Philloise Re-Written

Chapter Three

. . . you will see why I could not continue the dance. He was too churlish by half and sought to gain my favour by insulting our entire sex! If I were ever to marry, I should like him to afford myself and other ladies with the respect we deserve. As people with our own minds. Surely that is not too much to ask.

—from Eloise Bridgerton to her dear friend Penelope Featherington, sent by messenger after Eloise left a gentleman on the dance floor. The first of many instances.

By afternoon, Eloise was almost convinced that she had made a terrible mistake.

And in truth, the sole reason she was only almost convinced was that the only thing she hated more than making mistakes was the admission thereof. So she was trying to maintain a proverbial stiff upper lip and forcing herself to pretend that this ghastly situation might all work itself out in the end.

She had been left stunned—open-mouthed, even—when Sir Phillip had departed with barely more than an "Enjoy your food" and then stalked out the door. She had travelled halfway across England, answering his invitation to come and visit, and he left her alone in the drawing room a mere half hour after she arrived? Even she recognised this as impropriety. Her mother certainly never would have stood for this kind of behaviour.

Eloise was very much aware that she doesn't always make the best first impression on people, but she'd hoped for a little bit more than a curt "Who are you?" and "Enjoy your food."

She'd built an elaborate dream around her image of this man, someone with intelligence and wit and a respect for her dream of making her own way in the world – an image which she was now not wholly convinced to be true. And the worst was—she had only herself to blame. Sir Phillip had never misrepresented himself in his letters. Her dreams had been just that—dreams. Wishful illusions, all of her own making. If he wasn't what she'd expected, that was her fault. She'd been expecting something that didn't even exist.

And she should have known better.

What's more, it was clear he didn't know the first thing about how to act with children. While Eloise doesn't exactly fawn over every snot-nosed infant which comes her way like her sisters often do, she knows how to talk to them without eliciting a tantrum.

Perhaps she wasn't being fair. She shouldn't judge him so quickly on that score. The children didn't look ill-treated or malnourished or anything so dire, so congratulations to Sir Phillip for at least meeting the bare minimum requirements as a guardian. It was just clear to her that he had no idea how to manage them. He had handled them all wrong this morning, and their behaviour signified his relationship with them was distant at best.

Good heavens, they had practically begged him to spend the day with them. Any child who actually received enough attention would never act in such a way. Eloise and her siblings had spent half their childhood trying to avoid their parents—lack of supervision being, of course, more conducive for mischief.

Her own father had been splendid. She had been only seven when he'd died, but she remembered him well, from the stories he wove at bedtime to the hikes they had taken across the fields of Kent, sometimes with all the Bridgertons in tow, sometimes just with one lucky child, chosen for some special alone time with Father.

It was clear to her that if she hadn't suggested to Sir Phillip that he find out why the children were screaming and knocking over the furniture, he would have left them to their own devices. Or, more to the point, left them to be someone else's problem. And by the end of their conversation, it was apparent that Sir Phillip's main aim in life was to avoid his niece and nephew.

Which Eloise did not approve of at all.

She pushed herself off of her bed, forcing herself upright even though she was bone-tired. But every time she laid down, something began to quicken in her lungs, and she felt herself gasping in that awful precursor to fits of rage and frustration. She felt her anxiety shudder and rattle through her body. If she didn't get up and do something, she wasn't going to be able to control herself.