“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.