Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,240

crept forward instead, peeking through the crack as unobtrusively as he could.

It required only half a second to realize what was happening.

Oliver was curled up in a ball on the floor, shaking with silent sobs, and Amanda was standing in front of a wall, bracing herself with her tiny little hands, whimpering as her nurse beat her across the back with a large, heavy book.

Phillip slammed through the door with a force that nearly took it off its hinges. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he nearly roared.

Nurse Edwards turned around in surprise, but before she could open her mouth to speak, Phillip snatched the book away and hurled it behind him against the wall.

“Sir Phillip!” Nurse Edwards cried out in shock.

“How dare you strike these children,” he said, his voice shaking with fury. “And with a book.”

“I was told—”

“And you did it where no one would see.” He felt himself growing hot, agitated, itching to lash out. “How many children have you beaten, making sure to leave the bruises where no one would see?”

“They spoke disrespectfully,” Nurse Edwards said stiffly. “They had to be punished.”

Phillip stepped forward, close enough so that the nurse was forced to retreat. “I want you out of my house,” he said.

“You told me to discipline the children as I see fit,” Nurse Edwards protested.

“Is this how you see fit?” he hissed, using every ounce of his restraint to hold his arms at his sides. He wanted to swing them wildly, to lash out, to grab a book and beat this woman just as she had done to his children.

But he held on to his temper. He had no idea how, but he did it.

“You beat them with a book?” he continued furiously. He looked over at his children; they were cowering in a corner, presumably as scared of their father in such a mood as they were of their nurse. It sickened him that they were seeing him this way, so close to a total loss of control, but there was nothing more he could do to rein himself in.

“There was no switch,” Nurse Edwards said haughtily.

Wrong thing to say. Phillip felt his skin grow even hotter, fought against the red haze that had begun to cloud his vision. There had been a switch in the nursery; the hook it had hung upon was still there, right by the window.

Phillip had burned it the day of his father’s funeral, had stood in front of the fire and watched it turn to ash. He hadn’t been satisfied with just tossing it in; he’d needed to see it destroyed, completely and forever.

And he thought of that switch, thought of the hundreds of times it had been used upon him, thought of the pain, of the indignity, of all the effort he had used, trying to keep himself from crying out.

His father had hated crybabies. Tears only resulted in another round with the switch. Or with the belt. Or the riding crop. Or, when there was nothing else available, his father’s hand.

But never, Phillip thought with a strange sort of detachment, a book. Probably his father had never thought of it.

“Get out,” Phillip said, his voice barely audible. And then, when Nurse Edwards did not immediately respond, he roared it. “Get out! Get out of this house!”

“Sir Phillip,” she protested, scooting away from him, out of reach of his long, strong arms.

“Get out! Get out! Get out!”

He didn’t know where it was all coming from anymore. From somewhere deep inside, never tamed, but held down by sheer force of will.

“I need to gather my things!” she cried out.

“You have one half hour,” Phillip said, his voice low but still quavering with the exertion of his outburst. “Thirty minutes. If you have not departed by then, I will throw you out myself.”

Nurse Edwards hesitated at the door, started to walk through, then turned around. “You are ruining those children,” she hissed.

“They are mine to ruin.”

“Have it your way, then. They are nothing but little monsters, anyway, ill-tempered, misbehaved—”

Had she no care for her own safety? Phillip’s control was dangling by one very thin thread, and he was this close to grabbing the damned woman by the arm and hurling her out the door himself.

“Get out,” he growled, for what he prayed was the last time. He couldn’t hold on much longer. He stepped forward, punctuating his words with movement, and finally—finally—she ran from the room.

For a moment Phillip simply held still, trying to calm himself, to