"What of our families? What will they think?"
"Let us not live for them, let us live for us and our eternal love."
A century-long feud and a forbidden romance.
In which a Sutherland falls
for a Bridgerton, and despite
the cutthroat rivalry between...
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nine years later.
"WE ARE NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU PUT THEM ON," Margaret Sedgewick, the dowager Marchioness of Hertford, sighed, looking down upon her frowning son. The current debate, this time around, was that he was adamant about not replacing his worn-out riding boots that were becoming a tad small on his growing feet. Oh and ridden with holes.
So, when he grumbled for what may have well been the sixteenth time that afternoon, "I do not want new boots" Maisie just about let out an exasperated sigh.
The real reason the mother-son duo had spent the entire afternoon in town, visiting different shops was because of her son. Although they had left the Hertford Manor whilst the sun was at its peak in the sky, it was now inching closer and closer to the horizon. Maxwell Sedgewick, her eight-year-old son, named after her younger brother who passed away shortly before she gave birth, was a menace (albeit, a very cute one that she loved with the entirety of her heart). Maxwell with his curly chestnut locks and warm brown eyes was stubborn, terribly so, and always put up a fight. But Maisie was glad the young boy, who learnt to be withdrawn in the presence of his father, was able to be himself while in her presence. Even if he was a bit more troublesome, Maisie loved seeing him so lively.
Maxwell was all she had and she was all he had. Maisie never knew the love of a husband and Maxwell had never felt the love of a father, leaving the mother and son to pour all the love they had into one another. Maisie hated how Maxwell had to grow up walking on thin ice, never allowed to be a child, to have fun around his father. The late Marquess of Hertford was a horrid man. He was cruel and apathetic, only caring that Maisie had given him an heir. Even on the night of her gruelling labour, he spent the hours tucked away in his study, only wishing to be notified if and only if she provided him with a son. Even then he had not left his study.
Eight years into her marriage, her husband passed away due to his advanced age. Upon the news of his death, it seemed as if a weight had been lifted from her chest and the veil of darkness shrouding the Hertford Manor had dissipated. In the weeks after her husband's death, for the first time, she heard Maxwell laugh loudly and carelessly as he ran about the house. Before then, his pure laughter had been imprisoned to the shadows and the hours his father was not in earshot. Maisie supposed Maxwell missed his father, although he never said anything of the like. She assumed he missed what he could have been, what he should have been.
She did not love her husband coming into the marriage and she did not grow to love him over the years. However, she held no hatred for him either. She tolerated him just as he tolerated her, each interaction carrying the minimal amount of words necessary and each glance fleeting. He wanted an heir, that was all. He did not care for his wife. While Maisie did not mourn the loss of her husband, she, like Maxwell, mourned the loss of what he could have been, but realistically never be.
