Chapter Text
one
when she was kind
On April 6th, 1809 on a random Thursday, Peter Featherington fell in love.
But he was not the one who took the fall, not literally. One moment, he was digging through his jacket’s pocket for his yellow handkerchief, and the next thing he knew, the said cloth was free-flowing through the wind, straight into the unsuspecting face of a Miss going for a morning ride at Hyde Park. She yanked the reins in panic, causing the horse to jerk, and her elegant frame to land straight on the mud accumulated from last night’s downpour.
His mother’s thunderstruck exclamation of his name steered his legs to run to the damsel in distress, his mouth winning the race against his brain, stuttering unintelligent inquiries for her well-being. The latter’s face was still covered by the yellow handkerchief, her light blue riding dress tarnished by mud from the waist down. When her muddied hand peeled off the offending fabric from her face, he was bracing himself for the familiar haughty disdain that haunted young ladies’ countenances when a podgy lad dared to talk to them, or in this case, caused their fall (which is even worse). The blow never came, though. Instead, a boisterous laughter reverberated on the humid atmosphere that diffused the stuck particles trapped in the air.
The second thing he noticed after the bark of her laughter was her green eyes. The colour was not particularly striking to him; after all, he saw it on his brother’s unkind orbs, his father’s indifferent ones, yet he did not believe that it could shine such a luminous hue until she spoke mirthfully, “That wasn’t very well-done of me, was it?”
His tongue-tied utterances were immediately supplied by their garnered spectators, the fiercest one taking the form of his mother, “Goodness me, Miss Bridgerton! Are you injured? Lady Bridgerton, I am terribly sorry for my son’s carelessness. He always misbehaves and acts like a chit rather than a proper gentleman,” she threw Peter an exasperated look.
“It is not the child’s fault, Lady Featherington,” replied the Dowager Viscountess who was promenading with her son, the little Viscount David. “Coleen, dear, can you stand?”
Peter now realized that the young woman in front of him was the third daughter of the prominent Bridgerton family, illustriously seated on the lavish townhome directly across the garish Featherington House at Grosvenor Square. They were renowned throughout Mayfair for their influence, already having debuted three diamonds of the season- Anne, Bernadette, and most recently, Coleen herself. Everyone in London was in awe of their wake, but most especially Peter who saw them daily through their parlour’s window that is directly facing the square, immediately hiding behind the curtains or covering his face with a book when one of the children waves at him. He even swore that Coleen had waved at him on some occasions.
“Yes, I can.” Coleen attempted to stand, even as she winced. Without thinking, Peter assisted her arms with his own, the contact immediately sending a buzz to his whole body. He was half surprised and half thrilled that she did not shrug him off.
“I am so sorry, Miss Bridgerton. I was… careless. Are you hurt anywhere? Please ask me of anything that may remedy your situation,” he said mechanically, a practised humility taught by his mother and his 13 years minus 2 days of humbling life experiences. Clinical. Compliant. Unaffected. An amalgamation of voices echoed in his head- some haughty, cruel, humorous, condescending, angry. In boys like him, eagerness and excitability was a weapon designed to uprear defense in others, especially in girls like her.
He expected Coleen to respond to him with her own practised speech. She would smile perfunctorily and assure him that such a thing is unnecessary for it was naught but a scratch. Then, she would bid his mother adieu, leaving him with the latter’s wrath.
But instead, she thoughtfully placed a finger on her chin, a habit, muddying her porcelain skin, and grinned, “Actually, there is something you can do for me.”
He startled, “There is?”
She chortled inelegantly at his expression, as if she saw right through his facade. Peter’s face burned, realizing his transparency, and also oddly charmed by her unladylike chortle.
“Yes. Sign my dance card this Saturday evening, will you? It is my first ball ever. You’ll be my first dance,” she said.
Peter was suddenly hurled in-deep. A random Thursday suddenly became the single most defining moment of his entire life. He fell hard and fast, akin to a thunderbolt from the sky after the initial rumbling of stirring feelings. He blinked, and then there was only her in her mud-coated clothes, her liberated laugh, and the devastatingly gorgeous verdant eyes of hers that shone even brighter when she was kind.
It is only a shame that on Saturday morning, exactly 2 days after he fell in love, he was set to leave for Eton, watching her house shrink smaller and smaller from the carriage window. He even swore that he saw her wave from the window that he was compulsively staring at for the past two days.