Chapter Text
Anthony Bridgerton is a 36-year-old man who loves baseball.
The Red Sox have been his favourite team since he got into the sport as a teen. Maybe a little unusual for a London-based Englishman, but he loves it.
Fenway Park in Boston is his team’s home ballpark and the best place, in his view, to enjoy the game. He likes its history, home field to the Red Sox since 1912. For him, Fenway has seen it all: cultural shifts, world wars, seat changes, and generations of families spectating, singing Sweet Caroline in the 8th, while enjoying a Fenway Frank. That steadiness was comforting in its own way.
His favourite member of the current roster? Wilson Contreras.
All time? The Splendid Splinter Ted Williams. Obviously!
At Fenway, he is Ant, just Ant. Not Anthony who commands boardrooms, sweet-talks investors, and attends far too many meetings which could have been emails. He liked Ant; Ant lived for the diamond. If you asked Anthony’s family about his love of baseball, they would affectionately roll their eyes and say he is a grump if interrupted when a game was on.
Somehow it had bypassed Anthony that the Football World Cup was starting. He had known it was being played at some point in Canada, America, and Mexico; he had just not clocked Boston in June. Maybe because he refused to acknowledge the American use of the word soccer, he saw it as an act of linguistic terror. A hate crime against vowels, even.
Anthony finally realised something was different as he arrived at the gate.
He flew commercial when he really wanted to escape with little notice. If he took his private jet, there was always a conversation from someone asking questions he couldn’t be bothered to answer. His love of the game was his and his alone.
Somehow, he missed the Saltire and Lion Rampant flags, missed the kilts, the blue and salmon shirts. What he didn’t miss, however, was the line “No Scotland, No Party”.
“Jesus Christ on a bike,” he thought. “I am about to be on a flight full of Scots and not just any Scots, the bleeding Tartan Army.”
Now Anthony didn’t dislike the Scots; he simply didn’t give them much thought. They were Brits, he was a Brit, he knew a few perfectly pleasant Scots. But as the aircraft filled with kilts, he suspected he might soon be giving them more thought than ever before.
If anyone had asked him, which they hadn’t, he would have said that he felt the Tartan Army were good ambassadors for their sport, even if he felt they were a little performative, like they were on a mass school holiday and the teacher had told them to be on their best behaviour.
By the time he was crammed into first class, he was convinced the entire Tartan Army had been air‑dropped into Heathrow. Bagpipes were stowed in the overhead bins, their drones leaking a faint, ominous hum of weapons pretending to sleep, a burly kilted man tried to convince the flight attendant to do the Gay Gordons in the aisle.
Around hour 3, Anthony thought he caught a whiff of deep-fried pizza and wondered if the captain had agreed to this mid‑air ceilidh. As the flight had run out of all beers, wines and spirits, he decided he needed respite, earbuds and possibly a witness statement. Jamming in his earbuds, hoping to watch baseball highlights, he soon found he had been overly ambitious as the cabin became an airborne festival.
“500 Miles” roared from somewhere near the galley, complete with stomping. A ditty about shoving grannies off buses tore through the air, alarmingly confident. Rounding off with a chant about “Super John McGinn”, sung like an unhinged lullaby.
By hour 5, Anthony began to suspect he was hallucinating a small Highland cow reclining in the jump seat, nodding to the beat.
7 hours and 35 minutes later, he staggered off the plane at Logan as if he’d spent the flight in a live episode of Bagpipes Gone Wild. He caught himself singing “No Scotland, No Party” under his breath while waiting for his luggage. He hadn’t smiled this much for a while.
Day one in Boston was lost in his hotel suite, catching up on work and clearing the next few days for his time in the city. Between jet lag and work, he resigned himself to room service and Wi-Fi.
Day 2 in Boston, he was finally headed to Fenway. His car passed statues crowned with orange traffic cones, which made the city look like it was hosting the world’s first international festival of orange plastic construction equipment. He had seen the Duke of Wellington in Glasgow crowned with its cone; everyone knew of the jaunty angle of his plastic crown. They sell merchandise of the very thing, but this, this was the steroid-enhanced version.
Chatting with his driver, he asked:
“I have no idea why they do this. Do you?”
“No, sir, I don’t think they do either.”
Chuckling to himself, Anthony relaxed back into his seat, logging into his Discord app to see if there were any pre-game details he needed to catch up on.
Making his way through the venue, drums and bagpipes echoed off the buildings. By the time he made his way to the field box behind home plate, the familiar sea of red had been invaded by tartan—Red Sox jerseys paired with kilts, and one man enthusiastically juggling haggises (or possibly just baseballs, Anthony couldn’t be sure).
He sank into his beloved seat, hoping for peace, but the Sox mascots Wally and Tessie emerged in full Highland regalia—sporrans, furry hats, the works. A piper marched them onto the field like they were storming a castle.
The Star‑Spangled Banner gave way to thousands of voices belting “Flower of Scotland,” loud enough to wake Robert the Bruce. He could admit the Scots anthem was rousing; with goosebumps on his arms, he turned to enjoy the spectacle.
In the row behind Anthony was a kilted quartet, arm in arm, singing passionately about sending proud Edward hame tae think again, as if the Hammer of the Scots himself could be chastised through the centuries.
This quartet was made up of one man and three women. Two of the women were just that: women. One, however, was a tiny woman with the most beautiful red hair, whose curls tumbled like a fiery waterfall. She sang with the kind of commitment usually reserved for battle hymns. Like the rest of the women in the group, she was in a kilt which hit her mid-thigh, and in a blue Scotland jersey which was knotted at the back to give the suggestion of an hourglass figure. Like the others in the group, she had a tiny Saltire painted on her cheek.
Instantly his mind flashed to that Disney princess his niece loved; he didn’t know her name, he just knew the headlines: Scottish princess. Red hair. Archery. Bear-related complications.
He briefly wondered if asking her what she wore under her kilt was appropriate. Turning back to the field, he settled in to watch the game. He tried to focus on the game but could hear the crowd around him explaining the rules of the game to the Scots, could hear them ordering beer, and lots of it. He heard one woman say:
“Fancy rounders is kinda boring.”
Fancy rounders, he scoffed to himself, wondering if he was going to strain something. Give over, this is baseball, statistics, heritage. Men being paid millions to miss the ball with dignity and poise. Rounders could never.
Filtering out the wall of noise around him, he thought they were going to get bored and leave maybe within the hour. At the interval, he heard the lyric
“Mister
Your eyes are full of hesitation”
What he could only describe as an ear-piercing scream made him instinctively duck his head. The Scots behind him launched into “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie” with both volume and military precision.
Within moments, a lot of something wet hit the back of his neck. Whatever it was had chosen him as its final resting place. With the cold liquid seeping down the back of his vintage 1977 Sox shirt, furious, he turned.
“OHMYGODAMSOSORRY.”
“IWASJISTSOEXCITEDMASONGCAMEONIDROPPEDMYBEER.”
Shouted at him by the tiny redhead.
“Take a breath, love,” he barked with the tone of a man baptised in beer. Turning back to the diamond, he wiped himself down as best he could.
Within a few seconds, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“What?”
“English, right?” she chirped, blue eyes bright. Anthony braced himself. There had been centuries of rivalry between the English and the Scots. Rationally, he knew it was generally friendly banter, sibling rivalry but sport sometimes could have a way of making even friendly rivalries boil over.
“Is that… a problem?” Inwardly, he cringed, as he knew he was being rude.
“Naw, should it be?” she retorted. “Not unless ye cannae boogie.”
Smiling, he turned back to the game.
A second later, another tap to the shoulder.
“Look, can I buy you a beer to make up for soaking you?”
Anthony was surprised, most of his life in London was spent at business dinners and galas. Crystal chandeliers, champagne flutes and whisky tumblers swept from passing trays were more the scene. Here his position as a FTSE50 CEO and millions in the bank were unknown. Here he was away from the burden of surname and portfolio size. Here he was just a damp Englishman being offered a beer by a tiny hellion who had recently weaponised a pint.
“Sure, princess, why not?”
Turning back to the field, he expected to accept the drink, say thanks and slowly dry off, absorbed in the game with the dignity of a damp rodent.
A couple of minutes later, he felt a firm grip on his shoulder. Turning, he saw this red-headed whirlwind climbing over the row to stand next to him, one of her friends handing over two beers.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you call all women Princess, or is that an effort to be charming?”
Anthony thought to himself: You haven’t had the full Bridgerton experience princess.
“Do you want me to be charming?”
“Is that a line?”
“No, you just reminded me of the princess from the kids’ film about the bear. The one in the green dress with the bow and arrow, red hair. My niece loves her; she watches that film more than the one with the ice lady and singing snowball in it.”
Giggling, the princess turned back to her friends, shouting:
“He thinks I look like Merida.”
“Aye, hen, we ken ye do.”
Roaring with laughter, she held a hand over her heart in mock offence.
“A feisty redhead with mammy issues, me? Never.”
Pointing at each person in turn, she introduced her group: Rory, Morag and Isla. They greeted him like they were old friends.
They had a little back and forth about supporting England and Scotland. He told them they should keep the plane engine warm for Scotland being sent home. The Scots made a joke about 1966. Standard Scottish/English banter, a good faith roasting.
“So we have no confusion, I am Pen. Not a princess, no bow and arrow and no mammy bears, just a regular person with an abundance of tartan, although I may have a few green dresses back home.” She put out her hand to shake his.
“Ant,” he replied. Shaking her hand, he felt a spark of electricity creep up his arm. His heart thumped once, but that was clearly because he was missing his game. “Was that a line?” he asked.
“It would have been a terrible one if it was,” she giggled.
For the next few innings, they chatted. She told him that she was 28 and lived near a small village in the Highlands. They were in the states for the World cup as it was the first time in 28 years Scotland had qualified. They were all excited because they played the night before and had won. He discovered she was renovating her croft; apparently, remote stone buildings were relaxing. In the off-season, she worked remotely doing “a little of this and that”, which sounded suspiciously like many things pretending to be one. His tax accountant would weep. During tourist season, she took tour groups across the north-east of Scotland and the Highlands on historical tours of everything from beaches to battlefields and castles galore. She saw herself as a storyteller and, with absolute confidence, informed him most Scots were.
She shared that she really wanted “a dug” but didn’t have one as her tours could take her away for weeks at a time. She managed sales of Tartan Army merchandise to fund their charitable donations, and her friend group lived in and around the same village. This explained the mildly terrifying efficiency with which they operated as a tartan unit. This was less of a friend group and more a colourful parish with drinking privileges.
The conversation meant Anthony was missing the game. He didn’t notice.
The break in conversation came with squeals and songs, as ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” came next. He watched her turn back to the group, finger guns and arms in the air, entirely unburdened by dignity.
To his shock, by the next inning he realised that his day had become less about sport, baseball becoming a decorative backdrop to an emotionally inconvenient knitting circle for two. She asked him about himself. She felt she had been “gassing on” long enough.
He told her about his 7 siblings. She asked if his mum was Catholic, he laughed and told her no. He liked her and he liked this version of himself. He didn’t want to become stuffy Anthony, boardroom connoisseur, walking bank account with a Black Amex habitat, surname people used like a door code. He wanted to remain Ant, so he told her he worked for a development firm, omitting the ownership of said firm. Not a lie. More an aggressively edited truth. Like castles were technically houses, right?
Told her of his love of baseball, that he wasn’t a football, rugby, cricket or tennis man. She asked if he was a navy-gilet-wearing finance bro who loved rich people sports like polo or hunting. Nope, just baseball he shared, although he did like horses. He didn’t tell her about the 3 thoroughbreds he owned and stabled at the country estate. She followed up by commenting that he didn’t seem like a man who repressed himself in cashmere.
“So, you like a ride?”
Well, he thought yes, he did love a ride, but maybe that type of ride wasn’t what she meant. Were they still discussing equestrian pursuits? The rational part of his brain left the meeting.
“Yes. Do you?”
With a cheeky glint in her eye, she changed the subject back to him and asked about something else. He wasn’t really listening, a buffering wheel spinning behind his eyes like it was powered by rural broadband. After a few moments, he came back to the conversation and ordered the group a few more beers.
Then it happened:
He felt her arm slip around his waist, turning them to the unit behind them. He hadn’t registered the music. A cacophony of sound met his ears:
“You'll tak the high road and I'll tak the low road
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye
Where me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond”
He had no idea about low or high roads, ‘what in the devil’s incantation’ was going on, he thought, but with her arm securely round his waist, she swayed them side to side with a strength that surprised the six-foot gym rabbit that was Anthony Bridgerton. Slave to protein shakes and grilled chicken. He kind of liked it. Something in him shifted, and without his permission. This cathedral of sound reached up to the heavens, asking forgiveness for sins he hadn’t realised they had committed:
“Where wildflowers spring and the wee birdies sing
On the steep, steep side of Ben Lomond
But the broken heart it kens nae second spring
Though resigned we may be while we're greetin'”
Anthony spotted a tear forming in Pen’s eye. Weird, these Scots.
Isla bent to him and said,
“This song always gets Pen in the feels.”
“Really?”
“Aye, she even has a tour at the Loch dedicated to the song, she taks bookings ye ken?”
He may not have known who Ken was, but he did know he might want to look into a future tour.
Nodding, he continued to sway with Pen, her fitting into his side like a limb he hadn’t known was missing. Be cool, Ant, he thought, be cool keep it light-hearted, flirty, fun. Who was this person thinking of missing limbs and romantic lochsides? He was here for baseball, not emotional rewilding.
He had come here to watch millionaires hit a ball, not be spiritually ambushed by a small woman in tartan.
As the song ended, the crowd went wild. He whipped back to the diamond to see what was going on. A ball had flown over the Green Monster and had been caught by one of the kilted spawn. The Tartan Army had the tactical discipline of elite forces and the volume control of toddlers.
“That’s a good story he can tell his wee pals about at breakfast the morn,” she sighed.
“Do you like an English breakfast?” he asked awkwardly. Who is this speaking? he cringed. His mouth had clearly declared independence from his brain. How American of it.
“In the name of the wee man, that was awful,” she laughed. “I mean, you could have asked if I had any English in me.”
He smirked, the next line in his head, he couldn’t say it, could he…
Pen guffawed.
”Go on, I can see it on your face, say it:”
“DoyouwantsomeEnglishinyou?”
Her head tipped back and they both laughed. Rory, just catching the end of the conversation, leaned forward in his best menacing impression of a man who regularly throws telephone poles for fun and owned a shovel, interjected,
“Mate, we are no about your shite, if ye cannae behave yersel back off”
Anthony paled, briefly calculating if his private health insurance covered being folded by a Scotsman; the NHS wouldn’t cover that. While he ruminated on policies for aggressive tartan origami, he heard Pen.
“Rory, fit are ye aboot” she flushed red. Anthony wanted to chase that flush with his mouth.
“Ye are no my boyfriend, brother nor keeper. Fuck off, fannybaws,” she shouted, slapping his arm with a big grin on her face.
Anthony slowly exhaled. Fannybaws, that’s a new one on him.
Morag piped up, punching Rory’s shoulder.
“This bawbag thinks he is our security, I canne get a look in at ony bloke wi him getting himsel involved. Whit this shitebag isne telling ye is aboot the 4 lasses coming out of his room in the mornings. Full walks o shame an athing. I dinna ken far he finds em or whit shite he spews to get em.”
Anthony got the gist, he thought. Pen translated… ahhh.
Isla joined in as if she had seen this all before and had brought snacks for a sequel.
”Aye Mr cockblock here has nae richt, leave them be.” Turning to Rory, “how are you turnin the lasses heads then?”
Rory earnestly explained that it was his accent, his devastating good looks and the burning need to let them see what was under his kilt when asked.
“Gads min,” Morag interjected. She turned to Isla as if Anthony wasn’t there, appraising him like a woman pricing agricultural livestock. With the confidence of a third-generation tarot card reader, she said, “look at him wi hearts in his eyes, looking at Pen as if she holds the key to the location of the Holy Grail itself”. Isla nodded once.
This was not just a friend group deployed as a tartan unit. It was a deployable matchmaking service in football shirts, and they had found their targets.
Meanwhile, Anthony wondered, not for the first time, if he could see what was up Pen’s kilt. He was a serious man. A man with investments. A man with board papers. He would not look at the kilt. The kilt was, frankly, a national security emergency.
“Ach, let him be, ye kent I spilt and I hud tae mak hings richt,” Pen said, whilst that blush flushed through her body.
She turned her back on her friend group and told Anthony to ignore them. They got a few more beers and pretended to watch the play with the dedication of undercover agents, bad ones. He asked a little more about her tours. He found himself fascinated by the passion she held for her country’s history and how she made him feel in these tales of terror, blood and freedom. Burns and Scott had nothing on this woman’s narrative when she got going about bloodshed and visitor parking. Her eyes he noticed were an icy blue but with a warmth that betrayed the glens she was from.
They continued to talk about anything that came to mind. She was chaos personified and, at times, he felt like a cowboy lassoing a tearaway ‘Highland coo’ with a drinking problem and great hair.
Suddenly, he heard it, the music, the squeal, he saw the finger guns come out.
Moments later, he was being dragged into a rendition of “500 Miles.” The stadium gave up the pretence of its remnants of dignity. Anthony discovered communal finger guns for the first time.
“When I wake up, well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you
When I go out, yeah I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you”
Chance would be a fine thing, he thought, as Pen sang her wee Scottish heart out, turning them again to the group behind them in a finger-gun dance-off.
The entire stadium pounded along like a seismic ceilidh. He thought he saw the Sox’s closer glance up at the stands, visibly wondering if he’d accidentally wandered onto the wrong continent.
“But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door”
Suddenly, horribly, he shook off the shackles of Anthony. Ant understood, despite generations of English reserve, he got it. What he had been missing about these Scots and the Tartan Army. He had thought the chaos gremlins were performative. This wasn’t curated fun, this was joy. Joy in its purest form. Loud, unfiltered, communal, off-key, lager-scented joy. That joy washed over the thousands on and off the field. The tide was coming in and each person in this crowd was happy to become the sand on its beach.
For a few minutes, these Scottish wonders had healed something none of the crowd knew needed healing with inclusivity, spins and hoarse voices. These people should be deployed by the UN to achieve world peace. The beer budget would need urgent negotiation.
Except Pen, she was staying with him, she just didn’t know it yet. He trusted she would be reasonable about it.
He understood the effort she had made to make herself clearer and easier to understand for him, but he found he loved her more natural accent with its Scots language peppered in like contrabanded joy. He wanted to take the time to figure out her meaning.
He had fibbed about his wealth, OK. Omitted it. He hadn’t had to change anything fundamental about himself to feel this happiness, this joy, this non-scheming, non-political honesty of song. This feeling was addictive; he wanted more of it. He wanted to roll in it like a ‘dug’ rolls in grass on the first sunny day after a week of rain.
He decided in that moment, if he cannot ignore them, or beat them, he was joining them. He found his hands making the finger gun shape without consulting legal.
He turned to Pen and the group joined the dance off with gusto singing the call and return of
“Da d-da da, da d-da da, da d-da da, da d-da da
Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle a da da
Da d-da da, da d-da da, da d-da da, da d-da da
Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle a da da”
Pen was delighted they had converted another to the cause. She would have him in a kilt before he knew it! This six-foot delight would maybe let her find out what was under his kilt. She would possibly be apologising to a traffic cone by sunrise.
Ant suddenly lifted Pen up. Her hands flew round his neck, as if this was normal public behaviour for a man with a portfolio kings would be jealous of. Spinning them both, he laughed and continued with the chorus.
She begged for him to put her down; she needed to pee. He understood she was 7, maybe 8 pints in; this was less a request and more a medical warning.
Turning to Rory, she warned him to behave himself and told the group she would be back in a few minutes. As she returned, hands washed, soul shaken by American toilet cubicles: the clear gap in the door, the possibility of accidental eye contact, the lawlessness of it all. She found Anthony and Rory arm in arm singing
“We’ve got McGinn
Super John McGinn
I just don’t think you understand”
Ant did now understand John McGinn was a beautiful man who, alongside McTominay and Robbo on the wing, was one of Steve Clarke’s men, and each of them should be knitted – or knighted – as national heroes.
Pen stood in Anthony’s prior row and asked Isla and Morag if there was anything she needed to know. Morag suggested with innocence that it might be Ant making the walk of shame out of Rory’s room tomorrow morning. Isla nodded with the gravity of a woman who saw into the future.
Ant caught it and evacuated himself out of Rory’s arms with the urgency of a man avoiding a complicated HR incident, scrambling back over the row to Pen’s side.
“Rory, you are a devilishly handsome man, but my future lies with red-headed princesses who could shoot me with better aim than Robin Hood or William Tell, and possibly both of them working together.”
Rory doubled over in laughter.
Pen giggled, looking up at Ant from beneath her eyelashes.
“Is that right, aye?”
By the end of the eighth inning, Anthony had stopped pretending he was there for baseball.
He was there for kilts, chaos, and the red‑headed princess who called him out for his terrible pick‑up lines.
Every time she flushed pink, he caught himself thinking he wanted to follow that blush wherever it led. If the price was a few more bagpipes in overhead bins, so be it.
The game ended with the Sox beaten by the Rangers. Who cared? Not Ant.
For a while after the game was over, the crowd continued with its impromptu international festival of joy: singing, foot-stamping, dancing. Doing more for Anglo-Scottish relations than any government ever had. Everyone in Fenway had chosen Scotland, and Scotland had accepted them with beer-soaked arms. For 30 beautiful minutes, this army succeeded where the Redcoats had failed 250 years ago: they took Boston without firing a shot, unless one counted lager.
As the crowd began to filter out, Pen and Ant stood side by side, quietly discarding any pretence that their mouths were not going to become better acquainted later. He was a gentleman, and a gentleman did not initiate a first kiss in front of the remaining 20 thousand people, no matter how enthusiastically Scotland had lowered the moral tone. Their second kiss, maybe. He wasn’t made of stone.
The kilt remained an unresolved security concern.
He turned to her.
“What are you up to for the rest of your time in America?”
Somewhere inside him, a committee of emotionally unavailable men in waistcoats called an emergency meeting.
Morag and Isla watched with the serene satisfaction of women whose trap had closed neatly.
Wide-eyed, she told him that they had a bus waiting for them in the car park to take them back to downtown Boston.
“Join us?”
A sensible man would have asked follow-up questions. Ant had recently stopped being sensible. He had come to Boston for baseball. He appeared to be leaving with Scotland.
“HELL YES!”