To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke Book 10)(17)

His hushed response was lost to her. Occasionally, Faith would nod and  smile. Philippa captured her lower lip between her teeth and bit hard  enough that the metallic tinge of blood filled her mouth. In this  moment, she could almost convince herself that she and Faith and Violet  could have those elusive gifts she'd long believed only fortunate ladies  were lucky enough to receive.

And standing there, watching him so wholly effortless with her daughter,  the truth trickled in like a quick moving poison. This was why she  could never, ever marry Miles even if he did ask. Which he hadn't. A man  so at ease around children deserved offspring of his own.

Anguish weighted her chest and she drew in a ragged breath. And another.  But it did not ease the vise about her lungs. Once upon a different  time, when she'd been a young lady just out in London, optimistic with  stars in her eyes, mayhap she could have met Miles and life would have  belonged to them. They could have shaped a future together, different  than the one she'd lived.

But she hadn't. Instead, she'd been introduced to Calvin.

Yet, from her miserable marriage and for all her childbirths, she'd been  blessed with Faith and Violet. She would never trade any of the agony  of loss for those gifts.

And it was because of that, Philippa could never give Miles more.

Ever.





Chapter 11


Miles sat at his private table at the back corner of White's, the same  bottle of brandy he'd requested two hours earlier remained beside the  untouched snifter.

After he'd taken his leave of Philippa, her haunted eyes and insistent  words echoed around his mind; consuming his thoughts.  … I can never, ever  marry again. Even if you wish to do right by me …  He stared blankly out,  unseeing the gentlemen seated about him.

She'd endured a cold, emotionless marriage. Which was not vastly  different than so many of the union    s between lords and ladies.

He'd never given proper thought to the expectations his mother put to  him years earlier regarding Sybil Cunning. If they married, they would  have a polite, companionable union    . But was that enough?

Just days prior, he would have answered with a definitive yes. Now,  after seeing Philippa again for a fourth time, he'd been forced to  reconsider the promise he'd made regarding Sybil. If it hadn't been for  Philippa, he would have not considered all the perils that came in  wedding where one's heart was not engaged. The haunted glimmer in  Philippa's eyes, the pain he saw there, ushered in questions and doubts.  Could there ever truly be happiness in that staid, proper affair?

Tamping down an agonized groan, Miles grabbed the bottle and poured  himself several fingerfuls of liquor. He thought better of it and then  filled his glass to the brim.

He took a long, slow swallow, welcoming the sting as it burned a trail  down his throat. But it did little to ease the pain weighting his chest.  Her words hadn't been restricted to the hell she'd lived as a wife, but  she'd also spoken of suffering … at the hands of her father. And had her  daughter not entered, he would have asked every last bloody question.  Fury lanced through him; an unholy desire to drag her dead father and  husband from the grave and kill them dead all over again. Was it a  wonder the lady would be suspect of any gentleman's motives? Himself  included?                       
       
           



       

"I believe this is the first time I can recall a scowl from the always affable Marquess of Guilford."

At that familiar, dry drawl, Miles shot his head up. He set his glass  aside. "Bainbridge." Surprise crept into his tone. The other man,  devoted to his two children and hopelessly in love with his wife, was  rarely one for their clubs.

Bainbridge dragged out a chair and claimed the opposite seat with all  the austere command of a man born and bred to be a duke. A servant  rushed over with a glass, but the young duke waved the man off. All the  while, he kept his attention trained on Miles. "I've read of your own  impressive rescue of a lady in Hyde Park earlier this week," he drawled,  folding his arms at his broad chest. He quirked a very ducal eyebrow.

Years earlier, Bainbridge had set the Town abuzz when he'd rescued his  now wife from the frozen Thames. "Hardly the manner of heroics evinced  by some," he said dryly. This was the reason for the other man's visit,  then.

"But enough to merit gossip, of course," the duke spoke with his disdain for Polite Society underscoring his every word.

Miles gave a brusque nod. Gossip he'd only fueled that morning by taking Philippa in his arms.

"The papers purport an illicit relationship." His friend drummed his gloved fingertips on his sleeves.

A wry smile creased Miles' lips. "Apparently, in my advancing years,  I've acquired the reputation of rogue." The young duke had never been  one to dance around matters. His statements were more demands than  anything else. Most of the ton feared the man. Miles, however, had known  him since he'd been a sullen, lonely boy at Eton. Miles then stood  beside that man who'd sobbed at the loss of his wife during childbirth.  His dry mirth faded. How easily he'd encouraged the other man to move  past his sorrow, but how very near to becoming his late wife Philippa  had been.

"Well?" Bainbridge demanded gruffly.

He sighed, not pretending to misunderstand the question there. "The lady  is a widow. I found her daughter wandering in Hyde Park and returned  her." And I've since seen her three more times, after, drawn like one of  those hopeless sailors at sea.

The other man continued beating his fingers in that annoying staccato rhythm. "A lady you've since seen again?"

He frowned. "Her daughter forgot her book in the park."

"Of course," the young duke drawled.

Shifting in his seat under the speculative glint in Bainbridge's eyes,  Miles added, "Furthermore, it would have been ungentlemanly to not visit  and see after the lady's well-being."

The ghost of a smile hovered on Bainbridge's lips. "Indeed, not," he  stretched out those three syllables. Then, the duke had plucked a lady  from the frozen Thames and never called again. It was the lady who'd  continually sought him out.

Whereas Miles couldn't bring Lady Philippa 'round to any real interest.  That isn't altogether true. Her breathless moans and soft pleas bespoke a  woman not wholly immune to me. Miles rolled his snifter between his  hands.

"She's not solely a young widow you happened to meet though, is she?"  the duke said with an astuteness that could only come from years of  friendship.

He shook his head once. "She does not wish to marry," he said quietly.  Even with the bond between him and Bainbridge, he could not bring  himself to share the whispered words about her childhood. "She nearly … "  Miles looked the other man squarely in the eye. "lost her life in  childbirth."

The duke's expression grew shuttered. But for the faint muscle that  jumped at the corner of his mouth, he gave no indication of his  thoughts. In all Miles' urgings that the other man re-enter the living,  he'd not ever given consideration to the horror and hell of getting a  child on another woman. How, after such a loss, could one ever be the  same? Naively, with his own largely uncomplicated until now life, he'd  never had the foresight to truly think of the implications in marrying,  particularly where Bainbridge had been concerned.

At his silence, Miles continued on. "As such," he said with a wave of his hand, "she's no desire to marry."

"Does she have no desire to marry? Or to suffer the hell of childbirth?" his friend asked, not missing a proverbial beat.

Miles frowned, momentarily stunned by the questions tossed at him. In  all Philippa had shared, with all her revelations, how had he failed to  piece together those very questions Bainbridge put to him, even now?  "I … didn't think," he said, at last, shamed by his own admission.                       
       
           



       

Bainbridge shrugged his broad shoulders. "Those are entirely two different matters."

Surely Philippa saw the value of her life far greater than any risk for a  potential heir? Then, why would she? a voice whispered. She's known you  but a handful of days and the husband who'd treated her as more  broodmare than wife for more than six years.

His friend put another question to him. "Would you be content in never having children if you married her?"

Only, they would have children. They would have Faith and Violet.  Violet, a babe he'd still not met beyond a chance meeting in the park; a  child with cherubic cheeks whom he wished to know with the same tender  regard he'd come to appreciate Faith. Yes, there would be children.  There would just be no male issue of his own. "I am not worried over the  Guilford line," he said, truthful. Where most gentlemen, like the  bastard of a husband Philippa had spoken of, desired nothing more than  their male offspring, he'd no sense of urgency or even a need to carry  on the line. There was his brother and there would be other Brookfield  issue. Then there remained the whole bringing the lady around to knowing  she could trust in him. Why should she after just a few days of knowing  one another? "She does not wish to marry again," he said curtly.