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 was not what 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 he had expected 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, but why would 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 to find some 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.
He’d pinned all of his hopes on Miss Bridgerton, and now it seemed that he was going to have to give up on her as well.
He set his pot down too hard on a shelf, wincing as the clatter of it rang through the greenhouse.
With a loud sigh, he dunked his muddy hands into a bucket of already dirtied water to wash them off. He’d been rude this morning. He was still rather irritated that she’d come out here and wasted his time—or if she hadn’t wasted it yet, she was almost certainly going to waste it, since she wasn’t likely to turn around and leave this evening.
But that didn’t excuse his behavior. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t manage his own children, and it certainly wasn’t her fault that this failing always put him in a foul mood.
Wiping his hands on a towel he kept by the door, he strode out into the drizzle and made his way to the house. It was probably time for luncheon, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone to sit down with her at the table and make polite conversation.
Plus, she was here. After all his effort with the letters, it seemed foolish not to at least see if they might get on well enough for marriage. Only an idiot would send her packing—or allow her to leave—without even ascertaining her suitability.
It was unlikely that she would stay, but not, he reckoned, impossible, and he might at least give it a try.
He made his way through the misty drizzle and into the house, wiping his feet on the mat that the housekeeper always left out for him near the side entrance. He was a mess, as he always was after working in the greenhouse, and the servants were used to him in such a state, but he supposed he ought to clean up before finding Miss Bridgerton and inviting her to eat with him. She was from London and would surely object to sitting at table with a man who was less than perfectly groomed.
He cut through the kitchen, nodding genially at a maid washing carrots in a tub of water. The servants’ stairs were just outside the other kitchen door and—
“Miss Bridgerton!” he said in surprise. She was sitting at a table in the kitchen, halfway through a very large ham sandwich and looking remarkably at home on her perch on a stool. “What are you doing here?”