“Not at all,” he replied, “but one can—” He stopped, craned his neck a bit. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Eloise answered, but as the words left her lips, she heard what Phillip must have heard. Argumentative voices, growing louder by the second. Heavy footfall.

A forceful stream of invective was followed by a yelp of terror that could only have come from the butler . . .

And then Eloise knew.

“Oh, dear God,” she said, her grip on her spoon growing slack until the soup dribbled off, splashing back into her bowl.

“What the devil?” Phillip asked, standing up, obviously preparing to defend his home against invasion.

Except that he had no idea what sort of invaders he was about to face. What sort of annoying, meddlesome, and diabolical invaders he was going to have to meet in, oh, approximately ten seconds.

But Eloise did. And she knew that annoying, meddlesome, and diabolical meant nothing compared to furious, unreasonable, and downright large when it came to Phillip’s imminent safety.

“Eloise?” Phillip asked, his brows shooting up when they both heard someone bellow her name.

She felt the blood drain from her body. Positively felt it, knew it had happened, even though she couldn’t see it pooling about her feet. There was no way she could survive a moment such as this, no way she could make it through without killing someone, preferably someone to whom she was quite closely related.

She stood, her fingers gripping the table. The footsteps (which, to be honest, sounded rather like a rabid horde) grew closer.

“Someone you know?” Phillip asked, quite mildly for someone who was about to face his demise.

She nodded, and somehow managed to eke out the words: “My brothers.”

It occurred to Phillip (as he was pinned up against the wall with two sets of hands around his throat) that Eloise might have given him a bit more warning.

He didn’t need days, although that would have been nice, if still insufficient against the collective strength of four very large, very angry, and, from the looks of them, rather closely related men.

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

Four of them, to be precise.

Four. It was a wonder he wasn’t dead already.

“Anthony!” Eloise shrieked. “Stop!”

Anthony, or at least Phillip presumed he was Anthony—they hadn’t exactly bothered to go through the necessary introductions—tightened his grip on Phillip’s neck.

“Benedict,” Eloise pleaded, turning her attention to the largest of the lot. “Be reasonable.”

The other one—well, the other one squeezing his throat; there were two others, but they were just standing around glowering—loosened his grip slightly to turn around and look at Eloise.

Which was a huge mistake, since, in their haste to rip every limb from his body, none of them had yet looked at her long enough to see that she sported a nasty blackened eye.

Which of course they would think he was responsible for.

Benedict let out an unholy growl and jammed Phillip against the wall so tightly that his feet came off the ground.

Wonderful, Phillip thought. Now I really am going to die. The first squeeze was merely uncomfortable, but this . . .

“Stop!” Eloise yelled, hurling herself onto Benedict’s back and yanking his hair. Benedict howled as his head jerked backward, but unfortunately Anthony’s strangulatory grip held firm, even as Benedict was forced to let go to fight off Eloise.

Who was, Phillip noted as well as he could, given his lack of oxygen, fighting like a fury crossed with a banshee, crossed with Medusa herself. Her right hand was still pulling out Benedict’s hair, even as her left arm wrapped around his throat, with her forearm lodged quite neatly up under his chin.

“Good Christ,” Benedict cursed, whirling around as he tried to dislodge his sister. “Someone get her off of me!”

Not surprisingly, none of the other Bridgertons rushed to his aid. In fact, the one back against the wall looked rather amused by the whole thing.

Phillip’s vision began to curl and turn black at the edges, but he couldn’t help but admire Eloise’s fortitude. It was a rare woman who knew how to fight to win.

Anthony’s face suddenly appeared very close to his. “Did . . . you . . . hit her?” he growled.

As if he could speak, Phillip thought woozily.

“No!” Eloise cried out, momentarily taking her attention off tearing Benedict’s hair out. “Of course he didn’t hit me.”

Anthony looked over at her with a sharp expression as she resumed pummeling Benedict. “There’s no of course about it.”

“It was an accident,” she insisted. “He had nothing to do with it.” And then, when none of her brothers made any indication that they believed her, she added, “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Do you really think that I would defend someone who’d struck me?”

That seemed to do the trick, and Anthony abruptly let go of Phillip, who promptly sagged to the floor, gasping for breath.

Four of them. Had she told him she had four brothers? Surely not. He would never have considered marriage to a woman with four brothers. Only a fool would shackle himself to such a family.

“What did you do to him?” Eloise demanded, jumping off Benedict and hurrying to Phillip’s side.

“What did he do to you?” one of the other brothers demanded. The one who, Phillip realized, had punched him in the chin right before the others had decided to strangle him instead.

She shot him a scathing look. “What are you doing here?”