Chapter Text
The Bridgerton Residence, Gloucester Place, London, June 27, 1953
Early Saturday mornings were a luxury to Francesca.
Alone with the piano, she was able to get herself a few hours of observing the music that danced beneath her fingers. In her head, she was mentally trying to remember which keys her fingers should glide to as her eyes keenly followed note after note on the sheet music in front of her.
The melody was fair, not quite passionate but she’ll fix it, she was only starting out the piece after all.
In classical music, there seemed to be no room for improvisation. She thought it was rather restricting, but if Francesca were to dream of performing a piece one day, she will have to follow its confinement to perfection. No improvisation; no errors.
Anthony offered to pay for an education at becoming a Teacher or in Finance, when it might not be the path for her. Francesca agreed; there was no harm in being practical.
Five years after graduating from her current music course was still a long time, she had just finished her second year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama days ago. She had plenty of time to think.
Francesca moved on towards the next movement of the piece, briefly watching the tall clock chime to the next hour; the rest of the family will be wake soon. Her mind returned to the focus on her keys, carefully following the notes, flipping occasionally to the next sheet. While she focused, she was well aware of the minutes that passed, if you knew the minute well and the markers of which the note strikes; it almost felt like a mathematical computation.
It was a predictability that Francesca can welcome and anticipate. Right at that moment, she can hear the footsteps of one of her siblings lumbering through the halls, directly to where she is in the main room.
“Quite a joyful ballad, Fran.” It was Eloise, bright and fiery, still fighting a yawn that stuck between her throat. “Good Morning.”
“It’s a Beethoven piece, I’m still practicing, hardly joyful if you ask me. Good Morning, El.” She smiled up at her sister, never stopping her rhythm. Her older sister sat on the chaise near the piano, opening the latest newspaper.
Eloise continued, “Marvelous! Keep it up, whatever mood it may be. This is better than to be woken up by Hyacinth’s screeching days ago.”
They both flinched. The youngest Bridgerton had woken up to several frogs on top of her blankets. How Gregory, who had been immediately snitched by a visiting Daphne, found frogs in the streets of London, they will never know. However, they did now know how far in human decibels Hyacinth’s screeching could go.
“Ah, morning,” Benedict walked in, awfully dashing in his bold burgundy polo shirt tucked into his muted dark gray pants, fastened securely by a robust belt. His mischievious grin made Francesca’s playing falter. He was up to something.
“I see that the party’s gathered.”
Francesca downplayed her play, though the tone from the piano didn’t feel as brand new at all to her ears. It had been an newer Mason & Hamlin model in 1930, gifted by Grandpapa Thomas Ledger before he passed away. Her mother was too fond of it to let it go, even if the many fixings didn’t fix anything.
She posed her question anyway, “Gathered? For what?”
She looked around, it was only them around. She can hear the cars from the open window and young children on the streets. Other than that, who else but them?
Eloise twisted to face her from the chaise, newspaper abandoned and mischief long standing.
“We’re going to Gloucestershire.”
“Really? Do we know anyone from there?” Francesca stopped immediately, pressing on a rather distasteful D that made all of the occupants in the room flinch.
“We’re going to Wiltshire.” Benedict corrected, limping in-between the chaise and the piano. His blue hat rested on his chest, as if confessing all sins to the greatest higher being, whoever that may be.
“Wiltshire— right. Well, Mum approved.” Eloise practically bounced on her seat. “We’re going to Ben’s home, he had finally polished it up to adequate satisfaction.”
“You can just say the place’s all cleaned up.” Benedict turned to Francesca, stepping further into the room. “Me and El are approved to stay for the summer in my house. Mum might come visit but she’s awfully busy with the shop. I reckon she’ll visit Bath for the summer with Gregory and Hyacinth anyway.”
Francesca was still thoroughly confused, she was truly not catching on. Her wildest siblings were her closest ones; Benedict and Eloise. True, all her siblings were loud in many ways. Francesca had her own loudness and it was with the silence she accepted and yielded as her own and as her friend. Benedict and Eloise made sense as a pair to spend their summer elsewhere.
“We mean for you to go with us,” Benedict clarified, possibly having mercy on her confusion. “The countryside is after all, a wonderful place of solitude and I have a new piano set installed at My Cottage that you may like.”
“Please go with us,” Eloise, ever so restless in her movements had moved from the chaise and directly in front of Francesca. “Mum would be relieved you’re there, instead of… Mum herself. You know how she is.”
Francesca grinned, intrigued and immediately sold by the fact that there was a piano for her to sit and play with. “I would be cross with both of you if you dared to go without me.”
Eloise’s eyes lit up, “So is that a yes?”
“Of course.”
Eloise hugged her, in her rarer moods of levity. Benedict looked pleased and pushed up his thin-wired spectacles from falling on his nose. Francesca couldn’t admire how well her brother cleaned up, sans the clear signs of stubble on his face.
“I shall tell mother when the shop’s not too busy. I’ve not foretold her about your approval, but I did not doubt you wouldn’t come with.” He said, settling himself on the chaise, picking up Eloise’s abandoned newspaper. “Blimey.” He muttered but offered no more opinions after that and kept to his reading with a frown on the page.
Both sisters stared at him briefly. Francesca knew his brothers had suffered a great deal during the war, each had their own scars and quietness that followed them wherever they went. Benedict used to be the most carefree, uncaring of the world’s conventions, but after being demobilised from the Korean War due to injury, he had been mostly closed off, followed a strict routine, but mostly restless, and his current levity left Francesca slightly worried.
Eloise turned to her, offering her hand. “Shall we pack then?” Her tone was quiet, equally worried for their brother.
Francesca took her hand, and tucked her sheet music under her arm. She perhaps assumed the intention; a place to escape from the wild world they had been thrust into, each of them merely children in an adult’s world. Their intentions were still unclear. To include Francesca to the countryside felt like a cover-up, but she filed that thought away for another time.
She shook her head and let Eloise drag her up the stairs to their shared rooms.
My Cottage, Devizes, Wiltshire. July 9, 1953, late Afternoon
On the way to My Cottage, they were picked up by Mr. Crabtree, who drove a car that barely fit them. She thought, if Mum and Hyacinth and Gregory were to come with, where would they even sit?
Thankfully, it wasn’t too cramped, Francesca had enjoyed seeing the verdant sights of the plains, through the triangle window the backseats provided.
Benedict and Mr. Crabtree made idle conversation, with Eloise adding to the conversation, pausing from her reading occasionally.
Francesca enjoyed her inward solitude, her fingers drumming on her dress’ cotton fabric. She saw the trees move along the wind like a starting symphony of a song she cannot place. For several minutes, or an hour it may have been as the car drove from Meksham to Devizes; Francesca was left to her own thoughts and self-enjoyment.
She was mid-way into the second movement in her mind, carefully arranging the notes she can see from the moving winds and dancing blades of grass when a blur of a person passed by the window, just when the car was turning right to a private path filled and lined with trees.
“What was that?” Francesca blurted out to Eloise. She craned her neck beyond the window, catching a silhouette running further ahead from the car, and disappearing towards left all too suddenly.
Eloise looked up from her book. The Catcher in the Rye was the title. “What was what?”
Mr. Crabtree must’ve heard them, because he looked up on the windshield with a gentle smile. “Don’t be be too worried, Misses. We have neighbors in Bloom Cottage. A smaller bargain than Mister Bridgerton’s here, but still as good. I visited once before it was occupied.”
“Oh, is it the Stirlings? I heard they were from Scotland was it?” Benedict perked up with interest. Francesca wanted to feign indifference, truly she did, but she was intrigued as well.
“Yes, they moved when the older Master died around February. Two cousins live there from what I know, terribly reclusive.” Mr. Crabtree sounded like he disapproved reclusiveness. Francesca did not know why that bothered her. “I haven’t seen them down in town yet, I’m sure it is not my business to know.” He definitely sounded like he had every business to know.
“We don’t see much of them if the young Misses are worried. The Stirlings live beyond that road, a tad bit rocky if you ask me.” He pointed to a narrow but rocky road that seemed endless as it stretched on while the car passed. Francesca fought herself not to crane more of her head and turn it around when they drove away from the street.
“Well I’d rather not sacrifice my car to visit them.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Crabtree.” Benedict chuckled. “We will not make you.”
“Good.”
The rest of the ride was spent in quiet. Francesca thought it was a longer drive, but she was surprised it wasn’t far off from the street they had passed earlier.
“Cottage, brother? That is a bloody mansion!” Eloise cried out from her seat, shutting her book close when they parked on the free lot. The woman had peered from the window briefly and was entirely agog.
It was indeed a manor, as Benedict had corrected impishly. He continued with a little more history: “Grandpapa bequeathed My Cottage once I became of age, and of course, I was in the frontlines — it was inadequately not polished to perfection before I returned.”
Francesca giggled as her siblings volleyed back and forth with their banter. She busied herself by getting out of the car, and helping Mr. Crabtree take out their luggages from the trunk of the car. Although, he did wave her off but she helped him with the smaller bags anyway.
She admired the view, the green plains, the wonderful front garden and the trees beyond the gates. It was the very picture of the countryside they had in Kent. Though, that was truly isolated — My Cottage was not.
She could see another house peeking out from the trees beyond the house.
“Ah, that’s the Bloom Cottage.” Mr. Crabtree pointed. “That’s where one of the cousins that we saw earlier live.”
Francesca squinted to see more of the roof structure above the trees, but she could only barely see anything under the glare of the late-afternoon sun. The sky was beginning to pink already, and the crickets slowly croaking into a tentative chorus, it occurred to her that the atmosphere had gone a little colder before the evening chill fully took over.
Eloise suddenly tugged her towards the main entrance of the manor. “Come on, we have got to see the piano set.”
She shook herself out of her curiosity and smiled fondly at her excited sister, thoughts of Bloom Cottage fading from her mind.
“You needn’t be too excited to see the piano, sister. I know the library is your target.”
“I am,” her sister said stubbornly, looping her arm with hers. “It apparently is of prestigious brand, custom-made from what Benedict told me.”
“Is it true?” She turned with surprise to Benedict, who was following along behind him with his cane guiding him along from his limp.
Benedict’s smile was lopsided, as he always had when he was pleased. It was good to see her brother smile.
“Why don’t you see for yourself and find out?”
“Race you there?” Eloise grinned, taking off before Francesca could respond.
“Eloise!” She ran after her older sister, their laughs echoing off the walls.