Chapter Text
Anthony had not thought himself capable of this much love.
He knew he was capable of some amount of love. He loved his siblings and his mother. He loved riding horses in Hyde Park and playing billiards at night. He was careful not to love any woman but that didn’t mean he didn’t love bringing them pleasure.
But he was very careful about not loving one. It wasn’t worth the risk. He had seen how love had turned his mother into a shell of a person and left his siblings lost and bewildered. He knew now that the inevitable consequence of love was grief and the only way to avoid it was never fall in love.
Anthony thanked God every day that he had failed in that particular endeavour. That Kate had ridden into his life and never ridden out of it, not even when he was so deep in his long-standing grief that he’d almost pushed her away, nor when she had fallen from her horse and almost left him for ever.
Now he got to spend the rest of his life with her. Now he got to hold her close in bed- although now he wasn’t holding her quite as close as he had previously.
They had to leave room for something incredibly precious.
A child, adorable, beautiful, half him, half Kate. Anthony felt he could spend hours just gazing at his son, admiring his dark curly hair or his large brown eyes. In fact, he often did so, interlocking fingers with Kate as the two of them gazed at their perfect son on the bed between them.
Edmund. Named after the man whose death had closed the door in Anthony’s heart. But if Kate had been the key that had unlocked it, baby Edmund was the treasure that lay in the room beyond.
Sometimes it was hard to remember what had worried him so. As he and Kate fell in love with their son and even more in love with each other, he wondered why he had spent so much of his life resisting this happiness, this love, this life that he could not believe he deserved.
But sometimes it was easy.
Especially at night, whilst Kate slept in his arms and their child slumbered in his cot. Especially when the darkness outside crept into their chamber and into his soul. When the air felt thick and heavy with ghosts and grief, he wondered if maybe he had been right before.
He had mostly been able to let go of the idea that he would never grow older than his father. He knew it was irrational, yet once he had known it to be the truth as much as he had known his own name. And in the darkness of the night, where there was nothing but his own thoughts, he wondered if maybe he was right, if maybe he would die as young as his father and leave behind a fractured family.
He knew that Kate would be alright. She was the strongest person he knew, never again would he doubt her, never would he think she would fall apart after his death, no matter how much she loved him.
It was Edmund he was worried about.
He had been the first person in the world to hold him, the second to marvel at how his tiny hand could achieve such a strong grip around Kate’s finger. The best day of his life was when he had played peekaboo with a toy rabbit and Edmund had laughed so hard Anthony had felt his heart break.
Because as strong as Kate could be, it was different for children. He saw that in his siblings, how Colin got into fights with boys at school and Daphne constantly fell out with their mother. How Eloise would burst into tears seemingly at random, Francesca did not speak for a month and Gregory constantly asked where papa was. Only Benedict, closest to him in age and with the intelligence if not the wisdom of an adult, seemed to be able to function but if he was managing as well as Anthony was then he was not managing at all.
It was hard not to think about death during the night and eventually it became harder to push the thoughts away during daylight. He took more care over his ledgers so that if he was to go to sleep and not wake up, either Kate or Benedict would be able to pick up where he left off. He took a much closer interest in the pantry stocks much to Kate’s confusion, just so he could be sure his household wouldn’t starve. He paced out the grounds of Aubrey Hall and considered if he wanted to be buried to the left or the right of his father.
It was when he started writing letters to Edmund for all the birthdays that he would not be in the world for that he realised he was much deeper in his despair than he had ever been before.
He replaced his pen in its stand and stared at a still-drying ink on the paper. It was a letter for Edmund’s eighteenth birthday, in which he informed the future viscount that he had already paid for his studies at Oxford and warning him not to sow too many oats among the local women. Writing it had been a strange experience for him, thinking back to how he’d been at that age, newly titled, newly away from home, newly bereaved of the father he loved. Hot tears pricked at the corner of Anthony’s eyelids and gathered so much so that his vision became blurry. He brushed them away quickly and looked up to see if Kate had noticed.
Of course she had.
She was sitting at her own desk, pen hovering above her letter, a concerned frown twisting her beautiful features. Anthony hated himself for worrying her, he never wanted to be the cause of her pain- and yet he would be wouldn’t he? Kate would be strong, yes, but because she would have to be. Because she would miss him. Because she loved him now and would be heartbroken later.
“I need you,” he whispered and at once Kate was on her feet and half way across the room before he clambered to his own and was caught in her loving embrace. Her arms tightening around him finally made him feel secure enough to bury his face in her shoulder and weep.
When his sobs eased and he lifted his head, Kate took his face in her gentle hands. Anthony nuzzled into her palm, kissed her wrist and tried to calm down.
“My love, what is wrong?”
Wordlessly Anthony gestured towards the letter on his desk. He watched Kate’s eyes flick back and forth, her frown deepening and she took in each line.
“Anthony are you making plans-”
“No!” he exclaimed, “I am not! I am not planning anything. But that does not mean I won’t…”
His voice trailed off.
“Won’t what?” Kate asked softly.
Anthony rubbed his eyes so hard the world went white. His breathing felt laboured and heavy, as though every time he breathed in some invisible hands were pulling his chest down again. He desperately needed Kate’s arms around him again but she was still frowning at Edmund’s letter.
“Is this about not outliving your father?”
Anthony gave a shaky exhale. “I know we have spoken about this before. And you were right, I cannot let my fear rule life. But recently it has been haunting me and I cannot remove the ghosts from my mind.”
“Recently?”
Anthony nodded. “Since Edmund was born.”
Together, they looked over at him. Their study was an unusual set up, two desks perpendicular to each other with a bassinet in the half-completed square. And in the bassinet lay their sleeping son, tiny fist bunched against his chubby cheek, oblivious to the melancholy around him. As he should be. As Anthony would always want him to be but that wouldn't come to pass, would it?
“Very well,” came Kate's quiet, firm voice in his ear, “let's say you are right.”
Anthony started. He would have accidentally jostled Kate except she was reaching for her own pen and a blank piece of paper on his desk.
“Whatever can you mean?” he said. He had expected some kind of dismissal, not that Kate was ever dismissive but he thought she might be more… reassuring.
Kate did not answer at first, instead drawing a long vertical line down the middle of the page, dividing it into two columns. At the top of the left column she wrote ‘True’ and underlined it twice. At the top of the right one she wrote ‘False’ and underlined it in the same way again.
Then she placed her pen on the ‘True’ side and looked at Anthony expectantly. He could only gape back.
“You say you will not outlive your father. Why is that true?”
Anthony thought this was still a little too flippant but decided to play along, “I cannot say for sure but I have always felt it in my soul.”
Kate nodded and wrote ‘gut instinct’ in the ‘True” column.
“Why else?”
Anthony considered. The first reason had been so all-consuming that he had not considered much else. It still consumed him now and he wrestled with it, tore it apart so he could see the inner workings.
“We have both lost parents young,” he said softly, “you cannot say dying young, leaving a family behind never happens.”
Kate's hand shook a little as she wrote but her writing of ‘Precedence’ was clear.
“Any more?”
Anthony looked at their son. He continued sleeping, his thumb in his mouth, his long lashes- he got those from Kate- brushing his upper cheeks.
“The world is dangerous,” Anthony said finally, “I know this is similar to the last thing I said but it is more than that. My father never had this, this malady that I have and yet he died young. I imagine the same is true for your parents. And yet we live in a world of danger and disease and goddamn bees that if it's not one thing that finishes me off it will be something else.”
He had wondered if he had gone a step too far, if he had shocked Kate but she only nodded and dutifully documented ‘dangerous world’ in the left hand column.
“There,” she said, “that's enough for now.”
Anthony looked at his fears, neatly written in black and white, the darkest parts of his soul summarised in only a few words. They didn't seem so terrifying, written down like that. It was oddly comforting in a way, being seen like this. He knew that his fears were, strictly speaking, irrational, but that didn't mean they weren't real to him. He appreciated the acknowledgement.
His eyes moved over to the right hand side, the column titled ‘False’. He was beginning to get an idea of where this was going.
“I suppose I have to think of reasons why I will outlive my father?”
“Precisely,” said Kate, pen to paper.
“I suppose,” Anthony began hesitantly, “I know that this feeling is irrational. As much as I believe it to be true, I do not truly know it to be. It is silly, in a way.”
“That's true,” said Kate, writing ‘silly’ on the right side column, “what else?”
This side was harder. Anthony had spent so long either convinced of his own imminent mortality or trying to suppress it that thinking of reasons why was surprisingly difficult. Like he was exercising a more hopeful part of his brain that he had not much used.
“I know of people who have died from the same illnesses as their parents,” said Anthony, “but my father did not die from an illness. I do not see how this applies to my situation. How would a bee know one had already killed my father?”
“A good point,” said Kate, writing ‘not hereditary.’
“I can't see the future,” said Anthony, warming to the exercise, “I suppose this goes a little with irrational, but they all go with irrational, do they not?”
“They do,” said Kate, writing down ‘not an oracle’ and Anthony smiled at her praise.
After that, though, he was stumped.
He wasn't sure if he needed the ‘False’ column to have more items on it compared to the ‘True’ but the ‘True’ listed seemed to loom above its paper, seeming heavier, truer than its weaker counterpart.
“I have one to add,” murmured Kate. Her pen made a scratching sound on the paper, her head bowed low over it so Anthony could not see what she was writing until she lifted her head back up and revealed she had written ‘Kate’s gut instinct’.
Anthony looked at her quizzically. Kate looked delightfully smug, as though she had just offered him a riddle and he was taking too long to come to the obvious answer. He supposed that's exactly what was happening.
“Your gut instinct tells you that you will die before you reach your fathers age. My gut instinct says you will live a long happy life and die at the age of ninety two.”
Anthony let out a short bark of laughter. “You cannot possibly know that.”
“I might say the same to you,” said Kate grandly, “but it is not the same because I am the one who is correct.”
Anthony smiled at her, tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “You think you can just will it to be so?”
“Yes,” said Kate definitely, “I am the Viscountess Kathani Bridgeton. My every wish is my husband's command.”
Anthony laughed again and kissed her. He could feel Kate smiling against his lips and thought, well perhaps she was right. Kate had enough tenacity to will a fact into being, enough stubbornness to resist the universe itself until it morphed itself to meet her approval. And she was entirely right about him, any passing fancy of hers was a serious mission for him. If she demanded him to live until his ninety second birthday, who was he to deny her?
“Thank you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close, “I don't know how but your little exercise worked.”
“It's something my father used to do with me when I was anxious as a child,” said Kate, “I was not a good sleeper, something was always keeping me up. Appa would make me speak my worries aloud and investigate their truths and their falsehoods the way we did now. I often found that, even when there was an element of truth, it was not the whole story.”
Anthony pressed his lips into her neck, closing his eyes as he inhaled. Her scent was always strongest here, where she enhanced her soap’s lily scent with perfume.
“You have to outlive me,” said Anthony. A tremor went through Kate but Anthony could not fully account for it, “if your prophecy is that I will live until ninety two then mine is that you live far longer. Perhaps forever.”
“I do not think I should like to live for ever,” said Kate, gently scratching his scalp in that comforting way of hers.
“Nevertheless-”
A noise interrupted them. A tiny mewl that Anthony knew from experience would give way into a proper cry. But before that could happen, both of Edmund's parents were upon him, lifting him out of his bassinet, Kate cradling him in her arms, singing a soft lullaby, Anthony fussing over him, stroking his curls, kissing his cheeks.
And Anthony knew he was alright. Everything would be well. The night had no more terror for him now.