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.
Anthony left Daphne sitting in the hall and took the stairs three at a time up to his parents’ bedchamber. Surely his father wasn’t dead. A man couldn’t die from a bee sting. It was impossible. Utterly mad. Edmund Bridgerton was young, he was strong. He was tall, his shoulders were broad, his muscles were powerful, and by God, no insignificant honeybee could have felled him.
But when Anthony reached the upstairs hall, he could tell by the utter and complete silence of the dozen or so hovering servants that the situation was grim.