“Do we understand each other?” Eloise asked, straightening her spine and smoothing her hands along her skirts in a deceptively casual manner.
They said nothing, so she decided to answer for them. “Good,” she said. “Now, then, would you like to show me where the dining room is? I’m famished.”
“We have lessons,” Oliver said.
“You do?” Eloise asked, arching her brows. “How interesting. Then you must return to them at once. I imagine you’ve fallen behind after spending so long waiting outside my door.”
“How did you know—” Amanda’s question was cut short by Oliver’s elbow in her ribs.
“I have seven brothers and sisters,” Eloise answered, deciding that Amanda’s question deserved an answer, even if her brother hadn’t allowed her to finish her sentence. “There isn’t much about this sort of warfare that I don’t already know.”
But as the twins scurried down the hall, Eloise was left chewing her lower lip in apprehension. She had a feeling she shouldn’t have ended their encounter with such a challenge. She had practically dared Oliver and Amanda to find a way to evict her from the premises.
And while she was quite certain they wouldn’t succeed—she was a Bridgerton, after all, and made of sterner stuff than those two even knew existed—she had a feeling that they would throw every fiber of their being into the task.
Eloise shuddered. Eels in the bed, hair dipped in ink, jam on chairs. It had all been done to her at one point or another, and she didn’t particularly relish a repeat performance—and certainly not by a pair of children twenty years her junior.
She sighed, wondering what it was she had gotten herself into. She had better find Sir Phillip and get to the task of deciding whether they would suit. Because if she really was leaving in a week or two, never to see any of the Cranes again, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to put herself through the trouble of mice and spiders and salt in the sugar bowl.
Her stomach rumbled. Whether it was the thought of salt or sugar that did it, Eloise didn’t know. But it was definitely time to find something to eat. And better sooner than later, before the twins had a chance to figure out how to poison her food.
Phillip knew that he’d blundered badly. But deuce it, the bloody woman had given him no warning. If she’d only alerted him of her arrival, he could have prepared himself, thought of a few poetic things to say. Did she really think he’d scribbled all those letters without laboring over every word? He’d never sent out the first draft of any of his missives (although he always wrote it on his best paper, each time hoping that this would be the time he’d get it right on the first try).
Hell, if she’d given him warning, he might have even summoned a romantic gesture or two. Flowers would have been nice, and heaven knew, if there was one thing he was good at, it was flowers.
But instead, she’d simply appeared before him as if conjured from a dream, and he’d mucked everything up.
And it hadn’t helped that Miss Eloise Bridgerton was not what he had expected.
She was a twenty-eight-year-old spinster, for heaven’s sake. She was supposed to be unattractive. Horse-faced, even. Instead she was—
Well, he wasn’t exactly certain how one could describe her. Not beautiful, precisely, but still somehow stunning, with thick chestnut hair and eyes of the clearest, crispest gray. She was the sort of woman whose expressions made her beautiful. There was intelligence in her eyes, curiosity in the way she cocked her head to the side. Her features were unique, almost exotic, with her heart-shaped face and wide smile.
Not that he’d seen much of that smile. His less-than-legendary charm had seen to that.
He jammed his hands into a pile of moist soil and scooped some into a small clay pot, leaving it loosely packed for optimal root growth. What the devil was he going to do now? He’d pinned his hopes on his mirage of Miss Eloise Bridgerton, based upon the letters she’d sent to him over the past year. He didn’t have time (nor, in truth, the inclination) to court a prospective mother for the twins, so it had seemed perfect (not to mention almost easy) to woo her through letters.
Surely an unmarried woman rapidly approaching the age of thirty would be gratified to receive a proposal of marriage. He hadn’t expected her to accept his offer without meeting with him, of course, and he wasn’t prepared to formally commit to the idea without making her acquaintance, either. But he had expected that she would be someone who was at least a little bit desperate for a husband.
Instead, she’d arrived looking young and pretty and smart and self-confident, and good God, but why would a woman like that want to marry someone she didn’t even know? Not to mention tie herself to a decidedly rural estate in the farthest corner of Gloucestershire. Phillip might know less than nothing about fashion, but even he could tell that her garments had been well made and most probably of the latest style. She was going to expect trips to London, an active social life, friends.
None of which she was likely to find here at Romney Hall.
It seemed almost useless to even try to make her acquaintance. She wasn’t going to stay, and he’d be foolish to get his hopes up.
He groaned, then cursed for good measure. Now he was going to have to court some other woman. Curse it, now he was going to have to find some other woman to court, which was going to be nearly as difficult. No one in the district would even look at him. All of the unmarried ladies knew about the twins, and there wasn’t a one of them willing to take on the responsibility of his little devils.
He’d pinned all of his hopes on Miss Bridgerton, and now it seemed that he was going to have to give up on her as well.
He set his pot down too hard on a shelf, wincing as the clatter of it rang through the greenhouse.
With a loud sigh, he dunked his muddy hands into a bucket of already dirtied water to wash them off. He’d been rude this morning. He was still rather irritated that she’d come out here and wasted his time—or if she hadn’t wasted it yet, she was almost certainly going to waste it, since she wasn’t likely to turn around and leave this evening.
But that didn’t excuse his behavior. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t manage his own children, and it certainly wasn’t her fault that this failing always put him in a foul mood.
Wiping his hands on a towel he kept by the door, he strode out into the drizzle and made his way to the house. It was probably time for luncheon, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone to sit down with her at the table and make polite conversation.
Plus, she was here. After all his effort with the letters, it seemed foolish not to at least see if they might get on well enough for marriage. Only an idiot would send her packing—or allow her to leave—without even ascertaining her suitability.
It was unlikely that she would stay, but not, he reckoned, impossible, and he might at least give it a try.
He made his way through the misty drizzle and into the house, wiping his feet on the mat that the housekeeper always left out for him near the side entrance. He was a mess, as he always was after working in the greenhouse, and the servants were used to him in such a state, but he supposed he ought to clean up before finding Miss Bridgerton and inviting her to eat with him. She was from London and would surely object to sitting at table with a man who was less than perfectly groomed.
He cut through the kitchen, nodding genially at a maid washing carrots in a tub of water. The servants’ stairs were just outside the other kitchen door and—
“Miss Bridgerton!” he said in surprise. She was sitting at a table in the kitchen, halfway through a very large ham sandwich and looking remarkably at home on her perch on a stool. “What are you doing here?”
“Sir Phillip,” she said, nodding at him.
“You don’t have to eat in the kitchen,” he said, scowling at her for no reason other than that she was not where he’d expected her to be.
That and the fact that he’d actually intended to change his clothes for lunch—something with which he did not ordinarily bother—for her benefit, and here she’d caught him a mess, anyway.
“I know,” she replied, cocking her head and blinking those devastating gray eyes at him. “But I was looking for food and company, and this seemed the best place to find both.”
Was that an insult? He couldn’t be certain, and her eyes looked innocent, so he decided to ignore it and said, “I was just on my way to change into cleaner attire and invite you to share my lunch with me.”
“I would be happy to remove myself to the breakfast room and finish my sandwich there, if you wish to join me,” Eloise said. “I’m sure Mrs. Smith wouldn’t mind making another sandwich for you. This one is delicious.” She looked over at the cook. “Mrs. Smith?”
“It’s no trouble at all, Miss Bridgerton,” the cook said, leaving Phillip nearly gaping at her. It was quite the friendliest tone of voice he had ever heard emerge from her lips.
Eloise edged herself off of her stool and picked up her plate. “Shall we?” she said to Phillip. “I have no objection to your attire.”
Before he even realized that he had not agreed to her plan, Phillip found himself in the breakfast room, seated across from her at the small round table he used far more often than the long, lonely one in the formal dining room. A maid had carried Miss Bridgerton’s tea service, and after inquiring if he wanted some, Miss Bridgerton herself had expertly prepared him a cup.
It was an unsettling feeling, this. She had maneuvered him quite neatly to serve her purposes, and somehow it didn’t quite matter that he’d intended to ask her to lunch with him in this very manner. He liked to think he was at least nominally in charge in his own home.
“I met your children earlier,” Miss Bridgerton said, lifting her teacup to her lips.
“Yes, I was there,” he replied, pleased that she had initiated the conversation. Now he didn’t have to.
“No,” she corrected, “after that.”
He looked up in question.
“They were waiting for me,” she explained, “outside my bedchamber door.”
An awful feeling began to churn and roll in his stomach. Waiting for her with what? A bag of live frogs? A bag of dead frogs? His children had not been kind to their governesses, and he did not imagine they’d be much more charitable to a female guest who was obviously there in the role of prospective stepmother.
He coughed. “I trust you survived the encounter?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “We have reached an understanding of sorts.”
“An understanding?” He eyed her warily. “Of sorts?”
She waved away his question as she chewed on her food. “You needn’t worry about me.”
“Need I worry about my children?”
She looked up at him with an inscrutable smile. “Of course not.”
“Very well.” He looked down at the sandwich that had been placed in front of him and took a healthy bite. Once he’d swallowed, he looked her straight in the eye and said, “I must apologize for my greeting this morning. I was less than gracious.”
She nodded regally. “And I apologize for arriving unheralded. It was quite ill-bred of me.”
He nodded back. “You, however, apologized for that this morning, while I did not.”
She offered him a smile, a genuine one, and he felt his heart lurch. Good God, when she smiled it transformed her entire face. In all the time he’d been corresponding with her, he’d never dreamed that she would take his breath away.
“Thank you,” she murmured, her cheeks flushing with the barest hint of pink. “That was very gracious of you.”
Phillip cleared his throat and shifted uneasily in his seat. What was wrong with him, that he was less comfortable with her smiles than he was with her frowns? “Right,” he said, coughing one more time to cover the gruffness in his voice. “Now that we have that out of the way, perhaps we should address your reason for being here.”
Eloise set her sandwich down and regarded him with obvious surprise. Clearly, she hadn’t expected him to be so direct. “You were interested in marriage,” she said.
“Are you?” he countered.
“I’m here,” she said simply.
He looked at her assessingly, his eyes searching hers until she squirmed in her seat. “You are not what I expected, Miss Bridgerton.”
“Under the circumstances, I would not think it inappropriate for you to use my given name,” she said, “and you are not what I expected, either.”
He sat back in his seat, looking at her with the vaguest hint of a smile. “And what did you expect?”
“What did you expect?” Eloise countered.
He gave her a look that told her he’d noticed she’d avoided his question, then said, quite bluntly, “I didn’t expect you to be so pretty.”
Eloise felt herself lurch back slightly at the unexpected compliment. She hadn’t been looking her best that morning, and even if she had—well, she’d never been considered one of the beauties of the ton. Bridgerton women were generally thought to be attractive, vivacious, and personable. She and her sisters were popular, and they’d all received more than one offer of marriage, but men seemed to like them because they liked them, not because they were struck dumb by their beauty.
“I . . . ah . . .” She felt herself flushing, which mortified her, which of course caused her cheeks to redden even more. “Thank you.”
He nodded graciously.
“I am not certain why my appearance would have come as a surprise to you,” she said, thoroughly annoyed with herself for reacting so strongly to his flattery. Heavens, one would think she had never been paid a compliment before. But he was just sitting there, looking at her. Looking, and staring, and . . .
She shivered.
And it wasn’t the least bit drafty. Could one shiver from feeling too . . . hot?
“You yourself wrote that you are a spinster,” he said. “There must be some reason you have never married.”
“It was not because I received no offers,” she felt compelled to inform him.
“Obviously not,” he said, tilting his head in her direction as a gesture of compliment. “But I cannot help but be curious as to why a woman like you would feel the need to resort to . . . well . . . me.”
She looked at him, really looked at him for the first time since she’d arrived. He was quite handsome in a rough, slightly unkempt sort of way. His dark hair looked in dire need of a good trim, and his skin showed signs of a faint tan, which was impressive considering how little sunshine they’d enjoyed lately. He was large and muscular, and sat in his chair with a careless, athletic sort of grace, legs sprawled in a manner that would not have been acceptable in a London drawing room.