I wanted lemonade.” 

“There are six other lemonade tables situated around the room you could have chosen.” 

“I chose that one.” 

“Sophie.” 

“She is vile,” Sophie tells him quietly. 

“Yes,” Anthony agrees. “Which is why I tried to keep you away from her.” 

“She is not very clever, though,” Sophie tells him. 

He tries hard not to laugh. “Sophie.” 

“I am only saying,” she mutters.

They find Colin and Penelope in the crowd, and Colin looks utterly amused.

“Did Sophie just torture Lady Chatham?” he asks.

Anthony nods. “The woman looked outraged.” 

“Good show, Sister,” Colin grins. “She has had it coming for years and years.” 

“Do not encourage this madness,” Anthony orders. 

“Lady Chatham has long been someone I avoided writing about in Whistledown,” Penelope tells Sophie. “I found that though her exploits were entirely scandalous, she was not worth my time. To say nothing of the fact that everyone knew. The only time I wrote about her in earnest was when she miraculously found a husband.”

“Lord Chatham is an idiot,” Anthony comments. “I believe he once got a quill stuck up his nose.” 

Colin laughs. “How?” 

“I wish I knew,” Anthony marvels, before turning to Sophie. “Home?” 

Sophie nods. “Home.” 

***** 

She finds him in the study, still at his easel. 

Benedict looks tired, but determined. He glances up as she enters the room, and gives her a crooked smile. “I am nearly finished, I promise.” 

Sophie nods, and settles on the sofa, slipping off her shoes and curling her legs up. 

“How was the ball?” he asks. 

She shrugs. “I ran into someone you once knew.” 

“Oh?” he asks, chuckling softly. “I have known quite a few people.” 

“This one was not very kind,” Sophie tells him. “Lady Chatham.” 

He freezes, and she watches something like hurt flicker across his features as he sets his paint brush down. “Oh.” 

“Would you like to talk about it?” she asks softly.

“There is nothing to say,” he tells her, a tight grin gracing his lips. “I was young, and I thought it was love, and she knew better.” 

“She hurt you,” Sophie observes. 

“In a number of ways,” Benedict confirms. “None of which matter now.” 

She purses her lips and holds her arms out for him. 

“I’m fine.” 

“I know,” Sophie says. “But I wish to hold my husband.” 

His grin softens, no longer that tight, pained look, and he steps over, settling onto the sofa with her, into the circle of her arms. “Forgive me for missing tonight.” 

“There is nothing to forgive,” she assures him, cuddling in against him. “It is only a ball. There will be others.” 

Benedict nods and goes quiet, closing his eyes. 

“You have paint on your neck,” Sophie tells him.

“Mm-hmm,” he confirms. “I must have rubbed it absently earlier in the night.” 

“Ridiculous man,” she mutters, before leaning in to kiss him. 

He moans happily. “If Anthony finds us here like this, he will complain.” 

“As if we did not find him and Kate in the study at Our Cottage in a similar position,” Sophie teases. 

He doesn't tell Anthony about the nights he's spent with other boys at Eton. He doesn't tell him that he was dragged to a house party last fall and was very merrily had by two young women whose names he doesn't remember.

He does go to the brothel. He has a drink. He spends a few hours getting to know Christine, who is quite beautiful and has the funniest, most scandalous stories Benedict has ever heard. She eventually grabs him by the dick and declares that she's tired of talking.

The sex is fine. About as fine as it was with the girls at the house party. As fine as it was with the boys at school.

Though one winds up suspiciously dead soon after, and Benedict decides maybe women are a safer bet.

*****

He doesn't go back to the brothel, but he does fall into bed with a few friends.

There's one young lady of the ton. Emily.

She's funny, and mean, and witty, and Benedict might love her a little.

The sex is raucous. She hurts him, but he doesn't mind. The bruises and bite marks and verbal stings. It's…

It's not his favorite, the way she tells him she hates him when she comes, but maybe this is what love is.

Or not. Because when he brings up marriage, she laughs in his face and tells him she would never settle for a second son.

Asks if Anthony was looking for a wife.

*****

“Is this about Ms. Dorset?” Anthony asks as he watches the valet help Benedict pack his things.

“A little,” Benedict admits. “But also…” he shrugs. “At some point, mother has to be responsible for her own children.”

Anthony nods in agreement. “I am sorry about Ms. Dorset. She uh…inquired about my current prospects.”

Benedict gives him a tight smile. “Enjoy.”

*****

Sardinia is incredible.

Oddly, he spends most of his time either helping on farms in exchange for home cooked meals, or by the sea.

He'll never need to know how to pick figs or trim sheep wool or fish back home, but here…

Here.

He thinks deeply about staying forever. Here, there are no siblings to raise. There is no estate to help run. There's just sunshine and the sea and everything between.

Including Lillia.

She's older. Not that much older, but still. Beautiful and joyful. She laughs at his attempts to speak her language, but thankfully knows a fair amount of English. She's the daughter of a sheep farmer.

She beds him regularly.

It is…

Indescribable.

She shows him what it means to give pleasure - real pleasure. She kisses him like it's a game they play. She wants him. Truly, just him. Just Benedict.

They do other things, too. Work, obviously. She tries to teach him to cook and it goes so poorly she winds up on the floor of the kitchen, laughing.

They walk through the gardens one day, and Benedict freezes at the sound he hears.

Buzzing.

It's not that he doesn't hear bees all the time. He does. It just sometimes hits him funny.

Lillia squeezes his hand. Leads him over to a patch of daisies where a few bees are going about their business.

“No fear,” she encourages in English. “Beautiful. Important.”

They stand there in silence for a while.

“Dangerous,” Benedict tells her a little shakily in her language.

She nods. “Us, too.”

They stay there for a long time. Long enough for the bees to get tired. Some move along. Others fall asleep in their flowers.

Lillia reaches out, using a finger to pet a rather chubby bumble bee, and she smiles at him. “No fear.”

He watches her and nods. “No fear,” he agrees.

And he means it.

*****

Six months go by too quickly, but he promised Anthony he'd be home.

And a promise is a promise.

He makes none of those to Lillia, who just embraces him at the docks as he leaves. Plans on marrying one of the other local farmers. Will miss him, but not enough to uproot either of their lives.

Doesn't love him.

That's probably fine.

*****

Life is fine.

He mostly stays in the country.

When he turns twenty-four his inheritance becomes his own and he buys a little estate in Wiltshire. It gives him a place to get away. It gives the Crabtrees a place to call their own.

He still goes to London for the season. It's mostly just him and Anthony. Sometimes their mother.

In watching Violet Bridgerton struggle to keep her foot in society without the love of her life, Benedict comes to realize that perhaps it isn't what he wants.

If true love only ever ends in heartbreak, he would rather avoid sporting the haunted look in his mother's eyes.

If loving someone that much, that hard, is destined to end in the destruction of oneself, then he's not certain he sees the point.

Emily Dorset married a baron. Benedict gives her a polite smile when she informs him.

“Good for you,” he says, more amused than anything else. He can't imagine being married to her now. He knows now he would have been miserable with her.

Emily watches him, expecting him to have more of a reaction.

He just sips some lemonade.

*****

Genevieve. Lucy. Tessa. It all feels very much the same. Nice. Pleasant.

Fine.

The revelation about his art school acceptance hurts more than Genevieve's rejection.

He is starting to feel as though he has been superfluous this entire time. The sibling herder. The second son. Sometimes his family looks at him with such disappointment he thinks maybe they'd be happier if he left again.

He misses Sardinia sometimes.

He'd be out of place there, too.

Anthony marries, and they'll start having children soon, and then Benedict will be truly put out to pasture.

Tilley is beautiful and daring. He thinks maybe this is where his future could lay. With her. She's fun. A little focused on being not like everyone else. His family likes her. He starts to enjoy her more and more. Starts to think…

And then he meets Paul.

Paul is handsome. Charming. A lot like Tilley.

When he catches them kissing, he realizes that Tilley was never serious about him.

More games.

Emily.

Lillia.

Tilley.

He can play games, too. He doesn't tell them about the boys at Eton. Doesn't let on that he's familiar with that part of himself but chose to lock it away.

Beds both of them and it's good. Paul is certainly more skilled than any other sexual partner of the male persuasion he's had.

It's nice.

Maybe he doesn't need to lock that part of himself up so tightly anymore.

Tilley offers something more serious, out of the blue, and Benedict lets her down gently. He'd rather explore. He'd rather not be tied to someone who was so ready to play with his feelings.

*****

He meets lots of people. He beds most of them.

Paul pops up here and there, but there was a night where things got out of hand, and while pain can sometimes be pleasurable…

Benedict left that night feeling as though he'd been torn apart bit by bit. He had been something to be used, and not a willing participant.

They never spoke again.

His family don't seem to notice that he stays away from Grosvenor Square for a week while he heals up.

Louis is nice. Consistent. Fun. Virginia, too. Others.

It's good.

It's fine.

It breaks up the monotony of running the estate while Anthony is gone.

Anthony, who had a son.

Anthony, who doesn't really need Benedict anymore. Will never need him again.

That's fine.

*****

A young lady dressed all in silver stares upwards at the chandelier at his mother's masquerade, and Benedict's brain clicks over. Sees her in sketch strokes and charcoal curves on paper.

She asks him to wade into deeper water with her. Challenges him. Makes him feel a little seen for the first time in…

Well.

It's so strange. This woman in his arms who feels like she has always been there. Should always have been there. Should always be there.

When she runs, it's like she's running out with his heart trailing behind her.

When she kisses him it's like a bolt of lightning.

Fuck.

Fuck.

*****

He can't find her.

He finds Sophie Baek instead.

Rigid, beautiful, infuriating, clever, lovely, courageous Sophie Baek.

They kiss by the lake, and it takes every shred of common sense he has not to pin her to a tree and ruck up her dress and-

That's a new feeling.

But he knows he has to put a stop to it. Mrs. Crabtree is right.

She is.

She’s right.

That doesn’t stop him from touching himself to the thought of her right next door in the guestroom. In her chemise. The possibility that she could slip into his room again at any moment. This time to crawl into bed with him.

It also doesn’t stop him from convincing his mother to employ Sophie at Bridgerton house or…running into her all the time, or comparing every young lady he runs into to her.

“Compared to what?” Sophie had demanded weeks into her employment after a particularly mortifying afternoon with Ms. Hollis.

It’s never felt like this before. He’s never been so completely and utterly entranced by anyone. Not anyone, and hearing how happy Hiscox is with his mistress…

It seems sensible. Realistic. A way to be with this woman he can’t seem to get off his mind.

They practically collide in the stairwell that night, and when she comes against him, pressed to the wall, her calloused, strong fingers in his hair, she sounds so relieved that he nearly does as well.

When she walks away, reality comes crashing back into him.

It twists him up for days. She refuses his offer. She pushes him away.

As he struggles with her rejection, he realizes that this is what love is. This is that feeling his mother cannot stop talking about.

It terrifies him, and he should run. Back to the countryside; away from Sophie Baek and her big brown eyes and her calloused fingers and her sweet lips.

She is a maid, and even if she weren’t, he has no business falling in love with anyone. He isn’t Anthony or Daphne or Colin or Francesca. He’s never been the one before and nothing has really changed.

Except that there is Sophie.

Her very existence seems to turn his life upside down. Make him determined to be with her in whatever way he can.

They fight in the hallway, during Hyacinth’s recital, Sophie clearly doesn’t understand; thinks that this is passing fancy for him, when it’s not.

It’s not.

“I love you,” he whispers, arms outstretched, and it finally seems to sink in.

He’s never said it to anyone. No one has ever said it in return before.

She is so beautiful. The most beautiful woman Benedict has ever laid eyes on. Being with her like this, truly being with her, is like nothing he has ever experienced. This is not just fine. This is not just a nice time.

This is everything.

Feeling her clench around him as she reaches completion a second time rips his own release from him, and his vision whites out.

When she falls into an exhausted sleep in his arms after, all he can think about is what their lives will be like now. How happy they can be together.

He wants this.

He wants this so much, he no longer gives a good god damn about how he gets it. He plans for My Cottage to be their home; to travel between two worlds. To be with Sophie. To give her a life. To love her for the rest of his.

When she makes the decision to leave eight days later, he’s not really surprised, but he is heartbroken. He offers her support anyways. For her to stay on at his mother’s home, or to pay for a place for her to live. To give her something; anything.

Show her in some way what she truly means to him.

She turns down all of it. It’s just who she is. She calls what they had a mistake.

And he knew, deep down, that that was true for most of the people in his life. That he had likely just been a clerical error somewhere along the way; that Colin should have been the spare.

Sophie’s words hurt more, somehow.

His life will go back to what it was. Everything will be fine. He will fill in for Anthony in town while Anthony enjoys his wife and his child at Aubrey Hall, and it will be like none of this ever happened, and Benedict will-

He’ll-

He’ll live, he supposes.

*****

John dies.

Sophie stays longer.

He nearly kisses her in the study. Wants so desperately to take comfort in her, and can’t. Won’t. It’s not what she wants. Or it is, but she’s determined that she cannot have it.

Him.

He loses it a little.

It’s just too fucking much.

He yells at a barrister. He yells at his mother. Admits to loving Sophie when he doesn’t mean to.

It earns him her blessing and a promise ring to use, but when he tries, he’s too late. Sophie is already gone, left a necklace Benedict recognizes far too late, and a very specific glove in her wake.

Fuck.

Fuck.

*****

He doesn’t sleep for a few days. Searches for her at the docks. Is ready to throw himself into the sea to find her. Finds out she’s been thrown in jail by her wretched fucking stepmother.

Of all the things he thought he’d be doing, bailing the lady in the silver gown out of jail wasn’t really one of them but here they are.

She didn’t tell him; didn’t feel like he could swallow the truth of who she was. He fell in love with her twice, and still…

Again. This isn’t surprising. This is just more of the same.

Except it’s not. Because Sophie is Sophie. There are reasons behind everything she does. None of it is done on a whim, or for her own gain. It’s all in the name of protection. Of shielding herself from harm.

She pushes him away so hard because she's been hurt over and over and over again. It's a familiar story, sadly.

“We cannot risk it,” she whispers in the bath, after they’ve put some puzzle pieces together. After she kisses him within an inch of his god damned life. She practically threw him against the back of the tub. He can't say he's mad about it.

He touches her, giving her what she needs; what he needs to give her. When she reaches back to grip him in return, it’s an overload of sensation. Too much. She gets distracted, though, as his fingers press more firmly into her clit, as she starts to spiral into completion. The sounds she makes spur him on, and he kisses her after, as she slumps back against him.

He knows now. He knows that for once in his life, his feelings weren't misplaced. This woman is all he wants. Will ever want, or need. That life he imagined weeks ago may not have felt attainable to either of them then, but Benedict no longer cares.

There is nothing but Sophie.

*****

They get the queen’s approval by the skin of their teeth. They get engaged quickly.

This is forever. This is what he’s been looking for, this whole time. Simply someone who loves him; who isn’t more interested in their own prospects or their own pleasure than avoiding hurting his feelings.

It’s probably too low a bar. Benedict isn’t sure he cares.

They marry on a sunny day when the weather isn’t quite warm, and it’s perfect.

Sophie is perfect. Mostly because she isn’t, but that’s a thought process or another day.