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.