The Bridgertons Happily Ever After (30 page)

“So formal?”

“Only because it means I get to call you Mrs. Bridgerton.”

It was remarkable, how he could make her so ridiculously happy with a single sentence.

“Shall we head inside?” he asked, lifting her hand as a prompt. “Are you hungry?”

“Er, no,” she said, even though she was, a little.

“Thank
God
.”

“Edmund!” she laughed, because by now he was walking so quickly she had to skip to keep up with him.

“Your husband,” he said, drawing up short for the express purpose (she was sure) of making her crash into him, “is a very impatient man.”

“Is that so?” she murmured. She was beginning to feel womanly, powerful.

He didn’t answer; they’d already reached the innkeeper’s desk, and Edmund was confirming the arrangements.

“Do you mind if I don’t carry you up the stairs?” he asked once he was done. “You’re light as a feather, of course, and I’m manly enough—”

“Edmund!”

“It’s just that I’m rather in a rush.”

And his eyes—oh, his eyes—they were filled with a thousand promises, and she wanted to know every one of them.

“I am, too,” she said softly, placing her hand in his. “Rather.”

“Ah, hell,” he said hoarsely, and he scooped her into his arms. “I can’t resist.”

“The threshold would have been enough,” she said, laughing all the way up the stairs.

“Not for me.” He kicked open the door to her room, then tossed her onto the bed so that he could shut and lock it behind them.

He came down atop her, moving with a catlike grace she’d never seen in him before. “I love you,” he said, his lips touching hers as his hands came under her skirt.

“I love you more,” she gasped, because the things he was doing—they ought to be illegal.

“But I . . .” he murmured, kissing his way down to her leg and then—good heavens!—back up again. “I shall love you
better
.”

Her clothes seemed to fly away, but she felt no modesty. It was astounding, that she could lie beneath this man, that she could watch him watching her, seeing her—
all
of her—and she felt no shame, no discomfort.

“Oh God, Violet,” he groaned, positioning himself awkwardly between her legs. “I have to tell you, I don’t have a whole lot of experience with this.”

“I don’t, either,” she gasped.

“I’ve never—”

That got her attention. “You’ve never?”

He shook his head. “I think I was waiting for you.”

Her breath caught, and then, with a slow, melting smile, she said, “For someone who’s never, you’re rather good at it.”

For a moment she thought she saw tears in his eyes, but then, just like that, they were gone, replaced by a wicked, wicked twinkle. “I plan to improve with age,” he told her.

“As do I,” she returned, just as slyly.

He laughed, and then she laughed, and they were joined.

And while it was true that they both did get better with age, that first time, up in the Hare and Hounds’s finest feather bed . . .

It was bone-crackingly good.

Aubrey Hall, Kent

Twenty years later

The moment Violet heard Eloise scream, she knew something was dreadfully wrong.

It wasn’t as if her children never yelled. They yelled all the time, generally at each other. But this wasn’t a yell, it was a scream. And it wasn’t born of anger or frustration or a misplaced sense of injustice.

This was a scream of terror.

Violet ran through the house, with speed that ought to have been impossible eight months into her eighth pregnancy. She ran down the stairs, across the great hall. She ran through the entry, down the portico stairs . . .

And all the while, Eloise kept screaming.

“What is it?” she gasped, when she finally spied her seven-year-old daughter’s face. She was standing at the edge of the west lawn, near the entrance to the hedgerow maze, and she was still screaming.

“Eloise,” Violet implored, taking her face in her hands. “Eloise, please, just tell me what is wrong.”

Eloise’s screams gave way to sobs and she planted her hands over her ears, shaking her head over and over.

“Eloise, you must—” Violet’s words broke off sharply. The baby she was carrying was heavy and low, and the pain that shot through her abdomen from all the running hit her like a rock. She took a deep breath, trying to slow her pulse, and placed her hands under her belly, trying to support it from the outside.

“Papa!” Eloise wailed. It was the only word she seemed able to form through her cries.

A cold fist of fear landed in Violet’s chest. “What do you mean?”

“Papa,” Eloise gasped. “Papapapapapapapapapa—”

Violet slapped her. It would be the only time she would ever strike a child.

Eloise’s eyes went wide as she sucked in a huge breath of air. She said nothing, but she turned her head toward the entrance to the maze. And that was when Violet saw it.

A foot.

“Edmund?” she whispered. And then she screamed it.

She ran toward the maze, toward the booted foot that was sticking out of the entrance, attached to a leg, which must be attached to a body, which was lying on the ground.

Not moving at all.

“Edmund, oh Edmund, oh Edmund,” she said, over and over, something between a whimper and a cry.

When she reached his side, she knew. He was gone. He was lying on his back, eyes still open, but there was nothing of him left. He was gone. He was thirty-nine years old, and he was gone.

“What happened?” she whispered, frantically touching him, squeezing his arm, his wrist, his cheek. Her mind knew she could not bring him back, and her heart even knew it, too, but somehow her hands would not accept it. She could not stop touching him . . . poking, prodding, yanking, and all the while sobbing.

“Mama?”

It was Eloise, come up behind her.

“Mama?”

She couldn’t turn around. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t look at her child’s face, knowing that she was now her only parent.

“It was a bee, Mama. He was stung by a bee.”

Violet went very still. A bee? What did she mean, a bee? Everyone was stung by a bee at some point in their lives. It swelled, it turned red, it hurt.

It didn’t kill you.

“He said it was nothing,” Eloise said, her voice trembling. “He said it didn’t even hurt.”

Violet stared at her husband, her head moving from side to side in denial. How could it not have hurt? It had
killed
him. She brought her lips together, trying to form a question, trying to make a bloody sound, but all she could get out was, “Wh-wh-wh-wh—” And she didn’t even know what she was trying to ask.
When
did it happen?
What
else did he say?
Where
had they been?

And did it matter? Did any of it matter?

“He couldn’t breathe,” Eloise said. Violet could feel her daughter’s presence growing close, and then, silently, Eloise’s hand slipped into her own.

Violet squeezed it.

“He started making this sound”—Eloise tried to imitate, and it sounded awful—“like he was choking. And then . . . Oh, Mama. Oh, Mama!” She threw herself against Violet’s side, burying her face where there had once been a curve of a hip. But now there was just a belly, a huge, massive belly, with a child who would never know its father.

“I need to sit down,” Violet whispered. “I need to—”

She fainted. Eloise broke her fall.

When Violet came to, she was surrounded by servants. All wore masks of shock and grief. Some could not meet her gaze.

“We need to get you in bed,” the housekeeper said briskly. She looked up. “Have we a pallet?”

Violet shook her head as she allowed a footman to assist her into a sitting position. “No, I can walk.”

“I really think—”

“
I said I can walk
,” she snapped. And then she snapped on the inside, and something burst inside of her. She took a deep, involuntary breath.

“Let me help you,” the butler said gently. He slid his arm around her back, and carefully helped her to her feet.

“I can’t—but Edmund . . .” She turned to look again, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
It wasn’t him
, she told herself.
That’s not how he is
.

That’s not how he
was
.

She swallowed. “Eloise?” she asked.

“Nanny has already brought her up,” the housekeeper said, moving to Violet’s other side.

Violet nodded.

“Ma’am, we must get you to bed. It’s not good for the baby.”

Violet placed her hand on her belly. The baby was kicking like mad. Which was par for the course. This one kicked and punched and rolled and hiccupped and never, ever stopped. It was quite unlike the others. And it was a good thing, she supposed. This one was going to have to be strong.

She choked back a sob. They were both going to have to be strong.

“Did you say something?” the housekeeper asked, steering her toward the house.

Violet shook her head. “I need to lie down,” she whispered.

The housekeeper nodded, then turned to a footman with an urgent stare.

“Send for the midwife.”

She didn’t need the midwife. No one could believe it, given the shock she’d had and the late state of her pregnancy, but the baby refused to budge. Violet spent three more weeks in bed, eating because she had to, and trying to remind herself that she must be strong. Edmund was gone, but she had seven children who needed her, eight including the stubborn one in her belly.

And then finally, after a quick and easy birth, the midwife announced, “It’s a girl,” and placed a tiny, quiet bundle in Violet’s arms.

A girl. Violet couldn’t quite believe it. She’d convinced herself it would be a boy. She would name him Edmund, the A-G alphabetization of her first seven children be damned. He would be called Edmund, and he would
look
like Edmund, because surely that was the only way she would be able to make sense of all this.

But it was a girl, a pink little thing who hadn’t made a sound since her initial wail.

“Good morning,” Violet said to her, because she didn’t know what else to say. She looked down, and she saw her own face—smaller, a bit rounder—but definitely not Edmund’s.

The baby looked at her, straight into her eyes, even though Violet knew that could not be true. Babies didn’t do that so soon after birth. Violet should know; this was her eighth.

But this one . . . She didn’t seem to realize she wasn’t supposed to stare her mother down. And then she blinked. Twice. She did it with the most startling deliberation, as if to say,
I’m here. And I know
exactly
what I’m doing
.

Violet caught her breath, so totally and instantly in love she could hardly bear it. And then the baby let out a cry like nothing she had ever heard. She wailed so hard the midwife jumped. She screamed and screamed and screamed and even as the midwife fussed, and the maids came running in, Violet could do nothing but laugh.

“She’s perfect,” she declared, trying to latch the tiny banshee onto her breast. “She is absolutely perfect.”

“What shall you name her?” the midwife asked, once the baby had busied herself trying to figure out how to nurse.

“Hyacinth,” Violet decided. It was Edmund’s favorite flower, especially the little grape hyacinths that popped up each year to greet the spring. They marked the new birth of the landscape, and this hyacinth—her Hyacinth—she would be Violet’s new birth.

The fact that as an H, she would follow perfectly after Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, and Gregory . . . Well, that simply made it all the more perfect.

There was a knock at the door, and Nanny Pickens poked her head in. “The girls would love to see Her Ladyship,” she said to the midwife. “If she’s ready.”

The midwife looked at Violet, who nodded. Nanny ushered her three charges inside with a stern “Remember what we talked about. Do not tire your mother.”

Daphne came over to the bed, followed by Eloise and Francesca. They possessed Edmund’s thick chestnut hair—all of her children did—and Violet wondered if Hyacinth would be the same. Right now she possessed just the tiniest tuft of peachy fuzz.

“Is it a girl?” Eloise asked abruptly.

Violet smiled and changed her position to show off the new baby. “It is.”

“Oh, thank heavens,” Eloise said with a dramatic sigh. “We needed another one.”

Beside her, Francesca nodded. She was what Edmund had always called Eloise’s “accidental twin.” They shared a birthday, the two of them, a year apart. At six, Francesca generally followed Eloise’s lead. Eloise was louder, bolder. But every now and then Francesca would surprise them all and do something that was completely her own.

Not this time, though. She stood beside Eloise, clutching her stuffed doll, agreeing with everything her older sister said.

Violet looked over at Daphne, her oldest girl. She was nearly eleven, certainly old enough to hold a baby. “Do you want to see her?” Violet asked.

Daphne shook her head. She was blinking rapidly, the way she did when she was perplexed, and then all of a sudden she stood up straighter. “You’re smiling,” she said.

Violet looked back down at Hyacinth, who’d dropped off her breast and fallen quite asleep. “I am,” she said, and she could hear it in her voice. She’d forgotten what her voice sounded like with a smile in it.

“You haven’t smiled since Papa died,” Daphne said.

“I haven’t?” Violet looked up at her. Was that possible? She hadn’t smiled in three weeks? It didn’t feel awkward. Her lips formed the curve out of memory, perhaps with just a little bit of relief, as if they were indulging in a happy memory.

“You haven’t,” Daphne confirmed.

She must be right, Violet realized. If she hadn’t managed to smile for her children, she certainly hadn’t done so in solitude. The grief she’d been feeling . . . it had yawned before her, swallowed her whole. It had been a heavy, physical thing, making her tired, holding her down.

No one could smile through that.

“What is her name?” Francesca asked.