“It doesn’t work that way,” Eloise said sharply.
“Yes, it does,” Amanda replied with a smug little nod. “Do unto others as you would like done to you.Wehaven’t gone to your house, so you shouldn’t come to ours.”
“You’re very clever, did you know that?” Eloise asked.
Amanda looked as if she wanted to nod, but she was clearly too suspicious of Eloise’s compliment to accept it.
Eloise bent down so that they were face-to-face, all three of them. “But I,” she said to them in a very serious—and slightly defiant—voice, “am very clever, too.”
They stared at her with wide eyes, their mouths hanging slack as they regarded this person who was clearly so different from any other adult they’d ever met.
“Do we understand each other?” Eloise asked, straightening her spine and smoothing her hands along her skirts in a deceptively casual manner.
They said nothing, so she decided to answer for them. “Good,” she said. “Now, then, would you like to show me where the dining room is? I’m famished.”
“We have lessons,” Oliver said.
“You do?” Eloise asked, arching her brows. “How interesting. Then you must return to them at once. I imagine you’ve fallen behind after spending so long waiting outside my door.”
“How did you know—” Amanda’s question was cut short by Oliver’s elbow in her ribs.
“I have seven brothers and sisters,” Eloise answered, deciding that Amanda’s question deserved an answer, even if her brother hadn’t allowed her to finish her sentence. “There isn’t much about this sort of warfare that I don’t already know.”
But as the twins scurried down the hall, Eloise was left chewing her lower lip in apprehension. She had a feeling she shouldn’t have ended their encounter with such a challenge. She had practically dared Oliver and Amanda to find a way to evict her from the premises.
And while she was quite certain they wouldn’t succeed—she was a Bridgerton, after all, and made of sterner stuff than those two even knew existed—she had a feeling that they would throw every fiber of their being into the task.
Eloise shuddered. Eels in the bed, hair dipped in ink, jam on chairs. It had all been done to her at one point or another, and she didn’t particularly relish a repeat performance—and certainly not by a pair of children twenty years her junior.
She sighed, wondering what it was she had gotten herself into. She had better find Sir Phillip and get to the task of deciding whether they would suit. Because if she really was leaving in a week or two, never to see any of the Cranes again, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to put herself through the trouble of mice and spiders and salt in the sugar bowl.
Her stomach rumbled. Whether it was the thought of salt or sugar that did it, Eloise didn’t know. But it was definitely time to find something to eat. And better sooner than later, before the twins had a chance to figure out how to poison her food.
Phillip knew that he’d blundered badly. But deuce it, the bloody woman had given him no warning. If she’d only alerted him of her arrival, he could have prepared himself, thought of a few poetic things to say. Did she really think he’d scribbled all those letters without laboring over every word? He’d never sent out the first draft of any of his missives (although he always wrote it on his best paper, each time hoping that this would be the time he’d get it right on the first try).
Hell, if she’d given him warning, he might have even summoned a romantic gesture or two. Flowers would have been nice, and heaven knew, if there was one thing he was good at, it was flowers.
But instead, she’d simply appeared before him as if conjured from a dream, and he’d mucked everything up.
And it hadn’t helped that Miss Eloise Bridgerton wasnotwhat he had expected.
She was a twenty-eight-year-old spinster, for heaven’s sake. She was supposed to be unattractive. Horse-faced, even. Instead she was—
Well, he wasn’t exactly certain how one could describe her. Not beautiful, precisely, but still somehow stunning, with thick chestnut hair and eyes of the clearest, crispest gray. She was the sort of woman whose expressions made her beautiful. There was intelligence in her eyes, curiosity in the way she cocked her head to the side. Her features were unique, almost exotic, with her heart-shaped face and wide smile.
Not that he’d seen much of that smile. His less-than-legendary charm had seen to that.
He jammed his hands into a pile of moist soil and scooped some into a small clay pot, leaving it loosely packed for optimal root growth. What the devil was he going to do now? He’d pinned his hopes on his mirage of Miss Eloise Bridgerton, based upon the letters she’d sent to him over the past year. He didn’t have time (nor, in truth, the inclination) to court a prospective mother for the twins, so it had seemed perfect (not to mention almost easy) to woo her through letters.
Surely an unmarried woman rapidly approaching the age of thirty would be gratified to receive a proposal of marriage. He hadn’t expected her to accept his offer without meeting with him, of course, and he wasn’t prepared to formally commit to the idea without making her acquaintance, either. But hehadexpected that she would be someone who was at least a little bit desperate for a husband.
Instead, she’d arrived looking young and pretty and smart and self-confident, and good God, butwhywould a woman like that want to marry someone she didn’t even know? Not to mention tie herself to a decidedly rural estate in the farthest corner of Gloucestershire. Phillip might know less than nothing about fashion, but even he could tell that her garments had been well made and most probably of the latest style. She was going to expect trips to London, an active social life, friends.
None of which she was likely to find here at Romney Hall.
It seemed almost useless to even try to make her acquaintance. She wasn’t going to stay, and he’d be foolish to get his hopes up.
He groaned, then cursed for good measure. Now he was going to have to court some other woman. Curse it, now he was going to have tofindsome other woman to court, which was going to be nearly as difficult. No one in the district would even look at him. All of the unmarried ladies knew about the twins, and there wasn’t a one of them willing to take on the responsibility of his little devils.
