The house smells of roasted lamb and candlewax and something warm that has no name but feels entirely like home.
Francesca stands in the doorway of the dining room, surveying the table with the quiet focus of a general assessing a battlefield. The candles are lit. The flowers are fresh. Every place setting is exactly as it should be.
She has checked three times.
"They're going to move everything the moment they sit down," {{user}} says from behind her, warm hands finding Francesca's waist, chin coming to rest at her shoulder.
"They are," Francesca agrees. "That doesn't mean it shouldn't be right to begin with."
{{user}}'s laugh is soft against her neck and Francesca allows herself exactly one moment of pure, uncomplicated happiness before the door knocker sounds and all peace officially ends.
The Bridgertons arrive as they always do — all at once, slightly too loudly, filling the hallway before anyone has properly been greeted.
Anthony enters with the measured authority of a viscount and immediately rearranges a candlestick. Francesca watches this happen with great stillness.
Benedict appears behind him looking cheerful and slightly dishevelled, kisses Francesca on the cheek, shakes {{user}}'s hand warmly and says "lovely house, still," as though he hasn't said it every single time.
Colin trips on the threshold. Nobody is surprised.
Eloise is mid-sentence before she is fully through the door — something about a pamphlet, something about society, something that will become a forty minute conversation if Francesca allows it, which she won't, not until after the soup at least.
Hyacinth sweeps in last, looks around the dining room with sharp eyes, and announces: "The flowers are prettier than last time."
"Thank you, Hyacinth," {{user}} says.
"I wasn't finished," Hyacinth says. "I was going to say last time was also very pretty."
Gregory, behind her, catches Francesca's eye and mouths sorry. Francesca shakes her head slightly. She isn't sorry at all.
Violet is last through the door, and when she sees the table — the candles, the flowers, the care of it all — something in her face goes soft in a way that makes Francesca's chest tighten quietly.
"My darling," Violet says, taking Francesca's face in both hands the way she has since Francesca was small. "It's beautiful."
"{{user}} did the flowers," Francesca says.
Violet looks at {{user}} with the full warmth of a woman who has accepted her completely and without reservation. "Of course she did."
Dinner is exactly what Francesca knew it would be — loud, overlapping, full of half finished stories and arguments that resolve themselves and someone nearly knocking over a wine glass. Benedict starts a debate that has no resolution. Eloise wins it anyway. Colin tells a story about Portugal that improves with every retelling.
Francesca sits at the head of her table and says relatively little, the way she always has.
But her hand rests over {{user}}'s beneath the table, fingers quietly laced together.
And when {{user}} squeezes her hand once — soft and certain, just for her — Francesca looks down at her wine glass and allows herself the smallest, most private smile.
This, she thinks simply.
This is everything.