The Defiant Wife (The Three Mrs #2) - Jess Michaels Page 0,25

that firm grip she kept on her feelings. He could see the edges of her pain and her fear. Tears filled her eyes and then slid down her cheeks, and she just kept punching, wild and unkempt and beautiful now that she’d let it all go and was allowing herself to just feel.

She staggered with the last punch and tipped forward. He caught her as he dropped the pillow away and drew her against his chest. She wept there, great heaving gasps of sobs, her fingers clenching against his chest as she released everything she’d been holding inside.

“He shouldn’t have done that to me,” she gasped against his coat. “He shouldn’t have done that to Kenley. He shouldn’t have done that to you.”

She lifted her face toward his and her eyes went wide. Her wrapped hand lifted and wiped his face, and only in that moment did he realize he was weeping too. For the same reasons, for different ones. For loss and unfairness and everything he’d wanted and could never have.

He lowered his head and their foreheads met gently. She caught his hands, her fingers tangling with his. And slowly, their panting breaths slowed to something deeper, something matched. Calm descended on him, nothing like he’d ever felt before, certainly nothing like what he’d felt in the last few months.

Despite the flurry of her emotion, she brought calm to him. And, of how he wanted more of that. More of her. More of this one thing he definitely couldn’t pursue.

“Phillipa,” he whispered.

He had no idea what he would say to her. What he would ask. He never had a chance to find out because just as he was about to continue, the door to the terrace opened.

They stepped away. He pivoted toward the garden, pacing away from her as she turned to her butler, who was staring out at them with wide eyes. “Yes, Mr. Barton?”

“Master Kenley is up, Mrs. Montgomery,” he said. “Mrs. Barton said you’d wanted to know.”

“I did, thank you. Have her bring him to the breakfast room and I will join them there in a moment,” she said.

The butler bowed his head and left them alone again on the terrace. Rhys forced himself to face her, uncertain what they should say or do. She smiled, something a little awkward but not untrue, and began to unwind his cravats from her hands. It was mesmerizing watching that swatch of cloth he wore against his throat come off her skin.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she handed them back and motioned to the door. “We should go back in.”

He nodded as he followed her through the hall. When they reached the breakfast room, he stopped, catching her elbow before she could leave him. She sucked in her breath when he touched her, just the slightest reaction, but he felt it down to his bones.

“I will arrange things for you, Phillipa. For him,” he swore, holding her gaze so she would know he meant those words. “Nothing will be taken from you.” He hesitated because certainly she had lost more than a good deal already. “Nothing more.”

She bent her head. “I know.”

They entered the breakfast room. Mrs. Barton was standing at the mirror above the mantel with Kenley. They turned as Phillipa entered, and Kenley’s entire face lit up. So did Phillipa’s. Rhys saw how closely connected they were, how special and strong their bond was.

And he knew, deep in his heart, deeper than his heart, that he had to keep the promise he had just made to this woman. He had to do everything in his power to make her happy. It was, perhaps, what he had been put on this earth to do.

Chapter 8

Phillipa sat on the floor in the parlor, watching as Kenley played with his blocks. “That’s a square,” she said as he lifted one of the smooth wooden toys toward her. “Square.”

Kenley babbled empty noises as he slammed one block against the other and then rolled the one in his hand across the carpet.

She sighed and worried her lip. It had been three days since Rhys had taken her out on the terrace and let her vent her emotions. Three days since he’d touched her and held her and cried with her. He’d been busy since then, working away in Erasmus’s study, going out into Bath where she thought he might have hired a solicitor to help him with the particulars.

She, however, was kept out of them. Rhys spoke to her about books, music,