Chapter 26: The Matriarch's Homily
The heavy leather-bound ledgers remained unopened, gathering motes of dust in the slanting afternoon light. Anthony’s study was a sanctuary of masculine order, all dark wood and the faint, comforting scent of pipe tobacco and old paper. That order was a lie, a carefully maintained front like the manicured lawns outside. The truth knelt, supplicant, on the rug.
Colin watched, detached and pleased, as his older brother tended to him. Anthony’s mouth was a study in devout efficiency, his tongue swirling over Colin’s softening flesh, lapping up every trace of the earlier release, cleansing him with a focus that bordered on the obsessive. Colin’s fingers carded through Anthony’s perfectly styled hair, mussing it, claiming it.
“You swallowed everything from breakfast?” Colin asked, his voice languid.
Anthony pulled off with a soft, wet sound, resting his forehead against Colin’s thigh. “Every drop. It’s my privilege.”
“And the footmen? They performed adequately?”
A flicker of something—possessiveness, perhaps—crossed Anthony’s usually impassive face. “They served their purpose. They are… well-trained. But their devotion is born of fear and duty. It lacks the purity of family.”
Colin smiled, tracing the shell of Anthony’s ear. “Spoken like a true high priest. Fear and duty have their place, brother. They are the foundations upon which true worship is built. But you’re right. Theirs is a borrowed faith. Yours is in the blood.”
He shifted, and Anthony understood, moving back to give him space. Colin stood, his dressing gown falling closed. He walked to the window, looking out at the bustling square. “Tonight. After dinner. I want a proper ceremony. Not a hurried breakfast servicing. Something with… intention.”
Anthony remained on his knees, his body thrumming with anticipation. “Of course. I’ll inform Mother. She’ll wish to oversee the preparations.”
“Naturally.” Colin turned, his expression shifting from reverie to casual command. “Now, about those ledgers. The Morpeth estate. The timber yield seems suspect. Explain it to me.”
The transition was seamless, brutal. One moment, Anthony was a worshipper; the next, he was the Viscount Bridgerton, scrambling to his feet, adjusting his trousers, his mind forcibly wrenching from the taste of his brother’s seed to the dry arithmetic of estate management. It was this whiplash, this total demand on every facet of his being, that Colin craved to impose. It proved his dominion was complete.
“The foreman has been dishonest,” Anthony began, his voice slightly hoarse. He cleared his throat, becoming the stern businessman. “The figures here for oak are inflated by nearly twenty percent. I’ve already sent a man to investigate.”
Colin listened, asking sharp questions, his mind absorbing the details with alarming speed. He had always been clever, but since his return, his intelligence had a new, predatory edge. He saw angles, deceptions, opportunities where others saw only numbers. Anthony felt a surge of pride that was utterly distinct from his carnal devotion. This, too, was worship. The submission of his mind.
Downstairs, in the steaming underbelly of the house, Thomas and Gregory moved like ghosts. The breakfast dishes were washed, the silver polished, the dining room restored to its pristine, waiting state. No trace remained of the spilled seed, the frantic movements under the damask cloth. It had been wiped away as thoroughly as a chalk mark from a slate.
In the dim, cramped vestibule where the footmen stored their outdoor coats, Gregory finally broke. He grabbed Thomas’s arm, his fingers biting into the muscle. “Did you see her face? Daphne? She was smiling. She was eating fruit while he…”
“I saw,” Thomas said, his voice flat. He pulled his arm away. “What did you expect? Horror? Disgust? This is their normal. We are the interlopers here. The strange ones.”
“We should go to the magistrate,” Gregory hissed, though the words lacked all conviction.
Thomas laughed, a short, ugly sound. “And say what? That the illustrious Bridgerton family demanded I suck their son’s cock under the table during kippers? That the Viscount himself kneels for it? That the Dowager Viscountess watches and approves? We’d be laughed into Bedlam, then transported, or worse. They own the magistrates. They own everything.”
He leaned closer, his breath hot in Gregory’s ear. “And be honest. When his mouth was on you… when he took you in his throat… was it only horror you felt?”
Gregory flinched as if struck. His silence was confession enough. The shame was not in the act itself, but in the treacherous, rising heat of his own body’s response, in the way his soul had momentarily thrilled at being chosen, used, seen by that beautiful, monstrous man.
“We belong to him now,” Thomas whispered, the finality of it settling into his bones like a fatal chill. “In a way we will never belong to anyone else. You know it’s true.”
Before Gregory could reply, the housekeeper’s bell rang—two sharp peals. The summoning for dinner preparation. The mask of servitude slipped back into place, smoother now, as if their faces were hardening into the required shape.
Dinner was an exercise in exquisite tension. The family was joined by Benedict and his wife, Sophie, and Eloise, who had returned from a literary salon with her usual air of distracted intellectual fervor. The conversation was lively, peppered with Benedict’s witticisms and Eloise’s sharp commentary on parliamentary hypocrisy. It was a perfectly normal Bridgerton family dinner.
Except it wasn’t.
Colin, resplendent in a navy superfine coat that made his eyes gleam, held court. He told a humorous anecdote about a mishap with a gondola in Venice. His family laughed, their eyes bright with adoration. But beneath the table, a different story unfolded.
Colin’s leg brushed against Anthony’s. It was not an accident. Anthony, cutting his roast lamb with precise, methodical strokes, went very still. Then, slowly, he let his own leg press back. The contact was electric, a secret current flowing between them beneath the linen and mahogany.
Violet, seated at the head of the table, saw everything. Her sharp eyes missed nothing. She watched Colin’s smile widen a fraction, watched Anthony’s knife hand tighten on its handle. A slow, deep smile spread across her own lips. She took a sip of claret, the ruby liquid staining her mouth.
Daphne, seated to Colin’s right, was describing a musicale she had attended. Her hand, resting idly on the tablecloth, slowly drifted to her lap. Her fingers slipped beneath the edge of her napkin. Her breathing didn’t hitch, her voice didn’t falter, but a faint, rosy flush crept up her neck.
It was Violet who broke the civilized pretense. She set her wine glass down with a soft, definitive click. The conversation lulled, sensing a shift in the atmosphere.
“Look at you all,” Violet said, her voice not loud, but carrying a husky, intimate weight that stilled the air. “My beautiful children. So vibrant. So full of… life.”
Her gaze traveled to Colin, then to Anthony. “The two of you. My first and my third. The bookends of my heart.” Her hand disappeared beneath the table, the rustle of silk against silk deafening in the sudden quiet. “I can feel the heat from here. The hunger. Don’t think I don’t know what your hands are doing down there in the dark.”
Benedict choked on his wine. Sophie stared at her plate, her face pale. Eloise’s eyes widened, darting from her mother to her brothers, a furious, dawning comprehension on her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Colin’s breath hitched. His right hand was indeed in his lap, moving slowly, firmly, over the hard bulge in his trousers. He didn’t look away from his mother. It was a challenge, an acknowledgment.
“Mother,” Anthony groaned, the word ripped from him. His own hips gave a small, involuntary jerk.
“I made those cocks,” Violet continued, her voice dropping to a raw, visceral whisper. The obscenity in her refined mouth was more shocking than a shout. “I carried them inside me. I felt you kick, Colin, right here.” She placed her free hand low on her own belly. “And you, Anthony, you were so eager to enter the world. You nearly split me in two. And now… now I watch you touch them, stroke them, as if they were your own private treasures. But they’re not. They’re mine. My creations. My masterpieces.”
She began to move her hand beneath her gown, her fingers working with a deliberate, knowing rhythm. Her eyes glazed, not with passion, but with a terrifying, maternal pride. “It’s beautiful. To see the gifts I gave you being used with such… single-minded purpose. Such greed. Don’t be shy. I want to see it. I want to see you both claim what is rightfully yours.”
It was a permission, a command, a curse. Colin, his eyes locked on his mother’s hazy gaze, unfastened his falls with trembling, urgent fingers. He freed himself, his cock springing out, thick and already weeping. He wrapped his hand around it, stroking in full view now, his movements becoming ragged, desperate.
Anthony, with a stifled cry of surrender, followed suit. The stern Viscount, the pillar of society, was openly jerking his own hard length under the dinner table, his face a mask of agonized ecstasy.
“Yes,” Violet hissed, her own movements becoming more agitated. “That’s it. Show me. Your cocks should rule the world. They are magnificent. Perfect. Everything a man should be is right there, in your fists.”
Daphne moaned softly, her own hidden hand moving faster. Eloise looked away, revolted and transfixed. Benedict had buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking, whether in laughter or horror was impossible to tell.
Violet’s monologue unraveled into a stream of pure, unadulterated filth. “I want to see you come. I want to watch my sons spend themselves. I want to taste your seed on my tongue, know the proof of my power. Let it out. Give it to me. Cover the plate, Colin. Mark the silver, Anthony. This is our communion.”
Her words were the trigger. Colin’s back arched off his chair. A raw, guttural shout tore from his throat, devoid of any semblance of his usual charm. “Fuck! Mother! Oh, God, yes!” His release erupted, not in discrete spurts but in a sudden, violent gush that splashed across his untouched plate of blancmange, over his fork, onto the pristine linen. The warm, pearlescent fluid dripped onto the floor.
The sight, the sound, the sheer obscene reality of it undid Anthony completely. With a choked sob, he followed, his own cum jetting over his knuckles, dripping onto the fine wool of his trousers, a dark, spreading stain of utter submission.
For a moment, there was only the sound of ragged panting. The scent of sex and salt and claret hung thick in the air.
Then Violet rose. She moved with her customary grace, as if getting up to ring for dessert. She walked around the table to Colin first. She looked down at the mess he had made of his place setting. She smiled, a tender, approving smile. She dipped her index finger into the pool of cum on his plate, gathering a thick, glistening globule. She raised it to her lips, her eyes holding Colin’s defiant, glazed stare.
Her tongue slid out, slow and pink, and she licked her finger clean with a slow, deliberate swipe. She swallowed.
“Perfect,” she murmured. Then she turned to Anthony, placing a gentle, blood-red nailed hand on his sweat-dampened hair. “My good, loyal boy.” She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Never forget who made you. Who allows you this.”
She straightened, surveying the ruined table, her children in various states of shock, arousal, and collapse. “Sophie, dear, would you pass the peas? They look particularly fine tonight.”
The mundane request hung in the fetid air, impossible, insane. Sophie, trembling, handed the porcelain dish. The normal world, brittle and thin, tried to reassert itself.
But it was shattered. Eloise pushed back from the table, her chair scraping loudly. She looked at her mother, her brothers, her sister. Her face was a pale moon of disgust and a strange, unwilling understanding. “You’re all mad,” she whispered, the words barely audible. “This house is a madhouse.”
She fled the room.
Her departure was like a pinprick, letting a sliver of cold, sane air into the corrupt warmth. It changed nothing, but it introduced a variable. A witness who was not a devotee.
Colin, tucking himself away with shaky hands, watched her go. A new light, thoughtful and calculating, entered his eyes. The worship was complete, but it required totality. Eloise’s defiance was a loose thread. And loose threads, in a tapestry this dark and intricate, had to be woven in or cut away.
He looked at his mother, who gave him a small, knowing nod. The ceremony was over. The next one was already being planned.