Chapter Text
Violet Bridgerton was always a big believer in family breakfasts - also family lunches, family dinners, family sandwiches before bed and biscuits at midnight, but mainly it was breakfasts. She loved it when her first husband was alive and she loves it still. Her oldest daughter and her friends used to say that perhaps she kept having children in order to fill out more seats around the dining table, taking her offspring to ballets and rugby and school plays and debate club so that they would need more calories and she could cover more toast with strawberry jam, make more casseroles, order more dumplings. Then she would sit at the head of the table and look out at them all as they bickered and announced their plans, and she would think how wonderful it was to have a generously sized dining room in central London, with generously sized sash windows to let the light in, and a grocery budget the size of a small country to keep them all fed.
So when Marcus was hustling her to the airport taxi for their Caribbean honeymoon, the last thing she said to the offspring she saw in the hall, who happened to be Anthony and Eloise, was, “You will keep family breakfasts going, won’t you?”
Eloise said, “Well…”
And Anthony said, “We can certainly try.”
She went back in to both of them for one more hug, following the previous hugs that had just been one more hug, and she said, “Make sure Benedict drinks orange juice, okay? I worry about him getting scurvy.”
Anthony nodded. He also worried about Benedict getting scurvy.
So that is how we reached the first of October, the first day of the autumn term of a new academic year, and five Bridgerton siblings were sat around the long family dining table. It was exactly what Violet had wished, even if Anthony was a little twitchy at the table’s top end, Francesca was staring out of the window, and Benedict didn’t seem to have gone to bed.
“Will there be cooked breakfasts every day, then? Is that what you’ve all been doing without me?” Said Eloise, picking a long dark hair out of the blueberry jam on her toast.
“We have to get some pictures for mum,” said Anthony, “She wants evidence we all still like each other.”
“I’d like you more if there were pancakes,” said Colin, wiping his mouth to catch the crumbs that had already fallen into his lap, “Or perhaps something spicy with eggs.”
“He wants something spicy with eggs,” said Benedict, not eating, “because that’s what they always had when he was in Colombia. Has he mentioned it? I thought perhaps I was the only one who knew the news. About Colombia.”
“f*ck off Benedict,” he said, at the same time as Eloise said, “Colombia? I had no idea? He never mentioned?” Her hair was still in the jam and now it was on her fingers as well. Francesca was still looking out of the window, in her running gear and eager to get outside, taking small and measured mouthfuls of yogurt.
“I can’t sit through any more of this. Everyone look happy!” Said Anthony, and his camera made a loud thunk when the shutter closed and captured everyone’s smiling faces, mostly smiling. Colin had his eyes closed.
“Are we retaking that?” Said Colin, because he had had his eyes closed.
“One is fine,” said Anthony. “Right. That’s your half hour. I have to go and do things.”
“That’s so sweet of you, big brother. You budgeted in not quite ten minutes per beloved family member to wish us luck in the agonising new year. What if we need you? What if we need your advice to help us get through?” Said Benedict. “I for one am very nervous. I was hoping you’d walk me to school.”
Anthony, at the end of his patience and his Financial Times, chose to walk away rather than try to have the last word. It was often a long business, trying to get out of a conversation with a sense you’d won. As much as Anthony loved his siblings, and as much as he loved getting the best and final quip in that no one could come up with an answer to, the voice of his day planner with its box for every hour of the day spoke louder.
“Are you not supposed to be looking after us?” Benedict called as Anthony walked away.
“I’ll be sure to inform your supervisor if you get syphilis!” He called back. It was possible that Anthony made a rude gesture with his hand as he turned the corner, but eyewitness accounts cannot be sure. Benedict kept smiling and Francesca rolled her eyes at him. His voice became conspiratorially low, though Francesca had never yet actually conspired with him, and he said to her, “I’ll bet you’re overwhelmed with gratitude to have us all home.”
Francesca’s smile was not cold, but also not disagreeing with his sentiment. “My composition teachers keep telling me I need to see more of life, I suppose.”
“Do you think Anthony being a bitch at breakfast was the life they had in mind?”
“I suppose I’ll have to write my symphony and find out.” Her smile was neat and delicate, not confident, not unkind. She took a look at her watch, downed the last inch of her milky coffee and started to tie her hair up for her run.
“What’s the music choice today?” Asked Benedict, as Colin took the last pain au chocolat from his plate with minimal struggle.
“The Enigma Variations.”
“Ah, an ode to the friends pictured within.” Benedict, for an acting degree he had once been very devoted to, had created a piece based on imaginary people. He had performed it in very tight leggings in a studio space above a pub to an audience of seven, three of whom he later had sex with. The soundtrack still made him feel shivery, though acting had ultimately left him feeling cold.
“I like the friends pictured within. They’re better behaved than you.” Francesca zipped up her running jacket and took Benedict’s hand which he offered to her to squeeze. She slid her headphones up over her ears and her smile deepened. The front doorbell sounded as she left the kitchen through the back door, and though she didn’t hear it over the sound of the best noise cancellation money could buy, there was a kind of visible and tangible joy in knowing that whatever there was outside you, you wouldn’t hear it or know what you were missing. Because there was nothing to be missed, only you as an island floating free of a continent, in Bloomsbury’s most beautiful square that could only be entered by residents with keys to the quiet.
“Was that the doorbell?” Said Colin. “Is Mummy back because we’ve worried her already?”
Eloise was standing up. “Don’t say Mummy, no one can tell you’re trying to be ironic and not do a weird sex thing. And it’s Penelope.”
“I thought Penelope moved to Darlington?” Said Benedict.
“That was just for her first placement.” Said Colin. “She’s back in London now, offering her best self to her majesty’s government.”
“And be nice!” Eloise shouted back from the hallway. “She says the civil service is turning her brain to goo and it’s dribbling out through her nose. So don’t be dickhe*ds.”
Colin was left looking at Benedict. “When am I ever a dickhe*d to someone whose brain is turning to goo and dribbling out through their nose?”
Benedict threw an orange peel at him. “No, you do that all the time. We’ve all been talking about it for years.”
“Oh, of course.”
