Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,187

quieter, more thoughtful, and certainly less suited to the role of father and lord of the manor. He’d always planned to leave Romney Hall and never look back, at least while his father was still alive. George was to marry Marina and have a half dozen perfect children, and Phillip would be the gruff and slightly eccentric uncle who lived over in Cambridge, spending all his time in his greenhouse, conducting experiments that no one else understood or in truth even cared about.

That was how it was supposed to be, but it had all changed on a battlefield in Belgium.

England had won the war, but that had been little comfort to Phillip when his father had dragged him back to Gloucestershire, determined to mold him into a proper heir.

Determined to change him into George, who had always been his favorite.

And then his father had died. Right there, right in front of Phillip, his heart gave out in a screaming rage, surely exaggerated by the fact that his son was now too large to be hauled over his knee and beaten with a paddle.

And Phillip became Sir Phillip, with all the rights and responsibilities of a baronet.

Rights and responsibilities he had never, ever wanted.

He loved his children, loved them more than life itself, so he supposed he was glad for the way it had all turned out, but he still felt as if he were failing. Romney Hall was doing well—Phillip had introduced several new agricultural techniques he’d learned at university, and the fields were turning a profit for the first time since . . . well, Phillip didn’t know since when. They certainly hadn’t earned any money while his father had been alive.

But the fields were only fields. His children were human beings, flesh and blood, and every day he grew more convinced that he was failing them. Every day seemed to bring worse trouble (which terrified him; he couldn’t imagine what could possibly be worse than Miss Lockhart’s glued hair or Eloise’s blackened eye) and he had no idea what to do. Whenever he tried to talk to them, he seemed to say the wrong thing. Or do the wrong thing. Or not do anything, all because he was so scared that he’d lose his temper.

Except for that one time. Supper last night with Eloise and Amanda. For the first time in recent memory, he’d handled his daughter exactly right. Something about Eloise’s presence had calmed him, lent him a clarity of thought he usually lacked when it came to his children. He was able to see the humor in the situation, where he usually saw nothing but his own frustration.

Which was all the more reason he needed to make sure Eloise stayed and married him. And all the more reason he wasn’t going to go to her tonight and try to make amends.

He didn’t mind eating crow. Hell, he would have eaten an entire flock if that was what it took.

He just didn’t want to muck up the situation any worse than it already was.

Eloise rose quite early the following morning, which wasn’t surprising, since she’d crawled into bed at only half eight the night before. She’d regretted her self-imposed exile almost the moment after she’d sent the note down to Sir Phillip informing him of her decision to take supper in her room.

She’d been thoroughly annoyed with him earlier in the day, and she’d allowed her irritation to rule her thinking. The truth was, she hated eating by herself, hated sitting alone at a table with nothing to do but stare at her food and guess how many bites it might take to finish one’s potatoes. Even Sir Phillip in his most obstinate and uncommunicative of moods would have been better than nothing.

Besides, she still wasn’t convinced that they wouldn’t suit, and dining apart wasn’t going to offer her any further insight into his personality and temperament.

He could be a bear—and a grumpy one, at that—but when he smiled . . . Eloise suddenly understood what all those young ladies were talking about when they’d waxed rhapsodic over her brother Colin’s smile (which Eloise found rather ordinary; it was Colin, after all.)

But when Sir Phillip smiled, he was transformed. His dark eyes assumed a devilish twinkle, full of humor and mischief, as if he knew something she didn’t. But that wasn’t what sent her heart fluttering. Eloise was a Bridgerton, after all. She’d seen plenty of devilish twinkles and prided herself on being quite immune to them.

When