“No.” He turned away, began to walk, his long stride forcing her to jump to attention and follow. But then, just when she’d gathered enough speed to catch up, he stopped, causing her to stumble and put her hands out against his arm just to keep her balance.
“I have a question for you,” he said, his voice abrupt.
“Of course,” she murmured, surprised by his sudden change of demeanor. Still, it was only fair. She’d practically interrogated the poor man.
“Why did you leave London?” he asked.
She blinked in surprise. She hadn’t been expecting something with such an easy answer. “To meet you, of course.”
“Balderdash.”
Her mouth fell open at his palpable disdain.
“That’s why you came,” he said, “not why you left.”
It hadn’t occurred to her until that very minute that there was a difference, but he was right. He’d had nothing to do with why she’d left London. He’d just provided an easy means of escape, a way to leave without feeling she was running away.
He’d given her something to run to, which was so much easier to justify than running from.
“Did you have a lover?” he asked, his voice low.
“No!” she answered, loud enough so that Anthony actually turned around, forcing her to smile and wave at him, assuring him that all was well. “Just a bee,” she called out.
Anthony’s eyes widened, and he started to stride in their direction.
“It’s gone now!” Eloise called quickly, shooing him away. “Nothing about it!” She turned to Phillip and explained, “He’s rather morbidly afraid of bees.” She grimaced. “I forgot. I should have said it was a mouse.”
Phillip looked over at Anthony, curiosity on his face. Eloise wasn’t surprised; it was difficult to imagine that a man such as her brother was afraid of bees, but it did make sense, seeing as how their father had died after being stung by one.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Damn. She’d thought she’d got him off the subject. “How could you even ask it?” she asked.
Phillip shrugged. “How could I not? You ran away from home, not bothering to tell your family where you were going—”
“I left a note,” she interrupted.
“Yes, of course, the note.”
Her mouth fell open. “Don’t you believe me?”
He nodded. “I do, actually. You’re much too organized and officious to leave without making sure all of your loose ends were tied up.”
“It’s not my fault it got shuffled into Mother’s invitations,” she muttered.
“The note is not the issue,” he stated, crossing his arms.
Crossing his arms? She clenched her teeth together. It made her feel a child, and there was nothing she could do or say about it, because she had a feeling that whatever he was about to say concerning her recent behavior, he was right.
Much as it pained her to admit it.
“The fact of the matter,” he continued, “is that you fled London like a criminal in the middle of the night. It simply occurred to me that something might have happened to . . . ah . . . stain your reputation.” At her peevish expression, he added, “It’s not an unreasonable conclusion to reach.”
He was right, of course. Not about her reputation—that was still as pure and clean as snow. But it did look odd, and frankly, it was a wonder he hadn’t inquired after it already.
“If you had a lover,” he said quietly, “it won’t change my intentions.”
“It’s not that at all,” she said quickly, mostly just to make him stop talking about it. “It was . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sighed. “It was . . .”
And then she told him everything. All about the marriage proposals she’d received, and the ones Penelope hadn’t, and the plans they’d jokingly made to grow old and spinsterish together. And she told him how guilty she’d felt when Penelope and Colin had married, and she couldn’t stop thinking about herself and how alone she was.
She told him all that and more. She told him what was in her mind and what was in her heart, and she told him things she’d never told another soul. And it occurred to her that for a woman who opened her mouth every other second, there was an awful lot inside of her that she’d never shared.
And then, when she was done (and, in truth, she didn’t even realize she’d finished; she just kind of ran out of energy and dwindled off into silence), he reached out and took her hand.
“It’s all right,” he said.
And it was, she realized. It actually was.
Chapter 14
. . . I grant that Mr. Wilson’s face does have a certain amphibious quality, but I do wish you would learn to be a bit more circumspect in your speech. While I would never consider him an acceptable candidate for marriage, he is certainly not a toad, and it ill-behooved me to have my younger sister call him thus, and in his presence.
—from Eloise Bridgerton to her sister Hyacinth,
upon refusing her fourth offer of marriage
Four days later, they were married. Phillip had no idea how Anthony Bridgerton had managed it, but he’d procured a special license, allowing them to be wed without banns and on a Monday, which, Eloise assured him, was no worse than Tuesday or Wednesday, just that it wasn’t Saturday, as was proper.
Eloise’s entire family, minus her widowed sister in Scotland, who hadn’t had time to make the journey, had trooped out to the country for the wedding. Normally, the ceremony would have taken place in Kent, at the Bridgerton family seat, or at the very least in London, where the family attended church regularly at St. George’s in Hanover Square, but such arrangements were not possible on such a hastened schedule, and this wasn’t an ordinary sort of wedding in any case. Benedict and Sophie had offered their home for the reception, but Eloise had felt that the twins would be more comfortable at Romney Hall, so they’d held the ceremony at the parish church down the lane, followed by a small, intimate reception on the lawn outside Phillip’s greenhouse.
Later in the day, just as the sun was beginning to dip in the sky, Eloise found herself in her new bedchamber with her mother, who was busying herself by pretending to tuck away items in Eloise’s hastily gathered trousseau. It all, of course, had been taken care of by Eloise’s lady’s maid (brought up from London with the family) earlier that morning, but Eloise didn’t comment upon her mother’s idle busy-work. It seemed like Violet Bridgerton simply needed something to do while she talked.
Eloise, of all people, understood that need perfectly.
“I should complain that I’m being denied my proper moment of glory as the mother of the bride,” Violet said to her daughter as she folded her lacy veil and placed it gently on top of a bureau, “but in truth I’m just happy to see you a bride.”
Eloise smiled gently at her mother. “You’d quite despaired of it, hadn’t you?”
“Quite.” But then she cocked her head to the side and added, “Actually, no. I always thought you might surprise us in the end. You frequently do.”
Eloise thought of all those years since her debut, all those rejected marriage proposals. All those weddings they’d attended, with Violet watching another of her friends marrying off another of their daughters to another fabulously eligible gentleman.
Another gentleman, of course, who could now no longer marry Eloise, Lady Bridgerton’s famously on-the-shelf spinster daughter.
“I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,” Eloise whispered.
Violet gazed at her with a wise expression. “My children never disappoint me,” she said softly. “They merely . . . astonish me. I believe I like it that way.”
Eloise found herself lurching forward to hug her mother. She felt awkward doing so; she didn’t know why, since hers was a family that had never discouraged such displays of affection in the privacy of their own home. Maybe it was because she was so perilously close to tears; maybe it was because she sensed her mother was the same. But she felt an awkward girl again, all gangly arms and legs and bony elbows and a mouth that always opened when it should be closed.
And she wanted her mother.
“There, there,” Violet said, sounding very much as she had years ago, when fussing over a skinned knee or bruised feelings. “Now,” she said, her face turning pink. “Now, then.”
“Mother?” Eloise murmured. She looked very strange indeed, as if she’d eaten bad fish.
“I dread this,” Violet muttered.
“Mother?” Surely she couldn’t have heard correctly.
Violet took a deep, fortifying breath. “We have to have a little talk.” She leaned back, looked her daughter in the eye, then added, “Do we have to have a little talk?”
Eloise wasn’t certain whether her mother was asking her if she knew of the details of intimacy or if she actually knew them . . . intimately. “Uhhh . . . I haven’t . . . ah . . . If you mean . . . That is to say, I’m still . . .”
“Excellent,” Violet said with a heartfelt sigh. “But do you—that is to say, are you aware . . . ?”
“Yes,” Eloise said quickly, eager to spare both of them undue embarrassment. “I don’t believe I need anything explained.”
“Excellent,” Violet said again, her sigh even more heartfelt. “I must say, I do detest this part of motherhood. I can’t even recall what I said to Daphne, just that I spent the entire time blushing and stammering, and honestly, I have no idea if she left the encounter any better informed than when she arrived.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “Probably not, I’m afraid.”
“She seems to have adapted to married life quite well,” Eloise murmured.
“Yes, she has. Hasn’t she?” Violet said brightly. “Four little children and a husband who dotes upon her. One certainly can’t hope for more.”
“What did you say to Francesca?” Eloise asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Francesca,” Eloise repeated, referring to her younger sister who had married six years earlier—and was tragically widowed two years after that. “What did you say to her when she married? You mentioned Daphne, but not Francesca.”
Violet’s blue eyes clouded, as they always did when she thought of her third daughter, widowed so young. “You know Francesca. I expect she could have told me a thing or two.”
Eloise gasped.
“I don’t mean it that way, of course,” Violet hastened to add. “Francesca was as innocent as . . . well, as innocent as you are, I imagine.”
Eloise felt her cheeks grow hot and thanked her maker for the cloudy day, which left the room somewhat darkened. That and the fact that her mother was busy inspecting a torn hem on her dress. She was technically untouched, of course, and she’d certainly pass inspection if examined by a physician, but she didn’t feel quite so innocent any longer.
“But you know Francesca,” Violet continued, shrugging and looking back up when she realized that there was nothing she could do about the hem. “She’s so sly and knowing. I expect she bribed some poor housemaid into explaining it all to her years earlier.”
Eloise nodded. She didn’t want to tell her mother that she and Francesca had in fact pooled their pin money to bribe the housemaid. It had been worth every penny, however. Annie Mavel’s explanation had been detailed and, Francesca had later informed her, absolutely correct.
Violet smiled wistfully, then reached up and touched her daughter’s cheekbone, right near the corner of her eye. The skin was still slightly discolored, but the purple had faded through blue and green to a rather sickly (but certainly less unsightly) shade of yellow. “Are you certain you’ll be happy?” she asked.
Eloise smiled ruefully. “It’s a little late to wonder, don’t you think?”
“It might be too late to do anything about it, but it’s never too late to wonder.”
“I think I’ll be happy,” Eloise said. I hope so, she added, but just in her mind.
“He seems a nice man.”
“He’s a very nice man.”
“Honorable.”
“He is that.”