To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke Book 10)(7)

He stilled. "Doing what?"

She slashed her hand in his direction. "Shifting about in that manner?"

Miles dragged one hand through his hair. "I don't know what you-"

"Regardless," his mother went on. "I knew you'd not be so insensitive to  take on with the Edgertons." She let out a small, relieved laugh. "Why  would you ever be carrying a woman through Hyde Park?" He froze. "It is  preposterous. It is … " She immediately ceased her prattling. "What?" She  slapped her hand over her mouth. Horror rounded her eyes. "You did carry  a woman through the park? An Edgerton?"

He frowned. "The young lady fell. It hardly seems fair to question her  respectability simply because she had the misfortune of miscalculating a  rabbit hole," he amended. After all, carrying a married woman who'd  been injured was vastly safer than a young, unmarried debutante. At  least in his mother's eyes. Even if the lady did have a lean figure he  could span with his hands. At his mother's absolute silence, Miles blew  once more on his drink and then took a sip.

Then, she buried her face in her hands and groaned.

His frown deepened. "Surely, you'd not have had me leave her and her young daughters there without aid?"

She let her hands fall to the table; the frustrated, resigned glimmer in  her eyes, a woman of propriety who knew that he couldn't have very well  not come to the aid of a fallen stranger.

"Furthermore," he went on. "The gossips," Viscountess Lovell, that  bloody shrew would be better used serving the Home Office, "were  incorrect in their reporting. It was not an Edgerton, but rather Lady  Winston." The lady's haunting visage flitted before his eyes. What  caused the glitter of sadness in that endless blue stare? Or had he  merely imagined that glimmer?

His mother stitched her eyebrows into a single line. "Lady Winston?" she parroted back.

He gave a tight nod and, setting his glass down, picked up his fork and knife.

"With her family's notorious reputation, I expect the lady, a widow,"  she spoke that word with the same vitriol as she might a harlot or  courtesan, "has arrived in London with wholly dishonorable intentions."

Miles snapped his head up. "A widow?" The young woman, with her sad eyes and two daughters, was, in fact-

"Indeed." Mother pursed her lips. "And you were seen carrying her about  Hyde Park." She tossed her hands up. "Is it a wonder the viscountess is  outraged?"

"Yes, it is," he said dryly. "I would expect her to be a good deal more  outraged if I'd simply left an injured lady on the ground without the  benefit of help."

His mother continued as though he hadn't spoken. "Regardless, you need  but demonstrate your devoted interest in Sybil by dancing two sets with  her at Lady Essex' upcoming ball."

Two consecutive sets constituted an offer of marriage. Short of public  ruin, it was an act that would send the loudest signal of his intentions  for the lady. So why, given his promise to his mother to marry the lady  by the time he reached thirty, did he hesitate? "I'm not yet thirty,  Mother," he said, with deliberate humor infused into his reminder.

She swatted the air with a hand. "Oh, do not tease. You'll be thirty the  day the Season ends." Three weeks. Three weeks until he made a formal  offer to a lady he'd known as a child, who really would make him a fine  enough wife. They'd played as children and grew somewhat distant as  adults. But to their mothers, the expectation had always been there just  the same-they would marry.

Surely, Sybil desired more than that. He did. Or he had. Through the  years, he'd been quite content in his bachelor state, with the eventual  hope that there would be … more. That there would be a lady who desired  more than the title of marchioness and the wealth and prestige that came  with the noble position. A woman who was content with a noble  gentleman, rather than a practiced charmer. Alas, there hadn't. And a  promise to his mother, given when he was a man of three and twenty, had  been made. How to account for the regret that now rolled through him?

His mother rose in a flurry of skirts, bringing his attention to the  moment. "If you'll excuse me, I am paying a visit to Lady Lovell." She  pursed her lips. "I will take it upon myself to reassure her that  nothing untoward occurred. After all, the lady was injured, correct?"

The reminder only conjured the memory and feel of Lady Philippa's foot  in his hand; the satiny smoothness of her soft skin. Had he imagined the  breathy sigh as he'd run his fingers over her instep?                       
       
           



       

"Miles?"

"Uh … indeed, she was." By the narrowing of her eyes, his mother was not  in the least mollified. Without another word, she swept from the room,  leaving him with blessed silence and the memory of the widowed Lady  Philippa.

The woman whose book he carried in his pocket. No doubt, she'd been  reading the child's tale to her daughter, Faith. And why the girl was  surely missing it, even now.

Miles climbed to his feet. Yes, the least he could do was see it properly restored to the pair.

Except, as he took his leave, why did it feel as though his intended  visit had more to do with seeing the lady than anything else?





Chapter 5


"My lady, let me help you," Mary the young maid said quickly.

Later that afternoon, servants rushed about Philippa with the same  attentiveness she'd received the eight times she'd been with child. She  swallowed a sigh, hating that hovering concern, preferring the privacy  of her own company. Alas, to her family and servants, she'd been the  weak Edgerton-the most in need of protecting, the one afraid to speak  her mind. But haven't I been? Haven't I, with my willingness to wed a  gentleman whose eyes I couldn't even meet because he'd been touted as a  good man, proven that very thing? Oh, how she despised what she'd  allowed life to shape her into-an empty shell of someone she was not.

"Are you certain you are all right?" Faith asked, snapping Philippa's  attention sideways to the too-large King Louis XIV chair where her  daughter sat swinging her legs back and forth. The girl had remained at  her side for the past hour, refusing to abandon her post, to return  abovestairs for her lessons.

"I am quite hale and hearty," Philippa assured her. Hale and hearty were  words very rarely uttered about her, but Philippa knew how important it  was that she set Faith's mind at ease. This was her daughter; a girl  who'd known recent loss and Philippa would not allow uncertainty about  her mother's well-being to hang over her. She leaned over and brushed  her daughter's knee. "Look at me. No harm will come to me," she  promised, as a maid gently lifted her ankle and propped a pillow under  it as though she were a fragile piece of china. How very determined  everyone was to see her as a frail woman in need of coddling. For years,  it had been that way. Too many years. A scream of frustration bubbled  from the surface and climbed her throat, demanding to be set free.  Philippa clamped her lips shut to keep it buried.

"Not like Father?" Her father; healthy one day and dead of an apoplexy the next.

She leaned over and collected Faith's hand. "Look at my lips," she  ordered loudly. Too many times, too many words were lost in translation  due to Faith's partial loss of hearing. Her daughter had become adept at  making proper sense of sentences through studying lips. Philippa waited  until her daughter's attention was fixed on her mouth. "As long as it  is within my power, I will never, ever leave," she promised. It was a  promise she'd no right making; one beyond her grasp and, yet, she'd lie  to the Lord on Sunday if it would erase fear or hurt from her children's  lives. But the decision of whether to subject herself to further  pregnancies was now in her power.

"You almost did." Faith's lower lip quivered. "A lot."

Yes, she had. Her fingers tightened about her daughter's hand and she  forced herself to lighten her grip. The agony of endless birthings and  inevitable losses, several early, most late, which had left her weak  from blood loss. The doctor had warned the late earl of the perils in  subjecting Philippa to any further childbirths. She drew in a steadying  breath and battled the remembered horror cleaving away at her insides.  Never again. Never would she again risk leaving her daughters behind,  all to give a lord that highly-desired heir.

"But I didn't," she said, proud of the even delivery of those three  words. "And it should give you proof that I'll not go anywhere." In  those many times she'd lain weak, fighting to survive, she'd bartered  her soul for survival, unwilling to leave Faith alone with the cold,  emotionally deadened earl. A man who'd sneered at Faith's partial  deafness and who'd lambasted Philippa for never giving him a boy. In  those darkest days when she'd hovered between life and death, all that  had kept her alive had been her daughter.