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The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –
The Bustle in a House by Emily Dickinson
It is Benedict who finds him dead in his study. It should’ve been obvious that’s where he’d be in the end, but Benedict rather stands like a statue in shock.
That is, he stands in shock after he shakes Anthony’s shoulder with increasing desperation, thinking, hoping, praying that he is just asleep and feels for signs of life and shouts into Anthony’s face (eyes closed, lips blue, jaw tight as Anthony's body—his corpse —has evidently been here long enough to develop rigour mortis) before he releases his brother and backs far far away, standing completely still except that he is trembling.
He rips his gaze away from Anthony and his eyes dart around, searching for a weapon, searching for a clue as to what— how— why—
They saw each other just last week. Anthony was fine—
He’s not felt so helpless since that damned duel so many years ago. Anthony would not hear his protests, so frantic as he was over the status of their family, so incredibly cavalier with his own life, so damned practical as he described the situation and his plans. Benedict begged him to reconsider, even though he knew once Anthony made up his mind, it was impossible to reason with him. Benedict has never shared his brother’s talent for stoicism, for decisiveness, for making madness seem sensible.
“You would murder Hastings? I thought he was a friend—and a good one, at that.”
“There is a reason it is called an affair of honour,” Anthony snapped, Benedict’s pleas rolling right off his back. “Now pay attention, unless you would rather be left scrambling after I am dead to figure this all out. I can assure you it was no small task for me.”
His voice was hard and unyielding and yet he, too, seemed to be begging. So, Benedict shut his mouth and listened dutifully, trying to keep his head from spinning, trying not to think about how his brother could be dead in a matter of hours—
It was a harrowing morning, but in the end Anthony and Simon both lived to tell the tale and even laugh about it later. Benedict counted his lucky stars that he should be saved from certain disaster.
A decade later, his luck has finally run out.
He clings to his brother’s dead body, half expecting Anthony to rise up and push him away, affronted that Benedict should weep over him. Staining Anthony’s jacket with his tears, he tries and fails to remember the last time they hugged in earnest.
He babbles senseless apologies and questions and, if he’s honest, complaints.
“How could you leave me like this?” he sniffles. “You’re always there, always. I don’t understand. Did you— did you do this to yourself? You should have told me, Brother.”
But then, he’d known Anthony was miserable, retreating into himself and his duties more and more as the years passed while Benedict had become preoccupied with his own life, his own family. Still, Anthony was so duty-bound that the idea he would outright abandon his family was unimaginable.
He focuses on a note in his brother’s handwriting—nothing, only plans for the harvest season—and suddenly he is thinking of paper, of when he’d only just taken an interest in drawing. He’d needed a hobby, something to do apart from playing with his much younger siblings whilst waiting for Anthony to return from Eton for the summer. He wasn’t very good yet, so he kept it a secret, choosing to sketch on the leafs of his lesson books and on bits of paper from the nursery. Upon seeing his drawings for the very first time, Anthony swiped a bit of expensive paper from their father’s study just so that Benedict might have somewhere nicer to do his sketches.
Anthony, who worshipped their father, had stolen from him. It was unthinkable, but he’d seen Benedict drawing by accident and he’d been sworn to secrecy lest their mother find out and make a fuss about it. So he kept his word and lifted the paper. Benedict would later learn that the guilt had eaten his brother alive when he overheard young Anthony tearfully approach their father with a handful of pin money to repay him.
Father had a good laugh over that one.
Now, his father is dead, and his brother is too, and Benedict has never felt more alone. All his life he’s been surrounded by a loving family, and in the back of his mind he’d wondered why Anthony seemed to consider himself separate from it all. He’d thought it a quirk of personality, at times. Arrogance, at others.
Now, he understands.
Is this how it is to be? The heir finds the viscount dead before the age of forty? Perhaps Bridgerton men are cursed, perhaps Benedict will die young in some tragic happenstance. He hopes he’ll be doing something fun, but just now it is difficult to imagine he’ll ever have fun again. He can’t imagine this happened to the others before his father took up the title, but it’s not like he’s ever had a reason to ask.
He touches Anthony’s shoulder, more gently now, the way Anthony would always do as a sign of comfort, of strength, of all that he needs right now, because as soon as he pulls the bell on the wall to summon someone to call a physician, his life will change forever.
Indeed, it already has. And the only person who would truly understand is gone.
The second son, now the eldest, now the tenth Viscount Bridgerton, straightens onto shaking legs and pulls a bell on the wall, its toll clanging one floor below and signalling the end of an era and a new, bleak beginning.
A week later, he doesn’t much remember giving the eulogy. What he remembers are people, faces. As much as Anthony’s death had brought the Bridgerton siblings together, Colin, Daphne, and Eloise each clung to their spouses. Francesca and their mother—the two widows—clung to one another. After the loss of her husband just a few years earlier, Benedict was surprised to see Francesca standing upright at all. He needed to look away from Hyacinth and Gregory in order to stay standing himself. His mother stared straight through him, as if seeing the ghosts of the men he wasn’t.
His hands were shaking, the crinkling of paper sounding loud even in the packed church, as Benedict unfolded his speech and began.
“What does one even say about a man like Anthony? My brother was formidable, a force of nature. If an electrical storm were a person, that would have been Anthony.”
There was a titter of laughter around in the room, reminding him that he’d meant that bit as a joke, but really it was just the truth.
“It can be difficult to truly come to know somebody like that,” he continued. “I suppose that is what happens when somebody dies: you realise who they were, or you realise you did not know them at all." He paused for breath, for strength, for God to strike him down, too. "I like to think I knew him.”
In the crowd, he was startled to find Miss Kate Sharma, who looked as if she might break into a million pieces if someone so much as looked at her wrong. Her eyes found Benedict’s, and he watched one tear and then two and then a whole cascade of them fall down her face, and she didn’t even bring up her handkerchief to wipe them away.
She was there, visiting from India. A coincidence, a miracle of the worst kind, a minute late and a pound short. He could not tell who was laughing harder at this cruel trick, God or the Devil. Benedict had never blamed her for returning to India after everything that had transpired, but now, standing at his brother’s funeral and delivering a eulogy that was premature by several decades, in the sickest parts of Benedict’s heart he blamed Kate Sharma for everything.
After that, whatever else he said was in God’s hands. Or perhaps the Devil’s. He hopes he stuck to the script, but how could he have read it all with tears in his eyes? He’d written something poetic about familial love, about a man who struck fear into the hearts of grown adults but was universally beloved by his eight young nieces and nephews. He might’ve shared the story about the stolen drawing paper or any other number of precious memories he’s held onto and hasn’t thought about for years.
What he hopes he didn’t say is the whole truth of the matter: that his brother was a miserable man, prone to bouts of panic and anger, guilt and self-loathing. He was a madman, a wild caricature of a person with a deep and all-consuming sense of duty. Anthony cared for his family at the expense of everything else. He would’ve burned the whole of London to the ground to save one of his siblings, and he didn’t even know himself for how much he focused on everybody else.
Despite having the largest, closest family in the ton, Anthony was possibly the loneliest person Benedict has ever known, and he most likely died of a broken heart. That is Benedict’s theory anyway. The coroner had checked for blood, for wounds, for evidence that he’d suffocated or poisoned himself or that he’d somehow been stung by a damned bee, and had found nothing.
Anthony had never married and sired an heir. It was the only duty he’d never fulfilled, and Benedict had assumed that he would eventually figure it out. After all, he was only eight and thirty. For a wealthy man with Bridgerton good looks, there had still been plenty of time. But no, Anthony had gone and fallen in love and not been able to see it through, and in the years that followed he’d not even invited a lady to dance. Benedict does not even know whether he had kept a mistress. And then, after a lifetime without allowing himself to love or be loved, he died.
Benedict, on the other hand, has Sophie and the boys and another one on the way. His beautiful boys, a mere three and five years of age, are now directly in line for the cursed viscountcy. He finds himself in the nursery one night, watching his sons sleep and cursing his brother, his father, and God Himself for dealing them so cruel a Fate.
Benedict has staff move everything he needs from the study into his own home. The family Bible is transferred to his mother’s office. Noting Anthony’s death among its pages feels final, but seeing his desk and chairs covered with canvas cloths feels far more like closure.
It is awful, sorting through the papers. Not because they were left in any state of disarray. No, Anthony is—was—so meticulous one might accuse him of knowing he was going to die, but this was always his way. Everything is filed, labelled, orderly. Bills are paid or on their way for payment. Coffers full, allowances allotted, transactions tracked in a balance book, plans plotted in notebooks, letters posted to mail, all sorted, addressed, organised.
He thinks of his brother poring over his books while Benedict poured from the decanter, and he decides he’s not to worry about it quite so much. Up to this point, he’s been rather content with being the head of his own little family, and he does not share Anthony’s proclivity for meddling or managing. He has a steward, after all. Solicitors. Servants. He delegates in a way that Anthony always seemed unwilling or incapable.
Benedict is no Atlas. He has no compulsion to fit the world upon his shoulders.
Still, the world finds a way to be heavy.
He fights with Colin over who will take care of their mother. He should be ashamed that it comes to this—they both should be—but she needs someone, and for however close he and his mother may be, he’s already been through this with her once before and he has myriad more responsibilities to attend to this time.
Anthony had led their family alongside their mother, and while they both held affection for one another, she and Anthony’s relationship held so much tension. Benedict had steadfastly avoided stepping in the middle of it lest he be asked to take sides. He certainly does not want to take up those conflicts now.
When he’s with her, his memory is constantly winding the clock back twenty years. Just yesterday she said something so peculiar, so eerie about feeling as if she’s been cursed. It is rather like they have both been let in on the same taboo secret, and Benedict all but fled the room trying to change the subject before she could say the full thought aloud, as if that would make it true—
“She is your responsibility now,” Colin all but spits in his face.
“I cannot be responsible for everything in this family. I am not— I am not Anthony, and I do not plan to become him. You are her favourite. You will tend to her,” he says, jabbing a finger into his brother’s chest.
“You may not be him, but you certainly sound like him,” Colin returns, and they both freeze.
His heart squeezes and his eyes begin to water as he considers how many times they had both complained to their overbearing brother about the modicum of familial responsibilities they’d undertaken, and then in the next breath, poked fun at Anthony for how he had never seemed to stop attending to those duties himself.
He feels twenty years younger, grief-stricken and lost and sitting in the study opposite his brother, when Anthony looked at him with such resignation, and said, so matter-of-fact, “You would do well as head of this family. Better than me, I rather think.”
“I do not want this,” Benedict told him, completely floored and terrified by the notion that this could be his life, to which Anthony replied, “And I do?”
A moment later, Anthony lifted it all from his shoulders, telling him not to worry, that he himself would ensure the survival of their family at the age of eighteen.
Perhaps it spoke to Benedict’s naïveté that he believed him.
Perhaps it spoke more to Anthony’s strength that he had done it all these years.
“Please, Brother,” he says now, passing the burden along to Colin so that it might be shared, so that he does not succumb to the same Fate as their brother. “Do me this favour. I do not know how he did it—”
Colin’s hand squeezes his shoulder, a mimicry of a gesture they both know well. “Do not think of it further. I shall do my best.”
Colin’s hand slides from his shoulder, yet this time, the weight remains.
Far too early in the morning for his liking, Benedict is roused from bed—unfortunately not by his wife but by his valet—and he stumbles into his clothes and down the stairs until he finds Gregory pacing up and down his drawing room, looking ragged and uncharacteristically serious.
“It’s Hyacinth,” he blurts, before Benedict can even open his mouth to ask why he rode on horseback in the rain. “She will not eat or sleep or— I do not know what to do, Benedict. We had a row, and I do not know what to do—”
He’s reminded of his mother so many years ago, and the memory twists in his chest. Hyacinth has always been a bit of a stoic. She’s not one to indulge in dramatics or fanciful feelings, but as he now knows, everybody has their limits.
He nearly asks why Gregory hasn’t asked their mother or called on Daphne instead, as either might be better equipped for such matters, but the Duchess has already repaired to Clyvedon, and now is not a good time to ask their mother anything. He’s dimly aware that this is the sort of thing Anthony might’ve been summoned to handle. He’d already have been up at this hour anyway.
So, Benedict dispatches to Bridgerton House and tries to coax Hyacinth out of it until he’s tired of grieving, tired of reliving history, tired of everything, and he pulls the last and worst card of all.
“Do you think Anthony would want you to behave like this?” he says, desperation making his voice harsh, almost cruel.
He sounds startlingly like Anthony, except even he hadn’t been so unkind to their baby sister. Benedict has never been an angry sort of person, but it seems that’s something one can learn.
Hyacinth’s eyes flash and her jaw sets, and despite her dress and red-rimmed eyes, she is a mirror image of Anthony. “You and I have this in common now,” she says bitterly, ignoring the question. “We have both lost our fathers. I do not care what you or Mama or anybody says; Edmund was never my father. Anthony—” Her voice breaks like a dam buckling against a flood of tears, drowning Benedict’s own soul in the deluge. “He was supposed to give me away,” she gasps sharply, trying to breathe, the sound as ugly and painful as a sob. “Why could he not— why did he—”
Gregory swallows convulsively, his jaw trembling as he tries valiantly not to cry. “He did not even see me graduate,” he says, his voice cracking. “He was looking forward to it more than I was, really.”
Honestly, after so many years, Benedict has never once thought of his brother as anybody’s father. Certainly he’d taken up the mantle as head of the family, but he had always just been the eldest. Benedict had even rolled his eyes when Anthony had given him parenting advice, asking what he could possibly know about fatherhood. “Nothing, of course,” Anthony had replied.
Nothing, indeed.
He remembers one night a few months ago, he was lounging in Anthony’s study, his legs propped inelegantly over the couch cushions, much to his brother’s disapproval, though he didn’t comment on it. Anthony poured out a fine scotch, and when he turned around to hand him a drink, he was smiling.
“I am proud of you, Brother.”
“Generally, or for some specific reason?” Benedict replied in jest, somewhat taken aback by the sincerity in Anthony’s tone.
“Both, but I… You have been quite serious in settling down and raising your family. It is something I myself have not accomplished.”
Benedict watched him carefully, trying to understand where the conversation was meant to go. “Do not tell me you are seeking my advice…”
But Anthony shook his head firmly. “No. I only meant to celebrate your achievements. And to congratulate you, if that’s in order.” He winked.
Benedict’s jaw dropped. Sophie was in the very early stages of pregnancy by that point, and although her previous pregnancies had gone swimmingly, she had not wanted to tell anybody yet. Anthony’s talent for knowing everything that went on in the family could not possibly include this.
“How did you know?”
“Mother told me.”
“How did she know?”
Anthony shrugged. “Woman’s intuition, I suppose. I’m very happy for you, Benedict. For you both.”
If Benedict hadn’t known any better, he would’ve said Anthony sounded wistful.
“Thank you. One day, I am sure I will need to congratulate you in return.”
He knows now that it was not merely a trick of candlelight that caused his brother’s dark eyes to shutter, locking away his true feelings on the matter. Anthony stared at his scotch and took a long sip before gently dismissing the notion. “But not tonight. Tonight is yours.”
Benedict did not say anything more about Anthony’s plans or prospects, not willing to push uncomfortable topics when he was just so pleased with his own news and happy to let his brother in on the secret.
Now, he cannot believe Anthony will never get to meet the child.
He cannot believe his child will never get to meet Anthony.
He spends the morning with his youngest siblings (his brother’s children), sharing stories and allowing the memories to crest and break over them in waves. In this family there are so many of them, siblings and stories, that they sometimes tell the same ones, some remembered differently, at different ages, or they confuse each other’s memories for their own and retell those stories, as if all the ways they remember him are true. In a sense, they are true. After all, memory is the only thing they have left.
After ensuring Hyacinth has a bite of breakfast before he goes, Benedict comes home and spends all the time he can with his own children. When Alexander begins to cry, there is some grumbling, but eventually Charles returns the apparently stolen toy and pats his baby brother gently on the arm, soothing him until they are playing amiably again.
A hazy memory from bygone years fills Benedict’s mind. It must be one of his earliest recollections, for he could not have been older than Alexander. Anthony would’ve been the same age as Charles. Benedict had been searching for Anthony in the drawing room when his brother jumped from the curtains, startling him badly. Anthony laughed himself silly until he had noticed Benedict begin to cry, and he hugged him and apologised, saying that he’d only meant to be funny and he hadn’t meant to frighten him so much, until Benedict could hardly remember why he had been crying in the first place. With Anthony’s reassurances, he certainly wasn’t frightened anymore.
Now, he’s lost his first friend, his oldest confidant, his companion since birth, and his fiercest advocate. Anthony was such a constant, abiding presence in Benedict’s life that he was a nuisance, and Benedict almost did not realise what he had until it was gone.
Now, it is all he can do not to let his boys see him cry.
The house is full today, and he ought to be inside with his family. Normally he’s right in the middle of it—playing games with the boys, dancing with Sophie, entertaining a member of his family or another guest—but today he just cannot manage it.
He likes to think he’s created his own life, that he’s challenged the very notion of what it means to be a Bridgerton. After all, his occupation in the arts and the circumstances of his marriage are somewhat unusual for a man of his status. He’s set out to do things his brother would never even dream of doing (as well as a few things he did dream of) and he saw his way to becoming his own man.
But deep down, since the very day of his birth, he’s always been Anthony’s second.
He’s relied on that fact for all sorts of things. Being the second is easier than being the first. Anthony was the one who worried and fretted, steered and orchestrated. Of course things got more intense when he became viscount, but he’d always been a little bit like that. Anthony managed. Anthony handled. Anthony carried. Benedict helped. Benedict supported. Benedict was relied on for the things that Anthony couldn’t do. It seems he’s finally met his moment in doing what his brother could not do. He just wishes… Christ, there are so many things he wishes, he doesn’t know where to begin.
He stares on at the pond behind his home, so placid and peaceful the whole thing is a crystal clear mirror for the sky, complete with puffy white clouds and a bright yellow sun. The weather has been perfect this week, beyond rare for England and completely contradictory to Benedict’s mood.
There hasn’t been an electrical storm in quite some time.
To his memory, he has experienced a singular perfect summer in his lifetime. He and Anthony (and occasionally Colin, though it was a bit of a safety risk) would swim in the pond behind Aubrey Hall nearly every day. On any given afternoon, he and his brother would wade out into the chilly water, only slightly tempered by the sunshine, and swim and splash until they grew tired and swam ashore, scrambling to pull on their clothes as the warm summer air suddenly felt cool on their bare skin. Then they would lay side-by-side in the grass, looking up at the sky, talking and laughing without a care in the world until one of their other siblings (usually Colin) ran down the hill toward them and demanded attention.
He wishes that something better had happened to those two little boys. That they could’ve been carefree a little longer, that they could’ve been together a lot longer.
He supposes he could go and lie down next to the pond here, and he could bid Sophie or Charles or even Colin or Gregory to lie down with him.
But it wouldn’t be the same. It never will be the same.
Naturally, it is Sophie who puts him to rights, as much as one can be put to rights in these circumstances. After dealing with his grieving family for months and becoming the new Lady Bridgerton, all while nearing her third confinement, she has every right to be sick of all of this, especially of him. Sophie, who is truly the most patient of wives, doesn’t scold him. Instead, one day she steers him into his studio and damn near threatens to lock the door from the outside until he’s in there for at least an hour.
His studio. He’s not been in here since before the funeral. It’s been an age since he’s even thought about painting, let alone held a brush.
He sits for a while, staring at the blank canvas while it taunts him. Mere months ago, this was his life, even a portion of his livelihood.
On impulse, he dips his brush into a smear of bright blue, muting the beautiful poison by mixing it with black and white. He paints a stifling English fog that runs dark where he drops valleys beneath the clouds, the grass almost black beneath a mysterious shadow. The Sun peeks through white, then yellow, then a dark, bleeding red. It is a strange sky, as if Hell itself threatens to burst through where there should be heavens. The sky has never looked this way. (Later, Colin, the veteran globetrotter, will declare that the sky has never looked that way at any time, in any place.) It is part landscape, part nightmare.
It helps.
It really helps.
For her part, Sophie looks pleased as punch. She scrutinises the piece, the corners of her mouth drawing down thoughtfully. He sees the worry in her eyes although she doesn’t comment except to ask if Benedict wants to hang it somewhere around the estate.
He doesn’t.
He considers destroying it or painting over it and starting anew, and eventually he decides against both. Once the layers of paint have dried, he tucks the canvas away in a large, old trunk, alongside a drawing sketched on a bit of stolen paper and a fob watch that has long since stopped ticking.