Archive of Our Own

The morning after the Featherington Ball, London smells like fireworks.

And Kate feels like one.

Unpredictable. Brilliant. Made to be seen.

Although — she pauses at the top of the servant’s staircase at the back of Danbury House, peering down at the footman halfway up — ideally not at this precise moment. She dances her fingers along the bannister, breathing in the scent of gunpowder drifting in from the open window as she silently counts his steps up towards the first floor, where experience tells her he will disappear out onto the landing, taking his early morning grumbles with him.

A restless, slightly giddy sort of anticipation thrums beneath her skin as she slips down the now empty staircase, her mind already flitting out of the window and off into the park, where she half-expects to find Anthony waiting, impatient as her heart. The spark to her fuse.

Half-expects, only because they have not planned to meet. They couldn’t have. She did not even know she would be sneaking out this morning until she found herself padding silently past Mary’s bedroom door with her boots in hand, trying desperately not to hum the music from last night’s ball as it whispered invitingly in the back of her mind.

And yet — it’s more than half, really.

In truth she fully expects to find him waiting for her in those familiar woods today, no matter which of the dozen paths she takes through the trees. Beyond that, she expects … many things. Another race, perhaps. Another kiss, perhaps. Another argument, almost certainly. More fireworks.

What she does not expect is to open the doors onto the mews at the back of Danbury House and find him waiting right there in the sunlit courtyard, leaning idly against the stable wall as if every last brick was laid solely for the purpose of his comfort.

“Lord Bridgerton!” She pulls up short, dropping her boots to the cobblestones with a clatter.

“Miss Sharma.” He smirks at her obvious surprise, pushing himself off the wall and making his way over to the doorway. “Good morning.”

It’s an effort, schooling her face to hide how appealing she finds that slight saunter in his stride, but she manages it somehow.

“You are up with the larks today, my lord,” she says idly, as if it is of no great consequence to her. As if her heart hasn’t left her chest entirely, off soaring somewhere up near the rafters at the mere thought of him slipping out of bed before sunrise, simply to see in the dawn beside her.

“I suppose I am,” he allows, stopping at the threshold of the house, mere inches away. He rocks on his heels, tilting closer and then back, like a child with a secret, barely contained. “What can I say? I missed you.”

There’s something sweetly honest beneath his nonchalance and the quiet joy of it sneaks beyond her defences, setting her smile free before she ever quite decides to stop withholding it.

“And I you,” she allows, watching his own smile lift in response to hers — growing wider and brighter, and far more dangerous.

It would be easy, so very easy, to give in to a smile like that. To take a step back and pull him into the cool darkness of the boot room, and show him just how much she has missed him in the few short hours since they parted in the Featherington gardens last night. She contemplates the prospect for a moment, flexing her toes on the freezing cold stone beneath her feet, and then tosses the idea aside. A kiss would be nice, of course, but darkness won’t do; she is all sunshine today.

She steps out into the daylight instead, letting the warmth of the early morning sun hit her cheeks as she tilts her face up towards the sky. “It is going to be a beautiful day.”

“It already is,” he replies at once, his eyes fixed on her face.

She isn’t looking at him, of course, but she knows where his eyes are. She always knows.

This morning, that doesn’t feel like such a problem anymore.

“Quite the perfect conditions for a ride, in fact.” She glances back at him, lifting her brows in a gentle challenge. “Do you not think, my lord?”

“I thought you might say so.” He glances down at his open hand, absently rubbing his thumb over his palm. “Have you been out since … since that day?”

“No,” she says quietly, hating the flicker of remembered pain in his eyes.

Not for the first time, she wishes she could remember more of that morning. There is the rain, and the ride, the tender ache between her thighs, and then — nothing. She could ask him, she knows, and he would not deny her. She is beginning to understand that now, that there is nothing in this world that he would deny her. If she asked him, he would tell her the whole story, piece by painful piece. What he saw. How it felt. All the things he whispered in her ear when she was beyond hearing anything at all. For her sake, he’d cut open the scar of that morning, and let her examine the wounds it left on his heart. All she would have to do is ask.

“No,” he echoes, bringing her back to the present. Clear skies. Dry ground. Safety.

She could never ask him to go back to the storm.

“I did not think you had. But …” He waves his hand around the mews. “I had an inkling that you might wish to recommence the habit today.”

“And?” she prompts, suddenly suspicious of his appearance right here, beside the stable doors. “You thought to prevent me?”

For a moment the lingering motes of gunpowder in the air seem to swirl up around her, threatening to catch.

Until—

“Prevent you?” The sharp sound of his laughter rings out around the courtyard, sending a few blackbirds scattering from the stable roof to the sky. “I would be a fool to attempt anything of the sort.”

“Oh.” She tugs awkwardly on her riding habit, straightening the already perfect lapels. “Well … yes. Yes, you would.”

“And in truth,” he goes on, his voice growing softer now, quiet in that way of his that she feels in her bones, “I would not want to.”

“No?”

“Never,” he murmurs, with a slow, almost mesmerised shake of his head. “You are magnificent on horseback, Kate.”

“Is that so?” Smiling softly, she lifts her face back to the sun, feeling him settle beside her, a steady warmth against the side of her body — close, but not crowding.

“Of course.” He closes his hand around hers, squeezing slightly before letting go. “One fall could never change that.”

“No,” she says, watching the flight of one of the birds until it slowly disappears, a fading speck in the clear blue. “I have absolutely no intention of allowing it to.”

He huffs a fond, slightly beleaguered laugh at her bravado. “I did not think that you would.”

Slowly, he turns to face her, the brim of his hat tipping his face into shadow so she knows, without question, that the warmth in his face is all his own light.

“I merely thought you might welcome some company the very first time you ventured back out. That is all.”

He says it so simply — that is all, and yet it strikes Kate that, in fact, that is everything. She terrified him that day, she knows she did, and for all the lost days that followed. And yet here he is, turning up here at half past who knows when in the morning, offering to accompany her … not for his own sake, but for hers.

Because he loves her.

“Oh,” she says again, like a fool.

If her heart was up near the rooftops before, it’s almost out of sight now, soaring off somewhere into the sky with the blackbirds. Loose, but not lost.

“Well?” he prompts, looking rather sweetly nervous at her uncharacteristic silence. “What do you say?”

“What do I say…” She breathes in deeply, committing this moment to memory — gunpowder and freshly scythed grass, and the good man she is going to marry, standing beside her in the sunshine, letting her lead the way.

She grins at him, lifting her skirts to slip into the short boots she prefers for riding. “I say… What are we waiting for?”

It’s comical, really, how fast the atmosphere changes at that.

“Kate?” His gaze flits down to her exposed ankles and then back up, latching onto the spot near her thigh where her hand is bunching up a fistful of her skirts. “What are you—”

He cuts off the question with a slightly strangled noise, his jaw clenching so tightly she half-imagines she heard the snap of his teeth drawing together.

“My lord?” She teeters slightly on one foot, suddenly off kilter under the absurd intensity of his stare. “Are you quite—”

“Careful,” he bites out, latching onto her forearm with his whole hand, his fingers splaying across her wrist to hold her steady as she finishes putting on her boots.

“Thank you,” she says, swallowing down the urge to laugh at his reaction — half annoyance, half concern. “You…” She stamps her feet against the cobblestones to make the leather give, looking down at where his fingers are still gripping the fabric of her riding jacket. “You can let me go now, my lord…”

His fingers flex absently, but he still doesn’t release his hold.

“My lord?”

He barely even seems to hear her, his attention utterly fixed on her other hand where it rests on her thigh, still holding up a fistful of her skirts, quite unnecessarily now. She starts to open her hand, ready to let the fabric fall, but something makes her pause, makes her look back at him, and—

“Oh.” The memory hits hard, and quite without warning — darkness instead of daylight, and his hand precisely where hers is now, pulling up a different skirt.

Her gasp is a quiet one, little more than a breath, but the gentle inhale seems to somehow pull him up with it, his head snapping up to meet her gaze, like a marionette under her command. He says nothing, just searches her face, watching every breath, every blink, as if he can somehow see more in them than anyone else ever could.

This morning, the thought is thrilling, not frightening.

And so she lets him look.

Holding his gaze quite deliberately, she watches him as he watches her, his eyes fixed on hers as she gives herself over to the onslaught of remembered sensations — the soft slip of silk against her skin and the faintest scratch of the end-of-day stubble on his jaw, rough against her hands, her stomach, her thighs…

Without realising it, she closes her hand around the fabric of her skirt again, her touch just hovering there, not letting it fall, not lifting it higher.

“Kate…” he breathes quietly, half warning, half wanting.

She wonders, idly, if he shaved before he came out to find her this morning. If she touched him now, would he feel the same beneath her fingers? Would he scratch another mark on her skin?

“You…” His fingers flex where they still hold her other arm. “You…”

“I what, my lord?”

For a moment he just looks at her, half appalled, half aroused, and then, in a flash he suddenly wrenches her skirts from her grasp, shoving the fabric back down to settle at her ankles, proper and neat. For a split second, she thinks that’s it, that the moment is ending — that he means to set her to rights and step away, like he’s done so many times before.

The sting of disappointment prickles beneath her skin but he soothes it in a second, suddenly moving nearer, not away.

“Anthony,” he says, his hands landing heavy and warm on her hips, his fingers pressing so hard through the layers of fabric that she imagines she can feel the callus of where he holds his pen.

“You ought…” His hat tips back off his brow as he lowers his head to hers, his nose brushing gently against hers. “You ought to call me Anthony now.”

She tilts back slightly, letting him see the lift of her brow. “Was that a request or an instruction, my lord?”

“Neither.” He ducks his head again, suddenly bringing his lips close to her ear. “It was a plea.”

“Oh.” She softens beneath him, arching her neck slightly to feel the line of his nose against the underside of her jaw. “Well, in that case…”

She lets her sentence hover, just for a moment, just long enough to make him growl out a warning in the shape of her name, whispered right into her ear.

“Kathani…”

The sound slips inside her like a key into a lock, letting loose the syllables she’s been holding in her heart for weeks now. Months.

“Anthony...”

She hears, rather than sees his answering smile — loud and clear, hidden in the shape of the breath he lets out against her neck. She has made a study of his exhales these past few months, learning to distinguish the rough edge of longing from the sharp scratch of annoyance, and she knows this one for how rare it is — the sigh of a smile.

He pulls back slightly, just enough to meet her gaze, and the quiet happiness in his eyes is almost more than she can bear.

“Anthony,” she says again, just to watch him as he hears her, suddenly desperate to replace the memory of his face the first time he ever heard her call for him, back on that awful morning in the park.

The memory doesn’t disappear, probably never will, but it’s enough for now, to feel it begin to soften. An ache, instead of a knife wound.

“Kiss me,” she says, the order falling from her lips in a hoarse, pleading whisper. “Now, Anthony. Please.”

“As you wish...” Slowly, reverently, he lifts his hand to her face, his thumb ghosting over her cheek as he tucks a stray curl behind her ear. “Lady Bridgerton.”

Out of habit, she waits — for the chill rush of guilt, the reminder that none of this is right, that the title doesn’t belong to her any more than the right to use his given name does, but the feeling never comes. The honorific sounds just as her name does on his lips — like an endearment. Like something good, that is hers alone.

Anthony lowers his head, his eyes closing on his smile, just as sense suddenly catches up with the fog of her desire.

“Oh!” She jerks back from him, glancing nervously up at the dozens of windows at the back of the house. “Actually, perhaps we should not—”

“We should.” She feels the slight growl in his voice right down to her toes. “It has been at least six and a quarter hours since I last kissed you, Kate—”

“That is rather precise.”

“I have a watch,” he says, utterly serious.

She softens slightly at that, though she couldn’t say why. As if he can sense her wavering resolve, or perhaps because he cannot help himself, he suddenly moves closer, his hands sliding around her waist before she realises she has decided to allow it.

“But…” She glances back at the house, half expecting to hear a cane rapping against one of the upstairs windows. “Lady Danbury—”

“Rarely rises before ten,” he supplies, the words a rush of breath over her lips, his mouth suddenly mere inches from hers, one hand now cupping her jaw.

She doesn’t remember allowing that either.

“Still…”

“Kate,” he bites out, “last night you kissed me not twenty feet from half of London society, including Her Majesty the Queen and Lady Danbury herself, I might add, so why on earth—”

“Last night,” she interrupts, rolling her eyes at his sudden fit of temper, “I had no alternative location in which to kiss you.”

He falters a little at that, his indignation fading into something more like interest. “And this morning?”

“This morning,” she says, trailing her hand down his arm and tangling their fingers together. “I do.”

And with that, she slips out of his embrace and starts to move across the courtyard, towing him along after her.

“If,” she says archly, glancing back over her shoulder at him, “you had deigned to let me finish just now, my lord, you would not have heard me say that we should not do this at all, you would have merely heard me say we should not do it over there.”

“I see…” he murmurs, hurrying along uncomplainingly in her wake, his whole body tipping forwards at the waist as if that might make him reach her faster. “My apologies.”

“Apology accepted,” she says cheerfully, taking him around to the far side of the huge apple tree that dominates the grass circle at the centre of the courtyard. “There now.” She gives him a gentle push, forcing his back into the trunk of the tree. “This is better, is it not?”

His eyes light up at the slight pressure of her shove, the gesture seeming to chase that familiar, slightly untamed look back onto his face. “Infinitely.”

She stalks closer, feeling more than a little wild herself, lost to the light in his eyes and the pretty patterns the sunlight is painting across his chest through the leaves. When he makes to reach for her she shakes her head sharply, the simple gesture enough to command him.

“Kate…” he says softly, more a whine than a warning. “Come here.”

For a moment she just stares at him, taking in the clench of his jaw, the tremble of his hands, the quiet power of his desire right there on display, and all of it utterly tamed, just by a shake of her head.

“Not yet…” she says softly.

“But—”

Without warning she springs up on her toes, plucking his hat off his head. “There,” she whispers, sinking her free hand deep into his hair. “Now you may kiss me.”

He groans at the scratch of her fingers across his scalp, his knees dipping as if he can barely support his own weight, as if the slim tree trunk at his back might be the only thing holding him up. “You will be the death of me, woman.”

“No,” she says, pulling his head down to hers. “I intend to be your whole life.”

The last thing she hears, right before his lips finally touch hers, is a quiet, glorious whisper of, “Yes.”

It’s touch and go, after that, as to whether she will manage to keep hold of his hat — or of her sanity. It’s touch and go, too, as to whether she really cares one way or the other. He can always buy another hat.

And she doesn’t really need to be sane anymore, not about him.

She never has been, not really.

She drops the hat to the ground and throws both her arms around his neck, launching herself into the kiss with the sort of reckless abandon that used to threaten to overwhelm her, every time she met his eyes in a crowded room.

This morning, it doesn’t feel quite so reckless anymore. It just feels right.

“I love you,” she whispers, tracing the shape of his answering smile with her tongue. “I love you…”

At her quiet whisper, all of Anthony’s strength seems to suddenly return to him. He straightens, pushing off the tree slightly as his arms close low around her waist, hauling her against the warm expanse of his chest. She whimpers something unintelligible as he opens his mouth for her, the helpless sound drawing a low groan from his lips, his hold tightening as he presses his hands into her back, encouraging her closer.

It should feel constricting, perhaps, to be held so tightly that every single breath crushes her breasts up against him, but it’s not. It’s not enough. All of this — standing here pressed against him, pounding heart against pounding heart, his hands on her body, her tongue in his mouth, it’s still not enough. She wants more. She wants absurd, impossible, appalling things. To crawl inside him and never leave. To bind him to her with a knot in his own cravat. To strip off every layer of his clothes and scratch her name into the bare skin of his back so that when his valet stands behind him tonight, ready to dress the Lord Bridgerton for dinner, he will know to whom the viscount belongs.

She settles, for now, for biting at the swell of his bottom lip, pretending that the indent she leaves will stay long enough for him to catch sight of it in a mirror, and remind him of this. Of her.

“This—” He growls the word as he breaks the kiss, his breath hot and heavy in the tiny space between them. “This feels like madness.”

“I know.” She barely recognises her own voice, thready and weak with desire.

“I am such a fool—” He cuts himself off with a rough, incredulous laugh. “Do you know, I actually thought this might ease?”

He sets his forehead to hers, his eyes burning into hers, desperate and wild.

“Now that I know you will be mine … now that you know that I have always been yours, I thought this… this need for you that haunts me every waking moment, I thought perhaps it would ease…”

He shakes his head, the motion moving hers with it, where their foreheads remain pressed together.

“That for once I would not wake, aching for you in every possible way. But it…”

“It is worse,” she supplies, surging up to kiss him again, hard and fierce. “I know, Anthony. I know.”

“Christ.” He hums another ragged, desperate laugh, pulling back slightly to look her in the face. “Please tell me you do not want a long engagement.”

She matches his laughter, the sound tumbling out of her unbidden. “If it were not for our families, I would be insisting that you take me to that place where lovers are always running off to in Edwina’s novels—”

“Gretna Green,” he supplies. “It is up in Scotland.”

“That is the one,” she says, tracing her thumb around the shape of his mouth, tugging at his bottom lip. “I hear it is a lovely country…”

He growls a warning, shaking his head in that way she’s seen him do before, the way that says please stop, and please don’t, all at once.

“If it were not for our families, we would not need Gretna Green, Kate. I would have a special licence in my pocket right now.” He lets out a breath, glancing over his shoulder to where Danbury House looms, just beyond the apple tree. “But…”

“But we do have our families,” she finishes with a rueful smile. “And we are enough of a scandal as it is.” She pulls out of his embrace reluctantly, bending to retrieve his hat from the dusty ground and handing it back to him. “I know.”

“An ordinary licence then,” he says, taking his hat but making no effort to put it back on. “And a courtship too, albeit a brief one. I can be patient but—”

“Can you indeed? I have seen no evidence of that.”

“I now know precisely which bedroom in that house belongs to you, Kate. And yet I waited down here for you this morning. I would say that is patient indeed.”

She laughs, tipping her head back and letting the dappled sunlight hit her face through the leaves. “Well argued, my lord.”

“Brief or not, it will be a real courtship, however,” he says, all traces of the rake suddenly quite gone from his voice. “All the bells and whistles, I assure you.”

“I do not need all that fuss—”

“Perhaps not. But you deserve it,” he says, sounding so desperately earnest she cannot bring herself to argue. “I think … perhaps we both do.”

He straightens suddenly, clasping his hat in his hands behind his back, the model of gentlemanly manners.

“I will call on you, Kate, every day. I will take you and your ridiculous dog out to the park. I will sit across from you at one of those stupidly small tables at Gunters while you eat some absurd flavour of ice. I will dance one too many times with you at every single ball…” He trails off, blowing out a long breath as he worries at his bottom lip, suddenly not quite the proper gentleman anymore as he adds, quietly, “And I will still go to bed every night wanting more of you.”

Kate makes a show of tilting her head, considering the prospect. Of courting. Of wanting. And then she smiles and says, quite mildly, “I suppose I can allow that. After all, I have never had an ice.”

He laughs at that, the warmth of it lighting up his whole face. “They are completely nonsensical. I think you will like them immensely.”

“I think I like you immensely.”

He kisses her again for that, growling out a rough, senseless noise as he closes the distance between them. She lifts her hand to his face, cupping his cheek beneath her palm to find the answer to her question from earlier. No. No, he has not yet shaved this morning. Lovely, impatient man.

“Then it is settled,” she says, releasing him with a sigh. “We will be seen to be courting for … shall we say three weeks—”

“Two.”

“Two and a half.”

“One.”

“That is not how negotiating works, Anthony.”

He shrugs, leaning back against the tree trunk like a man without a care in the world. “It is how my negotiations work.”

“I—”

“Do not fight me on this, Kate,” he says softly. “We have waited long enough for each other.”

“Oh, very well,” she mutters, all her arguments melting away in the face of his quietly determined eyes. “One week. After which we will observe whatever the shortest possible non-scandalous period of engagement may be, before—”

“Three weeks,” he supplies, looking rather prettily disgruntled by that fact.

“A month then, all told. During which we will be perfectly proper and perfectly boring, until the Ton forget there was ever anything scandalous about us to start with.”

“You and I could never be boring, Kate.” The look he gives her is half amused, half offended. “And gentleman or not, I can offer no promises on propriety either. A month is a long time.”

“We can but try.”

“We will fail,” he says simply, idly picking a piece of grass out of the brim of his hat. “I am quite certain that I am going to give every last one of your chaperones the vapours by the end of this week alone.”

“Lady Danbury did send for rather a large glass of brandy when I broke the news to my family last night.”

He straightens suddenly, pushing off the tree. “You have told your family already?”

“After the ball,” she says, feeling her cheeks heat at the memory of her mother’s knowing smile on the carriage ride home. “I did not have a choice. I … I could not keep it off my face, apparently.”

He smiles at that but she barely notices, too preoccupied with the suspicion that has just occurred to her, and the unease it brings with it.

“You have not told yours?” she asks, aiming for a casual tone.

“Only because I have not seen them yet,” he says quickly, taking her hand. “I went straight to my lodgings after the ball. I will tell them this morning, after our ride.”

“And … what will they say, do you suppose?”

“They will be pleased, I imagine.” He cocks his head, considering. “Or … confused, possibly. There’s rather a lot of us, you know, and more than half of them haven’t a clue what has been going on between us these past few months.”

“And the ones that do?”

“Daphne will most likely want to throw a parade … in her own honour, you understand. And deservedly so, to be honest with you. Until recently, she was fighting our corner far better than either of us.”

“She was? I thought perhaps … after what she saw in the library—”

“The duchess is in no position to judge,” he says, smiling faintly. “One day, remind me to tell you how her betrothal came about.”

“Really?”

“Never mind Daff’s indiscretions,” he says, waving off her interest. “You have not told me how your family took the news. I suppose it is too much to ask that they were pleased?”

“They were, actually,” she says, smiling at the memory of the three of them, weeping in the drawing room while Lady Danbury rolled her eyes and drank her brandy. “Mama cried. Happy tears, she promised. Even Edwina managed a smile, though I cannot promise that it was not more for the fact that I will now be cancelling my passage back to India.”

He shakes his head softly, half disbelief, half wonder.

“Truly, Anthony. I am not trying to spare your feelings, they really—”

“It is not that,” he says, still shaking his head, almost as if he’s forgotten the motion. “It is you.” His smile is a sweetly careful thing, a slow, gentle curve of his lips, washing happiness over his face. “Staying.”

She falters slightly, thrown by the strength of his reaction. “Well, I could hardly be your viscountess from the other side of the world.”

She says it casually enough — your viscountess — but the words seem to do something to Anthony, landing on him like a splash of cold water first thing in the morning, waking him up. He closes the distance between them in a flash, lowering his head close to hers.

“I love you, you know,” he whispers, the words touching her lips like the kiss she is aching for. “My viscountess.”

As he closes the distance between them, covering her smile with his lips, she realises that she is beginning to lose count. Is this the tenth time he has kissed her? The fiftieth? After that night in the garden, she could list them all out in her head, as much as she tried to not to. The memories followed her out into the park that day, counting themselves out with every stamp of her horse’s hooves — one, in the church, two, in the gazebo, three, dropped onto her shoulder as her dress dropped onto the floor.

She was supposed to pack them all away in her trunk and take them home with her, and take them out sometimes, one by one, to remember what she left behind.

But he said it right, a moment ago.

She is staying.

His kisses are quite unpacked now, the hoard of his affection growing far too big to account for. So she doesn’t try to. She throws her arms around his neck and lets herself lose count.

When they part, his hat is on the floor again. And her heart is not up at the rooftops after all, or anywhere off in the sky, it is right here beneath this apple tree, held in his hands. Loose, but not lost.

Anthony leans back against the tree again, looking quite content to stay right there all morning, until Danbury House wakes up around them. Which, come to think of it, will be any second now.

“Stop it,” she says, breaking their gaze with some considerable effort.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that. I mean it, Anthony! We must make haste if we are to make it out on this ride before someone catches us.”

“Not to be pedantic—

“When are you ever not?”

“—But I believe you were the one who asked for a kiss.”

“Oh, hush,” she says and then, hearing the telltale creak of the gardener’s cottage door, “No, no, really — Hush!”

“Kate?”

She snatches his hat up off the ground, covering his face with it. “Someone is coming.”

“Oh, well done, that will make me invisible.”

“I am not trying to make you disappear,” she hisses, trying desperately not to laugh. “I am trying to make you silent. The gardener never passes this way but he has keen ears.”

They stand there, frozen in this absurd tableau, his face smothered by his own hat, her other hand clapped over her own mouth, until the heavy footsteps fade away.

“I think he is gone.” She lowers the hat, showing him a sheepish smile. “My apologies.”

“Why do I get the feeling you are not really sorry?”

She shrugs. “Put your hat back on and stop complaining. We must go.”

For a minute, she thinks he will argue. But he just laughs, reaching up and effortlessly plucking down an apple from one of the lower branches. “Lead the way, my lady.”

She smothers her smile, taking his hand and leading him inside the cool shade of the Danbury stables.

“Do you need a mount?” she says distractedly, already scanning the stalls for the horse she wants.

“I came on horseback,” he says, tossing his hat carelessly over a post as he leans back against the gate of an empty stall. “Did you not see him tethered outside just now?”

“Oh,” Kate says, her cheeks heating as she slips inside one of the stalls. “I did not, actually.”

Somehow she can hear his smile.

“Would you say you find it hard to notice other things when I am near, Kate?”

“Why do you ask, my lord?” she calls back, busying herself with bridling her horse. “Are you familiar with such a problem?”

She expects him to answer back but as she leads out her horse, he only smiles at her and shrugs, tossing her the apple. “Oh, most certainly. You are a dreadful distraction.”

“Such sweet words,” she says, holding out the apple in the flat of her hand for her horse to take a bite. “Our week-long courtship is off to an auspicious start, do you not think, Mufasa?”

“Is…” Anthony pushes off the side of the stall, all his easy humour melting away. “Is that—”

“The horse that threw me?” Kate says, keeping her voice deliberately calm. For Anthony, or the animals, she could not say. “Of course.”

“Should you be—”

“If I do not go back out on him today, I never will.”

“But—”

“The fall was no more his fault than mine,” Kate says, rubbing Mufasa’s sleek neck. “That morning … we did not understand each other. But now we do.” She looks over at Anthony, smiling faintly. “We will not hurt each other like that again.”

“No,” he agrees, approaching slowly, but not hesitantly. He stops beside the horse, rubbing him gently on the withers. “Never.”

For a moment they simply stare at each other, until Mufasa, apparently bored with their endless mooning, begins to paw impatiently at the ground.

Kate gives herself a shake, ignoring Anthony’s slight smirk as she returns her attention to saddling her horse, keeping him happy with the last of the apple.

“Are you not even going to help?” she asks, outraged, as Anthony starts backs away, leaning comfortably against a post.

“Would you allow me?”

She cocks her head, considering this. “Not if you are going to interfere.”

“Well then…” He spreads his hands, propping his foot up against the post. “Besides, I like watching you.”

She turns away, feeling his eyes following her as she flits about the stable, collecting what she needs.

It is not, of course, the first time she has saddled a horse. It’s not even the first time she has done so with an audience.

Which is why it’s so irritating that she fumbles almost every last buckle.

“What?” she snaps, looking over at him with a huff that only seems to amuse him.

He doesn’t break her gaze, just keeps staring. Just keeps smiling.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I told you,” he says, pushing off the post and coming to check the hold of the saddle straps. “I like looking at you. And … it just occurred to me that there is now absolutely no need for me to stop.”

He shakes his head slightly at his own words, huffing out a sigh that sounds like a laugh. Half of every sound he makes sounds like a laugh this morning, it seems.

“No,” she says, her heart turning over at the little nod he gives her, so very eager. And so very pleased. “Do not stop.”

“Say that again.”

“Kiss me again.”

She watches, transformed — a lit firework again, anticipation flickering in her like a fuse — as he takes the bridle from her, tethering Mufasa with a few quick, efficient motions, the quiet competence in his hands burning the last of her meagre patience away, making her grab for him, pulling him towards her by his own lapels.

They collide as they have done before, suddenly and gracelessly, and for a single suspended second he just stares at her, his gaze flitting from her lips to her eyes and back again. Then he smiles, a devastating thing, and in a heartbeat her hands are back in his hair and her name is on his lips and he is kissing her like he has never done before.

Slowly.

It is a perfect descent into madness, a kiss like this one.

Touching him has always come with the edge of something slightly frantic, setting her hands roving wildly, never quite stopping anywhere, because there was always somewhere else to touch, something else to find. But when he slows, so does her heart. And it’s easy then, to settle. One hand on his neck. The other in his hair.

She is no less greedy for him like this, but it is a different sort of hunger. She does not need to devour the moment, afraid that it will all be snatched away and never returned, famine from a feast. There will be many more kisses. And for that, she can savour this one.

“I can scarcely believe this,” he whispers as they part, a slightly embarrassed smile playing around his lips — small, but also not. It’s the tiniest curve of his lips but there’s something of it in his whole face, a warmth that makes her want to abandon the idea of riding altogether, and take him into one of the empty stalls right here instead. “That this is real. That you are staying.”

“This again,” she says, humming a quiet laugh. “You continue to sound surprised.”

“I continue to be surprised.” He ducks his head suddenly, flattening his nose into her cheekbone and inhaling deeply. His breath is not an easy one. “Your — your passage was already booked?”

He jerks back slightly at his own words, his brown eyes wide and wounded, as if simply speaking the question has hurt him.

“Lady Danbury’s steward was making the arrangements for me.”

“And when were you to leave?”

“It does not matter now, Anthony.”

“It does.”

“Next week, I think.”

“When precisely?”

“Tuesday,” she whispers, not sure why she cannot seem to raise her voice any higher. “I was to leave for the coast on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday…”

“Anthony—”

“There is— There is just never enough time, is there?” he says suddenly, looking oddly at her, as though his strange segue is somehow her doing. “Always something left on this list. Never enough hours in the day.”

“I—”

“You must understand that.” He steps away, pacing slightly on the spot, one arm clasped behind his back, the other gesturing vaguely, as if he can’t quite decide what to do with himself. “You must know the feeling.”

“I do,” she says hesitantly, trying to keep up. “I know.”

“I thought I did too. But the moment you told me you would go…” He looks over her, half accusation, half heartbreak. “That was the first time in my life that I have ever felt like time was truly running out.”

“Anthony…” she whispers, wanting to go to him, but somehow unable to move. She holds herself still, soothing her horse as if that could somehow soothe him too.

“And I knew it was my fault,” he goes on, a flicker of self-disgust souring his expression. “But the thought of you being gone — to India at first, and then, after your accident, just gone...”

He blows out a long, shaky breath, looking down for a moment.

“It felt like an ending. Like I was ending. And now…”

She holds her breath, tears threatening behind her eyes, but when he looks up, all she can see is his smile.

“It is all just beginning, isn’t it?”

She chokes out a laugh, hurrying to his side and launching herself into his arms. “Yes.”

He kisses her then, with lips that taste of salt. Her tears, or his, it doesn’t really matter. Her tears are his now, she supposes. And his are hers. And together, they might be able to cry a little less of them.

“I know I can never understand it,” he whispers into her hair, his voice rough with emotion. “I cannot even fathom the size of your decision, not when I have never so much as left the south west corner of this country. But I do realise that you are giving up a great deal for me, that you always planned to—”

“Stop,” she scolds quietly, not wanting to spook the horses. She releases her hold on him, making sure she can see her face. “I was wrong.”

“But—”

“No, Anthony. Perhaps it was the plan once, long before we ever came here. But for a long time now…” She wanders idly back to Mufasa, petting his neck in slow, careful strokes. “You were right. Going back would have meant running away.”

He offers no reply, just lets her speak. And she loves him all the more for it.

“I will miss India, every day, of course I will, and I will complain endlessly—”

“You would not be you if you did not.”

“But … I will not miss the plan I had to return home alone.” She shakes her head, appalled by her own foolishness. “Without Mama and Edwina… nothing would have been the same.”

Looking back on it now, she cannot even imagine it, even as her trunks still sit upstairs, half packed. A quiet cabin on a ship. An empty house. Walking the last specks of the Hyde Park mud out of her boots, and never seeing what it looked like there in the frost.

“Home can be people too, I think. And if I had left you…”

She looks up, ready to meet his eyes. Ready to see him hear this.

“I would have been homesick all the days of my life, no matter where I was.”

He nods sharply, emotion glittering in his eyes again. And then, quite as firmly as she has ever heard him give any order before, he says, “Kate. Come here.”

Just this once, she does as he bids without a single complaint.

He folds her into his arms, his hand sliding into her hair to cradle her head, but carefully, avoiding the spot where her wound is still healing. And for a moment, even though nothing about this moment is the same — they are indoors, for one, and standing for another — Kate feels herself transported to the quiet peace of that night in the garden, to the moment just before she fell asleep in his arms, when she shivered in the cooling air, and all at once his body came around her like a blanket, safe and warm. Then, like now, she wanted to cry at his tenderness but her eyes remained stubbornly dry, as if her heart would not allow her a moment of misplaced sorrow in the face of such quiet, careful love.

“Does it still hurt?” he says softly, his fingers dancing around the edge of her wound, never touching.

“No,” she says quickly, sighing in pleasure at the feeling of his fingers on her scalp. “No, it does not hurt anymore.”

“Good,” he murmurs, releasing his hold on her slightly. He frames her face in his hands, blowing out a long breath. “Now then … enough introspection, I think. It is high time we blew off these cobwebs, don’t you agree?”

She laughs, rocking back and forth on her heels, suddenly impatient — for the fresh air and the blue sky and the exhilarating rush of thundering hooves beneath her, all that power bending to her wishes, just for the dig of her heels, the pull of her hands at the reins.

“Let us—”

“Wait. Before we set off, I believe I have something of yours…”

Kate sucks in a steadying breath, surprised by the greedy rush of anticipation that washes over her as his hand suddenly disappears into the pocket of his coat. It’s not where she might have imagined this moment happening — the stable smells of hay and horses, and gunpowder dusted sunshine, and she has not so much as brushed her unruly hair this morning, but at the same time she would not change it. They are together. And they are alone.

And she wants this.

She rubs her thumb over the empty space on her ring finger, and waits.

Quite wrongly, it transpires.

“These belong to you,” Anthony says, producing a pair of leather riding gloves from his pocket. “I took them off you … that day, when we were waiting for the surgeon to arrive.”

“Oh.” She stares down at the gloves, then up at his face, held carefully blank.

“You were cold,” he says, his voice oddly choked. “I was trying to…” He frowns slightly, his eyes far away. “You were cold.”

He gives himself a shake, that haunted look in his eyes fading slightly as he looks at her, seeming to see her for the first time since he pulled the gloves from his coat. “I found them in my pocket with my watch when I got home. I do not even remember putting them there.”

“Thank you,” she says, taking the gloves from him. She tries to muster a smile, tries not to look down at her hand, bare and empty, like it has been since she wrenched that ring off in Lady Danbury’s front parlour. “For taking care of them.”

“I should have returned them sooner,” he says, the pinch of a frown creeping back onto his face as he studies her face. “I should have been there—”

“It is not that,” she says, shaking her head slightly. “It is only…”

She trails off, suddenly appalled that she was about to admit what she thought aloud. What she wanted.

“What, Kate?”

“It is nothing.”

“It is something. Tell me.”

“I thought that was going to be a ring,” she blurts, before she has the time to talk herself out of admitting it.

“Ah.”

“Do not dare laugh at me.”

“I would not dream of laughing,” he says quickly, though she cannot help but notice that he sounds rather close to it.

“You would.”

“Not about this,” he says, his tone softer now, less amused and more serious. He tugs on his cuffs, looking suddenly nervous. “In actual fact, I wanted to talk to you about that. Your ring.”

“You did?”

“Yes,” he wanders idly over to her horse, almost but not quite looking at her. “I wanted to ask if you wanted something different.”

“Something different than a ring?”

“No.” He hums a quiet laugh. “Something different than that ring. Something new.”

“Oh.” Kate frowns, her thumb rubbing over her finger again. “I … I did not think I had a choice.”

“What?”

He sounds more hurt than confused, and for some reason that rankles her.

“You said it was a family ring! You told me — you said it was the ring your father gave to your mother—”

“It was,” he bites out, his voice rising to match hers, setting the horses pacing in their stalls. “And then I went and gave it to your sister, like a damn fool!”

The outburst seems to hang in the air for a moment, crackling like the gunpowder.

“Forgive me…” He sucks in a breath, closing his eyes as he breathes out, slow and careful.

When he opens his eyes, there is no anger there, only regret. “I just thought … after the mess I made—”

“We,” she interrupts. “The mess we made.”

“After everything,” he amends, “I would understand if you wanted something different, that is all. Something that is just yours.”

“Oh.” She contemplates the idea, trying to picture it. Seeing nothing. “I…”

“You do not have to decide right now,” he says quickly, clearly keen to put the discussion aside for another day. He reaches for his hat before untethering Mufasa, not quite looking at her. “Just … think about it. Tell me another time.”

“All right.” Slowly, she follows him towards the doors, slipping her hands into the riding gloves that he handed her.

“Now then, are you ready for this?”

She looks out of the open stable doors to the sky — clear and blue and cloudless. And then she looks at the man beside her, patiently holding the reins.

“Yes.” She takes the reins and steps out into the sunlight. “I believe I am.”

“We will have to ride separately until we reach the park, in case we are seen. But I will stay here for a moment, just until you mount up.”

She tries to pull a face at him, but the only thing her face seems to want to do is smile. “I will be—”

“Perfectly safe,” he finishes for her. “I know you will. But I will stay, nonetheless.”

Though she does not let it show on her face, her heart does lurch a little when the moment comes. Mufasa is a large horse, and a little skittish after so long waiting to get going this morning, but Anthony is there, standing quietly off to the side of the mounting block, murmuring calming words to his own horse. She cannot hear him but her heart does not seem to mind, slowing down in time to the gentle, careful movement of his lips.

She sucks in a breath and in a heartbeat, she is astride her horse.

And Anthony is looking at her like he never doubted, for a second, that she would find her place up there.

“Meet you at our spot?” she says, accepting the riding crop he offers up to her.

“Every single morning from now on,” he says, his eyes full of promise.

“Is that so?”

“An entire month until we marry, you said?” He grins up at her, his ears squashing down slightly as he pushes his hat onto his head. “I will need a moment with you in those woods damn near every day until then, Kate. Or we really will end up causing a scandal somewhere far more public.”

She wheels her horse around, showing him her smile. “Promises, promises, my lord…”

“It was meant as a warning!” he calls out, the sound a distant grumble as she encourages her horse into a trot, heading out towards Hyde Park.

She laughs into the morning breeze, leaving the carefree sound behind with him in the mews.

The journey from Danbury House to Hyde Park is a short one and Kate spends it staring not at the familiar streets in front of her but down at her hands on the reins, covered by the riding gloves he just gave her, still warm from his body.

She imagines a dozen other mornings like this, but with the shape of a ring there, the slight bulge misshaping the leather, but only slightly — for her alone to notice.

She imagines nights too. Walking into some elaborate ballroom, his ring on a chain around her neck, just out of sight beneath her ballgown. Where he will know it hangs. Him and no-one else. And when she thinks about that ring beneath her glove, or that ring on the chain, pressed there against her breasts all night, while they’re dancing in front of the Queen of England herself, it is the Bridgerton gemstones she pictures, leaving their mark against her skin.

And she doesn’t quite know what to do with that fact.

It’s easier, far easier, to push the worry aside and focus on something else. Something like the fact that Anthony somehow made it to Hyde Park before she did, despite leaving after her.

“How…?!” She trails off, indignation flooding her tone as he guides his horse to walk beside hers, the moment she turns into the park.

“I know a shortcut.”

“You must show me.”

“I will do no such thing. A man must have some secrets.”

“Not from his wife.”

“Ah, but you are not my wife yet,” he says, shrugging.

“Close enough,” she says, flexing her fingers a little on the reins, picturing that ring again. And there’s really nothing for it. She sucks in a breath, and tells the truth. “And on that topic — I have made my decision.”

“Your decision?”

“About my ring.”

“Oh,” he says, sitting a little straighter in the saddle. “Tell me…”

“It was thoughtful of you to offer me something new,” she begins, closing her eyes for a moment to feel the slight breeze ruffling the loose curls at the side of her face. “Thoughtful, and kind.”

“But…” he prompts, smiling softly, as though he has already read the answer in her face.

Perhaps he has.

“But I do not want something that is just mine. I want something that is yours.”

She looks ahead, finding it easier to admit this to the sunshine and the open park, rather than his face.

“I want the ring in that silly little heart shaped box. The one…” She looks back at him then, unable to help herself. “The one I have been coveting for weeks.”

She gives her head a little shake, unease threatening at the back of her mind, the habit of an old guilt.

“Perhaps that is selfish—”

“It is not,” he says at once, cutting her off. “It is just a choice. Your choice.”

She nods, stealing sidelong glances at him, just like she did that very first morning, in this very same park. He’s just as handsome now as he was that morning, same coat, same hat perhaps, but the gloves she wears have been inside his pockets now, and his hands have been on her body, and he knows her.

“You will always have choices, Kathani. I intend to spend my life making sure of that.”

She smiles across at him, loving him for every last step they took to get here, even the wrong ones.

“I’ll choose you, you know. Always.”

His smile is not quite what it was that morning. It’s bigger now. Brighter. There’s a little less surprise in it, and a little more comfort. Like he’s getting used to feeling it on his face.

“We’ll choose each other, Kate.” He leans towards her a little, guiding his horse even closer, his voice lowering to a whisper. “That’s how this thing works, I understand.”

“Marriage?”

“Love.”

“Oh.” She grins at him, affecting a long suffering sigh. “That.”

His laugh is her favourite sound in this whole country.

And this morning is the best of her whole life.

“Damned inconvenience, isn’t it?”

“It has thoroughly disrupted all my plans.”

“And mine,” he agrees. “And all because I could not resist a race with a pretty stranger…”

She raises a brow, grinning over at him. “Shall we have another?”

He smiles at that but she watches his hands tighten on the reins, ever so slightly, as he looks out at the path ahead of them. “Just … no jumps today, Kate. Please.”

“No,” she agrees softly, looking at him until he looks back at her, and sees the smile on her face. “No jumps.”

There is no need for risk, not this morning. Not when they have already made the biggest leap there is, reaching for everything they wanted, everything they were afraid to want, and landing it all — not perfectly, not easily, but completely, and permanently, and forever. There will be other days, other jumps and other ditches, but for today—

“Nothing but steady ground,” she promises him, smiling over her shoulder as she overtakes him, kicking her horse into a canter, and then, with a breathless laugh, into a gallop.

The wind whips her hair behind her as she heads for the woods on the other side of the park, where it will be dark, and quiet, and safe, and where, perhaps, if she provokes him just enough, he might lay her down in the fallen leaves and end up coming home with her riding gloves tucked into his pocket again, a secret this time, rather than a burden.

She looks back to find him, to see if he has guessed their destination, but he isn’t there.

When she whips her head around she finds him right beside her, effortlessly keeping pace. Not needing her to change course, or slow down, or do anything at all. He’s just there.

She laughs into the onrushing wind, and there it is again — even here in the park, the air still smells like gunpowder.

And she is not a single firework, after all. She is many. More. The whole display. All the parts of her that had been shut away for so long, everything that she ignored and pushed down and tried to make small — the ache to be loved, to be challenged, to be cherished — all of it has burst out of her now, all the secret colours of her soul exploding out of her at last, brighter and louder and more brilliant than she ever dreamed, on the quiet, lonely nights when she let herself dream at all.

And this morning all the pieces are still out there. In the air. In his smile.

She cannot contain herself anymore.

And it feels like freedom.

--