To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke #10)(11)

The reminder only conjured the memory and feel of Lady Philippa’s foot in his hand; the satiny smoothness of her soft skin. Had he imagined the breathy sigh as he’d run his fingers over her instep?

“Miles?”

“Uh…indeed, she was.” By the narrowing of her eyes, his mother was not in the least mollified. Without another word, she swept from the room, leaving him with blessed silence and the memory of the widowed Lady Philippa.

The woman whose book he carried in his pocket. No doubt, she’d been reading the child’s tale to her daughter, Faith. And why the girl was surely missing it, even now.

Miles climbed to his feet. Yes, the least he could do was see it properly restored to the pair.

Except, as he took his leave, why did it feel as though his intended visit had more to do with seeing the lady than anything else?





Chapter 5


“My 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.