To Woo a Widow (The Heart of a Duke #10)(16)

Her lips pulled in a sad smile. This was, of course, what everyone saw. After all, it was easier to see the lie that your sister had loved her miserable excuse for a husband than to accept the role you’d played in the union…

“…She has two daughters… Lord Matthew would make her a splendid match…”

Oh, God. How could her mother, who’d subjected her own children to the abuses of a brutal husband, be so steadfast in her resolve to make matches for her children? She pressed her eyes closed. Her mother was no less determined to marry her off than when she’d been a debutante just on the market. Dread spiraled through her; it found purchase in her feet and those digits twitched with the need to take flight.

“Philippa,” the gentle voice of her sister-in-law, Jane, sounded over her shoulder, ringing a gasp from her.

Philippa spun around. The blonde woman with a gentle and all-knowing smile stood with a book in her hands. Wetting her lips, she looked from the sister-in-law, who’d so graciously accepted her inside her home for these six months now, to the door where her brother and mother still carried on, discussing her fate and future.

The other woman gave her a gentle smile. She tucked the book in her hands under her arm and held out her spare hand.

Philippa hesitated. Jane tipped her head in the direction of the opposite hall. And when faced with being discovered any moment by her mother and brother, she far preferred the company of her sister-in-law with curious eyes.

She allowed the other woman to dictate the path they took through the house. Their slippered footfalls were silent in the halls as they wound their way through the house, to the…

Her stomach lurched as Jane stopped outside the library. A dull buzzing filled her ears, like so many swarming bees. How many times had she stood outside this very room, seeking refuge from her father’s beatings? Of all the places he’d thought to look for his children—the gardens, the parlors, the kitchens—never had he, with his disdain of books and literature, come here. Now she sought a different refuge; the danger no less real.

“Philippa?” her sister-in-law gently prodded and she jolted into movement. Eyes averted, she walked at the sedate pace drilled into her by too-stern governesses. Jane closed the door and motioned to the nearby leather button sofa. “Please,” she said softly. “Will you sit?”

Philippa hesitated and then slid onto the folds of the sofa. The leather groaned in protest. She folded her hands primly on her lap to still the tremble. In the months since Philippa had moved into the new marchioness’ home, Jane had proven herself to be kind and patient. She didn’t probe where every other Edgerton did. But neither did Philippa truly know her. Did Jane also want her married off? As her sister-in-law settled onto the seat beside her, dread knotted Philippa’s insides.

“I wanted to be sure that you are happy here,” the other woman began.

Philippa blinked. Happy here? A peculiar question that no one had ever put to her. The expectation had always been that, as a lady, she belonged wherever her husband, or father, or now elder brother was. “I am,” she said at last. Because she was. At least happier than she’d been when she’d been a girl living in this very house. Unable to meet the searching expression in Jane’s eyes, she looked about. Her stare landed on the book set aside by her sister-in-law. She peered absently at the title. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters—

“Are you familiar with Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s work?”

Philippa shot her head up; her attention diverted away from the gold lettering on the small leather tome. She looked questioningly at the other woman.

“Mrs. Wollstonecraft,” Jane elucidated, holding up the volume.

“I am not,” she said softly.

“She was a writer and an advocate for women’s rights,” her sister-in-law explained, as she held the book out. Philippa hesitated. This was the type of scandalous work her mother would have forbidden and her husband would have burned. With steady fingers, she accepted the book. “I quite enjoy her work.”

Philippa studied the title. Thoughts on the education of daughters: with reflections on female conduct, in the more important duties of life. How singularly…peculiar that her brother, who’d lamented Chloe’s shows of spirit and praised Philippa’s obedience to propriety and decorum, should have married a woman who read philosophical works, and whom he’d also given leave to establish a finishing school to educate women who dwelled on the fringes of Society. At the extended silence, she cleared her throat and made to hand the book back over.

“I’ve always admired her,” Jane said, ignoring the book so that Philippa laid it on her lap. “Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s father squandered the family’s money. He was a violent man.” Philippa stiffened. How much did Jane know of the abuse she and her siblings had suffered at the vile monster’s hands? “She cared for her sisters,” the woman went on. “And then she cared for herself.”

Self-loathing filled her. In a world where she’d readily turned over her fate and future to a man simply because he was respectable and kind, there had been Mrs. Wollstonecraft who’d laid claim to her life. “Did she?” For what did that even entail? Even now, living with her brother and his family, she’d demonstrated a return to a life not wholly different than the one she’d lived.

“Yes,” Jane said simply. Something gentle and, yet, at the same time commanding, in the woman’s tone brought Philippa’s gaze to hers once more. “Mrs. Wollstonecraft was not always that way, Philippa. She was compelled by her father to turn over all the money she would have inherited at her maturity to him. A miserable, mean cruel man.”