To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke Book 10)(10)

"Every morning when I am in London," he said at last.

Philippa filed that particular piece about the gentleman in her mind.

"And what of you?" He arched an eyebrow.

"Me?" She touched a hand to her chest. "I have never been proficient at  riding," she admitted. Or conversing. Or being anything other than  proper. Dull, proper, always-pious Philippa. She curled her hands into  tight balls, never hating that truth of her character more than she did  in this moment. She sighed. "I'm proficient at this," she said, lifting  the embroidery frame once more. In a show her mother would have  lamented, Philippa tossed her frame to the marquess who easily caught it  in his large, gloved hand. "And so everyone, of course, assumes I must  enjoy it. Why shouldn't I? I know how to draw the thread just so and how  to craft an image upon it. Where is the pleasure in it, though?" she  asked, the words just spilling out when they never, ever did.

"What, then?" At his quietly spoken question, she tipped her head. "What do you find pleasure in?"

"My daughters," she said with an automaticity borne of truth. In their  world, ladies didn't speak about affection or emotion they carried for  their children. And yet …  "My daughters make me happy." She coughed into  her hand.

He searched his piercing gaze over her face. "I expect they would," he  said with a matter-of-factness that caused her heart to pull. There was a  sincerity to those words, at odds with everything her own father and  late husband had proven in terms of affection for children. "What else?"

She started. "What else?" What else made her happy? No one in the course  of her life, not even her sister whom she adored, had ever put that  query to her. As such, it was a question she'd not really given any  thought to. Her existence was a purposeful one where she'd been a  countess, in charge of a household staff, and her daughters' tutors and  nursemaids. But she'd not always been that way. "I used to read  fairytales," she said wistfully. Not unlike the books she read to her  daughters. She'd forgotten until he'd forced her to think back to how  those fanciful tales had once brought her happiness, as well. "My mother  abhorred my reading selection. Called it drivel," she said with a  remembered laugh. Philippa hadn't cared. She'd been so enthralled by the  possibility of forever happiness promised on those pages that she'd  braved her mother's displeasure. It was why she even now read to her  girls from those same books.                       
       
           



       

"Is that why you stopped reading them?"

She blinked as Miles' quietly spoken question jerked her back to the  present-and the impropriety of speaking so familiarly with a man she'd  only just met. She firmed her lips into a line, willing herself to say  nothing. Still, there was this inexplicable ease being around him, when  she'd never even been comfortable around her own family. Philippa lifted  her shoulders in a slight shrug. "One day," she'd been married just a  fortnight, "I remember finishing a book and just realizing … " She let her  words trail off.

"Realizing?" he urged, a sea of questions in his fathomless eyes.

"How very silly it was to believe in a land of happily-ever-afters."  Such dreams didn't exist. Life in the Edgerton household had proven as  much. Marriage to Lord Winston had only confirmed it. No, dreams of  fairytales were reserved for innocent children unscathed by life. Or  that is what she'd come to believe. Now, this man before her swooped  into her life and stirred all those oldest yearnings she'd once carried.  Feeling Miles' gaze on her, Philippa's face heated. She'd said entirely  too much. Words she'd never even acknowledged to herself and suddenly  it was too much. "If you'll excuse me," she said softly. "I must go see  my daughters."

"Of course," he said politely and climbed to his feet.

And as he took his leave, the tension drained from her body, down to her  feet. She'd long believed there was nothing more perilous than Lord  Winston and his dogged attempt to get a male babe on her.

Now she feared she'd been wrong.

The gentle, tender Miles Brookfield's ability to stir her long buried dream of a happily-ever-after was far more dangerous.





Chapter 7


Philippa had never been someone who listened at keyholes. Where Chloe  had slunk about the townhouse with her ear pressed to oaken panels, she  had wisely continued on. Not because she'd not been remotely curious  about what was discussed behind those thick doors, but rather, the  terror at what would become of her if she was discovered at those  keyholes. It had been an attempt at self-preservation.

Now, years later, she saw it as a testament to her weakness and  failings. That self-awareness, however, was not what brought her to a  stop outside her elder brother's office, the following morning. Philippa  slowed her steps.

" … She is far too young to remain a widow, Gabriel … " At the insistence in her mother's tone, Philippa's stomach knotted.

" … She is in possession of her dowry, Mother …  She does not need … "  Whatever she did or did not need and their mother's response to it was  lost to the thick wood. Philippa gave her head a befuddled shake. This  was Gabriel? This man who spoke of her remaining unmarried, was so at  odds with the practical, determined, matchmaking brother who'd  introduced her to her late husband. "You cannot expect her to make a  match with just any gentleman … " Gabriel continued, " … She loved him … "

Her lips pulled in a sad smile. This was, of course, what everyone saw.  After all, it was easier to see the lie that your sister had loved her  miserable excuse for a husband than to accept the role you'd played in  the union     …

" … She has two daughters …  Lord Matthew would make her a splendid match … "

Oh, God. How could her mother, who'd subjected her own children to the  abuses of a brutal husband, be so steadfast in her resolve to make  matches for her children? She pressed her eyes closed. Her mother was no  less determined to marry her off than when she'd been a debutante just  on the market. Dread spiraled through her; it found purchase in her feet  and those digits twitched with the need to take flight.

"Philippa," the gentle voice of her sister-in-law, Jane, sounded over her shoulder, ringing a gasp from her.

Philippa spun around. The blonde woman with a gentle and all-knowing  smile stood with a book in her hands. Wetting her lips, she looked from  the sister-in-law, who'd so graciously accepted her inside her home for  these six months now, to the door where her brother and mother still  carried on, discussing her fate and future.

The other woman gave her a gentle smile. She tucked the book in her hands under her arm and held out her spare hand.

Philippa hesitated. Jane tipped her head in the direction of the  opposite hall. And when faced with being discovered any moment by her  mother and brother, she far preferred the company of her sister-in-law  with curious eyes.

She allowed the other woman to dictate the path they took through the  house. Their slippered footfalls were silent in the halls as they wound  their way through the house, to the …                        
       
           



       

Her stomach lurched as Jane stopped outside the library. A dull buzzing  filled her ears, like so many swarming bees. How many times had she  stood outside this very room, seeking refuge from her father's beatings?  Of all the places he'd thought to look for his children-the gardens,  the parlors, the kitchens-never had he, with his disdain of books and  literature, come here. Now she sought a different refuge; the danger no  less real.

"Philippa?" her sister-in-law gently prodded and she jolted into  movement. Eyes averted, she walked at the sedate pace drilled into her  by too-stern governesses. Jane closed the door and motioned to the  nearby leather button sofa. "Please," she said softly. "Will you sit?"

Philippa hesitated and then slid onto the folds of the sofa. The leather  groaned in protest. She folded her hands primly on her lap to still the  tremble. In the months since Philippa had moved into the new  marchioness' home, Jane had proven herself to be kind and patient. She  didn't probe where every other Edgerton did. But neither did Philippa  truly know her. Did Jane also want her married off? As her sister-in-law  settled onto the seat beside her, dread knotted Philippa's insides.

"I wanted to be sure that you are happy here," the other woman began.