Bridgerton Collection Volume 1 (Bridgertons)
Page 36
I could not. Teen romances of the 1980s had many good features, but interesting verbiage was not one of them.
But I wanted to continue with my “fun” books, and I really didn’t want to spend the summer reading Joseph Conrad, so I said that my Sweet Dreams novels were research. I was going to write a teen romance novel, and it would be foolish of me to do so without a full understanding of the genre.
That stopped him in his tracks. He was impressed. I was impressed. It was not easy to gain the upper hand in a debate with my father. It still isn’t.
“Okay,” he said, and that night he sat me down in front of his computer. We were practically state-of-the-art for the early 1980s—the only house on the block with a personal computer. The screen was maybe eight inches across, black with a noxious green flashing cursor, but once I started typing I didn’t stop. I wrote a chapter. And then another. At some point my father came in to check on me, but I waved him away.
He never bugged me about my Sweet Dreams books again.
I share this story not because it is particularly relevant to Regency England (although it is certainly true that my teenaged heroine was, like Daphne Bridgerton, romantically overlooked by the opposite sex). Rather, I want you to understand the special bond I have with my father when it comes to the written word.
Flash forward to 1999. I am writing what I think will be the first book of a trilogy. I start with chapter one, even though I think there will probably be a prologue. I open with a mother and daughter, and I realize that in the course of their conversation, I, the author, need to impart a great deal of expository information. The daughter is the fourth of eight alphabetically named children, and the oldest girl. They all look rather alike. The father is dead, but the mother is not, and none of her charges are yet married.
But how do I inform the reader? I don’t want to do what writers call an “info dump,” which is basically when the author dumps a whole lot of information into the opening chapter in an unnatural manner. My favorite (or rather, least favorite) example of this is when two characters have a conversation, but they are clearly talking to the reader and not to each other. If I were to do this in The Duke and I, it would come out something like this:
DAPHNE: Mother, did you ever think you would have eight children?
VIOLET: No, and I certainly didn’t think all eight would look so much alike.
DAPHNE: It does mean that people confuse us, but I suppose I have it easier than the others, since I’m the oldest girl.
VIOLET: Oh yes, I see what you mean. Eloise, Francesca, and Hyacinth will have to get used to the ladies of the ton mistakenly calling them by your name.
DAPHNE: It’s a good thing you named us alphabetically.
VIOLET: That was your father’s idea.
DAPHNE: I’m so sorry he’s dead.
Yeah . . . that’s not going to work.
Then I realized that while it made no sense for Daphne and Violet to have a conversation in which they basically said stuff they both already knew, it was perfectly logical that a third party might impart that same information. If someone—perhaps a gossip columnist—were to gossip about the Bridgertons, it would make perfect sense that the basic facts of the clan would be laid out in a single, tidy paragraph.
And so Lady Whistledown was born.
I loved her. She was arch and witty and cutting without being cruel, and she provided structure to the novel that would otherwise have been difficult to achieve. With Lady Whistledown we always knew what day it was. We knew what parties people had gone to. I could info-dump to my heart’s content and it would be entertaining. Honestly, it was a writer’s dream.
Until my father came to visit. (You knew we’d get back to him.)
I was puttering about in my kitchen, and all of a sudden he burst in and said, “You’re brilliant!”
I made a show of basking in the praise and then asked, “Why?”
It turns out I’d left my computer on in my office, and he’d read the first two chapters of what would eventually become The Duke and I. He immediately launched into an excited speech about what a great idea Lady Whistledown was, but he wanted to know—who was she, and how did I plan to reveal her?
I said, “You read it without asking me?”
He blinked.
I said, “I can’t believe you read what was on my computer without asking me.”
He blinked again and said, “But it was so good.”
This, apparently, was the right thing to say because I quickly forgave him. He said he hadn’t meant to read my work-in-progress. He’d gone onto my computer to check his email, and it was up on the screen and he got sucked in.
It turns out that it’s difficult to stay angry with someone when they tell you your writing has sucked them in.
But then he repeated his question. “Who is Lady Whistledown?”
The conversation then went something like this:
ME: I don’t know.
DAD: What do you mean you don’t know? You have to know.
ME: But I don’t. I don’t know.
DAD: You can’t write a mystery without knowing the answer.
ME: (with zero snark, I swear) Apparently I can.
DAD: But you have to know who she is to write her columns properly.
ME: Not really.
DAD: (now pacing with distress) Oh my God. How are you going to do this? You have to figure it out.
ME: I’m hoping it will come to me.
DAD: What if it doesn’t?
ME: (for the first time starting to feel a little nervous) Uhhh . . . Drag it out to the next book?
If you’ve finished The Duke and I, you know that I did indeed drag it out to the next book, although not because I didn’t know who Lady Whistledown was when it went to press. I figured it out right around the time I started writing the next book in the series (The Viscount Who Loved Me) and then frantically reread The Duke and I to make sure I hadn’t written anything that would disqualify my candidate.
But when I failed to reveal Lady Whistledown’s identity, I did something that was somewhat unusual in my genre. Romance novels, by definition, have tidy endings. The protagonists have fallen in love, and their happily-ever-after is assured. Romance authors don’t write sequels so much as spin-offs, because if we bring our hero and heroine back as the main characters in a sequel, this implies that the happily-ever-after did not stick. If we write a series, every book must have a different set of protagonists. Readers expect this, and somewhere along the way they began to expect that all the major plotlines would be resolved by the final page.
When my readers finished The Duke and I, there was a collective jaw-drop. I had most definitely not resolved all the major plotlines. “Who was Lady Whistledown?” soon morphed into “Are we going to find out in the next book?”
Maybe I shouldn’t tell you now, but no, you won’t find out in the next book. I was having far too much fun writing the columns to say goodbye. But rest assured, Lady Whistledown’s identity does get revealed further down the series. And I think you’ll be cheering for her all the way.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“The Duke and I: The 2nd Epilogue” was originally published in The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After in April 2013.
“The Duke and I: The 2nd Epilogue” copyright © 2013 by Julie Cotler Pottinger.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE DUKE AND I. Copyright © 2000 by Julie Cotler Pottinger. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompil
ed, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Mimi Bark
Cover photograph © Ildiko Neer/Trevillion Images (woman); © Phatthanit/Shutterstock (sky); © Neptunestock/Shutterstock (greenery)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
Digital Edition JUNE 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-242403-7
Version 05042020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-291141-4
Dedication
For Little Goose Twist,
who kept me company
throughout the writing of this book.
I can’t wait to meet you!
And also for Paul,
even though he is allergic to musicals.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Author’s Note
The Viscount Who Loved Me: The 2nd Epilogue
Copyright
Prologue
Anthony Bridgerton had always known he would die young.
Oh, not as a child. Young Anthony had never had cause to ponder his own mortality. His early years had been a young boy’s perfection, right from the very day of his birth.
It was true that Anthony was the heir to an ancient and wealthy viscountcy, but unlike most other aristocratic couples, Lord and Lady Bridgerton were very much in love, and they saw their son’s birth not as the arrival of an heir, but rather that of a child.
And so there were no parties, no fêtes, no celebration other than that of mother and father staring in wonderment at their new son.
The Bridgertons were young parents—Edmund barely twenty and Violet just eighteen—but they were sensible and they were strong, and they loved their son with a fierceness and devotion that was rarely seen in their social circles. Much to her own mother’s horror, Violet insisted upon nursing the boy herself, and Edmund never subscribed to the prevailing attitude that fathers should neither see nor hear their children. He took the infant on long hikes across the fields of Kent, spoke to him of philosophy and poetry before he could possibly understand the words, and told him a bedtime story every night.
Because the viscount and viscountess were so young and so very much in love, it came as no surprise to anyone when, just two years after Anthony’s birth, he was joined by a younger brother, christened Benedict. Edmund immediately adjusted his daily routine to take two sons on his hikes, and he spent a week holed up in the stables, working with his leatherworker to devise a special pack that would hold Anthony on his back while he held the baby Benedict in his arms.
They walked across fields and streams, and he told them of wondrous things, of perfect flowers and clear blue skies, of knights in shining armor and damsels in distress. Violet used to laugh when they returned all windblown and sunkissed, and Edmund would say, “See? Here is our damsel in distress. Clearly we must save her.” And Anthony would throw himself into his mother’s arms, giggling as he swore he’d protect her from the fire-breathing dragon they’d seen just two miles down the road in the village.
“Two miles down the road in the village?” Violet would breathe, keeping her voice carefully laden with horror. “Heaven above, what would I do without three strong men to protect me?”
“Benedict’s a baby,” Anthony would reply.
“But he’ll grow up,” she’d always say, tousling his hair, “just as you did. And just as you still will.”
Edmund always treated his children with equal affection and devotion, but late at night, when Anthony cradled the Bridgerton pocket watch to his chest (given to him on his eighth birthday by his father, who had received it on his eighth birthday from his father), he liked to think that his relationship with his father was just a little bit special. Not because Edmund loved him best; by that point the Bridgerton siblings numbered four (Colin and Daphne had arrived fairly close together) and Anthony knew very well that all the children were well loved.
No, Anthony liked to think that his relationship with his father was special simply because he’d known him the longest. After all, no matter how long Benedict had known their father, Anthony would always have two years on him. And six on Colin. And as for Daphne, well, besides the fact that she was a girl (the horror!), she’d known Father a full eight years less than he had and, he liked to remind himself, always would.
Edmund Bridgerton was, quite simply, the very center of Anthony’s world. He was tall, his shoulders were broad, and he could ride a horse as if he’d been born in the saddle. He always knew the answers to arithmetic questions (even when the tutor didn’t), he saw no reason why his sons should not have a tree house (and then he went and built it himself), and his laugh was the sort that warmed a body from the inside out.
Edmund taught Anthony how to ride. He taught Anthony how to shoot. He taught him to swim. He took him off to Eton himself, rather than sending him in a carriage with servants, as most of Anthony’s future friends arrived, and when he saw Anthony glancing nervously about the school that would become his new home, he had a heart-to-heart talk with his eldest son, assuring him that everything would be all right.
And it was. Anthony knew it would be. His father, after all, never lied.
Anthony loved his mother. Hell, he’d probably bite off his own arm if it meant keeping her safe and well. But growing up, everything he did, every accomplishment, every goal, every single hope and dream—it was all for his father.
And then one day, everything changed. It was funny, he reflected later, how one’s life could alter in an instant, how one minute everything could be a certain way, and the next it’s simply . . . not.
It happened when Anthony was eighteen, home for the summer and preparing for his first year at Oxford. He was to belong to All Souls College, as his father had before him, and his life was as bright and dazzling as any eighteen-year-old had a right to enjoy. He had discovered women, and perhaps more splendidly, they had discovered him. His parents were still happily reproducing, having added Eloise, Francesca, and Gregory to the family, and Anthony did his best not to roll his eyes when he passed his mother in the hall—pregnant with her eighth child! It was all a bit unseemly, in Anthony’s opinion, having children at their age, but he kept his opinions to himself.
Who was he to doubt Edmund’s wisdom? Maybe he, too, would want more children at the advanced age of thirty-eight.
When Anthony found out, it was late afternoon. He was returning from a long and bruising ride with Benedict and had just pushed through the front door of Aubrey Hall, the ancestral home of the Bridgertons, when he saw his ten-year-old-sister sitting on the floor. Benedict was still in the stables, having lost some silly bet with Anthony, the terms of which required him to rub down both horses.
Anthony stopped short when he saw Daphne. It was odd enough that his sister was sitting in the middle of the floor in the main hall. It was even more odd that she was crying.
Daphne never cried.
“Daff,” he said hesitantly, too young to know what to do with a crying female and wondering if he’d ever learn, “what—”
But before he could finish his question, Daphne lifted her head, and the shattering heartbreak in her large brown eyes cut through him
like a knife. He stumbled back a step, knowing something was wrong, terribly wrong.
“He’d dead,” Daphne whispered. “Papa is dead.”
For a moment Anthony was sure he’d misheard. His father couldn’t be dead. Other people died young, like Uncle Hugo, but Uncle Hugo had been small and frail. Well, at least smaller and frailer than Edmund.
“You’re wrong,” he told Daphne. “You must be wrong.”
She shook her head. “Eloise told me. He was . . . it was . . .”
Anthony knew he shouldn’t shake his sister while she sobbed, but he couldn’t help himself. “It was what, Daphne?”
“A bee,” she whispered. “He was stung by a bee.”
For a moment Anthony could do nothing but stare at her. Finally, his voice hoarse and barely recognizable, he said, “A man doesn’t die from a bee sting, Daphne.”
She said nothing, just sat there on the floor, her throat working convulsively as she tried to control her tears.
“He’s been stung before,” Anthony added, his voice rising in volume. “I was with him. We were both stung. We came across a nest. I was stung on the shoulder.” Unbidden, his hand rose to touch the spot where he’d been stung so many years before. In a whisper he added, “He on his arm.”
Daphne just stared at him with an eerily blank expression.
“He was fine,” Anthony insisted. He could hear the panic in his voice and knew he was frightening his sister, but he was powerless to control it. “A man can’t die from a bee sting!”
Daphne shook her head, her dark eyes suddenly looking about a hundred years old. “It was a bee,” she said in a hollow voice. “Eloise saw it. One minute he was just standing there, and the next he was . . . he was . . .”
Anthony felt something very strange building within him, as if his muscles were about to jump through his skin. “The next he was what, Daphne?”
“Gone.” She looked bewildered by the word, as bewildered as he felt.