Page 70 of Scandalous Nights With the Earl

The stairs were steep and narrow and the way was dark. When they reached the top the woman, Mrs Withers knocked on the door and then opened it.

‘I shall leave you with Mrs St Claire, sir. She has requested for privacy.’

Phillip took three steps and saw Willa sitting on the bed, so much thinner than she had been when he’d last seen her in London and so very pale. She looked broken and beaten and crushed.

‘What happened to your face?’ Her first words startled him.

‘I was in a fight with Simon St Claire.’

A slight smile crossed her face. ‘But you dealt with him.’

‘I did. He has taken back all his accusations against you and apologised. He has returned to his home in the north and I have warned him that I never want to see him again. I think he understood the true extent of my feelings and will venture nowhere near London or Hampshire again.’

She nodded and looked away and Phillip did not quite know what to say next. Wilhelmina looked so ill and brittle and so very small.

‘I have been sick.’ Her words were soft.

‘I can see.’

She nodded again. There was a window beside her bed looking over the river. This reunion was nothing like the one he had imagined.

‘How did you find me?’

‘I went to visit the McAllistair sisters and the sister with the glasses told me she had had a dream that you were in a house overlooking a river port with wooded hills behind it. She was very convincing.’

His glance went to the view and he saw exactly what the old lady had imagined in her dream.

‘That is Mildred.’

‘Why did you did not wish to see me yesterday, or did you not receive the message?’ He said this quietly in an attempt to understand her reasoning.

‘I thought it was Simon St Claire who had come to call.’

Phillip crossed the room to be nearer to her but still he could not touch her. ‘I gave my name.’

‘The woman you spoke to, Mrs Withers, gave me a sleeping draught after I fainted and so I only learnt of your visit much later when I woke. A boy was dispatched to Hastings this morning with a note.’

She spoke slowly, none of her usual spark on display.

‘Why did you run, Willa? Why did you tell me that our relationship had to end? Why did you not trust me enough to protect you?’

Her hand came up to her mouth and she bit at a nail. ‘Because no one before you ever has, and I did not wish to ruin your life.’

‘Will you come home to Elmsworth Manor with me? It will be safe there.’

‘Yes.’

He could see that she was exhausted, the dark rings under her eyes a further worry. He would not hurry her and burden her with all the arrangements he was mulling over in his head to get her back to Hampshire. Instead he only said a little of it.

‘I will leave you now to find us a way to get home. I will return around the lunch hour.’

‘You promise you will come back?’

‘I do.’

At this she lay down and closed her eyes, and within a moment she was sleeping.

When Willa woke again she thought seeing him an hour ago might have been a dream. Phillip had been here, she told herself, but, seeing the expression on his face, she knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that she looked awful and was trying his very best to hide his shock. He was thinking that she was only a shadow of the sensual woman he had known not too many weeks ago and he did not quite know what to say. He was unsure of her and tentative. He had not come close at all.