. . . should not have let him kiss you. Who knows what liberties he will attempt to take the next time you meet? But what’s done is done, I suppose, so all there is left is to ask: Was it lovely?

—from Eloise Bridgerton to her sister Francesca, slid under the door of her bedroom

the night Francesca met the Earl of Kilmartin, whom she would marry two months later

When the children entered the room, half dragged and half pushed by their nursemaid, Phillip forced himself to remain rigidly in his position against the wall, afraid that if he went to them he’d beat them both within an inch of their lives.

And even more afraid that when he was through, he wouldn’t regret his actions.

So instead he just crossed his arms and stared, letting them squirm under the heat of his fury, while he tried to figure out what the hell he meant to say.

Finally, Oliver spoke up, his voice trembling as he said, “Father?”

Phillip said the only thing that came to mind, the only thing that seemed to matter. “Do you see Miss Bridgerton?”

The twins nodded, but they didn’t quite look at her. At least not at her face, which was beginning to purple around the eye.

“Do you notice anything amiss about her?”

They said nothing, forcing a silence until a maid appeared in the doorway with a “Sir?”

Phillip acknowledged her arrival with a nod, then strode to take hold of the piece of meat she’d brought for Eloise’s eye.

“Hungry?” he snapped at his children. When they didn’t reply, he said, “Good. Because sadly, none of us will be eating this, will we?”

He crossed the room to the bed, then sat down gently at Eloise’s side. “Here,” he said, still too angry for his voice to be anything but gruff. Brushing aside her efforts to help, he set the meat against her eye, then arranged a piece of cloth over it so that she would not have to dirty her fingers while keeping it in place.

Then, when he was done, he walked over to where the twins were cowering, and stood in front of them, arms crossed. And waited.

“Look at me,” he ordered, when neither removed their gaze from the floor.

When they did, he saw terror in their eyes, and it sickened him, but he didn’t know how else he was supposed to act.

“We didn’t mean to hurt her,” Amanda whispered.

“Oh, you didn’t?” he bit off, turning on them both with palpable fury. His voice was icy, but his face clearly showed his anger, and even Eloise shrank back in her bed.

“You didn’t think she might possibly be hurt when she tripped over the string?” Phillip continued, his sarcasm lending him a controlled air that was even more frightening. “Or perhaps you realized correctly that the string itself wasn’t likely to cause injury, but it didn’t occur to you that she might be hurt when she actually fell.”

They said nothing.

He looked at Eloise, who had lifted the meat from her face and was gingerly touching her cheekbone. The bruise under her eye seemed to be worsening by the minute.

The twins had to learn that they couldn’t continue like this. They needed to learn that they had to treat people with more respect. They needed to learn . . .

Phillip swore under his breath. They needed to learn something.

He jerked his head toward the door. “You will come with me.” He walked into the hall, turned back at them, and snapped, “Now.”

And as he led them from the room, he prayed that he could control himself.

Eloise tried not to listen, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from straining her ears. She didn’t know where Phillip was taking the children— it could be the next room, it could be the nursery, it could be outside. But one thing was certain. They were going to be punished.

And while she thought they should be punished—what they had done was inexcusable and they were certainly old enough to have realized that— she still found herself oddly worried for them. They had looked terrified when Phillip had led them away, and there was that niggling memory from the day before, when Oliver had blurted out the question, “Are you going to hit us?”

He had recoiled when he’d said it, as if he were expecting to be hit.

Surely Sir Phillip didn’t . . . No, that was impossible, Eloise thought. It was one thing to give children a spanking at a time like this, but surely he didn’t strike his children habitually.

She couldn’t have made such a misjudgment about a person. She had let the man kiss her the night before, kissed him in return, even. Surely she would have felt that something was wrong, sensed an inner cruelty if Phillip were the sort who beat his children.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Oliver and Amanda filed in, looking somber and red-eyed, followed by a grim-faced Sir Phillip, whose job at the rear was clearly to keep the children walking at a pace that exceeded that of a snail.

The children shuffled over to her bedside, and Eloise turned her head so that she could see them. She couldn’t see out of her left eye with the meat covering it, and of course that was the side the children had chosen.

“We’re sorry, Miss Bridgerton,” they mumbled. “Louder,” came their father’s sharply worded directive. “We’re sorry.”

Eloise gave them a nod.

“It won’t happen again,” Amanda added. “That’s certainly a relief to hear,” Eloise said. Phillip cleared his throat.

“Father says we must make it up to you,” Oliver said.

“Er . . .” Eloise wasn’t exactly certain how they meant to do that. “Do you like sweets?” Amanda blurted out.

Eloise looked at her, blinking her good eye in confusion. “Sweets?” Amanda’s chin shook up and down.

“Well, yes, I suppose I do. Doesn’t everyone?”

“I have a box of lemon drops. I’ve saved them for months. You can have them.”

Eloise swallowed against the lump in her throat as she watched Amanda’s tortured expression. There was something wrong with these children. Or if not with them, then for them. Something wasn’t right in their lives. With all of her nieces and nephews, Eloise had seen enough happy children to know this. “That will be all right, Amanda,” she said, her heart wrenching. “You may keep your lemon drops.”

“But we have to give you something,” Amanda said, casting a fearful glance at her father.

Eloise was about to tell her that that wasn’t necessary, but then, as she watched Amanda’s face, she realized that it was. In part, of course, because Sir Phillip had obviously insisted upon it, and Eloise wasn’t about to undermine his authority by saying otherwise. But also because the twins needed to understand the concept of making amends. “Very well,” Eloise said. “You may give me an afternoon.”

“An afternoon?”

“Yes. Once I’m feeling better, you and your brother may give me an afternoon. There is much here at Romney Hall with which I’m unfamiliar, and I imagine you two know every last corner of the house and grounds. You may take me on a tour. Provided, of course,” she added, because she did value her health and well-being, “that you promise there will be no pranks.”

“None,” Amanda said quickly, her chin bobbing in an earnest nod. “I promise.”

“Oliver,” Phillip growled, when his son did not speak quickly enough. “There will be no pranks that afternoon,” Oliver muttered.

Phillip strode across the room and grabbed his son by the collar.

“Ever!” Oliver said in a strangled voice. “I promise! We shall leave Miss Bridgerton completely alone.”

“Not completely, I hope,” Eloise said, glancing up at Phillip and hoping he correctly interpreted that to mean, You may now put down the child. “After all, you do owe me an afternoon.”

Amanda offered her a tentative smile, but Oliver’s scowl remained firmly in place.

“You may leave now,” Phillip said, and the children fled through the open doorway.

The two adults remained in silence for a full minute after they left, both staring at the door with hollow, weary expressions. Eloise felt drained, and wary, almost as if she’d been dropped into a situation she didn’t quite understand.

A burst of nervous laughter almost escaped her lips. What was she thinking? Of course she had been dropped into a situation she didn’t understand, and she was lying to herself if she thought she knew what to do.

Phillip walked over to the bed, but when he got there, he stood rather stiffly. “How are you?” he asked Eloise.

“If I don’t remove this meat soon,” she said quite frankly, “I think I might be sick.”

He picked up the platter the meat had arrived upon and held it out. Eloise put the steak down, grimacing at the wet, slopping sound it made. “I believe I would like to wash my face,” she said. “The smell is rather overwhelming.”

He nodded. “First let me look at your eye.”

“Do you have very much experience with this sort of thing?” she asked, glancing at the ceiling when he asked her to look up.

“A bit.” He pressed gently against the ridge of her cheekbone with his thumb. “Look right.”

She did. “A bit?”

“I boxed at university.” “Were you good?”

He turned her head to the side. “Look left. Good enough.” “What does that mean?”

“Close your eye.”

“What does that mean?” she persisted. “You’re not closing your eye.”

She did, shutting them both, because whenever she winked only one eye she ended up squeezing it far too tightly. “What does it mean?”

She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him pause. “Has anyone ever told you you can be a bit stubborn?”

“All the time. It’s my only flaw.”

She heard his smile in the tenor of his breath. “The only one, eh?” “The only one worth commenting upon.”

She opened her eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.” “I’ve quite forgotten what it was.”

She opened her mouth to repeat it, then realized he was teasing her, so she scowled instead.

“Close your eye again,” he said. “I’m not yet finished.” When she obeyed his command, he added, “Good enough meant I never had to fight if I didn’t want to.”

“But you weren’t the champion,” she surmised. “You can open your eye now.”

She did, then blinked when she realized how close he still was. He stepped back. “I wasn’t the champion.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t care about it enough.” “How does it look?” she asked.

“Your eye?” She nodded.

“I don’t think there is anything to be done to stop the bruising.”

“I didn’t think I hit my eye,” she said, letting out a frustrated sigh. “When I fell. I thought I hit my cheek.”

“You don’t have to hit your eye to bruise there. I can see from your face that you landed right here”—he touched her cheekbone, right where she’d hit, but he was so gentle that she felt no pain—“and that’s close enough for the bleeding to spread to the eye area.”

She groaned. “I’m going to look a fright for weeks.” “It might not take weeks.”

“I have brothers,” she said, giving him a look that said she knew what she was talking about. “I’ve seen blackened eyes. Benedict had one that didn’t completely fade away for two months.”

“What happened to him?” Phillip asked. “My other brother,” she said wryly.

“Say no more,” he said. “I had a brother of my own.”

“Beastly creatures,” she muttered, “the lot of them.” But there was love in her voice as she said it.

“Yours probably won’t take that long,” he said, helping her to stand so that she could make her way to the washbasin.

“But it might.”

Phillip nodded, then, once she was splashing the smell of the meat off her skin, said, “We need to get you a chaperone.”

She froze. “I’d quite forgotten.”

He let several seconds go by before replying, “I hadn’t.”

She picked up a towel and patted herself dry. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault, of course. You had written that you would arrange for a chaperone. In my haste to leave London, I quite forgot that you would need time to make the arrangements.”

Phillip watched her closely, wondering if she realized that she had slipped and said more than she’d probably meant to. It was difficult to imagine a woman such as Eloise—open, bright, and extremely talkative— as having secrets, but she had been quite close-lipped about her reasons for coming to Gloucestershire.

She’d said that she was looking for a husband, but he suspected that her reasons had as much to do with what she’d left behind in London as they did with what she hoped to find here in the country.

And then she’d said—in my haste.

Why had she left in a hurry? What had happened there?

“I have already contacted my great-aunt,” he said, helping her back into her bed even though she quite clearly wanted to do it herself. “I sent her a letter the morning you arrived. But I doubt she could be here any earlier than Thursday. She only lives in Dorset, but she’s not the sort to leave her home at the drop of a hat. She will want time to pack, I’m sure, and do all those things”—he waved his hand about in a slightly dismissive manner

—“that women need to do.”

Eloise nodded, her expression serious. “It’s only four days. And you’ve a great many servants. It’s not as if we’re alone together at some remote hunting box.”

“Nonetheless, your reputation could be seriously compromised should people learn of your visit.”

She let out a long exhale, then lifted her shoulders in a fatalistic gesture. “Well, there isn’t much I can do about it now.” She motioned to her eye. “If

I returned, my current appearance would cause more comment than the fact that I left in the first place.”

He nodded slowly, signaling his agreement even as his mind flew off in other directions. Was there a reason she was so unconcerned for her reputation? He’d not spent much time in society, but it was his experience that unmarried ladies, regardless of their age, were always concerned for their reputations.

Was it possible that Eloise’s reputation had been ruined before she’d arrived on his doorstep?

And more to the point, did he care?

He frowned, unable to answer the latter question just yet. He knew what he wanted—no, make that what he needed—in a wife, and it had little to do with purity and chastity and all those other ideals that proper young ladies were meant to embody.

He needed someone who could step in and make his life easy and uncomplicated. Someone who would run his house and mother his children. He was quite frankly pleased to have found in Eloise a woman for whom he felt a great deal of desire as well, but even if she’d been ugly as a crone— well, he’d have been happy to marry a crone as long as she was practical, efficient, and good with his children.

But if all that were true, why did he feel rather annoyed by the possibility that Eloise had had a lover?

No, not annoyed, precisely. He couldn’t quite put his finger on the correct word for his feelings. Irritated, he supposed, the way one was irritated by a pebble in one’s shoe or a mild sunburn.

It was that feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Not dreadfully, catastrophically wrong, but just not . . . right.

He watched her settle herself against the pillows. “Do you want me to leave you to your rest?” he asked.

She sighed. “I suppose, although I’m not tired. Bruised, perhaps, but not tired. It’s barely eight in the morning.”

He glanced at a clock on a shelf. “Nine.”

“Eight, nine,” she said, shrugging off the difference. “Whichever, it’s still morning.” She looked longingly out the window. “And it’s finally not raining.”

“Would you prefer to sit in the garden?” he inquired.

“I’d prefer to walk in the garden,” she replied pertly, “but my hip does ache a bit. I suppose I should try to rest for a day.”

“More than a day,” he said gruffly.

“You’re most probably right, but I can assure you I won’t be able to manage it.”

He smiled. She wasn’t the sort of woman who would ever choose to spend her days sitting quietly in a drawing room, working on her embroidery or sewing, or whatever it was women were supposed to do with needles and thread.

He looked over at her as she fidgeted. She wasn’t the sort of woman who would ever choose to sit still, period.

“Would you like to take a book with you?” he asked.

Her eyes clouded with disappointment. He knew that she’d expected him to accompany her to the garden, and heaven knew, part of him wanted to, but somehow he felt he had to get away, almost as a measure of self- preservation. He still felt off balance, desperately ill-at-ease from having had to spank the children.

It seemed that every fortnight they did something that required punishment, and he didn’t know what else to do. But he drew no pleasure from the act. He hated it, absolutely hated it, felt almost as if he might retch every time, and yet what was he supposed to do when they misbehaved that badly? The little things he tried to brush aside, but when they glued their governess’s hair to her bedsheets while she slept, how was he supposed to brush aside that? Or what about the time they had broken an entire shelf of terra-cotta pots in his greenhouse? They had claimed it was an accident, but Phillip knew better. And the look in their eyes as they protested their innocence told him that even they hadn’t thought he’d actually believe them.

And so he disciplined them in the only way he knew how, although thus far he’d been able to avoid using anything other than his hand. When, that is, he did anything at all. Half the time—more than half, really—he was so overcome by memories of his own father’s brand of discipline that he just stumbled away, shaking and sweating, horrified by the way his hand itched to swat them on their behinds.

He worried that he was too lenient. He probably was, since the children didn’t seem to be getting any better. He told himself he needed to be more

stern, and once he’d even strode out to the stables and grabbed the whip . . . He shuddered at the memory. It was after the glue incident, and they’d had to cut away Miss Lockhart’s hair just to free her, and he’d been so angry—so unbelievably, overpoweringly angry. His vision had gone red, and all he’d wanted to do was punish them, and make them behave, and

teach them how to be good people, and he’d snatched the whip . . .

But it had burned in his hands, and he’d dropped it in horror, afraid of what he would become if he actually used it.

The children had gone unpunished for an entire day. Phillip had fled to his greenhouse, shaking with disgust, hating himself for what he’d almost done.

And for what he was unable to do. Make his children better people.

He didn’t know how to be a father to them. That much was clear. He didn’t know how, and maybe he simply wasn’t suited to the task. Maybe some men were born knowing what to say and how to act, and some of them simply couldn’t do a good job of it no matter how hard they tried.

Maybe one needed a good father oneself to know how to be the same. Which had left him doomed from birth.

And now here he was, trying to make up for his deficiencies with Eloise Bridgerton. Perhaps he could finally stop feeling so guilty about being such a bad father if he could only provide them with a good mother.

But nothing was ever as simple as one wanted it to be, and Eloise, in the single day she’d been in residence, had managed to turn his life upside down. He’d never expected to want her, at least not with the intensity he felt every time he stole a glance at her. And when he’d seen her on the floor— why was it that his first thought had been terror?

Terror for her well-being, and, if he was honest, terror that the twins might have convinced her to leave.

When poor Miss Lockhart had been glued to the bed, Phillip’s first emotion had been rage at his children. With Eloise, he’d spared only the merest of thoughts for them until he’d assured himself that she was not seriously injured.

He hadn’t wanted to care about her, hadn’t wanted anything other than a good mother for his children. And now he didn’t know what to do about it.

And so even though a morning in the garden with Miss Bridgerton sounded like heaven, somehow he couldn’t quite allow himself the pleasure. He needed some time alone. He needed to think. Or rather, to not think,

since the thinking just left him angry and confused. He needed to bury his hands in some dirt and prune some plants, and shut himself away until his mind was no longer screaming with all of his problems.

He needed to escape.

And if he was a coward, so be it.