To Sir Phillip, With Love

You will always be a Bridgerton, and we behave with honor and honesty, not because it is expected of us, but because that is what we are

“I need you,” he said hoarsely, pulling her dress from her body with shaking fingers. “I need you like I need breath. I need you like food, like water.”

As for him, he required less than a minute in the washroom to find his release; he was wound that tight from his encounter with Eloise.

“And then,” Benedict was saying as Anthony and Eloise reentered the dining room, “the tavern wench arrived and she had the biggest—”
“Benedict!” Eloise exclaimed.
Benedict looked over at his sister with a supremely guilty expression, yanked back his hands, which were demonstrating the size of what was clearly an impossibly endowed female, and muttered, “Sorry.”
“You’re married,” Eloise scolded.
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“But not blind,” Colin said with a grin.
“You’re married, too!” she accused.
“But not blind,” he said again.
“Eloise,” Gregory said with what was quite possibly the most annoying use of condescension she’d ever had cause to hear, “there are some things that are impossible not to see. Especially,” he added, “when you’re a man.”

e shot her a superior look. “You’d be surprised what men can deduce about one another while fighting.”

“I didn’t love my wife when I married her,” he continued, “or,” he added, his voice growing a bit softer, more gruff and nostalgic, “if I did, I did not yet realize it.”
Eloise nodded. “Y

nthony nodded, digesting that fact, and the fact that she knew it. “If you tell me that he’s a cruel man, that he will beat you, that he will insult you and demean you, I will not force your hand. But before you speak, I want you to consider my words.
You are a Bridgerton. I don’t care who you marry or what your name becomes when you stand up before a priest and say your vows. You will always be a Bridgerton, and we behave with honor and honesty, not because it is expected of us, but because that is what we are.”

Brothers. He should have considered that. It was probably best to avoid courting a woman with brothers.

is free hand found the small of her back, and he pulled her to him, slowly but surely, with a firmness she could not deny. And then he touched her chin and tilted her face to his, stopping only to whisper her name before capturing her mouth in a kiss that was blinding in its intensity. He was hungry, needy, and he kissed her as if he would die without her, as if she were his very food, his air, his body and soul.

The man I spent the evening with last night,”