#philipcore

Lord Harrowby’s London study was quiet when the earl, weighed down by his desire to escape the city and a belly that threatened his buttons in a way Sarah, Lady Harrowby, had not seen in…well, months, arrived after sundown.

Seeming to anticipate that the room would not be empty when he entered it, he declared, “I could hardly afford myself an afternoon off.”

He stripped himself of his jacket and draped it over his desk, then turned and strode—sauntered, rather, belly swaying opposite the rest of his body by force of gravity alone—to settle on the loveseat by the small hearth, which was framed by a pair of bookshelves joined by a wooden arch with a handpainted inlay. Sarah reached for her husband, for she had anticipated him and, thus, placed herself in the best position to disrupt his work.

Alone. With her hair down. Wearing the day dress that had the most daring neckline in her wardrobe.

Philip gathered her in his arms and breathed deeply once his nose was buried in her hair. “Would you kindly beg me to take you home?”

Sarah smiled into his neck, warm because of his wool scarf and his natural insulation alike. “May we go to Sandon, husband?”

He made a noise like a dying animal. “Would that I could…”

She knew there was far too much to be done before the end of the year, and unfortunate as it was, business moved faster in London than it did in Sandon. So, instead, she pressed her mouth against his chin once, twice, three times—trailing her way up to his ear, the lobe of which she briefly closed her lips over.

“You’ve missed a meal.”

“I have not,” he bickered, although he sounded immediately interested and instantly aware that Sarah was offering a game.

Clever husband. Wonderful man.

“I’ve asked for drinking chocolate,” she informed him, “and, one mustn’t have a drink without something small to eat with it.”

Pressing his cheek against her crown, Philip sounded amused when he agreed, “Certainly not in this house. Ah—it’s here already?”

“I do follow your schedule.”

Philip had arranged the whole afternoon rather smartly, he thought: as soon as the snow in Sandon had fallen hard enough for a proper ride along the meandering River Trent, he herded his wife and sisters-in-law to a barn belonging to the Trotshams—one of the young tenant families—where a small restoration project had been hiding all autumn long.

“Sleds!” Phoebe had exclaimed, overjoyed when Mr. Trotsham showed the young girls a pair of single-seat, polished-wood sleds with curving blades shined to gleaming, steel perfection. While Maybelle and Emmeline gathered around Phoebe, Sarah drifted, and Philip was very pleased with where she had gone.

“This is what you have been working on,” she said once she felt him wander up behind her. “I knew you could not have been only planting all season. I’m glad to see you had time for woodworking.”

Philip admitted to himself that it had been a challenge to make time for projects in between summer tasks at the estate and with the tenants, and with the headache Mr. Vane had caused when Philip bullied him into releasing his iron-fisted hold on the girls’ guardianship.

There were times when he kept how tired he was to himself.

But when Trostham opened up the old, then-rotting barn with the mind to restore it to house goats, none of the men helping with the project expected to find the building already occupied.

Sarah ran her hand over the shiny, green-painted wall of the tall, low-sided sleigh, from which two iron lanterns hung and beneath which ornate, filigree blades, painted red, were attached. Philip did not find himself particularly good at painting fine details when he attempted to add holly and berries along the corners, but when Sarah’s hand traced the curving leaves and swirls of red berries, he could no longer fret that it wasn’t good enough.

The sleigh, needing two horses, sat two on a cushioned seat, and there was room in the back for luggage—or a picnic basket, which Philip had brought along and reached to set inside. “Trotsham hopes to offer rides in Sandon and Salt.”

“And you hope we’ll be the first?”

Philip shrugged. “He offered.”

Already reaching to balance her hands on the sleigh’s edge and lift herself up, Sarah laughed. “I am sure you already had it in mind.”

While the girls frolicked off and Trotsham hurried to fetch the stableboy and pair of horses, Philip stepped behind Sarah to help her up, then lifted himself to sit beside her. It was a tight squeeze at once, and although he tried to compact himself, to offer her as much space as his damned winter weight would allow—Sarah scooted closer with every measure of space he gave her.

“Sweetheart,” he chided.

She blinked, the picture of innocence. “Pardon?”

“I am trying to give you room.”

“Oh.” She looked between the two of them, where there was no space at all. Indeed, when the cold settled in, more weight than he previously thought possible settled upon him. What had previously been powerful thighs, a solid belly, and a broad chest-and-shoulders had since swelled: his belly now dipped onto said thighs, even when he was standing, and struggled against his every waistcoat such that he felt perpetually packed into nearly every garment he owned. His thighs pillowed, weight settling both up and sideways to now pin a stray fold of Sarah’s dress underneath him. Philip had thought discomfort trumped however much she liked this—evidenced by the longing looks she gave him at nearly every meal—but the look on her face was that of the softest kind of delight. “Why should I want room when I could have your comfortable, warm embrace instead, dearest?”

Philip exhaled swiftly. Well, then. “I shall never understand it.”

As was their habit, Misses Maybelle and Emily Vane slid out of their beds and into Miss Phoebe’s. Their afternoon had been tense and terrible, and nothing soothed a girl’s nerves quite like time with sisters most beloved.

Emily was the first to do so. After waiting anxiously for their shared lady’s maid to be quite finished with her—she was always last—she gathered up her night rail and scurried right across the hall. There, she declared, “I need help with my plait.”

Phoebe, halfway finished with her own, simply sighed in the way that sisters did when they wanted to pretend the thing they were asked to do was not as much of a pleasure as it really was. “Someday, you must do it on your own.”

Emily shook her head. Not tonight, she would not.

Maybelle joined them with her hair already finished, twirled up atop her head in a looping plait that kept her thick, mid-brown waves somewhat at bay.

“Ah,” she sighed, “last.”

Phoebe shrugged one shoulder, her fingers already twisting through Emily’s hair, while Maybelle tucked herself into the bed they would all inevitably share that night. “You know I had expected you both.”

“The servants gossip to Mama,” Maybelle returned. “I thought it was best to wait.”

“I did not,” Emily declared. After a pause, during which she decided she was finished with her hair before Phoebe actually was, she added in a softer tone, “I miss Sarah.”

Sarah was faster with plaits, for one. Her room was where they all typically hid, for another.

“She’s been gone for quite some time,” Maybelle soothed.

Well, that was true enough. There was the previous Lord Harrowby, and now the current Lord Harrowby. Emily wasn’t quite sure what she expected of her sister—a married woman, a widow, and now being courted again? Or engaged?

She sighed and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, then fell backwards atop Maybelle’s thighs. Sarah had always felt very, well, far from her, being her oldest sister and so much further along in her life. Her sister was on her way to a second husband, and she herself was not even out.

A hand settled on her forehead, and she swiftly looked up—only to find Maybelle’s ever-warm eyes on her. “We have all had a very long day, have we not?”

Phoebe slid under the covers beside Maybelle, scooting Emily out of the way with a gentle nudge of her foot that Emily would have called a kick had she been in less turmoiled spirits. “Not long enough. Had we given Lord Harrowby twenty-five instead of twenty-four hours…”

Emily huffed.

“We mustn’t put such stock in him,” Maybelle chided. “The last lord—”

“Did not look at Sarah like that.”

“—likely came from the very same conditions—”

“Which are not everything to a gentleman.”

“—and he did not endeavor to know us.”

Emily would have rathered listen to any conversation but this one. Sighing but receiving none of the attention she hoped to get from it, she sat up and crawled into bed on Maybelle’s other side.

“I like him,” she said. “He seems much gentler.”

“And handsomer,” Phoebe added. “The last one was rather…”

“Oh, don’t,” Maybelle sighed.

“Emaciated.”

“Frail.”

“Cold.”

“Brooding.”

“Distant.”

In a flash, Maybelle dragged the sheets up to cover all three of them, purposefully pressing them against her sisters’ mouths. “Yes, we all know the previous Lord Harrowby was a frigid excuse of a man who drained all light and life from our sister. He is gone. We do not speak ill of the dead. We also do not know the new Lord Harrowby.”

A pause.

Then, Phoebe said, “My first thought about him was that he is twice the man the last earl was—in size. Is that rather terrible?”

“Yes,” both Maybelle and Emily said at once.

They had each noticed that, though. It was absolutely not a thing one remarked upon, but in the confidence of sisters most beloved…

A thoughtful quiet settled over the girls. 

Emily was too young to awaken to certain feelings about the opposite sex—beyond whispers of wonders and a modicum of curiosity here or there. Certainly, she felt nothing for the stranger her sister had claimed would be their new brother-in-law, other than the fact that he seemed quite intent on saving all of them.

She did not dream of being saved, exactly. She did not dream of anything. Her life was as it was, and she did not know any different.

Even she could not deny the feeling of safety projected by the very large man who professed his care for them with actions, not words. Her own father never did such a thing in any meaningful way that she could recall.

Moreover, a tiny, fragile part of her she did not know existed until that afternoon only wanted…

Well, she wondered what a hug, a familial one, might feel like. She and her sisters embraced often. Her parents patted her head or held her elbow. But she thought of Lord Harrowby and all his stature, and she was alarmed by the instant thought that she wanted to fall against him and sob.

She rolled onto her side and reached over Maybelle to prod Phoebe. “Is all you have for him judgement?”

“Judgement? No, that was a compliment. He is both handsome and twice the man the late earl was.” Phoebe looked surprised. Then, curiously, she blushed and cleared her throat. “Perhaps the difference is what makes him so… I— Rather, he has a kindness about him.”

“Oh, please.”

“He does!” She insisted, but the color on her face drifted down her neck, too. Being older, Phoebe was quite voraciously aware of the broad strokes that made up the opposite sex. Emily had previously thought she only whispered to her, pointing out a gentleman’s stature or thighs or facial hair, to get a rise out of her.

But, oh, her sister was learning what she was attracted to.

Horrifying.

Emily hoped there was a long, long time before she ever faced that reality of womanhood.

In the face of not knowing what to say, anyone who knew Phoebe knew, she chose to instead say absolutely everything. “I only thought it was rather bold for a gentleman to be quite so large. He was imposing, standing near Father, was he not? One look at him, and— Well, I think anyone at all would have difficulty telling him no.”

Emily pursed her lips, filled her cheeks with air, and sighed. That time, Phoebe reached over to prod her, and she squirmed away. “I rather like men telling Father no.”

Maybelle made a noise in her quiet way, and she stared up at the eggshell-colored ceiling when she said, “I rather like how Sarah looks at him.”

Both Phoebe and Emily quieted, knowing Maybelle had more to say than just that, but also that she would not continue if she was interrupted.

“She loves him,” she concluded. “Truly. She never once looked at the late earl unless she had to, but Lord Harrowby… She looks because she is fond of doing so, because she is fond of him.”

Beneath the sheets, she found each of her sisters’ hands. Their fingers wound together and squeezed hard enough for their missing fourth. Deep down, they each hoped she felt it.

They each wanted that fondness for themselves, they knew, and they still held the hope that they would someday find it. For now, however, it was enough—more than enough—to tuck into bed with the knowledge that their sister loved and was loved.

Of all the fortunate and unfortunate accidents of Philip’s scheme to seduce the widow, this was one he had not considered.

Looking himself in the mirror in the earl’s dressing room, he stood with one hand on his hip and the other, curled into a fist, pressed against his mouth. He puffed his cheeks out—perhaps, he had to admit, to distract from the fact that they had begun to puff on their own of late—and the buttons on his trousers undone.

This was not, he also had to admit, the first time he looked at himself in such a way. How many mornings had he dragged himself out of some gutter, fountain, bawd’s bed, or otherwise, only to look at his own reflection and wonder how on Earth he arrived here?

But, really. How on Earth had he arrived here?

His belly, which he had been forcibly nurturing for the last several weeks, spilled from the gap between his trousers’ halves, which he could not close.

Indeed, his force-feeding of himself had paid off to the effect of clothing that now pleaded no more, lest they burst a seam.

Would Lady Harrowby enjoy seeing that, he wondered?

And then, he wondered if he could manufacture such a scene—for her benefit, of course. Which, he knew, was also to his benefit, because the less Lady Harrowby could resist him, the faster he would be able to get on with his life.

Twisting because that seemed the right thing to do, he grasped each half of fabric with as much force as he could. The seam on his opposite hip groaned in protest. The waistband nipped into his flesh such that he first grimaced, then gritted his teeth and sucked his belly in as best he could. When he did, the little paunch that was now his own flattened only marginally, curling into a sweet little dimple beneath his navel.

He briefly imagined Lady Harrowby biting it.

Biting down on his tongue, now, he first got the trousers within a thumb’s width of closing before releasing them, huffing, puffing, and taking a quick stride around the pokey little dressing room.

When he returned to the mirror, he planted both hands on his hips and lifted the paunch. Brow furrowed, he examined it, familiarizing himself with it and the fact that it was, indeed, his. It belonged to him.

Rather, it was him.

He gave it a tender squeeze. Even the linen of his shirt would have bunched had he done that mere weeks ago, but it, too, coquettishly kissed his skin in ways it never had before. Though it was nowhere near the problem of the trousers, it still stretched flat in a way to which he was not accustomed.

Perhaps if he fastened the trousers beneath his belly, at least until they were let out?