𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐓 | b. bridgerton

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 | familia supra omnia

(TW- Very, very brief mention of suicide, alluding to the possibility of attempting)

Samuel Howard was a man of great integrity, of great intellect and wit, or at least that's what he tried to convince himself. He liked to believe that he had lived his life thus far in a way that his late parents and sister would be proud of. But his integrity and his dignity was hanging by a thread, wearing inevitably thinner for every day that his beloved niece remained in Spain, showing no inclination of ever wanting to return to England to properly claim her birthright. Samuel also liked to believe that he was a fairly lenient man, given the circumstances, but the unrelenting hands of destiny - and the law - were proving to be impossible to ignore. This meant that he was left with the unfortunate task of somehow convincing Josephine, as stubborn as she was, to come home.

Samuel had only reached fifty years a few summers prior, but the responsibilities of the man's position had worn him down. His face that once bore lines of laughter was now carved with creases and divots - particularly around his brow, from stress - that aged him at least an extra ten years. Samuel cared not, for he had long passed the age that he needed to fret over his appearance. The man was not being judged for how well he maintained his hair or how charming his smile was. Samuel Howard was one of the most important men currently in parliament . It was he who had the ear of the king, or - more accurately - his proxy. It was he who parlayed with the foreign dignitaries to secure better trade relations for the country, in such a delicate political climate, no less. It was he who stood firm in his policies when many of the other pillocks in the House of Lords rolled over in favour of the Prime Minister. Samuel Howard had single-handedly carved his own name into the history of his country.

And it vexed him terribly that he had to momentarily abandon those duties during such an uncertain period to go gallivanting across Spain to fetch his niece and drag her back with him to the present. If he had it his way, she would remain there forever. Hell, if Samuel had it his way, he would be there with her, permanently switched off from whatever else was happening in the outside world. But the rest of the world clearly did not agree, which led to the predicament they were currently in.

As he sat in the same clothes as the day before, with a crick in his neck from where he had slept in a bed at a dodgy country inn that was far too short, still vaguely nauseous from the past three weeks at sea, Samuel was struck with a feeling of nostalgia as the carriage led him towards his niece's estate. His throat bobbed uncomfortably as he remembered the last time he travelled down this road under vastly different circumstances.

It was three years earlier and he was on horseback, feeling the full force of the autumn winds against his face. Samuel's heart beat rapidly against his chest as he earnestly tried his best to follow his guide, also on horseback, riding a few paces ahead of him.

It had been many years since he had ridden on horseback so freely, probably not since he was a young lad growing up in the countryside. Apart from the few weeks he spent with his son every summer and with Jo around her birthday, Samuel remained in London for the rest of the year where his main method of transportation was via the hackney carriages. But the special circumstances of this particular visit required him to reach Villaconejos as quickly as possible. So this meant foregoing the luxury of a carriage and buying the first horse fit to travel that he could find at the port in Cadiz, a choice Samuel was starting to regret as his mare was proving to be more than slightly temperamental, distracted by every single tree, bird or other horse.

Nevertheless, he persisted forward with his guide - a shipping merchant of some kind who was conveniently travelling back to Villaconejos to see his family - and eventually reached the grounds surrounding Jo's estate. Samuel pulled at the worn leather reins in his palms to bring his unruly mare to a halt, the correspondence from his niece burning a hole through his jacket pocket.