Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,190

kill her.”

The maid looked alarmed. “Sir Phillip?”

“It was a joke . . . ah . . . Mary?” He didn’t mean to finish his sentence on a questioning note, but the truth was, he wasn’t quite certain of her name.

She nodded in such a way that he couldn’t be sure whether he’d gotten it right or she was just being polite.

“Do you happen to know where they went?” he asked.

“Down to the lake, I believe. To go swimming.”

Phillip’s skin went cold. “Swimming?” he asked, his voice sounding disembodied and hollow to his ears.

“Yes. The children were wearing their bathing costumes.”

Swimming. Dear God.

For a year now, he’d avoided the lake, always taken the long route around, just to spare himself the sight of it. And he had forbidden the children from ever visiting the site.

Or had he?

He’d told Nurse Millsby not to allow them near the water, but had he remembered to do the same with Nurse Edwards?

He took off at a run, leaving the floor littered with roses.

“Last one in is a hermit crab!” Oliver shrieked, tearing into the water at top speed, only to laugh when it reached his waist and he was forced to slow down.

“I’m not a hermit crab. You’re a hermit crab!” Amanda yelled back as she splashed around in the shallower depths.

“You’re a rotten hermit crab!”

“Well, you’re a dead hermit crab!”

Eloise laughed as she waded through the water a few yards away from Amanda. She hadn’t brought a bathing costume—indeed, who would have thought she might need one?—so she had tied her skirt and petticoat up, baring her legs to just above her knees. It was an awful lot of leg to be showing, but that hardly mattered in the company of two eight-year-olds.

Besides, they were having far too much fun tormenting each other to give her legs even a passing glance.

The twins had warmed up to her during their walk down to the lake, laughing and chattering the entire way, and Eloise wondered if all they truly needed was a bit of attention. They’d lost their mother, their relationship with their father was distant at best, and then their beloved nurse had left them. Thank heavens they had each other.

And maybe, perhaps, her.

Eloise bit her lip, not sure whether she ought even to be allowing her thoughts to veer in that direction. She hadn’t yet decided whether she wanted to marry Sir Phillip, and much as these two children seemed to need her—and they did need her, she just knew they did—she couldn’t make her decision based on Oliver and Amanda.

She wasn’t going to be marrying them.

“Don’t go any deeper!” she called out, mindful that Oliver had been inching away.

He pulled the sort of face boys do when they think they are being mollycoddled, but she noticed that he took two large steps back toward the shore.

“You should come in further, Miss Bridgerton,” Amanda said, sitting down on the lake bottom and then squealing, “Oh! It’s cold!”

“Why did you sit down, then?” Oliver said. “You knew how cold it was.”

“Yes, but my feet were used to it,” she replied, hugging her arms to her body. “It didn’t feel so cold anymore.”

“Don’t worry,” he told her with a supercilious grin, “your bottom will get used to it soon, too.”

“Oliver,” Eloise said sternly, but she was fairly certain she’d ruined the effect by smiling.

“He’s right!” Amanda exclaimed, turning to Eloise with an expression of surprise. “I can’t feel my bottom at all anymore.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” Eloise said.

“You should swim,” Oliver prodded. “Or at least go as far as Amanda. You’ve barely got your feet wet.”

“I don’t have a bathing costume,” Eloise said, even though she’d explained this to them at least six times already.

“I think you don’t know how to swim,” he said.

“I assure you I know very well how to swim,” she returned, “and that you’re not likely to provoke a demonstration while I’m wearing my third-best morning dress.”

Amanda looked over at her and blinked a few times. “I should like to see your first- and second-best. That’s a very pretty frock.”

“Why, thank you, Amanda,” Eloise said, wondering who picked out the young girl’s clothing. The crotchety Nurse Edwards, probably. There was nothing wrong with what Amanda was wearing, but Eloise would wager that no one had ever thought to offer her the fun of choosing her own garments. She smiled at Amanda and said, “If you would like to go shopping sometime, I would be happy to take you.”

“Oh,