To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke Book 10) (4 page)

“M
y lady, let me help you,” Mary the young maid said quickly.

Later that afternoon, servants rushed about Philippa with the same attentiveness she’d received the eight times she’d been with child. She swallowed a sigh, hating that hovering concern, preferring the privacy of her own company. Alas, to her family and servants, she’d been the weak Edgerton—the most in need of protecting, the one afraid to speak her mind.
But haven’t I been? Haven’t I, with my willingness to wed a gentleman whose eyes I couldn’t even meet because he’d been touted as a good man, proven that very thing?
Oh, how she despised what she’d allowed life to shape her into—an empty shell of someone she was not.

“Are you certain you are all right?” Faith asked, snapping Philippa’s attention sideways to the too-large King Louis XIV chair where her daughter sat swinging her legs back and forth. The girl had remained at her side for the past hour, refusing to abandon her post, to return abovestairs for her lessons.

“I am quite hale and hearty,” Philippa assured her. Hale and hearty were words very rarely uttered about her, but Philippa knew how important it was that she set Faith’s mind at ease. This was her daughter; a girl who’d known recent loss and Philippa would not allow uncertainty about her mother’s well-being to hang over her. She leaned over and brushed her daughter’s knee. “Look at me. No harm will come to me,” she promised, as a maid gently lifted her ankle and propped a pillow under it as though she were a fragile piece of china. How very determined everyone was to see her as a frail woman in need of coddling. For years, it had been that way. Too many years. A scream of frustration bubbled from the surface and climbed her throat, demanding to be set free. Philippa clamped her lips shut to keep it buried.

“Not like Father?” Her father; healthy one day and dead of an apoplexy the next.

She leaned over and collected Faith’s hand. “Look at my lips,” she ordered loudly. Too many times, too many words were lost in translation due to Faith’s partial loss of hearing. Her daughter had become adept at making proper sense of sentences through studying lips. Philippa waited until her daughter’s attention was fixed on her mouth. “As long as it is within my power, I will never, ever leave,” she promised. It was a promise she’d no right making; one beyond her grasp and, yet, she’d lie to the Lord on Sunday if it would erase fear or hurt from her children’s lives. But the decision of whether to subject herself to further pregnancies was
now
in her power.

“You almost did.” Faith’s lower lip quivered. “A lot.”

Yes, she had. Her fingers tightened about her daughter’s hand and she forced herself to lighten her grip. The agony of endless birthings and inevitable losses, several early, most late, which had left her weak from blood loss. The doctor had warned the late earl of the perils in subjecting Philippa to any further childbirths. She drew in a steadying breath and battled the remembered horror cleaving away at her insides. Never again. Never would she again risk leaving her daughters behind, all to give a lord that highly-desired heir.

“But I didn’t,” she said, proud of the even delivery of those three words. “And it should give you proof that I’ll not go anywhere.” In those many times she’d lain weak, fighting to survive, she’d bartered her soul for survival, unwilling to leave Faith alone with the cold, emotionally deadened earl. A man who’d sneered at Faith’s partial deafness and who’d lambasted Philippa for never giving him a boy. In those darkest days when she’d hovered between life and death, all that had kept her alive had been her daughter.

Faith slipped off her chair and perched on the edge of the sofa Philippa occupied. “Do you promise?” she asked, taking her mother’s face between her small hands.

Philippa crossed her heart. “I promise,” she murmured, battling back the ever-present maternal guilt in making a pledge she couldn’t truly keep in their uncertain existence.

Frantic footsteps sounded in the hall and they looked to the entrance as the Dowager Marchioness of Waverly entered, with Chloe rushing at her heels.

“Philippa,” her mother cried as she stopped beside her sofa. “What is this I heard of you falling?” She looked to the maid hovering at the opposite end of the chair. “Has the doctor been—?”

“It hardly merits a visit from the doctor,” Philippa reassured in placating tones. Then, hadn’t that always been her role in the Edgerton family? To be soft-spoken and constantly assuring everyone that all was well. Even when her heart was wrenching with the agony of the brutality she’d known at a vicious father’s hands and her husband’s relentless indifference. Because ultimately, everyone had their own demons to battle and hadn’t the time to take on hers, as well. “It hardly hurts anymore.” And it didn’t. The ache, though present, had dimmed.

“Whatever happened?” Chloe asked, in her always-curious tones, as she propped her hip on the back of Philippa’s seat.

“Mama stepped into a rabbit hole,” her daughter helpfully supplied. “Because she was looking back at Miles,” she added.
Unhelpfully
.

Silence resounded in the large parlor and Philippa’s cheeks blazed hot. With her daughter’s reduced hearing, Philippa had long believed Faith had honed other skills. One being her ability to see everything about her and, in this particular instance, she’d witnessed and now shared Philippa’s improper regard of the marquess. “I was not staring
at
him,” she said softly. Rather, she’d been staring
after
him. Entirely different things. Weren’t they?

Of course, Mother broke the tense quiet blanketing the room. “Who is Miles?” she blurted. When no one was quick to reply, she looked between her daughters. “Who is—?”

“He is the Marquess of…” Faith wrinkled her brow. “Milford? Or was it Guilford, Mama?”

“Guilford,” she said weakly. For the course of her daughter’s five years, Philippa had quite celebrated in Faith’s willingness and ability to freely speak. Having long had her voice quashed by a cruel father and an unkind husband, she’d appreciated the joy and beauty in Faith’s garrulousness. This moment, however, was decidedly not one of those times.

“The Marquess of Guilford?” her mother parroted back.

Warming to the curious stares trained on her by her grandmother and aunt, Faith puffed her chest proudly. “He carried Mama.”

Once more, silence reigned. Only this time, it came with probing, piercing stares. And the last thing Philippa wanted, needed, or desired was a probing, Edgerton inquiry.

“Who carried your mama?”

She swallowed a groan as Gabriel stepped inside the room. Blast and double blast.

“The Marquess of Guilford,” Chloe supplied.

Philippa leaned forward and touched her daughter’s cheek. “Faith, run abovestairs to the nursery,” she urged.

Her daughter opened her mouth to protest, but Philippa gave her a lingering look that ended the request. “Very well,” she said on a beleaguered sigh and skipped around the furniture. She paused in the doorway alongside Gabriel, the Marquess of Waverly.

“Uncle Gabriel,” she said, dropping a proper curtsy.

“Hullo, Faith.” He ruffled the top of her black curls, in a gesture so at odds with the coolly removed brother he’d been through the years. Then, the man she’d come back to live with, now married and so blissfully happy, had been transformed. Something tugged at Philippa. Something ugly and dark. Something that felt very much like envy. “Did you have a nice time at the park?”

“Oh, yes,” she called up. “I picked flowers with Miles.”

Which only earned Philippa further probing stares; this time from the eldest Edgerton sibling. She managed a smile. Of course, there would be questions. There always were with the Edgertons. Ironically, those same kin had failed to ask the most important questions about her hopes and dreams of a future. Faith slipped from the room and Philippa collected the until-now forgotten embroidery conveniently resting on the table beside her. To give her fingers something to do, she proceeded to drag the needle and thread through the white fabric.

“Well?” Gabriel drawled. Striding over, he claimed the seat directly across from Philippa. And just one additional probing Edgerton stare pricked her already burning skin.

“I fell,” she said under her breath. At the protracted silence, she paused in her work and glanced up.

The trio of Edgertons stood, mouths agape.

“You mumbled,” Chloe said with the same shock of one who’d first discovered the world was, in fact, round.

Philippa shook her head. “No.” She didn’t mumble or mutter. Ever. She was always proper.

“Yes,” Gabriel said with a faint grin. “You did.”

“He is correct,” Chloe continued. “And you know, it pains me to ever admit Gabriel is correct about anything, but in this, he is.” She paused. “You mumbled.”

“I hardly think whether or not I mumbled merits a discussion,” she said between tight lips as she dragged the needle through the frame once more. Then, what she had thought, wished, or wanted, had never truly mattered. She jabbed the tip of the needle into her thumb. She gasped, as the frame tumbled onto her lap…and was met, once more, with that damning, telling silence. Philippa stuffed her wounded digit into her mouth.

Her mother clasped her hands at her throat. “Did you…
stick
your finger?”

Given that she even now sucked on that same finger, Philippa opted not to respond.

“You never make a mistake,” Chloe matter-of-factly observed.

How very wrong her sister was. She had made the very worst mistakes in her life; ones that moved beyond a silly scrap of linen with flowers embroidered upon it. She curled her toes into the arch of her feet and winced as pain shot up her injured ankle.

“I believe we were speaking about the Marquess of Guilford?” her mother encouraged, because, inevitably, all matters came ’round to unwed gentlemen.

“Were we?” she asked, picking up her small wooden frame, once again. He
could
be very happily married, or more, unhappily married, as she’d been for six miserable years. After all, what did she know about the gentleman? Except, would a gentleman who’d bothered to collect flowers with her daughter and took time to search for said child’s mother be one of those nasty sorts that Lord Winston had been?

“He’s unmarried,” her mother offered.

Of course.

Every conversation invariably came back to that important detail about a gentleman:

Would you like sugar and milk in your tea? Lord So-and-So is married.

Do take care to not walk outside, lest you be caught in the rain. It wouldn’t do for an unmarried gentleman to see you without a care…

“It hardly matters whether the marquess is wed or not wed,” she said in smooth, even tones, still attending her work. She’d no intention of marrying again. Ever. There was no need to spend the remainder of her days as nothing more than a body to give a lord his beloved heir and a spare while his female issue was forgotten. When her family still said nothing, she filled the void. “Lord Guilford was gracious enough to help me to my carriage.” Carrying her as though she’d weighed nothing in his strong, powerful arms. Her breathing quickened and she prayed the three now studying her didn’t note her body’s telltale response. “That is all,” she finished weakly.

The butler, Joseph, appeared at the front of the parlor, a silver tray in his gloved hands. He cleared his throat. “The Marquess of Guilford has arrived…” He looked to Philippa. “…to see Lady Winston.”

Her lips parted and questions tumbled around her mind. He was here? What…? Why…?

At the protracted silence, the butler glanced about. And though she knew this surprising turn would only bring with it further Edgerton questions later, the oddest fluttering danced in her belly at the unexpected visit.

“You may show him in, Joseph” she said “Now, please excuse me,” she ordered her family. “I have a visitor to attend to.”

A
s Miles was led through the Marquess of Waverly’s townhouse, one thing became very apparent—he was being watched.

A small figure, a
familiar
figure, came racing down the corridor. “Miles!”

He smiled as Faith skidded to a halt before him. “My lady,” he greeted, sketching a deep bow.

She giggled. “I’m not a grown lady, I’m just a girl.” Nonetheless, she sank into a flawless, very mature curtsy. Had life taught the girl that maturity?

“Have you come to see my mama?” she asked with the guile only a child was capable of.

“I have,” he answered, snapped out of his musings. “Though I expect you’ve seen she is well-cared for.”

Faith gave a solemn nod. “Oh, yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “She wouldn’t let the doctor come and check her foot. She
says
she is fine.” Yet again, images of Philippa’s delicate slip of flesh in his hands, the satiny softness of her skin, burned in his memory.
I am going to hell. There is nothing else for it.
“She sent me abovestairs,” the girl was saying.

He furrowed his brow.

“To the schoolroom,” she said by way of explanation.

“Ah, of course.” As a child, he’d chafed at being shut away in those miserable nurseries, preferring the invigorating Sussex air to the closed-in rooms every previous Marquess of Guilford had lost countless days to.

“Lessons on reading,” she said with the same dejected tones of one who’d been deprived of a year’s worth of dessert.

His lips twitched. With her flair for the dramatics she called forth memories of his now married sister, Rosalind. “And what does your governess have you reading that has you avoiding your lessons?”

“Lessons on propriety and decorum,” she said in a high-pitched, nasal tone which, he’d wager these last three weeks of his bachelorhood, was a rendition of the nursery governess responsible for her tutoring. Then, the girl flared her eyes. “But I heard you had come for a visit and I sneaked away,” she whispered and then stole a glance about.

Miles dropped to a knee and leaned close to her right ear. He spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “I was known to avoid my own lessons,” he said with a wink.

She blinked and shook her head. “What did you say?”

Miles creased his brow. “Uh…”

Color rushed to Faith’s cheeks and she glanced down at the tips of her toes. “You said it against my right ear. I cannot hear out of my right ear.”

A vise squeezed at his chest. She was partially deaf. Of course.
This
was why she’d failed to hear his approach at Hyde Park and the questions he’d posed. Missing just a beat, Miles angled his head and repeated his admission in her opposite ear.

The little girl widened her eyes all the more, so they formed round moons in her face. “My father said only terrible children skip their lessons. He said proper, good children attended their studies.”

Her father sounded like a miserable, stodgy bore. As soon as the thought slid forward, guilt settled in. It was hardly fair to judge a man in death. “I suspect there is much to be learned in visiting the park and being outdoors, too, no?” he asked, instead.

She flashed him a gap-toothed grin. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper once again. “And also from reading enjoyable books about far off places.” He fished her forgotten book from the front of his jacket and held it out.

A small cry escaped the girl. “My book.” She hurled herself into his arms and he staggered back. “I forgot that I forgot it. And it is one of my favorites. It is about a princess and prince.”

Warmth filled his chest at that absolute lack of artifice. Aware of the ancient butler staring, Miles set the girl away. “Off you go with your fairytale then,” he said with a wink.

Faith waved and, turning on her heel, skipped off. He stared after her a moment and then fell into step behind the aged servant. At last, the man brought them to a stop outside an open door and Miles did a quick search of the room; his gaze landed on the delicate, slender lady stretched out on the sofa. Even with the distance between them, her eyes sparkled with some emotion—emotion he could not singularly identify, but desperately wanted to. “The Marquess of Guilford,” the old servant announced.

“Joseph, would you see refreshments brought?” she asked.

The servant nodded and backed out of the room—leaving Miles and Philippa—alone.

“My lord,” she welcomed in a soft, husky contralto that sent a bolt of lust through him. “Would you care to sit?”

Miles smiled and strode over, claiming the seat nearest her. “I thought we had agreed to move past the formalities of titles?”

“Very well,” she conceded. “Miles.” Her cheeks pinked, stirring intrigue with a widow who blushed like a debutante. She stole a furtive glance about. Did she fear recrimination over the use of his given name? His interest redoubled. “I did not expect you to…” She turned crimson. “That is…”

“I found a forgotten volume of
The Little Glass Slipper
and sought to return it.”

“Oh.” Did he imagine the lady’s crestfallen expression? “That is, I meant,
thank you
. For returning it and for coming to my aid this morn.”

The young widow dropped her gaze to the embroidery frame in her lap.

“I also wished to ask after you, Philippa,” he said quietly.

“I am well,” she said automatically.

She fiddled with the wood frame, drawing his attention to the skillfully crafted floral artwork on that white fabric. The delicate flowers, so expertly captured, demonstrated proficiency with a needle. Only… Miles took advantage of the lady’s distracted movements to study her. To truly study her. The white lines pulling the corners of her mouth; the frown on her lips as she glared at that scrap. Such details shouldn’t really signify. Not when he’d only come to return that child’s book, which he’d since done.
Liar. You wished to see this woman before you now.
“You do not enjoy it, then?”

She jerked her head up. “Beg pardon?”

Miles hooked his ankle across his opposite knee and motioned to the scrap of fabric on her frame. “You look as though you’d singe it with your eyes if you could,” he said with a smile.

Philippa followed his stare and then her perfect, bow-shaped lips formed a small moue. She blinked and drew that frame close to her chest with the same protectiveness of a mother bear defending her cub. “How…why…?”

He leaned forward and dusted the backs of his knuckles alongside the corner of her eye. “Here.” The lady’s breath caught. “You were frowning with your eyes when you were staring at it,” he said quietly.
Drop your hand. Drop your hand because coming here and putting your hands upon her, in any way, is forbidden…

Her lashes fluttered and Miles quickly dropped his hand to his side. By God, what madness had overtaken him?

In the scheme of all that had transpired in the past handful of minutes, Philippa should very well be fixed on the marquess’ brazen, if fleeting, caress.

And yet, instead, she was transfixed not by his gentle touch, but rather—his statement.
You look as though you’d singe it with your eyes if you could…

Philippa ran her fingers over the edge of the frame. “I do not,” she said softly.

Miles furrowed his brow.

“Enjoy it,” she clarified. And with that admission, which went against every ladylike lesson ingrained into her from the cradle, there was no bolt of lightning or thundering from the heavens…and there was something…freeing in it. A wistful smile pulled at her lips. “Do you know you’re the first to ever ask me that question?” Before he could reply, she rushed on. “Of course, you couldn’t possibly know that as we’ve only just met. But you are. Correct, that is,” she said, setting aside the frame. And for that, she thanked him. For seeing past her ladylike skill with that scrap and the well-built façade.

They shared a smile, as with his observation and her admission, a kindred bond was forged. A connection born in actually speaking
with
a person…something she’d never shared with her own husband. A thrill went through her. This was the intoxicating stuff recorded on the pages of those fanciful fairytales.

Miles glanced about the room and, for a moment, she believed he’d take his leave and restlessness stirred in her breast. Then, she’d be left here with the pitying stares and the sad glances and people who didn’t know she despised needlepoint and proper curtsies and false smiles. She searched her mind, never more wishing that she’d been one of those ladies skilled in conversing with all the right words. “Do you ride often?” she asked tentatively. As he trained his eyes on her face, she cringed.
Do you ride often? That is the best that I could come up with?

“Every morning when I am in London,” he said at last.

Philippa filed that particular piece about the gentleman in her mind.

“And what of you?” He arched an eyebrow.

“Me?” She touched a hand to her chest. “I have never been proficient at riding,” she admitted. Or conversing. Or being anything other than proper. Dull, proper, always-pious Philippa. She curled her hands into tight balls, never hating that truth of her character more than she did in this moment. She sighed. “I’m proficient at this,” she said, lifting the embroidery frame once more. In a show her mother would have lamented, Philippa tossed her frame to the marquess who easily caught it in his large, gloved hand. “And so everyone, of course, assumes I
must
enjoy it. Why shouldn’t I? I know how to draw the thread just so and how to craft an image upon it. Where is the pleasure in it, though?” she asked, the words just spilling out when they never, ever did.

“What, then?” At his quietly spoken question, she tipped her head. “What do you find pleasure in?”

“My daughters,” she said with an automaticity borne of truth. In their world, ladies didn’t speak about affection or emotion they carried for their children. And yet… “My daughters make me happy.” She coughed into her hand.

He searched his piercing gaze over her face. “I expect they would,” he said with a matter-of-factness that caused her heart to pull. There was a sincerity to those words, at odds with everything her own father and late husband had proven in terms of affection for children. “What else?”

She started. “What else?” What else made her happy? No one in the course of her life, not even her sister whom she adored, had ever put that query to her. As such, it was a question she’d not really given any thought to. Her existence was a purposeful one where she’d been a countess, in charge of a household staff, and her daughters’ tutors and nursemaids. But she’d not always been that way. “I used to read fairytales,” she said wistfully. Not unlike the books she read to her daughters. She’d forgotten until he’d forced her to think back to how those fanciful tales had once brought
her
happiness, as well. “My mother abhorred my reading selection. Called it drivel,” she said with a remembered laugh. Philippa hadn’t cared. She’d been so enthralled by the possibility of forever happiness promised on those pages that she’d braved her mother’s displeasure. It was why she even now read to her girls from those same books.

“Is that why you stopped reading them?”

She blinked as Miles’ quietly spoken question jerked her back to the present—and the impropriety of speaking so familiarly with a man she’d only just met. She firmed her lips into a line, willing herself to say nothing. Still, there was this inexplicable ease being around him, when she’d never even been comfortable around her own family. Philippa lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “One day,” she’d been married just a fortnight, “I remember finishing a book and just realizing…” She let her words trail off.

“Realizing?” he urged, a sea of questions in his fathomless eyes.

“How very silly it was to believe in a land of happily-ever-afters.” Such dreams didn’t exist. Life in the Edgerton household had proven as much. Marriage to Lord Winston had only confirmed it. No, dreams of fairytales were reserved for innocent children unscathed by life. Or that is what she’d come to believe. Now, this man before her swooped into her life and stirred all those oldest yearnings she’d once carried. Feeling Miles’ gaze on her, Philippa’s face heated. She’d said entirely too much. Words she’d never even acknowledged to herself and suddenly it was too much. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said softly. “I must go see my daughters.”