Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,174

been married by then. One would think that would confer a measure of adulthood, but now twenty-one seemed impossibly young and green, and far too innocent to have inherited a burden one had never thought to receive.

“Marina was his fiancée,” he said.

Her breath rushed over her lips, and she turned to him, her hand falling away from his. “I didn’t know,” she said.

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Here, would you like to see her portrait?”

“Yes,” Eloise replied, discovering that she did indeed wish to see Marina. They had been cousins, but distant ones, and it had been years since they’d visited with one another. Eloise remembered dark hair and light eyes—blue, maybe—but that was all. She and Marina had been of an age, and so they had been thrust together at family gatherings, but Eloise didn’t recall their ever having very much in common. Even when they were barely older than Amanda and Oliver, their differences had been clear. Eloise had been a boisterous child, climbing trees and sliding down banisters, always following her older siblings, begging them to allow her to take part in whatever they were doing.

Marina had been quieter, almost contemplative. Eloise remembered tugging on her hand, trying to get her to come outside and play. But Marina had just wanted to sit with a book.

Eloise had taken note of the pages, however, and she was quite convinced that Marina never moved beyond page thirty-two.

It was a strange thing to remember, she supposed, except that her nine-year-old self had found it so astounding—why would someone choose to stay inside with a book when the sun was shining, and then not even read it? She’d spent the rest of the visit whispering with her sister Francesca, trying to figure out just what it was that Marina was doing with that book.

“Do you remember her?” Phillip asked.

“Just a little,” Eloise replied, not sure why she didn’t wish to share her memory with him. And anyway, it was the truth. That was the sum of her recollections of Marina—that one week in April over twenty years earlier, whispering with Francesca as Marina stared at a book.

Eloise allowed Phillip to lead her over to Marina’s portrait. She had been painted seated, on some sort of ottoman, with her dark red skirts artfully arranged about her. A younger version of Amanda was on her lap, and Oliver stood at her side, in one of those poses young boys were always forced to assume—serious and stern, as if they were miniature adults.

“She was lovely,” Eloise said.

Phillip just stared at the image of his dead wife, then, almost as if it required a force of will, turned his head and walked away.

Had he loved her? Did he love her still?

Marina should have been his brother’s bride; everything seemed to suggest that Phillip had been given her by default.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. Maybe he had been secretly in love with her while she had been engaged to his brother. Or maybe he had fallen in love after the wedding.

Eloise stole a look at his profile as he stared sightlessly at a painting on the wall. There had been emotion on his face when he had looked at Marina’s portrait. She wasn’t sure what he had felt for her, but it was definitely still something. It had only been a year, she reminded herself. A year might make up the official period of mourning, but it wasn’t very long to get past the death of a loved one.

Then he turned. His eyes hit hers, and she realized she’d been staring at him, mesmerized by the planes of his face. Her lips parted with surprise, and she wanted to look away, felt as if she ought to blush and stammer at having been caught, but somehow she could not. She just stood there, transfixed, breathless, as a strange heat spread across her skin.

He was ten feet away, at the very least, and it felt as if they were touching.

“Eloise?” he whispered, or at least she thought he did. She saw his lips form the word more than she actually heard his voice.

And then somehow the moment was broken. Maybe it was his whisper, maybe the creak of a windblown tree outside. But Eloise was finally able to move—to think—and she quickly turned back to Marina’s portrait, firmly affixing her gaze on her late cousin’s serene face. “The children must miss her,” Eloise said, needing to say something, anything that would restart the conversation—and