But his daughter had made her bed; now it was time to lie in the one Miss Bridgerton had stunk up for her. He dipped his spoon in his soup, lifted it a few inches, then paused. “And what did you place in Oliver’s bed?”
“Nothing.”
He quirked a brow in question.
“It will keep him in suspense,” she explained coolly.
Phillip cocked his head toward her in salute. She was good. “They’ll retaliate, of course,” he felt honor-bound to warn her.
“I’ll be ready.” She sounded unconcerned. Then she looked up at him, straight in the eye, momentarily startling him with her direct gaze. “I suppose they know that you invited me here for the purpose of asking me to be your wife.”
“I never said anything to them.”
“No,” she murmured, “you wouldn’t.”
He looked over at her sharply, unable to discern if she meant that as an insult. “I don’t feel the need to keep my children apprised of my personal matters.”
She shrugged, a delicate little motion that he found infuriating.
“Miss Bridgerton,” he said, “I don’t need your advice on how to raise my children.”
“I didn’t say a word on the subject,” she returned, “although I might point out that you do appear rather desperate to find them a mother, which would seem to indicate that you do want help.”
“Until you agree to take on that role,” he bit off, “you may keep your opinions to yourself.”
She speared him with a frosty stare, then turned her attention back to her soup. After only two spoonfuls, however, she looked back up at him defiantly, and said, “They need discipline.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“They also need love.”
“They get love,” he muttered.
“And attention.”
“They get that, too.”
“From you.”
Phillip might have been aware that he was far from being a perfect father, but he was damned if he would allow someone else to say so. “And I suppose you have deduced their state of shameful neglect during the twelve hours since your arrival.”
She snorted her disdain. “It hardly required twelve hours to listen to them this morning, begging you to spend a paltry few minutes in their company.”
“They did nothing of the sort,” he retorted, but he could feel the tips of his ears growing hot, as they always did when he was lying. He didn’t spend enough time with them, and he was mortified that she’d managed to figure that out in such a short amount of time.
“They practically begged you not to be busy all day,” she shot back. “If you spent a bit more time with them—”
“You don’t know anything about my children,” he hissed. “And you don’t know anything about me.”
She stood abruptly. “Clearly,” she said, heading for the door.
“Wait!” he called, jumping to his feet. Damn. How had this happened? Barely an hour ago he’d been convinced that she would become his wife, and now she was practically on her way back to London.
He let out a frustrated breath. Nothing had the ability to turn his temper like his children, or the discussion thereof. Or, to be more precise, the discussion of his failings as their father.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it, too. Or at least meaning it enough not to want her to leave. “Please.” He held out his hand. “Don’t go.”
“I’ll not be treated like an imbecile.”
“If there is one thing I’ve learned in the twelve hours since your arrival,” he said, purposefully repeating his earlier words, “it’s that you’re no imbecile.”
She regarded him for a few more seconds, then placed her hand in his.
“At the very least,” he said, not even caring that he sounded as if he were pleading with her, “you must stay until Amanda arrives.”
Her brows rose in question.
“Surely you’ll want to savor your victory,” he murmured, then added under his breath, “I know I would.”
She allowed him to reseat her, but they had only one more minute together before Amanda came shrieking into the room, her nursemaid hot on her heels.
“Father!” Amanda wailed, throwing herself onto his lap.
Phillip embraced her awkwardly. It was some time since he’d done so, and he’d forgotten how it felt. “Whatever can be the problem?” he asked, giving her a pat on the back for good measure.
Amanda pulled her face out of its burrowed position in his neck and pointed one furious, shaking finger at Eloise. “It’s her,” she said, as if referring to the devil himself.
“Miss Bridgerton?” Phillip asked.
“She put a fish in my bed!”
“And you dumped flour on her head,” he said sternly, “so I’d say you’re even.”
Amanda’s little mouth fell open. “But you’re my father!”
“Indeed.”
“You’re supposed to take my side!”
“When you’re in the right.”
“It was a fish,” she sobbed.
“So I smell. You’ll want a bath, I imagine.”
“I don’t want a bath!” she wailed. “I want you to punish her!”
Phillip smiled at that. “She’s rather big for punishing, wouldn’t you agree?”
Amanda stared at him with horrified disbelief, and then finally, her lower lip shaking, she gasped, “You need to tell her to leave. Right now!”
Phillip set Amanda down, rather pleased with how the entire encounter was progressing. Maybe it was Miss Bridgerton’s calm presence, but he seemed to have more patience than usual. He felt no urge to snap at Amanda, or to avoid the issue altogether by banishing her to her room. “I beg your pardon, Amanda,” he said, “but Miss Bridgerton is my guest, not yours, and she will remain here as long as I wish.”
Eloise cleared her throat. Loudly.
“Or,” Phillip amended, “as long as she wishes to remain.”
Amanda’s entire face scrunched in thought.
“Which doesn’t mean,” he said quickly, “that you may torture her in an attempt to force her away.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
“But—”
“What did I just say?”
“But she’s mean!”
“I think she’s very clever,” Phillip said, “and I wish I’d put a fish in your bed months ago.”
Amanda stepped back in horror.
“Go to your room, Amanda.”
“But it smells bad.”
“You have only yourself to blame.”
“But my bed—”
“You’ll have to sleep on the floor,” he replied.
Face quivering—entire body quivering, truth be told—she dragged herself toward the door. “But . . . but . . .”
“Yes, Amanda?” he asked, in what he thought to be an impressively patient voice.
“But she didn’t punish Oliver,” the little girl whispered. “That wasn’t very fair of her. The flour was his idea.”
Phillip raised his brows.
“Well, it wasn’t only my idea,” Amanda insisted. “We thought it up together.”
Phillip actually chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry about Oliver if I were you, Amanda. Or rather,” he said, giving his chin a thoughtful stroke with his fingers, “I would worry. I suspect Miss Bridgerton has plans for him yet.”
That seemed to satisfy Amanda, and she mumbled a barely articulate “Good night, Father,” before allowing her nursemaid to lead her from the room.
Phillip turned back to his soup, feeling very pleased with himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d emerged from a run-in with one of the twins in which he’d felt he’d handled everything just right. He took a sip, then, still holding his spoon, looked over at Eloise and said, “Poor Oliver will be quaking in his boots.”
She appeared to be trying hard not to grin. “He won’t be able to sleep.”
Phillip shook his head. “Not a wink, I should think. And you should watch your step. I’d wager he’ll set some sort of trap at his door.”
“Oh, I have no plans to torture Oliver this evening,” she said with a blithe wave of her hand. “That would be far too easy to predict. I prefer the element of surprise.”
“Yes,” he said with a chuckle. “I can see that you would.”
Eloise answered him with a smug expression. “I would almost consider leaving him in perpetual agony, except that it really wouldn’t be fair to Amanda.”
Phillip shuddered. “I hate fish.”
“I know. You wrote me as much.”
“I did?”
She nodded. “Odd that Mrs. Smith even had any in the house, but I suppose the servants like it.”
They descended into silence, but it was a comfortable, companionable sort of quietude. And as they ate, moving through the courses of the supper as they chatted about nothing in particular, it occurred to Phillip that perhaps marriage wasn’t supposed to be so hard.
With Marina he’d always felt like he was tiptoeing around the house, always fearful that she was going to descend into one of her bouts with melancholia, always disappointed when she seemed to withdraw from life, and indeed, almost disappear.
But maybe marriage was supposed to be easier than that. Maybe it was supposed to be like this. Companionable. Comfortable.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken with anyone about his children, or the raising thereof. His burdens had always been his alone, even when Marina had been alive. Marina herself had been a burden, and he was still wrestling with the guilt he felt at his relief that she was gone.
But Eloise . . .
He looked across the table at the woman who had so unexpectedly fallen into his life. Her hair glowed almost red in the flickering candlelight, and her eyes, when she caught him staring at her, sparkled with vitality and just a hint of mischief.
She was, he was coming to realize, exactly what he needed. Smart, opinionated, bossy—they weren’t the sort of things men usually looked for in a wife, but Phillip so desperately needed someone to come to Romney Hall and fix things. Nothing was quite right, from the house to his children to the slightly hushed pall that had hung over the place when Marina had been alive, and sadly had not lifted even after her death.
Phillip would gladly cede some of his husbandly power to a wife if she would only make everything right again. He’d be more than happy to disappear into his greenhouse and let her be in charge of everything else.
Would Eloise Bridgerton be willing to take on such a role?
Dear God, he hoped so.
Chapter 5
. . . 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.