Bridgerton Collection, Volume 2 - Julia Quinn Page 0,251

knew Phillip, and she knew that had to be the truth.

“Eventually I just gave up,” he said, his voice flat. “I stopped trying to help her at all. I was so sick and tired of beating my head against a wall where she was concerned. And all I tried to do was protect the children, and keep them away when she was in a really bad spell. Because they loved her so much.” He looked at her pleadingly, maybe for understanding, maybe for something else Eloise didn’t understand. “She was their mother.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“She was their mother, and she didn’t . . . she couldn’t . . .”

“But you were there,” Eloise said fervently. “You were there.”

He laughed harshly. “Yes, and a fat lot of good that did them. It’s one thing to be born with one dreadful parent, but to have two? I would never have wished that on my children, and yet . . . here we are.”

“You are not a bad father,” Eloise said, unable to keep the scolding tone out of her voice.

He just shrugged and turned back to the portrait, clearly unable to consider her words.

“Do you know how much it hurt?” he whispered. “Do you have any idea?”

She shook her head, even though he’d turned away.

“To try so hard, so damned hard, and never succeed? Hell—” He laughed, a short, bitter sound, full of self-loathing. “Hell,” he said again, “I didn’t even like her and it hurt so much.”

“You didn’t like her?” Eloise asked, her surprise pitching her words into a different register.

His lips quirked ironically. “Can you like someone you don’t even know?” He turned back to her. “I didn’t know her, Eloise. I was married to her for eight years, and I never knew her.”

“Maybe she didn’t let you know her.”

“Maybe I should have tried harder.”

“Maybe,” Eloise said, infusing her voice with all the surety and conviction she could, “there was nothing more you could have done. Some people are born melancholy, Phillip. I don’t know why, and I doubt anyone knows why, but that’s just the way they are.”

He looked at her sardonically, his dark eyes clearly dismissing her opinion, and so she leapt back in with, “Don’t forget, I knew her, too. As a child, long before you even knew she existed.”

Phillip’s expression changed then, and his gaze grew so intense upon her face that she nearly squirmed under the pressure of it.

“I never heard her laugh,” Eloise said softly. “Not even once. I’ve been trying to remember her better since I met you, trying to recall why my memories of her always seemed so strange and odd, and I think that’s it. She never laughed. Whoever heard of a child who doesn’t laugh?”

Phillip was silent for a few moments, then he said, “I don’t think I ever heard her laugh, either. Sometimes she would smile, usually when the children came to see her, but she never laughed.”

Eloise nodded. And then she said, “I’m not Marina, Phillip.”

“I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know. It’s why I married you, you know.”

It wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear, but she stifled her disappointment and allowed him to continue.

The creases in his forehead deepened, and he rubbed them hard. He looked so burdened, so tired of his responsibilities. “I just wanted someone who wasn’t going to be sad,” he said. “Someone who would be present for the children, someone who wouldn’t—”

He cut himself off, turned away.

“Someone who wouldn’t what?” she asked urgently, sensing that this was important.

For the longest time she thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then, just when she’d quite given up on him, he said, “She died of influenza. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, since his back was to her and he wouldn’t see her nod.

“She died of influenza,” he repeated. “That’s what we told everyone—”

Eloise suddenly felt very sick, because she knew, absolutely knew what he was going to say.

“Well, it was the truth,” he said bitterly, surprising her with his words. She’d been so sure he was going to say that they’d been lying all the while.

“It’s the truth,” he said again. “But it wasn’t all of the truth. She did die of influenza, but we never told anyone why she fell ill.”

“The lake,” Eloise whispered, her words coming forth unbidden. She hadn’t even realized she’d been thinking them until she spoke.

He nodded grimly. “She didn’t fall in by accident.”

Her hand flew to cover her mouth. No wonder he’d been so