Who the devil—

He stopped short; stumbled, even.

Because the woman standing in his entry hall was young, and quite pretty, and when she looked up to meet his gaze, he saw that she had the largest, most achingly beautiful gray eyes he’d ever seen.

He could drown in those eyes.

And Phillip did not, as one might imagine, even think the word drown lightly.

Chapter 2

. . . and then, I’m sure you will not be surprised to hear, I talked far too much. I simply couldn’t stop talking, but I suppose that is what I do when I am nervous. One can only hope I have less cause for nerves as the rest of my life unfolds.

—from Eloise Bridgerton
to her brother Colin,
upon the occasion of
Eloise’s debut into London society

Then she opened her mouth.

“Sir Phillip?” she asked, and before he even had a chance to nod in the affirmative, she said, at quite the speed of lightning, “I’m so terribly sorry to arrive unannounced, but I really had no other option, and to be honest, if I’d sent notice, it probably would have arrived behind me, making the notice really quite moot, as I’m sure you’ll agree, and . . .”

Phillip blinked, certain he was supposed to be following what she was saying but no longer able to make out where one word ended and the next began.

“. . . a long journey, and I’m afraid I didn’t sleep, and so I must beg you to forgive my appearance and . . .”

She was making him dizzy. Would it be rude if he sat down?

“. . . didn’t bring very much, but I had no choice, and . . .”

This had clearly gone on far too long, with no sign, in truth, that it would ever end. If he allowed her to speak for one moment longer, he was quite certain that he would suffer an inner ear imbalance, or perhaps she would swoon from lack of breath and hit her head on the floor. Either way, one of them would be injured and in debilitating pain.

“Madam,” he said, clearing his throat.

If she heard him, she gave no indication, instead saying something about the coach that had apparently conveyed her to his doorstep.

“Madam,” he said, a little louder this time.

“. . . but then I—” She looked up, blinking those devastating gray eyes at him, and for a moment he felt frighteningly off balance. “Yes?” she asked.

Now that he had her attention, he seemed to have forgotten why he’d sought it. “Er,” he asked, “who are you?”

She stared at him for a good five seconds, her lips parting with surprise, and then she finally answered, “Eloise Bridgerton, of course.”

Eloise was fairly certain she was talking too much, and she knew she was talking too fast, but she tended to do that when she was nervous, and while she prided herself on the fact that she was rarely nervous, now seemed like a rather deserving time to explore that emotion, and besides, Sir Phillip—if indeed he was the large bear of a man standing before her—was not at all what she had expected.

“You’re Eloise Bridgerton?”

She looked up into his gaping face and felt the first stirrings of annoyance. “Well, of course I am. Who else would I be?”

“I could not possibly imagine.”

“You did invite me,” she pointed out.

“And you did not respond to my invitation,” he returned.

She swallowed. He had a point there. A rather large one, if one wanted to be fair, which she didn’t. Not just then, anyway.

“I didn’t really have the opportunity,” she hedged, and then, when it seemed from his expression that that wasn’t enough explanation, she added, “as I mentioned when I spoke earlier.”

He stared at her for longer than made her comfortable, his dark eyes inscrutable, and then he said, “I didn’t understand a word you said.”

She felt her mouth form an oval of . . . surprise? No, annoyance. “Weren’t you listening?” she asked.

“I tried.”

Eloise pursed her lips. “Very well, then,” she said, counting to five in her head—in Latin—before adding, “My apologies. I am sorry to have arrived unannounced. It was dreadfully ill-bred of me.”

He was silent for a full three seconds—Eloise counted that as well—before saying, “I accept your apology.”

She cleared her throat.

“And of course”—he coughed, glancing around as if in search of someone who might save him from her—“I am delighted that you are here.”

It would probably be impolite to point out that he sounded anything but delighted, so Eloise just stood there, staring at his right cheekbone as she tried to decide what she could say without insulting him.

Eloise considered it a sad state of affairs that she—who generally had something to say for any occasion—couldn’t think of a thing.

Luckily, he saved their awkward silence from growing to monumental proportions by asking, “Is this all of your luggage?”

Eloise straightened her shoulders, delighted to move on to a comparatively trivial topic. “Yes. I didn’t really—” She broke herself off. Did she really need to tell him that she’d stolen away from home in the middle of the night? It didn’t seem to speak well of her, or of her family, for that matter. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want him to know that she had, for all intents and purposes, run away. She wasn’t certain why she thought so, but she had a distinct feeling that if he knew the truth, he’d pack her up and send her back to London posthaste. And while her meeting with Sir Phillip had not thus far proven to be the stuff of romance and bliss she’d imagined it to be, she was not yet prepared to give up.