Chapter 5 #3
Humming softly to herself, she stepped out into the hall and turned to the right to make her way to the staircase. The day seemed filled with promise; the sun had actually been peeking out through the clouds this morning when she’d looked out the window, and—
“Oh!”
The shriek ripped itself right out of her throat as she plunged forward, her foot caught behind something that had been strung out across the hall. She didn’t even have a chance to try to regain her balance; she had been walking quickly, as was her habit, and when she fell, she fell hard.
And without even the time to use her hands to break her fall.
Tears burned her eyes. Her chin—dear God, her chin felt like it was on fire. The side of it, at least. She had just managed to twist her head ever so slightly to the side before she fell.
She moaned something incoherent, the sort of noise one makes when one hurts so badly that one simply cannot keep it all inside.
And she kept waiting for the pain to subside, thinking that this would be like a stubbed toe, which throbs mercilessly for a few seconds and then, once the surprise of it is over, slides into nothing more than a dull ache.
But the pain kept burning. On her chin, on the side of her head, on her knee, and on her hip.
She felt beaten.
Slowly, with great effort, she forced herself up onto her hands and knees, and then into a sitting position. She allowed herself to lean against the wall and lifted her hand to cradle her cheek, taking quick bursts of breath through her nose to try to control the pain.
“Eloise!”
Phillip. She didn’t bother to look up, didn’t want to move from her curled-up position.
“Eloise, my God,” he said, triple-stepping the last few stairs as he rushed to her side. “What happened?”
“I fell.” She hadn’t meant to whimper, but it came out that way, anyway.
With a tenderness that seemed out of place on a man of his size, he took her hand in his and pulled it from her cheek.
The next words he said were not ones that were often uttered in Eloise’s presence.
“You need a piece of meat on that,” he said.
She looked up at him with watery eyes. “Am I bruised?”
He nodded grimly. “You may have a blackened eye. It’s still too soon to tell.”
She tried to smile, tried to put a game face on it, but she just couldn’t manage it.
“Does it hurt very badly?” he asked softly.
She nodded, wondering why the sound of his voice made her want to cry even more. It reminded her of when she was small and she’d fallen from a tree. She’d sprained her ankle, quite badly, but somehow she’d managed not to cry until she’d made it back home.
One look from her mother and she’d begun to sob.
Phillip touched her cheek gingerly, his features pulling into a scowl when she winced.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. And she would. In a few days.
“What happened?”
And of course she knew exactly what had happened. Something had been strung across the hall, put in place to make her trip and fall. It didn’t require very much intelligence to guess who had done it.
But Eloise didn’t want to get the twins in trouble. At least not the sort of trouble they were likely to find themselves in once Sir Phillip got hold of them. She didn’t think they’d intended to cause quite so much harm.
But Phillip had already spied the thin length of twine, tightly drawn across the hall and tied around the legs of two tables, both of which had been tugged toward the center of the hall when Eloise had tripped.
Eloise watched as he knelt down, touching the string and twisting it around his fingers. He looked over at her, not with question in his eyes, but rather grim statement of fact.
“I didn’t see it,” she said, even though that was quite obvious.
Phillip didn’t take his eyes off of hers, but his fingers kept twisting the string until it tautened and snapped.
Eloise sucked in her breath. There was something almost terrifying in the moment. Phillip didn’t seem aware that he’d broken the string, barely cognizant of his strength.
Or the strength of his anger.
“Sir Phillip,” she whispered, but he never heard her.
“Oliver!” he bellowed. “Amanda!”
“I’m sure they didn’t mean to injure me,” Eloise began, not certain why she was defending them. They’d hurt her, that was true, but she had a feeling her punishment would be considerably less painful than anything coming from their father.
“I don’t care what they meant,” Phillip snapped. “Look how close you landed to the stairs. What if you’d fallen?”
Eloise eyed the stairs. They were close, but not close enough for her to have taken a tumble. “I don’t think . . .”
“They must answer for this,” he said, his voice deadly low and shaking with rage.
“I’ll be fine,” Eloise said. Already the stinging pain was giving way to a duller ache. But it still hurt, enough so that when Sir Phillip lifted her into his arms, she let out a little cry.
And his fury grew.
“I’m putting you in bed,” he said, his voice rough and curt.
Eloise offered no disagreement.
A maid appeared on the landing, gasping when she saw the darkening bruise on Eloise’s face.
“Get me something for this,” Sir Phillip ordered. “A piece of meat. Anything.”
The maid nodded and ran off as Phillip carried Eloise into her room. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asked.
“My hip,” Eloise admitted as he settled her on top of her covers. “And my elbow.”
He nodded grimly. “Do you think you’ve broken anything?”
“No!” she said quickly. “No, I—”
“I’ll need to check, anyway,” he said, brushing aside her protests as he lightly examined her arm.
“Sir Phillip, I—”
“My children just nearly killed you,” he said, without a trace of humor in his eyes. “I should think you could dispense with the sir.”
Eloise swallowed as she watched him cross the room to the door, his strides long and powerful.
“Get me the twins immediately,” he said, presumably to some servant hovering outside in the hall.
Eloise couldn’t imagine that the children hadn’t heard his earlier bellow, but she also couldn’t blame them for attempting to delay judgment day at the hands of their father.
“Phillip,” she said, trying to coax him back into the room with the sound of her voice, “leave them to me. I was the injured party, and—”
“They are my children,” he said, his voice harsh, “and I will punish them. God knows it’s long past due.”
Eloise stared at him with growing horror. He was nearly shaking with rage, and while she could have happily swatted the children on their bottoms herself, she didn’t think he ought to be meting out punishment in his state.
“They hurt you,” Phillip said in a low voice. “That is not acceptable.”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him again. “In a few days I won’t even—”
“That is not the point,” he said sharply.
“If I had . . .” He stopped, tried again with, “If I hadn’t .
. .” He stopped, beyond words, and leaned against the wall, his head hanging back as his eyes searched the ceiling—for what, she didn’t know.
Answers, she supposed. As if one could find answers with the simple upward sweep of the eyes.
He turned, looked at her, his eyes grim, and Eloise saw something on his face she hadn’t expected to see there.
And that was when she realized it—all that rage in his voice, in the shaking of his body—it wasn’t directed at the children. Not really, and certainly not entirely.
The look on his face, the bleakness in his eyes—it was self-loathing.
He didn’t blame his children.
He blamed himself.