Which, Phillip thought, feeling rather ironically-minded there on the floor, was nothing more than she deserved. Nappies, indeed.

"Well, you should have stopped him," Eloise said, oblivious to Phillip's mental defection. "Do you have any idea how mortifying this is?"

Her brothers stared at her, quite rightly, in Phillip's opinion, as if she'd gone mad.

"You lost the right," Anthony bit off, "to feel mortified, embarrassed, chagrined, or in fact any emotion other than blindingly stupid when you ran off without a word."

Eloise looked a bit mollified but still muttered, "It's not as if I would listen to anything he has to say."

"As opposed to us," the one who had to be Colin murmured, "with whom you are the soul of meekness and obeisance."

"Oh, for the love of God," Eloise said under her breath, sounding rather fetchingly unladylike to Phillip's stinging ears.

Stinging? Had someone boxed his ears? It was difficult to recall. Four-to-one odds against did tend to muddle one's memory.

"You," snapped the one Phillip was almost certain was Anthony, with a finger jabbed in Phillip's direction, "don't go anywhere."

As if that were even worth contemplating.

"And you," Anthony said to Eloise, his voice even deadlier, although Phillip wouldn't have thought it possible, "what the hell did you think you were doing?"

Eloise tried to sidestep the question with one of her own. "What are you doing here?"

And succeeded, because her brother actually answered her. "Saving you from ruin," he yelled. "For the love of God, Eloise, do you have any idea how worried we've been?"

"And here I'd thought you hadn't even noticed my departure," she tried to joke.

"Eloise," he said, "Mother is beside herself."

That sobered her in an instant. "Oh, no," she whispered. "I didn't think."

"No, you didn't." Anthony replied, his stern tone exactly what one would expect from a man who'd been the head of his family for twenty years. "I ought to take a whip to you."

Phillip started to intervene, because, really, he couldn't countenance a whipping, but then Anthony added, "Or at the very least, a muzzle," and Phillip decided that brother knew sister very well, indeed.

"Where do you think you're going?" demanded Benedict, and Phillip realized that he must have started to stand before plopping back to his rather impotent position on the floor.

Phillip looked to Eloise. "Perhaps introductions are in order?"

"Oh," Eloise said, gulping. "Yes, of course. These are my brothers."

"I'd gathered," he said, his voice as dry as dust.

She shot him an apologetic look, which, Phillip thought, was really the least she could do after nearly getting him tortured and killed, then turned to her brothers and motioned to each in turn, saying, "Anthony, Benedict, Colin, Gregory. These three," she added, motioning to A, B, and C, "are my elders. This one"a"she waved dismissively at Gregorya""is an infant."

Gregory looked near ready to throttle her, which suited Phillip just fine, since it deflected the murderous intentions off of him.

And then Eloise finally turned back to Phillip and said to her brothers, "Sir Phillip Crane, but I expect you know that already."

"You left a letter in your desk," said Colin.

Eloise closed her eyes in agony. Phillip thought he saw her lips form the words, Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Colin smiled grimly. "You ought to be more careful in the future, should you decide to run off again."

"I'll remember that," Eloise shot back, but she was losing her fire.

"Would now be a good time to stand?" Phillip inquired, directing his question to no one in particular.

"No."

It was difficult to discern which Bridgerton brother spoke the loudest.

Phillip remained on the floor. He didn't tend to think himself a coward, and he was, if he did say so himself, quite proficient with his fists, but hell, there were four of them.

Boxer he might be. Suicidal fool he was not.

"How did you get that eye?" Colin asked quietly.

Eloise paused before answering, "It was an accident."

He considered her words for a moment. "Would you care to expand upon that?"

Eloise swallowed uncomfortably and glanced down at Phillip, which he really wished she wouldn't do. It only made them (as he was coming to think of the quartet) even more convinced that he was the one responsible for her injury.

A misapprehension that could only lead to his death and dismemberment. They didn't seem the sorts to allow anyone to lay a hand on their sisters, much less blacken an eye.

"Just tell them the truth, Eloise," Phillip said wearily.

"It was his children," she said, wincing on the words. But Phillip didn't worry. As close as they'd come to strangling him, they didn't seem the sort to harm innocent children. And certainly Eloise would not have said anything if she'd thought it might place Oliver and Amanda in peril.

"He has children?" Anthony asked, eyeing him with a slightly less derogatory expression.

Anthony, Phillip decided, must be a father as well.

"Two," Eloise replied. "Twins, actually. A boy and a girl. They're eight."

"My felicitations," Anthony murmured.

"Thank you," Phillip answered, feeling rather old and weary in that moment. "Sympathies are probably more to the point."

Anthony looked at him curiously, almosta"but not quitea"smiling.

"They weren't especially keen on my presence here," Eloise said.

"Smart children," Anthony said.

She shot him a decidedly unamused look. "They set a trip wire," she said. "Rather like the one Colin"a"she turned to spear him with a hostile glarea""set for me in 1804."

Colin's lips twisted into a disbelieving expression. "You remember the date?"

"She remembers everything," Benedict commented.

Eloise turned to glare at him.

Aching throat notwithstanding, Phillip was actually beginning to enjoy the interaction.

Eloise turned back to Anthony, regal as a queen. "I fell," she said simply.

"On your eye?"

"On my hip, actually, but I didn't have time to break my fall, and I hit my cheek. I imagine the bruising spread to the eye area."

Anthony looked down at Phillip with a ferocious expression. "Is she telling the truth?"

Phillip nodded. "On my brother's grave. The children will own up to it as well, should you feel the need to interrogate them."

"Of course not," Anthony said gruffly. "I would nevera"" He cleared his throat, then ordered, "Stand up." But he tempered his tone by offering Phillip his hand.

Phillip took it, having already decided that Eloise's brother would make a far finer ally than enemy. He eyed the four male Bridgertons warily, though, and his stance was defensive. He stood no chance if all four decided to charge at him at once, and he wasn't convinced that that was not still a likely possibility.

At the end of the day, he was going to find himself either dead or married, and he wasn't quite prepared to let the Bridgerton brothers take the matter to a vote.

And then, after Anthony silenced his four younger siblings with nothing more than a stare, he turned to Phillip and said, "Perhaps you should tell me what happened."

Out of the corner of his eye, Phillip saw Eloise open her mouth to interrupt, then close it again, sitting down on a chair with an expression that, if it wasn't meek, was at least meeker than anything he'd ever expected to see gracing her face.

Phillip decided that he needed to learn how to glare like Anthony Bridgerton. He'd have his children in line in no time.

"I don't think Eloise will be interrupting us now," Anthony said mildly. "Please, go on."

Phillip glanced over at Eloise. She looked about ready to explode. But still, she held her tongue, which seemed a remarkable feat indeed, for one such as her.

Phillip briefly recounted the events that had led to Eloise's arrival at Romney Hall. He told Anthony about the letters, beginning with Eloise's letter of condolence, and how they had begun a friendly correspondence, pausing in his story only when Colin shook his head and murmured, "I always wondered what she was writing up in her room."

When Phillip looked at him quizzically, he held up his hands and added, "Her fingers. They were always ink-stained, and I never knew why."

Phillip finished his tale, concluding with, "So, as you see, I was looking for a wife. From the tone of her letters, she seemed intelligent and reasonable. My children, as you will come to realize should you remain long enough to meet them, can be rather, er"a"he searched for the least unflattering adjectivea" "rambunctious," he said, satisfied with his word choice. "I'd been hoping she would be a calming influence on them."

"Eloise?" Benedict snorted, and Phillip could see from their expressions that the other three brothers agreed with his assessment.

And while Phillip might smile at Benedict's comment about Eloise remembering everything, and even agree with Anthony about the muzzle, it was becoming apparent that the Bridgerton males did not hold their sister in the regard she deserved. "Your sister," he said, his voice coming off sharp, "has been a marvelous influence upon my children. You would do well not to disparage her in my presence."

He'd probably just issued his own death warrant. There were four of them, after all, and it wasn't in his best interest to be insulting. But even if they had charged halfway across the country to protect Eloise's virtue, there was no way he was going to stand here and listen to them snort and snuff and make a mockery of her.

Not Eloise. Not in front of him.

But to his great surprise, not a one of them had a retort, and in fact Anthony, who was still clearly the one in charge, held him with a level stare, assessing him as if he were peeling the layers back until he could see what lay hidden in his core.

"We have a great deal to talk about, you and I," Anthony said quietly.

Phillip nodded. "I expect you will need to speak with your sister as well."

Eloise shot him a grateful look. He wasn't surprised. He couldn't imagine she would take well to being left out of any decisions pertaining to her life. Hell, she wasn't the sort to take well to being left out of anything.

"Yes," Anthony said, "I do. In fact, I think we shall conduct our interview first, if you don't mind."

As if Phillip was stupid enough to argue with one Bridgerton while three more were glaring at him.

"Please use my study," he offered. "Eloise can show you the way."

It was the wrong thing to say. None of the brothers cared to be reminded that Eloise had been in residence long enough to know her way around.

Anthony and Eloise left the room without another word, leaving Phillip alone with the remaining Bridgerton brothers.

"Mind if I sit?" Phillip asked, since he suspected he was going to be stuck here in the dining room for some time.

"Go right ahead," Colin said expansively. Benedict and Gregory just continued to glare. Colin, Phillip noted, didn't look particularly eager to strike up a friendship, either. He might have been marginally more amiable than his brothers, but his eyes showed a sharp shrewdness that Phillip rather thought he ought not underestimate.

"Please," Phillip said, motioning to the food still on the table, "eat."

Benedict and Gregory scowled at him as if he'd offered poison, but Colin sat across from him and plucked a crusty roll off a plate.

"They're quite good," Phillip said, even though he'd not had the opportunity to partake that evening.

"Good," Colin muttered, taking a bite. "I'm famished."

"How can you think of food?" Gregory said angrily.

"I always think of food," Colin replied, his eyes searching the table until he located the butter. "What else is there?"

"Your wife," Benedict drawled.

"Ah, yes, my wife," Colin said with a nod. He turned to Phillip, leveled a hard stare at him, and said, "Just so that you are aware, I would have rather spent the night with my wife."

Phillip couldn't think of a reply that might not hint at insult to the absent Mrs. Bridgerton, so he just nodded and buttered a roll of his own.

Colin took a huge bite, then spoke with his mouth full, the etiquette breach a clear insult to his host. "We've only been married a few weeks."

Phillip raised one of his brows in question.

"Still newlyweds."

Phillip nodded, since some sort of response seemed to be required.

Colin leaned forward. "I really did not want to leave my wife."

"I see," Phillip murmured, since truly, what else could he have said?