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sweetbuckybarnes · 4 months

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You Clever, Clever Boy

Pairings: Anthony + Kate; Benedict + Sophie; Colin + Penelope; Daphne + Simon; Eloise + Phillip; Francesca + Michael; Gregory + Lucy; Hyacinth + Gareth

Extra Characters: Dowager Viscountess Violet Bridgerton, Edmund Bridgerton II, Miles Bridgerton, Thomas Bridgerton, Violet Bridgerton II, Agatha Bridgerton, Belinda Basset, George Bridgerton, Amanda Crane, Georgiana Crane

Summary: The annual Bridgerton Pall Mall has been somewhat interrupted by the first words of one young Bridgerton. or: How I imagine the final ever scene of Bridgerton taking place.

It was time for the annual Bridgerton Pall Mall game. This year, playing for the Mallet of Death, was Anthony and Kate, Benedict, Colin, Daphne and Simon, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory and Hyacinth.

Violet was sitting in the shade, looking out at her fully grown children, squabbling over pall mall sticks. She sighed and shook her head. They were like this as children, Edmund had always encouraged their competitive nature - and this is what it has spiralled into.

She pulls her attention away from her children, looks over to the other side of the Aubrey Hall gardens, and smiles at her grandchildren. She could see Anthony's boys (Edmund and Miles) chasing Colin's son Thomas. Three little girls were using one of the new skipping ropes - Benedict's daughter (Violet), Colin's daughter (Agatha - lovingly nicknamed, Aggie) and Eloise's daughter (Penelope). One of Daphne's daughters - Belinda - was sitting in front of her grandmother, working on her mathematics.

Two pairs of shoes brought the Dowager Viscountess away from her musings, and a pair of little hands wrapped themselves around her legs. Looking down, there was little George Bridgerton - Colin and Penelope's youngest child. "Hello, Georgie," she ran her fingers through his brunette locks - he looked so much like Colin did at his age. The only difference? Georgie Bridgerton has yet to speak a single word. "Where is your mama?"

"Hello, Violet," the voice of Penelope Bridgerton causing Violet to look over at her daughter-in-law with a smile - she had always wished for Colin to marry Penelope (when he found out everyone knew of his feelings before he realised them, he nearly demanded to know why nobody ever told him). Penelope leaned down and pressed a kiss to her mother-in-law's cheek. It was well known Penelope had a better relationship with her in-laws than her own family.

Colin looked away from the game of Pall Mall and spotted his wife talking to his mother, who was currently running her fingers through his son's hair. Penelope looked away from Violet and caught the eye of her husband (much like they always had done in every social situation), a large smile blossomed over Penelope's face as well as Colin's.

She looked away from her husband, a subtle pink blush still rose up her cheeks, even after all these years - he could still make her blush. "Thomas!" Penelope exclaimed, hurrying over to her son who had been accidentally toppled over by Edmund. "Are you alright, darling?" Colin had dropped his pall mall stick and hurried over along with his wife.

Colin was followed by Anthony and Kate to deal with the situation between their sons.

Anthony, Kate and Colin made their way back to the Pall Mall game as Penelope took Thomas up to where Violet was sitting with Belinda and Georgie.

"Are you alright, Thomas?" Violet asked, reaching her fingers out to wipe away one of his tears.

Thomas didn't say anything. Only nodded at his grandmother and manoeuvred himself so he was sitting in the chair with Violet.

Colin kept glancing over at his wife and two of their children. He couldn't imagine just how close he got to losing Penelope to Lord Debling (who went on to marry Cressida Cowper, however, part way into his travels to the North, he and the entire crew perished). If he hadn't admitted his feelings in the carriage, he would have lost her - they wouldn't have their four darling children. Agatha, Thomas, Jane and George.

One of his mother's ladies' maid brought out another chair for Penelope to sit in as she brought Georgie into her lap.

Daphne looked over at her husband, Simon, with a smile then glanced over at Belinda (who was being supervised by her grandmother with her mathematics). "I believe she may ask for advanced mathematics soon," she tells him.

Simon also looked over at their daughter, a smile growing on his face. "I believe so, she is more Bridgerton than she is Basset," Daphne laughed at his words and stepped up to take her turn.

Simon watched his wife, as she swung her red ball through the third wicket. He was extremely grateful to have been able to marry Daphne, rather than any other debutante that year.

Both Gregory and Benedict were worrying over their wives (Lucy and Sophie, respectively) as they were both nearing their suspected due dates. Eloise kept looking down to the other end of the garden, where her husband Phillip Crane (the former husband to the first Lady Crane - Marina) was planting some new flowers for Violet with his daughters Amanda and Georgiana.

Penelope had been talking to Violet, staring out at the garden (making sure her children were alright) when the gentle "mama," made her stop talking. She knew three of her children's voices. The only one she didn't know was...

She looked over at Violet, to make sure she did hear what she thought she heard. Violet also had a look of surprise.

It was Georgie. Her littlest baby finally said his first words.

"Georgie? Was that you?" She asked gently, looking down at him.

Georgie tipped his head, so he was completely resting against Penelope. "Mama," he says again.

Penelope let out a stuttered gasp, then a loud shriek escaped her. Which caught the attention of Colin and Eloise (the former who dropped his pall mall stick and ran over to his wife as quickly as his legs could take him). "Pen!" He called, which prompted Eloise to run over. "What is it? What happened?"

"Georgie spoke," she cried, holding their son to her.

Colin looked from his wife to his mother (who nodded, with tears in her eyes). Belinda pulled at his sleeve from where he was kneeling in front of his wife. "He spoke, Uncle Colin."

Colin let out a stuttered laugh, reaching over to rest his hand on the side of Georgie's head. "Of course he did, my clever boy!" Georgie smiled at his father. "What did he say?"

"Georgie," Violet said, capturing the little boy's attention. "Who has you? Who is this?" She pointed to Penelope.

Tilting his head back up, his face shone with the amount of love he holds for Penelope, even before he spoke, it was well known that Georgie was Mama's boy (as Agatha was Papa's girl). "Mama."

Colin rested his head on Penelope's knee for all of one second. "You clever, clever boy! Yes, mama has you!" Colin pressed a kiss to the top of Georgie's head.

"P-P-" Georgie started, making Colin look down at his son, with wide tearfilled eyes. However, before Georgie was distracted by a passing butterfly.

Penelope giggled and rested her cheek on top of Georgie's. "Give him time, he will say Papa soon."

Georgie looked away from where the butterfly had flown and then looked up at Colin. "P-papa," of course Georgie had to speak and call for both of his parents within the space of five minutes.

Colin exclaimed with joy, pulling Georgie from Penelope's lap and throwing him up into the air (which was followed by Penelope asking him to please be careful with Georgie), and pressed multiple kisses to his son's face. "You clever boy!"

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precious-little-scoundrel · 9 months

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Twenty Songs Challenge, written after being so lovingly inducted by the powerhouse that is sweet Mey, @the-ugly-swan . Challenge being to choose twenty favorited songs and write one shots based off of them with any pairing or fandom of my choosing. Being a weirdo and a little burned out in my own created universes beyond the fics already in works, I chose what currently inspired me most, obscure as it is.

Pairing: Henry “Hotspur” Percy and Lady “Kate” Mortimer Percy -early 15th century

Fandom: RPF, Shakespeare? Tom Glynn-Carney’s 5 magnificent minutes of a performance as Hotspur in <The King 2019> the armor alone was amply inspiring. The Hollow Crown fans feel free to imagine whoever, as you like. I love this historical pairing in about any iteration and the plot is drawn from both Shakespeare’s play and real history, the timeline, plot and politics being pretty self explanatory through the incorporated dialogue. NOTE- wordplay ahead with “cur” and “Kerr”, the latter being a Scottish clan holding great enmity with the Percy Family and charged with holding the Scottish side of the border. Also I kept Lady Percy’s name as “Kate” even though it was technically Elizabeth in the records.

Dynamic: a rough northern lord and his too good for him lady -a lady who has, through years of an arranged marriage gone horribly well, come to find his homespun gallantry and blunt ways more than a little intoxicating when knelt before her in amused deference. She could almost find it in herself to be gentle with him -if he hadn’t just started a rebellion whilst away from her at the Capitol.

Dedicated to my wifey @prompted-wordsmith who I did proselytize into the Percy cult one fevered evening with inestimable results, including her contribution of a few choice lines herein.

🕯As it Was ~ Hozier

“There is a roadway, muddy and foxgloved

Never I'd had life enough

My heart is screaming out

And in a few days I would be there, love

Whatever here that's left of me is yours just as it was”

Warnings: 18+ to be safe. a small amount of sexual content, flirtations, a husband and wife touching in public, verbal sparring and talk of making children and use of the word “bred”, swearing, use of the words “cock” and “cunt.”

The sound of hooves in the courtyard rouses Kate from her anxious stupor by the hearth, toilsome grain list forgotten on her lap. The scroll swishes to the floor at her abrupt standing, wafting out of her path as she rushes to the window.

First the clatter of a single, foremost, over-eager rider, followed at a lag by his retinue, skilled riders all and armored as befits the guard of a nobleman. They make such a clatter in the yard when they come in after him. Some petty part of her briefly considers the tactic of staying here in their chambers in protest, a quiet sign of disapproval with his errand, of discontent with his brusque leave taking two weeks agone.

Her Harry would find her anyway, and like it better that she were in their chambers. He would like it well she were so near the bed and like it ill she slighted him in her dutiful welcome -but he would not speak of that. Not one for speaking much, her husband, not on matters that plague her these days, weeks, months. Kate might have it out with him in the old way and slap him about and toss cold quips and get from him little more than the same benign aggravation and good humored laughs between, a couple dozen kisses to her neck and a grapple in the sheets.

That is what talk they would undertake were she to stay up here.

It is that lone, eager, forerunning clatter of his horse that speaks to her, speaks for him. Just as his sword and his reputation and his gruff graciousness has spoken well of him across these northern lands, his eagerness to return to her, to outstrip his men in haste to be back from his fool’s errand and into her embrace -it is all the declaration of devotion she may expect from him. It is the truest form, without jape lacing his tone or tonic of lust clouding his confessions.

Harry Hotspur, as fast to return to his wife as he is to meet a fight.

It is love, of the sort she has grown to be grateful for, and it is that and fear of losing it besides, that rushes her out from their chambers and down the polished steps, out to the great hall and past the giant outer doors, cursing a lousy servant or five and ordering a bath and commissioning supper and refreshments as she goes. The torch flames bend from her flight, a whoosh and a shadow stalking Alnwick Castle’s stone passageways until the gray light of evening pours into her sight from the opened great doors. Squires and stable boys clutter her path but they part as she dashes, nay, only a dignified hasten now, out into the courtyard where nearly all of this fool’s troup have dismounted.

There are doffed helms to the Lady Percy, the jangle of chain mail crinkling with bows and scraps of deference all around them, but she sees only him, with mist dripping on his nose and a face too boyish for the insolence he has returned from discharging.

“Kate.” he utters.

Will ever he say her name lazily? She hopes not, for that alone she will endure the unwarranted cheerfulness with which he greets her on this dire occasion. She has heard it said in anger, in jest and in passion, vows and quips, praise and warning. And now in cheerful pleasure as evening mist soaks her gown and the heavy clunk of her husband's footsteps clang ever near her on the paving stones.

“Lord husband.” she greets, hands folded over her freshly healed womb.

His stride falters and he rocks back on his spurred heels, an arms length away, an embrace so tangible she can see his jaw tick from the watering of his mouth. “Lord husband is it?” he repeats thoughtfully, eyes drifting down to the paving stones for a brief moment as if to recollect some forgotten crime, they flick up soon and in them is jesting scrutiny, “My lady wife rushed all this way, down five corridors and a furlong of Keep only to greet me thus?”

Did her rising breath betray her eagerness? Could he see her in the hall despite his business dismounting?

“Your cheeks are red.” he shows her mercy, some form of it. His form. “But -Lord husband, it is, nevertheless?”

“Unless you would prefer ought else?” she inquires, he had once thought this smile quite chilling, he had admitted after their first babe, now he finds it rousing, he has admitted after their third.

“If it please you.” his shifting stance is noisy, his tabard and sword and still clutched helm a racket of accouterments in the pattering rain.

“I have any number to offer,” she concedes, stepping nearer, a lady’s step, covering one third of the ground between them that he might vanquish in a single stride. Still, he waits. “Knucklehead.” she whispers, her breath a fog and her insult as lost as vapor in the ears of his watching men, her bearing alone must satisfy their curiosity, as must his growing smirk and rising color, “Jackenape.” Another step until each little scar on his face is visible and the little canyons each raindrop make of them. She saw his finger twitching where it grasped his visor “Cur.”

There was the slightest flinch between his brows at that, a furrow that smoothed as his mirthful lips flattened out. “Careful now, lady wife, with words like Kerr* thrown about, my men might think you presumptuous, their lady gone and married to some other, a Scottish laird at that. So sure of my death already, sweet Kate, that you must speak of Kerrs in mine own yard? Ha, ‘pon my word you are qu-“

“Hush!” Her hand, fresh warmed as it was by recent hearthside and rich velvets pressed frimly to his lips, a tingle shooting straight to her toes at touching him at last. He was silent then, only the puff of breath against her fast chilling fingertips. “Tease me not so,” she begged, her own mirth gone out in her eyes, her arch look turned to grief, “not when you are just returned from an errand all but ensuring such an end. It is too cruel, even of you. Handle me kindly, Percy, as you always have, in words this time, if not in embrace.”

He seemed to ponder this before raising that hand not occupied with his helm, clumsy and clad in gauntlet as it was, to her wrist, wrapping the chilled and layered steel round her pale flesh and gently tugging her hand from his lips, only so far as to press it to his cheek instead, their audience of men at arms unheeded. “I betook myself to London,” he enunciated, as if it were their first night all over again and his thick borderland drawl too strong for her courtly ears to decipher, “to remind a king of his debts.”

“And tell me!” she cried fiercely, a choked, barely quieted protest as her hands dug into the wet leather of his jerkin, wrist twisted from the steel grasp, “What errand is that but a fool’s? Have you no fear at all left in this bruised carcass? Do I patch up an animated corpse time and again from your wars only for it never to have soul and feeling and wisdom in it? Do I, Harry? Gone to remind a king? How do you dare such?”

“It is he who has dared too much!” he cried back, loudly where her’s had been choked, a ringing and rebauld defense, worthy of a man who would chastise his monarch in full view of council. “First his debts, and now my son’s land! We did not make children so as to watch like blithe cowards as their birthright is bequeathed out from under our feet -piecemeal!- to a courtly cunt whose only recommendation is his alacrity to pucker and bow.”

Kate glanced about her at the men making show of industry, piddling at harnesses and armaments, walking horses in circles. Her husband's words could be no worse than what he had said to the King’s own face, anyone without stomach to become a rebel would have stayed behind in the Capitol, sensing dissension brewing. Lady Percy could perceive none missing from his number. So, a war it was to be, then.

“So, a new generation of Percys is to play at kingmaking.” she summarized.

“We make no boast of it.” Harry protested in turn.

“No,” said she, “why would you with how poorly your last choice has served you?”

That caused a start from him, a step forward that was neither gallant nor eager but angry as man to man. Kate, still with hands fisted in the crooks of his armor, stepped with him, backwards to his hall. “It is your brother with the better claim.” he showed his plan at last, a slow and conniving admission, one not common for his brash ways and straightforward mind.

Kate gasped at the implication. “Edmund?”

“He was proper heir, all along.”

“Your father-“ she chose her wording carefully, “-did not agree.”

“My father’s preference is not law.”

“It is mistaken for such, often.” Kate smirked in reply. “And Edmund is not suited-“

“-Edmund is not the turd now stealing from his vassals!” her Harry rejoined, his helmet pressed to her chest, “Edmund will do.” he reiterated once more.

Kate stared at his temper, the signs of it in his flaring nose and his wild eyes, the cure was between her thighs but watching mist drops fall from unblinking lashes was sweet prelude indeed. “Edmund,” she replied quietly and in a manner to be heeded, “is not willing or suited, he prefers instead to listen to welsh bards and lay upon the lap of his savage wife.”

Her Harry rolled his eyes at her truth, an admission, or the closest to one, she would ever receive. As if battling some great inner turmoil she watched him purse his lips and heave out a sigh before in a sudden movement the helm was tossed to the ground -much to the scramble and reaction of a half a dozen squires who ran to pick it up from its puddle- and suddenly steel hands were upon her hips, tugging her near to him even as she shied away, her face turned in a pantomime of demureness. “Strange,” he said and his tone suggested he still pondered her report of her brother's amorous preoccupations, “-and her lap so less Devine than mine own wife’s.”

“Then why do you haste from it so often?” she whined, delivering a smack against his belted tabard, right where the lions paraded across his right breast.

“Only a man dying of thirst appreciates that water has a flavor.” he reasoned and Kate allowed the open mouthed kisses that crept down her neck, her face turned stubbornly still to the south wall. The blacksmith's roof will be in need of new thatching soon, before spring. Before war.

She feels stubble against her tender skin, bracketing those pretty lips she once derided him for. No warrior ought to have lips like that, it was not seemly, not when maidens were denied such richness, such fullness, such rosy hue. But there is roughness about his lips and on his jaw as it tucks into the juncture at her shoulder, that show of clavicle her dress allows drawing him in like a siren’s song. He must’ve rode hard the entire way, no inns or refreshment, no shaving or baths, straight to her as from a battlefield. The King’s city is just as loathsome as any field of carnage, but he went to free her brother, to get a ransom, to reclaim their stolen land, to remind a king.

He did it for her, and the babes she gave him.

Kate turns her face from the blacksmith's thatch and raises her hand to his face, tenderly stroking the three days' beard that's grown as he's been on the road, riding hard to get to her. They have backed nearly to the hall’s mouth, the drip of rain off the gutter patters behind her on the threshold, Kate knows he can smell supper and hear the clatter of their children racing to meet him on still chubby legs. How different is the love of home, man to woman, Harry would sooner fight for it and she would cower within. Her thumb swipes at the raindrops making farce of tears upon his cheek.

"Princess," he breathes against her palm as he crushes her into his chest, still half armored and agonized for it as he cannot feel her softness with the cuirass, the leather, the chainmail. There are curves and bosoms and soft flesh he knows too well just on the other side of this awful barrier.

Princess will be her title if his treason succeeds, if her brother wears that cursed crown. “Princess”. It sours her mouth, but it is kind of him to wish it for her.

"You will come back, Harry.” she commands of him, she declares the outcome of this brewing war, “Soaked in the blood of feckless scum, you will come back and put another babe in me. A little prince or princess," she hisses in his ear, and she can tell he freezes at that, her concession to his treason, still as stone in his metal casings.

His eyes are ever so blue as they search hers.

"So I forbid any recklessness, my Lord Husband. Because I want this - " and her hand slips beneath his jerkin and the hem of mail to squeeze his cockstand most assuredly, as assuredly as she was that he would be sporting one for her, gripping it as one might grasp a chalice of wine during a toast "- and the rest of you, in one piece." Harry slumps against her shoulder, panting into the chilled hair and too heavy for her little frame. "Or so help me God." she intones, sharper than any steel he wields. "Swear it, Harry." She gives him another punishing squeeze, and he groans, agonized, as his mouth meets with the softness of her bound bosom, his knees the hardness of the stone cobbles. If she hadn't promised a use for his cock, he'd think she was liable to geld him herself at his presumption to seat and unseat a king, but now that he is out of her grip, for a moment, and looks up at her with such longing he fears his soul has left his chest for hers.

"So help me God." he agrees, it is in providence’s hands, after all, and in Kate’s clasped one’s atop his head.

“Fool.” she says once more as she bends over him, gently pressing a hand to the back of his head, pressing his face to her belly and her chilled fingers to his sopping hair, “It is not my brother these men fight for, nor for me. Not when it is you that calls them to it.”

“For what then?” He mumbles into her womb, hands heavy on her hips, the courtyard’s occupants dispersed into the shadows of the eaves, but a couple dozen peering eyes twinkle towards them in the twilight’s gloom.

“How often have I heard it said here, in this very courtyard.” Kate scoffs, observing the strength knelt so adoringly before her, “Have I dreamed each cry of ‘no prince save he be a Percy?’ Ha, to think they fight for a Mortimer, indeed. Ha!”

Harry staggers to his feet at this poke, it is, as are so many of his Kate’s wounds, half torment, half praise. His blood pounds with the elixir of her acknowledgment of his capability. “It is well then, Kate Mortimer,” he recites, daring now to put his lips very near her own, to nuzzle his strong nose with her hawkish one, to tip a chin and bat an eyelash against her wet cheek, “it is well that you are Percy now yourself, through and through, wed-“ his lips meet hers in a brush she chases after, “-and bred.”

🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯🕯

Hope all five of you who read that enjoyed it. 😆 I know it’s a fragment but as I’m nothing but hyper fixated when some interests resurrects in me, I’ll probably be back with more of them. Drop a note below if you’d like to be on a taglist for such developments.

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