Eloise Bridgerton smoothed the well-read sheet of paper across her lap. There was little light by which to see the words, even with the full moon shining through the windows of the coach, but that didn’t really matter. She had the entire letter memorized, and the delicate pressed flower, which was actually more pink than red, was safely protected between the pages of a book she’d nipped from her brother’s library.

She hadn’t been too terribly surprised when she’d received a reply from Sir Phillip. Good manners dictated as much, although even Eloise’s mother, surely the supreme arbiter of good behavior, said that Eloise took her correspondence a bit too seriously.

It was common, of course, for ladies of Eloise’s station to spend several hours each week writing letters, but Eloise had long since fallen into the habit of taking that amount of time each day. She enjoyed writing notes, especially to people she hadn’t seen in years (she’d always liked to imagine their surprise when they opened her envelope), and so she pulled out her pen and paper for most any occasion—births, deaths, any sort of achievement that deserved congratulations or condolences.

She wasn’t sure why she kept sending her missives, just that she spent so much time writing letters to whichever of her siblings were not in residence in London at the time, and it seemed easy enough to pen a short note to some far-off relative while she was seated at her escritoire.

And although everyone penned a short note in reply—she was a Bridgerton, of course, and no one wanted to offend a Bridgerton—never had anyone enclosed a gift, even something so humble as a pressed flower.

Eloise closed her eyes, picturing the delicate pink petals. It was hard to imagine a man handling such a fragile bloom. Her four brothers were all big, strong men, with broad shoulders and large hands that would surely mangle the poor thing in a heartbeat.

She had been intrigued by Sir Phillip’s reply, especially his use of the Latin, and she had immediately penned her own response.

It was sneaky of her to end her letter with a question. Now the poor man would be forced to respond again.

He did not disappoint her. It had taken only ten days for Eloise to receive his reply.

Something about the correspondence was thrilling; perhaps it was simply the excitement of finding someone not related to her who actually seemed eager to conduct a written dialogue. Whatever it was, Eloise wrote back immediately.

Eloise hadn’t been certain about signing with such an informal salutation, but she decided to err on the side of daring. Sir Phillip was obviously enjoying the correspondence as much as she; surely he wouldn’t have finished his missive with a question, otherwise?

Her answer came a fortnight later.

Eloise remembered that day well. She had sat in her chair, the one by the window in her bedchamber, and stared at the carefully pressed purple flower for what seemed like an eternity. Was he attempting to court her? Through the post?

And then one day she received a note that was quite different from the rest.

Eloise had immediately tucked the letter away in a drawer, unable to even fathom his request. He wanted to marry someone he didn’t even know?

No, to be fair, that wasn’t entirely true. They did know one another. They’d said more in the course of a year’s correspondence than many husbands and wives did during the entire course of a marriage.

But still, they’d never met.

Eloise thought about all of the marriage proposals she’d refused over the years. How many had there been? At least six. Now she couldn’t even remember why she’d refused some of them. No reason, really, except that they weren’t...

Perfect.

Was that so much to expect?

She shook her head, aware that she sounded silly and spoiled. No, she didn’t need someone perfect. She just needed someone perfect for her.

She knew what the society matrons said about her. She was too demanding, worse than foolish. She’d end up a spinster—no, they didn’t say that anymore. They said she already was a spinster, which was true. One didn’t reach the age of eight and twenty without hearing that whispered behind one’s back.

Or thrown in one’s face.

But the funny truth was, Eloise didn’t mind her situation. Or at least she hadn’t, not until recently.

It had never occurred to her that she’d always be a spinster, and besides, she enjoyed her life quite well. She had the most marvelous family one could imagine—seven brothers and sisters in all, named alphabetically, which put her right in the middle at E, with four older and three younger. Her mother was a delight, and she’d even stopped nagging Eloise about getting married. Eloise still held a prominent place in society; the Bridgertons were universally adored and respected (and occasionally feared), and Eloise’s sunny and irrepressible personality was such that everyone sought out her company, spinsterish age or no.

But lately...

She sighed, suddenly feeling quite a bit older than her twenty-eight years. Lately she hadn’t been feeling so sunny. Lately she’d been starting to think that maybe those crotchety old matrons were right, and she wasn’t going to find herself a husband. Maybe she had been too picky, too determined to follow the example of her older brothers and sister, all of whom had found a deep and passionate love with their spouses (even if it hadn’t necessarily been there at the outset).

Maybe a marriage based on mutual respect and companionship was better than none at all.

But it was difficult to talk about these feelings with anyone. Her mother had spent so many years urging her to find a husband; as much as Eloise adored her, it would be difficult to eat crow and say that she should have listened. Her brothers would have been no help whatsoever. Anthony, the eldest, would probably have taken it upon himself to personally select a suitable mate and then browbeat the poor man into submission. Benedict was too much of a dreamer, and besides, he almost never came down to London anymore, preferring the quiet of the country. As for Colin—well, that was another story entirely, quite worthy of its own paragraph.

She supposed she should have talked to Daphne, but every time she went to see her, her elder sister was so bloody happy, so blissfully in love with her husband and her life as mother to her brood of four. How could someone like that possibly offer useful advice to one in Eloise’s position? And Francesca seemed half a world away, off in Scotland. Besides, Eloise didn’t think it fair to bother her with her silly woes. Francesca had been widowed at the age of twenty-three, for heaven’s sake. Eloise’s fears and worries seemed terribly inconsequential by comparison.

And maybe all this was why her correspondence with Sir Phillip had become such a guilty pleasure. The Bridgertons were a large family, loud and boisterous. It was nearly impossible to keep anything a secret, especially from her sisters, the youngest of whom—Hyacinth—could probably have won the war against Napoleon in half the time if His Majesty had only thought to draft her into the espionage service.

Sir Phillip was, in his own strange way, hers. The one thing she’d never had to share with anyone. His letters were bundled and tied with a purple ribbon, hidden at the bottom of her middle desk drawer, tucked underneath the piles of stationery she used for her many letters.

He was her secret. Hers.

And because she’d never actually met him, she’d been able to create him in her mind, using his letters as the bones and then fleshing him out as she saw fit. If ever there was a perfect man, surely it had to be the Sir Phillip Crane of her imagination.

And now he wanted to meet? Meet? Was he mad? And ruin what had to be the perfect courtship?

But then the impossible had occurred. Penelope Featherington, Eloise’s closest friend for nearly a dozen years, had married. And what’s more, she’d married Colin. Eloise’s brother!

If the moon had suddenly dropped from the sky and landed in her back garden, Eloise could not have been more surprised.

Eloise was happy for Penelope. Truly, she was. And she was happy for Colin, too. They were quite possibly her two most favorite people in the entire world, and she was thrilled that they had found happiness. No one deserved it more.

But that didn’t mean that their marriage hadn’t left a hollow spot in her life.

She supposed that when she’d been considering her life as a spinster, and trying to convince herself that it was what she really wanted, Penelope had always been there in the image, spinster right beside her. It was acceptable—almost daring, even—to be twenty-eight and unmarried as long as Penelope was twenty-eight and unmarried, as well. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted Penelope to find a husband; it was just that it had never seemed even the least bit likely. Eloise knew that Penelope was wonderful and kind and smart and witty, but the gentlemen of the ton had never seemed to notice. In all her years in society—eleven in all—Penelope had not received one proposal of marriage. Nor even a whiff of interest.

In a way, Eloise had counted on her to remain where she was, what she was—first and foremost, Eloise’s friend. Her companion in spinsterhood.

And the worst part—the part that left Eloise wracked with guilt—was that she’d never given a thought to how Penelope might feel if she married first, which, in truth, she’d always supposed she would do.

But now Penelope had Colin, and Eloise could see that the match was a splendid thing. And she was alone. Alone in the middle of crowded London, in the middle of a large and loving family.

It was hard to imagine a lonelier spot.

Suddenly Sir Phillip’s bold proposal—tucked away at the very bottom of her bundle, at the bottom of the middle drawer, locked away in a newly purchased safebox, just so that Eloise wouldn’t be tempted to look at it six times a day—well, it seemed a bit more intriguing.

More intriguing by the day, frankly, as she grew more and more restless, more dissatisfied with the lot in life that she had to admit she’d chosen.

And so one day, after she’d gone to visit Penelope, only to be informed by the butler that Mr. and Mrs. Bridgerton were not able to receive visitors (uttered in such a way that even Eloise knew what it meant), she made a decision. It was time to take her life into her own hands, time to control her destiny, rather than attending ball after ball in the vain hope that the perfect man would suddenly materialize before her, never mind that there was never anybody new in London, and after a full decade out in society, she’d already met everyone of the appropriate age and gender to marry.

She told herself that this did not mean she had to marry Sir Phillip; she was merely investigating what seemed like it might be an excellent possibility. If they did not suit, they would not have to marry; she’d made no promises to him, after all.

But if there was one thing about Eloise, it was that when she made a decision, she acted upon it quickly. No, she reflected with a rather impressive (in her opinion, at least) display of self-honesty, there were two things about her that colored her every action—she liked to act quickly and she was tenacious. Penelope had once described her as akin to a dog with a bone.

And Penelope had not been joking.

Once Eloise got her claws into an idea, not even the full force of the Bridgerton family could sway her from her intended goal. (And the Bridgertons constituted a mighty force, indeed.) It was probably just dumb luck that her goals and those of her family had never crossed purposes before, at least not over anything important.

Eloise knew that they would never countenance her going off blindly to meet a man she’d never met. Anthony would have probably demanded that Sir Phillip come to London to meet the entire family en masse, and Eloise couldn’t imagine a single scenario more likely to scare off a prospective suitor. The men who’d previously sought her favor were at least familiar with the London scene and knew what they were getting into; poor Sir Phillip, who had—by his own admission in his letters—not set foot in London since his school days, and never participated in the social season, would be ambushed.

So the only option was for her to travel to Gloucestershire, and, as she came to realize after pondering the problem for a few days, she had to do it in secret. If her family knew of her plans, they might very well forbid her to go. Eloise was a worthy opponent, and she might prevail in the end, but it would be a long and painful battle. Not to mention that if they did allow her to go, whether after a protracted battle over the subject or not, they would insist upon sending at least two of their ranks to accompany her.

Eloise shuddered. Those two would most probably be her mother and Hyacinth.

Good gad, no one could fall in love with those two around. No one could even form a mild but lasting attachment, which Eloise thought she might actually be willing to settle for this go-around.

She decided that she would make her escape during her sister Daphne’s ball. It was to be a grand affair, with hordes of guests, and just the right amount of noise and confusion to allow her absence to go unnoticed for a good six hours, maybe more. Her mother had always insisted that they be punctual—early, even—when a family member was hosting a social event, so they would surely arrive at Daphne’s no later than eight. If she slipped away early on, and the ball did not wind down until the wee hours of the morning... well, it would be nearly dawn before anyone realized she was gone, and she could be halfway to Gloucestershire.

And if not halfway, then far enough to ensure that they wouldn’t find it too terribly easy to follow her trail.

In the end, it had all proven almost frighteningly easy. Her entire family had been distracted by some grand announcement Colin planned to make, and so all she’d had to do was excuse herself to the ladies’ retiring room, slip out the back, and walk the short distance to her own home, where she’d hidden her bags in the back garden. From there, she needed only to walk to the corner, where she’d arranged to have a hired coach waiting.

Goodness, if she’d known it would be this easy to make her own way in the world, she would have done so years ago.

And now here she was, rolling toward Gloucestershire, rolling toward destiny, she supposed—or hoped, she wasn’t sure which—with nothing but a few changes of clothing and a pile of letters written to her by a man she’d never met.

A man she hoped she could love.

It was thrilling.

No, it was terrifying.

It was, she reflected, quite possibly the most foolhardy thing she’d done in her life, and she had to admit that she’d made a few foolish decisions in her day.

Or it might just be her only chance at happiness.

Eloise grimaced. She was growing fanciful. That was a bad sign. She needed to approach this adventure with all the practicality and pragmatism with which she always tried to make her decisions. There was still time to turn around. What did she know about this man, really? He’d said quite a lot over the course of a year’s correspondence—

He was thirty years of age, two years her elder.

He had attended Cambridge and studied botany.

He had been married to her fourth cousin Marina for eight years, which meant that he’d been twenty-one at his wedding.

He had brown hair.

He had all of his teeth.

He was a baronet.

He lived at Romney Hall, a stone structure built in the eighteenth century near Tetbury, Gloucestershire.

He liked to read scientific treatises and poetry but not novels and definitely not works of philosophy.

He liked the rain.

His favorite color was green.

He had never traveled outside of England.

He did not like fish.

Eloise fought a bubble of nervous laughter. He didn’t like fish? That was what she knew about him?

“Surely a sound basis for marriage,” she muttered to herself, trying to ignore the panic in her voice.

And what did he know about her? What could have possibly led him to propose marriage to a total stranger?

She tried to recall what she had included in her many letters—

She was twenty-eight.

She had brown hair (chestnut, really) and all of her teeth.

She had gray eyes.

She came from a large and loving family.

Her brother was a viscount.

Her father had died when she was but a child, incomprehensibly brought down by a humble bee sting.

She had a tendency to talk too much. (Good God, had she really put that into writing?)

She liked to read poetry and novels but certainly not scientific treatises or works of philosophy.

She had traveled to Scotland, but that was all.

Her favorite color was purple.

She did not like mutton and positively detested blood pudding.

Another little burst of panicked laughter passed over her lips. Put that way, she thought with no small bit of sarcasm, she seemed a fine catch indeed.

She glanced out the window, as if that might possibly give her an indication as to where they were on the road from London to Tetbury.

Rolling green hills looked like rolling green hills looked like rolling green hills, and she could be in Wales, for all she knew.

Frowning, she looked down at the paper in her lap and refolded Sir Phillip’s letter. Fitting it back into the ribbon-tied bundle she kept in her valise, she then tapped her fingers against her thighs in a nervous gesture.

She had reason to be nervous.

She had left home and all that was familiar, after all.

She was traveling halfway across England, and no one knew.

No one.

Not even Sir Phillip.

Because in her haste to leave London, she’d neglected to tell him she was coming. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten; rather, she’d sort of... pushed the task aside until it was too late.

If she told him, then she was committed to the plan. This way, she still had the chance to back out at any moment. She told herself it was because she liked to have choices and options, but the truth was, she was quite simply terrified, and she had feared a total loss of her courage.

Besides, he was the one who had requested the meeting. He would be happy to see her.

Wouldn’t he?

Phillip rose from bed and pulled open the draperies in his bedchamber, revealing another perfect, sunny day.

Perfect.

He padded over to his dressing room to find some clothes, having long since dismissed the servants who used to perform these duties. He couldn’t explain it, but after Marina had died, he hadn’t wanted anyone bustling into his bedroom in the morning, yanking open his curtains, and selecting his garments.

He’d even dismissed Miles Carter, who had tried so hard to be a friend after Marina’s passing. But somehow the young secretary just made him feel worse, and so he’d sent him on his way, along with six months’ pay and a superb letter of reference.

He’d spent his marriage with Marina looking for someone to talk to, since she was so often absent, but now that she was gone, all he wanted was his own company.

He supposed he must have alluded to this in one of his many letters to the mysterious Eloise Bridgerton, because he had sent off his proposal of not-quite-marriage-but-maybe-something-leading-up-to-it over a month ago, and the silence on her part had been deafening, especially since she usually responded to his letters with charming alacrity.

He frowned. The mysterious Eloise Bridgerton wasn’t really so mysterious. In her letters she seemed quite open and honest and possessed of a positively sunny disposition, which, when it all came down to it, was all he really insisted upon in a wife this time around.

He yanked on a work shirt; he planned to spend most of the day in the greenhouse, up to his elbows in dirt. He was rather disappointed that Miss Bridgerton had obviously decided he was some sort of deranged lunatic to be avoided at all costs. She had seemed the perfect solution to his problems. He desperately needed a mother for Amanda and Oliver, but they’d grown so unmanageable that he couldn’t imagine any woman willingly agreeing to cleave unto him in marriage and thus bind herself to those two little devils for life (or at least until they reached majority).

Miss Bridgerton was eight and twenty, however; quite obviously a spinster. And she’d been corresponding with a complete stranger for over a year; surely she was a little desperate? Wouldn’t she appreciate the chance to find a husband? He had a home, a respectable fortune, and was only thirty years of age. What more could she want?

He muttered several annoyed phrases as he thrust his legs into his rough woolen trousers. Obviously she wanted something more, else she would have had the courtesy to at least write back and decline.

THUMP!

Phillip glanced up at the ceiling and grimaced. Romney Hall was old and solid and very well built, and if his ceiling was thumping, then his children had dropped (pushed? hurled?) something very large indeed.

THUMP!

He winced. That one sounded even worse. Still, their nurse was up there with them, and she always managed them better than he did. If he could just get his boots on in under a minute, he could be out of the house before they inflicted too much more damage, and thus he could pretend none of it was happening.

He reached for his boots. Yes, excellent idea. Out of earshot, out of mind.

He donned the rest of his ensemble with impressive speed and dashed out into the hall, making quick strides toward the stairs.

“Sir Phillip! Sir Phillip!”

Damn. His butler was after him now.

Phillip pretended he didn’t hear.

“Sir Phillip!”

“Curse it,” he muttered. There was no way he could ignore that bellow unless he was willing to suffer the torture of his servants hovering over him, concerned about his apparent hearing loss.

“Yes,” he said, turning around slowly, “Gunning?”

“Sir Phillip,” Gunning said, clearing his throat. “We have a caller.”

“A caller?” Phillip echoed. “Was that the source of the, ah...”

“Noise?” Gunning supplied helpfully.

“Yes.”

“No.” The butler cleared his throat. “That would have been your children.”

“I see,” Phillip murmured. “How silly of me to have hoped otherwise.”

“I don’t believe they broke anything, sir.”

“That’s a relief and a change.”

“Indeed, sir, but there is the caller to consider.”

Phillip groaned. Who on earth was visiting at this time of the morning? It wasn’t like they were used to receiving callers even during reasonable hours.

Gunning attempted a smile, but one could see that he was out of practice. “We used to have callers, do you recall?”

That was the problem with butlers who’d worked for the family since before one was born. They tended to think highly of sarcasm.

“Who is this caller?”

“I’m not entirely certain, sir.”

“You’re not certain?” Phillip asked disbelievingly.

“I didn’t inquire.”

“Isn’t that what butlers are meant to do?”

“Inquire, sir?”

“Yes,” Phillip ground out, wondering if Gunning was trying to see how red in the face his employer could get without actually collapsing to the floor in an apoplectic fit.

“I thought I’d let you inquire, sir.”

“You thought you’d let me inquire.” This one came out as a statement, Phillip having realized the futility of asking questions.

“Yes, sir. She’s here to see you, after all.”

“So are all of our callers, and that has never stopped you from ascertaining their identities before.”

“Well, actually, sir—”

“I’m quite certain—” Phillip tried to interrupt.

“We don’t have callers, sir,” Gunning finished, quite clearly winning the conversational battle.

Phillip opened his mouth to point out that they did have callers, there was one downstairs that very moment; but really, what was the point? “Fine,” he said, thoroughly irritated. “I’ll go downstairs.”

Gunning beamed. “Excellent, sir.”

Phillip stared at his butler in shock. “Are you unwell, Gunning?”

“No, sir. Why do you ask, sir?”

It didn’t seem quite polite to point out that the broad smile made Gunning look a bit like a horse, so Phillip just muttered, “It’s nothing,” and headed down the stairs.

A caller? Who would be calling? No one had come to visit in nearly a year, since the neighbors had finished making their obligatory condolence calls. He supposed he couldn’t really blame them for staying away; the last time one of them had come to visit, Oliver and Amanda had smeared strawberry jam on the chairs.

Lady Winslet had left in a fit of temper quite beyond anything Phillip would have thought healthy for a woman of her years.

Phillip frowned as he reached the bottom of the stairs and turned into the entry hall. It was a she, wasn’t it? Hadn’t Gunning said his visitor was a she?

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.