"I THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY MAN I CAN STAND."
"AND I WEAR THAT LIKE A BADGE OF HONOR."
IN WHICH OLD FRIENDS
REUNITE UNDER THE
STARS OF THE TON
BRIDGERTON S1-S3
BENEDICT BRIDGERTON X OC
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PROLOGUE
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There was little Lizzie Aldridge did not know about her mother.
For instance, she knew they shared the same color hair and the same beautiful brown eyes. She knew her first name was Maria and that she had once lived on a beautiful island with crystal blue seas and bright white sands. She knew her mother had come from nothing while her father had come from everything.
But they were in love, and that Lizzie treasured above all.
Lizzie remembered the long walks through the garden that they would take, the towering estate high above them as they wove through hedges and trellises and statues, her mother always able to pick her out from a crowd. She remembered the sun on her skin and her father's arms wrapped around her.
She remembered her mother's soft voice reading aloud to her. Tales of knights and swords and women in lakes. She remembered falling asleep in the library, her father on her left and her mother on her right, the three of them snuggled on the couch as the fire burned down.
She remembered her father teaching her how to dance in the ballroom, her mother trying to take her measurements so she could sew her daughter's first dress for her first ball as a young woman, despite Papa's pleas that she could always visit the modiste.
Lizzie remembered the soft lullabies that accompanied her to sleep, her mother's kisses against her forehead. She remembered the smell of lilacs and oranges following her wherever she went.
Now as she sat on the edge of her mother's bed, her once beautiful bronze skin a pale white, Lizzie wished she could bury herself in that scent forever. To curl up beside her mother one last time as they snuggled together. She swore she could've fallen to the gates of hell herself if it meant she could ask death why he had seen fit to take her beautiful mother away from her. Why she had to leave her daughter and husband behind. Why had death been so cruel to a family of three who'd only had each other?
She clutched her mother's hand tighter, wishing she could understand it all. It had been hours since the doctor had declared the Countess dead, Lizzie remembering her father's hunched figure and sobbing shoulders.
The house had been dressed in black, the traditional mourning period already descending over the house. Yet Lizzie could not bring herself to change from the white cotton dress she'd been wearing when the servant had called for her.
She was a wraith in tanned skin, the pale white of her clothes matching the pallor of her now dead mother, brown eyes staring down at ones that would never open again, hand limp in her own.
Her tears had dried up a long time ago. Now it was only a morbid curiosity that was left within her.
"It was her time," A male voice whispered in her ear, dressed in black velvet and carrying a cane at his side.
Lizzie swallowed the lump in her throat, "So make it mine."
"You still have a long way to go Elizabeth Aldridge," He murmured, voice like the siren songs of old, "This is only the beginning." Saltwater burned against her cheek as a tear streaked down her face. "I am not coming for you for a long time."
The man disappeared as quickly as he reappeared, and Lizzie finally broke, everything she'd been building up flowing out of her like a river breaking a dam. It wasn't fair.
None of this was fair.
If her mother was to die why couldn't He take Lizzie along with her? Why did He have to leave her alone?
Why did He do anything?
She stayed with her mother until the undertaker arrived to take her away, and from that day on, Elizabeth Aldridge found herself trying to understand the man who had visited her.
