. . . implore you, Mother, you MUST punish Daphne. It is NOT FAIR that I am the only one sent to bed without pudding. And for a week. A week is far too long. Especially since it was all mostly Daphne’s idea.
—from Eloise Bridgerton to her mother, left upon Violet Bridgerton’s night table during Eloise’s tenth year
It was strange, Eloise thought, how much could change in a single day.
Because now, as Sir Phillip was escorting her through his home, ostensibly viewing the portrait gallery but really just prolonging their time together, she was thinking—
He might make a perfectly fine husband after all.
Not the most poetic way to phrase a concept that ought to have been full of romance and passion, but theirs wasn’t a typical courtship, and with only two years remaining until her thirtieth birthday, Eloise couldn’t really afford to be fanciful.
But still, there was something . . .
In the candlelight, Sir Phillip was somehow more handsome, perhaps even a little dangerous-looking. The rugged planes of his face seemed to angle and shadow in the flickering light, lending him a more sculptured look, almost like the statues she’d visited at the British Museum. And as he stood next to her, his large hand possessively at her elbow, his entire presence seemed to envelop her.
It was odd, and thrilling, and just a little bit terrifying.
But gratifying, too. She’d done a crazy thing, running off in the middle of the night, hoping to find happiness with a man she’d never met. It was a
relief to think that maybe it hadn’t all been a complete mistake, that maybe she’d gambled with her future and won.
Nothing would have been worse than slinking back to London, admitting failure and having to explain to her entire family what she’d done.
She didn’t want to have to admit that she’d been wrong, to herself or anyone else.
But mostly to herself.
Sir Phillip had proven to be an enjoyable supper companion, even if he wasn’t quite so glib or conversational as she was used to.
But he obviously possessed a sense of fair play, which Eloise deemed essential in any spouse. He had accepted—even admired—her fish-in-the- bed technique with Amanda. Many of the men Eloise had met in London would have been horrified that a gently bred lady would even think of resorting to such underhanded tactics.
And maybe, just maybe, this would work. Marriage to Sir Phillip did seem a harebrained scheme when she allowed herself to think about it in a logical manner, but it wasn’t as if he were a complete stranger—they had been corresponding for over a year, after all.
“My grandfather,” Phillip said mildly, gesturing to a large portrait.
“He was quite handsome,” Eloise said, even though she could barely see him in the dim light. She motioned to the picture to the right. “Is that your father?”
Phillip nodded once, curtly, the corners of his lips tightening.
“And where are you?” she asked, sensing that he didn’t wish to talk about his father.
“Over here, I’m afraid.”
Eloise followed his direction to a portrait of Phillip as a young boy of perhaps twelve years, posing with someone who could only have been his brother.
His older brother.
“What happened to him?” she asked, since he had to be dead. If he lived, Phillip could not have inherited his house or baronetcy.
“Waterloo,” he answered succinctly.
Impulsively, she placed her hand over his. “I’m sorry.”
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to say anything, but eventually he let out a quiet, “No one was sorrier than I.”
“What was his name?” “George.”
“You must have been quite young,” she said, counting back to 1815 and doing the math in her head.
“Twenty-one. My father died two weeks following.”
She thought about that. At twenty-one, she was supposed to have been married. All young ladies of her station were expected to have been married by then. One would think that would confer a measure of adulthood, but now twenty-one seemed impossibly young and green, and far too innocent to have inherited a burden one had never thought to receive.
“Marina was his fiancée,” he said.
Her breath rushed over her lips, and she turned to him, her hand falling away from his. “I didn’t know,” she said.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Here, would you like to see her portrait?”
“Yes,” Eloise replied, discovering that she did indeed wish to see Marina. They had been cousins, but distant ones, and it had been years since they’d visited with one another. Eloise remembered dark hair and light eyes—blue, maybe—but that was all. She and Marina had been of an age, and so they had been thrust together at family gatherings, but Eloise didn’t recall their ever having very much in common. Even when they were barely older than Amanda and Oliver, their differences had been clear. Eloise had been a boisterous child, climbing trees and sliding down banisters, always following her older siblings, begging them to allow her to take part in whatever they were doing.
Marina had been quieter, almost contemplative. Eloise remembered tugging on her hand, trying to get her to come outside and play. But Marina had just wanted to sit with a book.
Eloise had taken note of the pages, however, and she was quite convinced that Marina never moved beyond page thirty-two.
It was a strange thing to remember, she supposed, except that her nine- year-old self had found it so astounding—why would someone choose to stay inside with a book when the sun was shining, and then not even read
it? She’d spent the rest of the visit whispering with her sister Francesca, trying to figure out just what it was that Marina was doing with that book.
“Do you remember her?” Phillip asked.
“Just a little,” Eloise replied, not sure why she didn’t wish to share her memory with him. And anyway, it was the truth. That was the sum of her recollections of Marina—that one week in April over twenty years earlier, whispering with Francesca as Marina stared at a book.
Eloise allowed Phillip to lead her over to Marina’s portrait. She had been painted seated, on some sort of ottoman, with her dark red skirts artfully arranged about her. A younger version of Amanda was on her lap, and Oliver stood at her side, in one of those poses young boys were always forced to assume—serious and stern, as if they were miniature adults.
“She was lovely,” Eloise said.
Phillip just stared at the image of his dead wife, then, almost as if it required a force of will, turned his head and walked away.
Had he loved her? Did he love her still?
Marina should have been his brother’s bride; everything seemed to suggest that Phillip had been given her by default.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. Maybe he had been secretly in love with her while she had been engaged to his brother. Or maybe he had fallen in love after the wedding.
Eloise stole a look at his profile as he stared sightlessly at a painting on the wall. There had been emotion on his face when he had looked at Marina’s portrait. She wasn’t sure what he had felt for her, but it was definitely still something. It had only been a year, she reminded herself. A year might make up the official period of mourning, but it wasn’t very long to get past the death of a loved one.
Then he turned. His eyes hit hers, and she realized she’d been staring at him, mesmerized by the planes of his face. Her lips parted with surprise, and she wanted to look away, felt as if she ought to blush and stammer at having been caught, but somehow she could not. She just stood there, transfixed, breathless, as a strange heat spread across her skin.
He was ten feet away, at the very least, and it felt as if they were touching.
“Eloise?” he whispered, or at least she thought he did. She saw his lips form the word more than she actually heard his voice.
And then somehow the moment was broken. Maybe it was his whisper, maybe the creak of a windblown tree outside. But Eloise was finally able to move—to think—and she quickly turned back to Marina’s portrait, firmly affixing her gaze on her late cousin’s serene face. “The children must miss her,” Eloise said, needing to say something, anything that would restart the conversation—and restore her composure.
For a moment Phillip said nothing. And then, finally: “Yes, they’ve missed her for a long time.”
It seemed to Eloise a rather odd way to phrase it. “I know how they feel,” she said. “I was quite young when my father died.”
He looked over at her. “I didn’t realize.”
She shrugged. “It’s not something I talk about a great deal. It was a long time ago.”
He crossed back to her side, his steps slow and methodical. “Did it take you very long to get over it?”
“I’m not certain it’s something you ever do get over,” she said. “Completely, that is. But no, I don’t think about him every day, if that’s what you want to know.”
She turned away from Marina’s portrait; she’d been focusing on it for too long and was beginning to feel oddly intrusive. “I think it was more difficult for my older brothers,” she said. “Anthony—he is the eldest and was already a young man when it happened—had a particularly difficult time with it. They were very close. And my mother, of course.” She looked over at him. “My parents loved each other very much.”
“How did she react to his passing?”
“Well, she cried a great deal at first,” Eloise said. “I’m sure we weren’t meant to know. She always did it in her room at night, after she thought we were all asleep. But she missed him dreadfully, and it couldn’t have been easy with seven children.”
“I thought there were eight of you.”
“Hyacinth was not yet born. I believe my mother was eight months along.”
“Good God,” she thought she heard him murmur.
Good God was right. Eloise had no idea how her mother had managed. “It was unexpected,” she told him. “He was stung by a bee. A bee. Can
you imagine that? He was stung by a bee, and then— Well, I don’t need to
bore you with the details. Here,” she said briskly, “let us leave. It’s too dark in here to see the portraits properly, anyway.”
It was a lie, of course. It was too dark, but Eloise couldn’t have cared less about that. Talking about her father’s death always made her feel a bit strange, and she just didn’t feel like standing there surrounded by paintings of dead people.
“I should like to see your greenhouse,” she said. “Now?”
Put that way, it did seem an odd request. “Tomorrow, then,” she said, “when it’s light.”
His lips curved into a hint of a smile. “We can go now.” “But we won’t be able to see anything.”
“We won’t be able to see everything,” he corrected. “But the moon is out, and we’ll take a lantern.”
She glanced doubtfully out the window. “It’s cold.”
“You can take a coat.” He leaned down with a gleam in his eye. “You’re not afraid, are you?”
“Of course not!” she retorted, knowing he was baiting her but falling for it, anyway.
He quirked a brow in a most provoking manner.
“I’ll have you know I’m the least cowardly woman you’re ever likely to encounter.”
“I’m sure you are,” he murmured. “Now you’re being patronizing.” He did nothing but chuckle.
“Very well,” she said gamely, “lead the way.”
“It’s so warm!” Eloise exclaimed as Phillip shut the greenhouse door behind her.
“It’s actually usually warmer than this,” he told her. “The glass allows the sun to warm the air, but except for this morning, it’s been quite overcast for the past few days.”
Phillip often visited his greenhouse at night, toiling by the light of a lantern when he could not sleep. Or, before he’d been widowed, to keep him busy so that he would not consider entering Marina’s bedchamber.
But he had never asked anyone to accompany him in the dark; even during the day, he almost always worked alone. Now he was seeing it all through Eloise’s eyes—the magic in the way the pearlescent moonlight threw shadows across the leaves and fronds. During the day, a walk through the greenhouse wasn’t so very different from a walk through any wooded area in England, with the exception of the odd rare fern or imported bromeliad.
But now, with the cloak of night playing tricks on the eyes, it was as if they were in some secret, hidden jungle, with magic and surprise lurking around every corner.
“What is this?” Eloise asked, peering down at eight small clay pots, arranged in a line across his workbench.
Phillip walked to her side, absurdly pleased that she seemed truly curious. Most people just feigned interest, or didn’t even bother to pretend and made a quick escape. “It’s an experiment I’ve been working on,” he said, “with peas.”
“The kind we eat?”
“Yes. I’m trying to develop a strain that will grow fatter in the pod.”
She peered down at the pots. Nothing was sprouting yet; he’d only planted the seeds a week ago. “How curious,” she murmured. “I had no idea one could do that.”
“I have no idea if one can,” he admitted. “I’ve been trying for a year.” “With no success? How very frustrating.”
“I’ve had some success,” he admitted, “just not as much as I’d like.” “I tried to grow roses one year,” she told him. “They all died.”
“Roses are more difficult than most people think,” he said.
Her lips twisted slightly. “I noticed you have them in abundance.” “I have a gardener.”
“A botanist with a gardener?”
He’d heard that question before, many times. “It’s no different than a dressmaker with a seamstress.”
She considered that for a moment, then moved farther into the greenhouse, stopping to peer at various plants and scold him for not keeping up with her with the lantern.
“You’re a bit bossy this evening,” he said.
She turned, caught that he was smiling—half-smiling, at least—and offered him a wicked grin. “I prefer to be called ‘managing.’”
“A managing sort of female, eh?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t deduce as much from my letters.” “Why do you think I invited you?” he countered.
“You want someone to manage your life?” she asked, tossing the words over her shoulder as she moved flirtatiously away from him.
He wanted someone to manage his children, but now didn’t seem like the best time to bring them up. Not when she was looking at him as if . . .
As if she wanted to be kissed.
Phillip had taken two slow, predatory steps in her direction before he even realized what he was doing.
“What is this?” she asked, pointing to something. “A plant.”
“I know it’s a plant,” she said with a laugh. “If I’d—” But then she looked up, caught the gleam in his eyes, and quieted.
“May I kiss you?” he asked. He would have stopped if she’d said no, he supposed, but he didn’t allow her much opportunity, closing the distance between them before she could reply.
“May I?” he repeated, so close that his words were whispered across her lips.
She nodded, the motion tiny but sure, and brushed his mouth against hers, gently, softly, as one was supposed to kiss a woman one thought one might marry.
But then her hands stole around and touched his neck, and God help him, but he wanted more.
Much more.
He deepened the kiss, ignoring her gasp of surprise as he parted her lips with his tongue. But even that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to feel her, her warmth, her vitality, up and down the length of him, around him, through him, infusing him.
He slid his hands around her, settling one against her upper back, even as another daringly found the lush curve of her bottom. He pressed her against him, hard, not caring that she would feel the evidence of his desire. It had been so long. So damned long, and she was so soft and sweet in his arms.
He wanted her.
He wanted all of her, but even his passion-hazed mind knew that that was impossible this evening, and so he was determined to have the next best thing, which was just the feel of her, the sensation of her in his arms, the heat of her running along the entire length of his body.
And she was responding. Hesitantly, at first, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing, but then with greater ardor, making innocently seductive little sounds from the back of her throat.
It drove him wild. She drove him wild.
“Eloise, Eloise,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and raspy with need. He sank one hand into her hair, tugging at it until her coiffure loosened and one thick chestnut lock slid out to form a seductive curlicue on her breastbone. His lips moved to her neck, tasting her skin, exulting when she arched back and offered him greater access. And then, just when he’d started to sink down, his knees bending as his lips trailed over her collarbone, she wrenched herself away.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted out, her hands flying up to the neckline of her dress even though it wasn’t the least bit out of place.
“I’m not,” he said baldly.
Her eyes widened at his bluntness. He didn’t care. He’d never been particularly fancy with words, and it was probably best that she learned that now, before they did anything permanent.
And then she surprised him.
“It was a figure of speech,” she said. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said I was sorry. I wasn’t, really. It was a figure of speech.”
She sounded remarkably composed and almost schoolteacherish, for a woman who had just been so soundly kissed.
“People say things like that all the time,” she continued, “just to fill the silence.”
Phillip was coming to realize that she wasn’t the sort of woman who liked silence.
“It’s rather like when one—” He kissed her again.
“Sir Phillip!”
“Sometimes,” he said with a satisfied smile, “silence is a good thing.”
Her mouth fell open. “Are you saying I talk too much?”
He shrugged, having too much fun teasing her to do anything else.
“I’ll have you know that I have been much quieter here than I am at home.”
“That’s difficult to imagine.” “Sir Phillip!”
“Shhh,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand, then taking it again, more firmly this time, when she snatched it away. “We need a bit of noise around here.”
Eloise woke the following morning as if she were still wrapped in a dream. She hadn’t expected him to kiss her.
And she hadn’t expected to like it quite so much.
Her stomach let out an angry growl, and she decided to make her way down to the breakfast room. She had no idea if Sir Phillip would be there. Was he an early riser? Or did he like to remain abed until noon? It seemed silly that she didn’t know these things about him when she was seriously contemplating marriage.
And if he was there, waiting for her over a plate of coddled eggs, what would she say to him? What did one say to a man after he’d had his tongue in one’s ear?
Never mind that it had been a very nice tongue, indeed. It was still quite beyond scandalous.
What if she got there and could barely manage “Good morning?” He’d surely find that amusing, after teasing her about her loquaciousness the night before.
It almost made her laugh. She, who could carry on a conversation about nothing in particular and frequently did, wasn’t sure what she was going to say when she next saw Sir Phillip Crane.
Of course, he had kissed her. That changed everything.
Crossing the room, she checked to make sure that her door was firmly shut before she opened it. She didn’t think that Oliver and Amanda would try the same trick twice, but one never knew. She didn’t particularly relish the thought of another flour bath. Or worse. After the fish incident, they
were probably thinking more along the lines of something liquid. Something liquid and smelly.
Humming softly to herself, she stepped out into the hall and turned to the right to make her way to the staircase. The day seemed filled with promise; the sun had actually been peeking out through the clouds this morning when she’d looked out the window, and—
“Oh!”
The shriek ripped itself right out of her throat as she plunged forward, her foot caught behind something that had been strung out across the hall. She didn’t even have a chance to try to regain her balance; she had been walking quickly, as was her habit, and when she fell, she fell hard.
And without even the time to use her hands to break her fall.
Tears burned her eyes. Her chin—dear God, her chin felt like it was on fire. The side of it, at least. She had just managed to twist her head ever so slightly to the side before she fell.
She moaned something incoherent, the sort of noise one makes when one hurts so badly that one simply cannot keep it all inside. And she kept waiting for the pain to subside, thinking that this would be like a stubbed toe, which throbs mercilessly for a few seconds and then, once the surprise of it is over, slides into nothing more than a dull ache.
But the pain kept burning. On her chin, on the side of her head, on her knee, and on her hip.
She felt beaten.
Slowly, with great effort, she forced herself up onto her hands and knees, and then into a sitting position. She allowed herself to lean against the wall and lifted her hand to cradle her cheek, taking quick bursts of breath through her nose to try to control the pain.
“Eloise!”
Phillip. She didn’t bother to look up, didn’t want to move from her curled-up position.
“Eloise, my God,” he said, triple-stepping the last few stairs as he rushed to her side. “What happened?”
“I fell.” She hadn’t meant to whimper, but it came out that way, anyway.
With a tenderness that seemed out of place on a man of his size, he took her hand in his and pulled it from her cheek.
The next words he said were not ones that were often uttered in Eloise’s presence.
“You need a piece of meat on that,” he said.
She looked up at him with watery eyes. “Am I bruised?”
He nodded grimly. “You may have a blackened eye. It’s still too soon to tell.”
She tried to smile, tried to put a game face on it, but she just couldn’t manage it.
“Does it hurt very badly?” he asked softly.
She nodded, wondering why the sound of his voice made her want to cry even more. It reminded her of when she was small and she’d fallen from a tree. She’d sprained her ankle, quite badly, but somehow she’d managed not to cry until she’d made it back home.
One look from her mother and she’d begun to sob.
Phillip touched her cheek gingerly, his features pulling into a scowl when she winced.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. And she would. In a few days. “What happened?”
And of course she knew exactly what had happened. Something had been strung across the hall, put in place to make her trip and fall. It didn’t require very much intelligence to guess who had done it.
But Eloise didn’t want to get the twins in trouble. At least not the sort of trouble they were likely to find themselves in once Sir Phillip got hold of them. She didn’t think they’d intended to cause quite so much harm.
But Phillip had already spied the thin length of twine, tightly drawn across the hall and tied around the legs of two tables, both of which had been tugged toward the center of the hall when Eloise had tripped.
Eloise watched as he knelt down, touching the string and twisting it around his fingers. He looked over at her, not with question in his eyes, but rather grim statement of fact.
“I didn’t see it,” she said, even though that was quite obvious.
Phillip didn’t take his eyes off of hers, but his fingers kept twisting the string until it tautened and snapped.
Eloise sucked in her breath. There was something almost terrifying in the moment. Phillip didn’t seem aware that he’d broken the string, barely cognizant of his strength.
Or the strength of his anger.
“Sir Phillip,” she whispered, but he never heard her. “Oliver!” he bellowed. “Amanda!”
“I’m sure they didn’t mean to injure me,” Eloise began, not certain why she was defending them. They’d hurt her, that was true, but she had a feeling her punishment would be considerably less painful than anything coming from their father.
“I don’t care what they meant,” Phillip snapped. “Look how close you landed to the stairs. What if you’d fallen?”
Eloise eyed the stairs. They were close, but not close enough for her to have taken a tumble. “I don’t think . . .”
“They must answer for this,” he said, his voice deadly low and shaking with rage.
“I’ll be fine,” Eloise said. Already the stinging pain was giving way to a duller ache. But it still hurt, enough so that when Sir Phillip lifted her into his arms, she let out a little cry.
And his fury grew.
“I’m putting you in bed,” he said, his voice rough and curt. Eloise offered no disagreement.
A maid appeared on the landing, gasping when she saw the darkening bruise on Eloise’s face.
“Get me something for this,” Sir Phillip ordered. “A piece of meat.
Anything.”
The maid nodded and ran off as Phillip carried Eloise into her room. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asked.
“My hip,” Eloise admitted as he settled her on top of her covers. “And my elbow.”
He nodded grimly. “Do you think you’ve broken anything?” “No!” she said quickly. “No, I—”
“I’ll need to check, anyway,” he said, brushing aside her protests as he lightly examined her arm.
“Sir Phillip, I—”
“My children just nearly killed you,” he said, without a trace of humor in his eyes. “I should think you could dispense with the sir.”
Eloise swallowed as she watched him cross the room to the door, his strides long and powerful. “Get me the twins immediately,” he said,
presumably to some servant hovering outside in the hall. Eloise couldn’t imagine that the children hadn’t heard his earlier bellow, but she also couldn’t blame them for attempting to delay judgment day at the hands of their father.
“Phillip,” she said, trying to coax him back into the room with the sound of her voice, “leave them to me. I was the injured party, and—”
“They are my children,” he said, his voice harsh, “and I will punish them. God knows it’s long past due.”
Eloise stared at him with growing horror. He was nearly shaking with rage, and while she could have happily swatted the children on their bottoms herself, she didn’t think he ought to be meting out punishment in his state.
“They hurt you,” Phillip said in a low voice. “That is not acceptable.” “I’ll be fine,” she assured him again. “In a few days I won’t even—” “That is not the point,” he said sharply. “If I had . . .” He stopped, tried
again with, “If I hadn’t . . .” He stopped, beyond words, and leaned against the wall, his head hanging back as his eyes searched the ceiling—for what, she didn’t know. Answers, she supposed. As if one could find answers with the simple upward sweep of the eyes.
He turned, looked at her, his eyes grim, and Eloise saw something on his face she hadn’t expected to see there.
And that was when she realized it—all that rage in his voice, in the shaking of his body—it wasn’t directed at the children. Not really, and certainly not entirely.
The look on his face, the bleakness in his eyes—it was self-loathing. He didn’t blame his children.
He blamed himself.
