Chapter 8
. . . how fortunate you are to be at school.
We girls have been presented with a new governess, and she is misery personified.
She drones on about sums from dawn until dusk.
Poor Hyacinth now breaks into tears every time she hears the word “seven.” (Although I must confess that I don’t understand why one through six do not elicit similar reactions.) I don’t know what we shall do.
Dip her hair in ink, I suppose. (Miss Haversham’s, that is, not Hyacinth’s, although I would never rule out the latter.)
—from Eloise Bridgerton to her brother Gregory,
during his first term as a student at Eton
When Phillip returned from the rose garden, he was surprised to find his home quiet and empty. It was a rare day when the air wasn’t exploding with the sound of some overturned table or shriek of outrage.
The children, he thought, pausing to savor the silence. Clearly, they had been vacated from the premises. Nurse Edwards must have taken them out for a walk.
And, he supposed, Eloise would still be abed, although in truth it was already nearly ten, and she did not seem the sort to laze the day away under her covers.
Phillip stared down at the roses in his hand.
He’d spent an hour choosing exactly the right ones; Romney Hall boasted three rose gardens, and he’d had to go to the far one to find the early-blooming varieties.
He’d then painstakingly picked them, careful to snip at the exact right spot so as to encourage further blooming, and then meticulously sliced away each thorn.
Flowers he could do. Green plants he could do even better, but somehow he didn’t think Eloise would find much romance in a fistful of ivy.
He wandered over to the breakfast room, expecting to see food laid out, awaiting Eloise’s arrival, but the sideboard was tidy and spotless, signaling that the morning meal had come to an end.
Phillip frowned and stood in the middle of the room for a moment, trying to figure out what he ought to do next.
Eloise had obviously already arisen and eaten breakfast, but deuced if he knew where she was.
Just then a maid came through, holding a feather duster and a rag. She bobbed a quick curtsy when she saw him.
“I’ll need a vase for these,” he said, holding up the flowers. He’d hoped to hand them to Eloise directly, but he didn’t feel like clutching them all morning while he hunted her down.
The maid nodded and started to leave, but he stopped her with, “Oh, and do you happen to know where Miss Bridgerton might have gone off to? I noticed that breakfast has been cleared.”
“Out, Sir Phillip,” the maid said. “With the children.”
Phillip blinked in surprise. “She went out with Oliver and Amanda? Willingly?”
The maid nodded.
“That’s interesting.” He sighed, trying not to envision the scene. “I hope they don’t kill her.”
The maid looked alarmed. “Sir Phillip?”
“It was a joke . . . ah . . . Mary?” He didn’t mean to finish his sentence on a questioning note, but the truth was, he wasn’t quite certain of her name.
She nodded in such a way that he couldn’t be sure whether he’d gotten it right or she was just being polite.
“Do you happen to know where they went?” he asked.
“Down to the lake, I believe. To go swimming.”
Phillip’s skin went cold. “Swimming?” he asked, his voice sounding disembodied and hollow to his ears.
“Yes. The children were wearing their bathing costumes.”
Swimming. Dear God.
For a year now, he’d avoided the lake, always taken the long route around, just to spare himself the sight of it. And he had forbidden the children from ever visiting the site.
Or had he?
He’d told Nurse Millsby not to allow them near the water, but had he remembered to do the same with Nurse Edwards?
He took off at a run, leaving the floor littered with roses.
“Last one in is a hermit crab!” Oliver shrieked, tearing into the water at top speed, only to laugh when it reached his waist and he was forced to slow down.
“I’m not a hermit crab. You’re a hermit crab!” Amanda yelled back as she splashed around in the shallower depths.
“You’re a rotten hermit crab!”
“Well, you’re a dead hermit crab!”
Eloise laughed as she waded through the water a few yards away from Amanda.
She hadn’t brought a bathing costume—indeed, who would have thought she might need one?
—so she had tied her skirt and petticoat up, baring her legs to just above her knees.
It was an awful lot of leg to be showing, but that hardly mattered in the company of two eight-year-olds.
Besides, they were having far too much fun tormenting each other to give her legs even a passing glance.
The twins had warmed up to her during their walk down to the lake, laughing and chattering the entire way, and Eloise wondered if all they truly needed was a bit of attention.
They’d lost their mother, their relationship with their father was distant at best, and then their beloved nurse had left them. Thank heavens they had each other.
And maybe, perhaps, her.
Eloise bit her lip, not sure whether she ought even to be allowing her thoughts to veer in that direction.
She hadn’t yet decided whether she wanted to marry Sir Phillip, and much as these two children seemed to need her—and they did need her, she just knew they did—she couldn’t make her decision based on Oliver and Amanda.
She wasn’t going to be marrying them.
“Don’t go any deeper!” she called out, mindful that Oliver had been inching away.
He pulled the sort of face boys do when they think they are being mollycoddled, but she noticed that he took two large steps back toward the shore.
“You should come in further, Miss Bridgerton,” Amanda said, sitting down on the lake bottom and then squealing, “Oh! It’s cold!”
“Why did you sit down, then?” Oliver said. “You knew how cold it was.”
“Yes, but my feet were used to it,” she replied, hugging her arms to her body. “It didn’t feel so cold anymore.”
“Don’t worry,” he told her with a supercilious grin, “your bottom will get used to it soon, too.”
“Oliver,” Eloise said sternly, but she was fairly certain she’d ruined the effect by smiling.
“He’s right!” Amanda exclaimed, turning to Eloise with an expression of surprise. “I can’t feel my bottom at all anymore.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” Eloise said.
“You should swim,” Oliver prodded. “Or at least go as far as Amanda. You’ve barely got your feet wet.”
“I don’t have a bathing costume,” Eloise said, even though she’d explained this to them at least six times already.
“I think you don’t know how to swim,” he said.
“I assure you I know very well how to swim,” she returned, “and that you’re not likely to provoke a demonstration while I’m wearing my third-best morning dress.”
Amanda looked over at her and blinked a few times. “I should like to see your first- and second-best. That’s a very pretty frock.”
“Why, thank you, Amanda,” Eloise said, wondering who picked out the young girl’s clothing.
The crotchety Nurse Edwards, probably. There was nothing wrong with what Amanda was wearing, but Eloise would wager that no one had ever thought to offer her the fun of choosing her own garments.
She smiled at Amanda and said, “If you would like to go shopping sometime, I would be happy to take you.”
“Oh, I should adore that,” Amanda said breathlessly. “Above all else. Thank you!”
“Girls,” Oliver said disdainfully.
“You’ll be glad for us someday,” Eloise remarked.
“Eh?”
She just shook her head with a smile. It would be some time before he thought girls were good for anything other than tying their plaits together.
Oliver just shrugged and went back to hitting the surface of the water with the heel of his hand at just the right angle so as to splash the maximum amount of water on his sister.
“Stop it!” Amanda hollered.
He cackled and splashed some more.
“Oliver!” Amanda stood up and advanced menacingly toward him. Then, when walking proved too slow, she dove in and began to swim. He shrieked with laughter and swam away, coming up for air only long enough to taunt her.
“I’ll get you yet!” Amanda growled, stopping for a moment to tread water.
“Don’t go too far out!” Eloise called, but it really wasn’t very important.
It was clear that both children were excellent swimmers.
If they were like Eloise and her siblings, they’d probably been swimming since age four.
The Bridgerton children had spent countless summer hours splashing around in the pond near their home in Kent, although, in truth, the swimming had been curtailed after the death of their father.
When Edmund Bridgerton had been alive, the family had spent most of their time in the country, but once he was gone, they had found themselves in town more often than not.
Eloise had never known if it was because her mother preferred town or simply that their home in the country held too many memories.
Eloise adored London and had certainly enjoyed her time there, but now that she was here in Gloucestershire, splashing in a pond with two boisterous young children, she realized how much she’d missed the country way of living.
Not that she was prepared to give up London and all the friends and amusements it offered, but still, she was beginning to think she didn’t need to spend quite so much time in the capital.
Amanda finally caught up with her brother and launched herself on top of him, causing them both to go under.
Eloise watched carefully; she could see a hand or foot break the surface every few seconds until they both came up for air, laughing and gasping and vowing to beat each other in what was clearly extremely important warfare.
“Be careful!” Eloise called out, mostly because she felt she should. It was strange to find herself in the position of authoritative adult; with her nieces and nephews she got to be the fun and permissive aunt. “Oliver! Do not pull your sister’s hair!”