Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,185

get a book from the library?”

She shrugged. “I finished it.”

He quirked a brow in patent disbelief.

She returned his expression with an arch look of her own.

“Well, you need to sit down,” he said gruffly.

“I’m perfectly fine.” She patted her hip gently. “It hardly hurts at all now.”

He stared at her for some time, his expression irritable, as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know what. He must have left the greenhouse in a hurry, because he was quite filthy, with dirt along his arms, under every fingernail, and streaked quite liberally on his shirt. He looked a fright, at least by the standards Eloise had grown used to in London, but there was something almost appealing about him, something rather primitive and elemental as he stood there scowling at her.

“I can’t work if I have to worry about you,” he grumbled.

“Then don’t work,” she replied, thinking the solution quite obvious.

“I’m in the middle of something,” he muttered, sounding, in Eloise’s opinion, at least, rather like a sullen child.

“Then I’ll accompany you,” she said, brushing past him on the way to the greenhouse. Really, how did he expect them to decide if they would suit if they didn’t spend any time together?

He reached out to grab her, then remembered that his hand was covered with dirt. “Miss Bridgerton,” he said sharply, “you can’t—”

“Couldn’t you use the help?” she interrupted.

“No,” he said, and in such a tone that she really couldn’t continue the argument along those lines.

“Sir Phillip,” she ground out, completely losing patience with him, “may I ask you a question?”

Visibly startled by her sudden turn of conversation, he just nodded—once, curtly, the way men liked to do when they were annoyed and wanted to pretend they were in charge.

“Are you the same man you were last night?”

He looked at her as if she were a lunatic. “I beg your pardon.”

“The man I spent the evening with last night,” she said, just barely resisting the urge to cross her arms as she spoke, “the one with whom I shared a meal and then toured the house and greenhouse, actually spoke to me, and in fact, seemed to enjoy my company, astonishing as it might seem.”

He did nothing but stare at her for several seconds, then muttered, “I enjoy your company.”

“Then why,” she asked, “have I been sitting alone in the garden for three hours?”

“It hasn’t been three hours.”

“It doesn’t matter how long—”

“It’s been forty-five minutes,” he said.

“Be that as it may—”

“Be that as it is.”

“Well,” she declared, mostly because she suspected he might have been correct, which put her in something of an awkward position, and well, seemed all she could say without embarrassing herself further.

“Miss Bridgerton,” he said, his clipped voice a reminder that just the night before he’d been calling her Eloise.

And kissing her. “As you might have guessed,” he continued sharply, “this morning’s episode with my children has left me in a foul mood. I thought merely to spare you my company, such as it is.”

“I see,” she said, rather impressed with the supercilious edge to her voice.

“Good.”

Except that she was quite certain she did see. That he was lying, to be precise. Oh, his children had put him in a foul mood, that much was true, but there was something else at work as well.

“I will leave you to your work, then,” she said, motioning to the greenhouse with a gesture that was meant to seem as if she were waving him away.

He eyed her suspiciously. “And what do you plan to do?”

“I suppose I shall write some letters and then go for a walk,” she replied.

“You will not go for a walk,” he growled.

Almost, Eloise thought, as if he actually cared about her.

“Sir Phillip,” she replied, “I assure you that I am perfectly fine. I’m quite certain I look a great deal worse than I feel.”

“You had better look worse than you feel,” he muttered.

Eloise scowled at him. It was a blackened eye, after all, and thus only a temporary blight on her appearance, but truly, he didn’t need to remind her that she looked a fright.

“I shall remain out of your way,” she told him, “which is all that really matters, correct?”

A vein began to twitch in his temple. Eloise took great pleasure in that.

“Go,” she said. And when he didn’t, she turned and began to walk through a gate to another segment of the garden.

“Stop this instant,” Sir Phillip ordered, closing the distance between them with a single step. “You may not