Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,172

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