Storming the Castle

Eloisa James

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

About the Author

By Eloisa James

Kiss at Midnight

Cover

Front Sales

By Eloisa James

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

When Beauty Tamed the Beast

Cover

Front Sales

By Eloisa James

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The residence of

Phineas Damson, Esq.

Little Ha’penny, Lancashire

Late Spring

Not every fairy tale begins with a prince or a princess. Some begin with a kiss that turns a man into a frog, or a tumble on the road that turns a basket of eggs into scramble. They begin with the realization that what was once tall and handsome is now green and croaky.

My story belongs in that category, because it wasn’t until Miss Philippa Damson gave her virginity to her betrothed, Rodney Durfey, the future Sir Rodney Durfey, Baronet, that she realized exactly what she wanted from life:

Never to be near Rodney again.

It was unfortunate that she realized this significant point only now, standing in the barn and readjusting her petticoats after giving Rodney her most prized possession. But sometimes it takes a clear-eyed look at a man sprawled in the straw at your feet to realize just how you feel about him. One moment of weakness, ten minutes of discomfort, and now she was a woman. She felt different.

Meaner.

“Damn, that was nice,” Rodney said, making no attempt to straighten his clothing. “You’re as tight as a—” His imagination apparently failed him. “A lot tighter than my hand, anyway.”

Philippa wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you think you should get up now?”

“I waited so long that it took all the strength out of me. It isn’t every day that a man loses his virginity, you know.”

“Or a woman,” Philippa pointed out, using her fingers to comb bits of straw from her hair.

“My friends have been poking around from the moment they got a stand. You’re not innocent anymore, so it doesn’t matter if I’m blunt, I reckon. I saved myself for you. Didn’t want to get a disease.”

The etiquette her mother had taught her did not foresee this particular situation, but Philippa said, “Thank you.”

“If you aren’t the prettiest thing with your hair shining like that in the sunlight,” Rodney said, stretching. “I’m about ten times as much in love with you now, Philippa. And you know I’ve loved you ever since I saw you the first time, ever since—”

“Ever since you saw me in church when I was seven years old,” Philippa said drearily.

“You were like a little angel, and now you’re a bigger one. And your bosoms are heaven-sent, all right. Damn, but I could do that all day.” He reached toward Philippa’s ankle, and she moved back just in time. “Shall I climb up to your window tonight? I know you never let me before, but the banns have already been posted at St. Mary’s, so it seems as if—”

“No,” Philippa stated. “Absolutely not. And you should cover yourself. What if one of the stable hands returns?”

Rodney peered down at the limp pinkish thing he called his own. It was draped across his thigh in a way that made Philippa feel positively ill. “I bet I’m the biggest man you’ve ever seen.”

Philippa rolled her eyes and started braiding her hair.

“ ’Course you never saw anyone else,” he added. “I know that. You were a virgin all right. Of course you were. I had to force my way, you know.”

She did know, and the recollection made her grind her teeth.

“Though I did right by you too,” Rodney said, as oblivious as ever.

“You did what?”

“Didn’t you notice when I tiddle-taddled you?” he asked. “Diddled you right where I was supposed to, giving you women’s pleasure. I expect we’ll be making love two or three times a day in the next year. I expect we won’t even get out of bed in the next few weeks. Not even to eat. My daddy planted me in the very first week of his marriage, and I aim to keep to the tradition.”

If Philippa hadn’t already made up her mind, that would have done it.

She was not going to marry Rodney Durfey. Even though he had told the whole village at age nine that he would marry her or no one. Even though she had spent her girlhood being complimented by those who thought she was the luckiest girl in the world.

Even though she had given him her virginity, which rendered her, for all intents and purposes, unmarriageable.

Just at the moment, she had absolutely no problem with that idea.

“I’m leaving, Rodney,” she said.

“Won’t you kiss me good-bye?” he said, his blue eyes still hazy.

“No.”

And she walked out, feeling—as her nursemaid would have said—meaner than a barnyard dog. As she walked away, she realized that it wasn’t an entirely new sensation. She’d been a little angry at Rodney for a long time.

After he’d made his famous declaration in St. Mary’s Church, Little Ha’penny, no boy ever looked at her twice. She was “that lucky Damson miss,” destined to be the next Lady Durfey. What’s more, no one ever asked her what she thought about Rodney, about his pale blue eyes, or his round buttocks, or the way he looked at her heaven-sent bosom.

Her mother had died the summer before, clutching Philippa’s hand and repeating how glad she was that her little girl was taken care of. Her father had told her over and over that he was grateful to have been spared the expense and bother of a Bath season or—even more onerous—a trip to London to be sponsored into society by her godmother.

The Damsons and the Durfeys had always celebrated Yuletide together and walked to the front of church together at Easter. When both ladies in their respective families passed away . . . well, Sir George and Mr. Damson, Esq., simply kept trudging side by side as they had before.

Their children’s marriage would place Damson land in the hands of the baronet, which everyone, including Philippa’s father, agreed was a good idea.

“My land runs alongside his,” he had told her once, when Philippa complained that Rodney had stolen her doll and chopped off its head. “You two will be married someday, and this is the boy’s way of showing affection. You should be happy to see how that lad adores you.”

Everyone had always told her just how she should feel, from the time she was seven years old: lucky, special, celebrated, and beautiful.

Now, though, she felt nauseated.

She also felt like running away. Her father would never understand if she told him that she’d changed her mind about marrying Rodney. It wasn’t as if she could claim Rodney was cruel, or bestial, or even unlikable.

And the moment her father found out what had just happened in the barn—which he would, because Rodney would stop at nothing to marry her—he would deliver her to the altar no matter how fervent her protests.

No, if she wanted to escape Rodney, she would have to run away.

She took a deep breath. Why on earth couldn’t she have figured this out yesterday rather than after that unpleasant episode in the barn? She’d never granted Rodney more than kisses until this afternoon. Instead, she had drifted along like a twig caught in a stream, not really visualizing her life with Rodney. The nights with Rodney.

But now . . . there might be a baby. She walked back to her family’s trim house, so different from the garish brick monstrosity that was Durfey Manor, worrying about the possibility.

She loved babies; she always tried to steal away from tea parties and find her way to the nursery. What’s more, she had spent her happiest hours with her uncle, a doctor in Cheshire, who allowed her to accompany him as he ministered to village children.

Still, it was that possible baby who posed the greatest dilemma. She wasn’t sentimental about the life of servants. She couldn’t condemn Rodney’s child to a life of servitude, which is what her life was bound to be if she was with child but nevertheless fled her intended marriage.

Her mind was spinning like a whirligig in the wind. Finally, she made a decision: She would leave it up to fate. If there was a baby, she would resign herself. Walk down that aisle, smile, become Lady Durfey. She shuddered at the thought.

But if not . . . she’d steal freedom.

That very night, she discovered that Rodney had failed to “plant” anything, to use his repulsive terminology.

Philippa was still thinking about what it meant, and what she would do next, when she realized that Betty, the upstairs maid, was chattering on and on about a castle. Elsewhere in England, people undoubtedly talked of the great castles of Windsor and Edinburgh, but around Little Ha’penny, there was only one castle worth discussing: Pomeroy. It stood on the other side of the great forest, its turrets just tall enough to be visible on a clear day. For years, Philippa had stared out her window and dreamed of a knight in shining armor who would ride through town and fall in love with her, sweeping her onto the back of his steed and taking her away.

Away from Rodney, she now realized.

No knight in shining armor ever came; in fact, the castle had been unoccupied and neglected for years until a real prince moved there a couple of years ago. He was a foreigner, from some place in Europe.

As in a real fairy tale, the prince hadn’t lived in Pomeroy Castle long before he fell in love and married a princess. Or an heiress, at the least. No one really knew for sure because Little Ha’penny was far away from the polite world. Although Rodney puffed out his chest and boasted about his father’s connections, the fact was that Sir George Durfey was the sort of man who stayed very close to home. He’d even kept his son home with a tutor rather than send him off to Eton.

“It’s not good for the lad to be so provincial,” her father had remarked, years ago. Phineas Damson, Esq., was the only other gentleman in the area, though, and if the truth be told, he wasn’t all that interested in Sir George, nor in his future son-in-law. What Papa liked was to investigate battles. He spent the better part of his days in his study, surrounded by maps of places like Spain and Egypt, painstakingly translating accounts of Greek battles.

In short, no one knew anything about the castle and its royal occupants, and in keeping with their provincial outlook, most of the goodly inhabitants of Little Ha’penny had lost interest once the Prussian prince moved in.

“I’m sorry, Betty,” Philippa said, “could you tell me that again? About the princess, I mean?”

“Well,” Betty said importantly, “I was just saying what I heard from Mrs. Pickle, who heard it from the coachman of the morning mail.”

“And?”

“She had a baby. The princess that is, not Mrs. Pickle.”

“Oh,” Philippa said. “Very nice.”

“You’ll be having one soon enough,” Betty said comfortably. “One only has to take a look at the young master’s good, strong thighs to know that he’s all man, if you know what I mean. At any rate, this baby up at the castle cries all the time. Has the collywobbles, like my cousin’s second. I shouldn’t wonder if it will die. Some of them can’t take milk, and they just fade away.”

Philippa’s lips tightened. “Only if people insist on giving them cow’s milk as a substitute.”

“Well, my point is that the child isn’t doing so well,” Betty said. “The coachman said that he’d dropped off a footman in Manchester who is supposed to round up nursemaids and doctors, as many as he can find.”

“They must be desperate,” Philippa said.

“The baby’s a prince. ’Course they’re desperate. He’ll inherit the castle someday, though not if he’s dead.”

It was that easy. Philippa packed a small bag with her plainest clothes, and wrote a note to her papa. Then she made her way to what passed for a high street in the village and paid the old drunk, Fettle, who lay around in back of the Biscuit and Plow, to drive her to Bigger Ha’penny.

There she covered up her hair, which was distinctively silver-colored and therefore annoyingly recognizable, and bought a coach ticket to London. She hopped off in a bustling inn-yard in Lower Pomeroy, reasonably certain that with all the milling passengers, no one would notice that she didn’t get back on the coach.

An hour or so later, she was standing at the foot of Pomeroy Castle.

Chapter Two

Pomeroy Castle

Lancashire

Mr. Jonas Berwick, known to his half brother Gabriel as Wick, and to the castle at large as Mr. Berwick, the majordomo to Prince Gabriel Albrecht-Frederick William von Aschenberg of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld, was never at a loss for an answer. Well, rarely.

“What am I going to do?” Gabriel demanded again. His hair was standing on end, and under his eyes were dark circles that looked like bruises. “The baby cries, and then she cries, and—” He turned away abruptly, but not before Wick saw the gleam of something that looked like tears.

“Aw, hell, Gabe,” he said, reaching out and pulling his brother into his arms. “Your son is going to make it. You named him after me, and that alone will give him the balls to push on through.”

“He’s suffering,” Gabriel said flatly. “He pulls up his legs and he cries so desperately that it would make you ill to hear it.”

Wick knew. He kept breaking off his duties to dash up the stairs, to walk past the nursery, silently begging, praying that he wouldn’t hear his namesake crying in that desperate, pain-filled wail. “How is Kate?”

“Kate is Kate,” Gabriel said wearily. “She holds him, and she walks, then she cries, but she keeps walking. I can’t get her to sleep properly, and I’m sure it’s affecting her milk. And yet she will not allow him to be nursed by anyone else, not after the time when he cried all day after we tried a wet nurse. She’s convinced that because the poor woman reeked of garlic, her milk didn’t agree with the baby.”

“What does the new nursemaid say about it?”

“I just sent her away,” Gabriel said.

Wick made a mental note. He’d have to find the woman and pay her a week’s wages.

“I was decent about it,” Gabriel said, wearily running a hand through his hair. “I know it’s not her fault. But she kept shaking her head, and she had such a sad look about her . . . I couldn’t stand it. Besides, Kate won’t put Jonas down anyway, not unless she gives him to me. I should go back up there.” Instead, he slumped into a chair.

“I’ll go,” Wick said. “I’m the boy’s uncle. You’ll have to force Kate to give him up. I’ll walk him while the two of you nap for a couple of hours. Tell her that. I will walk up and down in the portrait gallery.”

Gabriel looked up, his eyes heavy. “She’ll never accept it.”

Wick pulled him to his feet. “Assert yourself, Gabe. Remember, you’re the master of the house, the paterfamilias, king of the castle, and all the rest of that rubbish. Grab your son, hand him to me, and take your poor wife off to get some proper sleep. You’d better go to your old chambers up in the tower because she won’t be able to hear Jonas cry from there.”

When Wick let go of his arm, Gabriel actually tottered.

“How long has it been since you slept?” Wick demanded, taking hold of his arm again and hauling him along the corridor.

“Exactly how old is Jonas? I’ve lost track.”

“Not even a fortnight. You need to get yourself and Kate to sleep,” Wick said, pushing him through the nursery door. A moment later, he was holding his nephew.

“I’ll sleep for one hour, then I’ll be back,” his sister-in-law stated. She was a beautiful woman, but just at the moment she resembled one of those weird sisters in the Shakespeare play. Wick couldn’t remember which play it was, but there were three of them in the production he’d seen, and Kate would have fit right in. Her eyes were red, her face drawn, and grief and fear vibrated in the air around her. “He just had some milk . . . at least I think he did.”

“More than an hour,” Gabriel said firmly, pulling her toward the door.

She managed to stop her husband in the doorway. “Don’t let anyone else touch him,” she told Wick in a threatening tone.

He nodded.

“And whatever you do, if that doctor comes, don’t let him give the baby anything. I’m certain his dose made Jonas sicker, and he wanted to try opium. I know that’s a bad idea.”

“I already forbade him entrance to the castle,” her husband said, managing to get Kate into the hallway.

As the sound of their footsteps receded, Wick looked down at the baby, and Jonas looked back at him. Then Jonas opened his mouth so wide that Wick could view his interesting lack of teeth and screamed until his face turned red.

Wick’s ears hurt. But something hurt in his chest too. Jonas looked thinner now than he had when he was born. His eyes were sunken, and there seemed to be a little less fire in his cry. He looked like a wizened old man, as if he’d lived an entire life in a week or two.

Wick swore under his breath and set off down the corridor, then down a flight and into the portrait gallery. After he had walked for five minutes, Jonas settled down some. He turned his face against Wick’s chest and sobbed more quietly. He curled his finger around Wick’s rather than flailing it in the air.

“Just don’t die,” Wick found himself whispering. “Please don’t die.”

Jonas gave an exhausted sob.

Wick walked for another half hour or so, up the portrait gallery, out into the corridor, around the bend, back down the corridor, back into the portrait gallery . . . at last, Jonas slept.

Sometime later, footsteps sounded in the stone corridor behind him. “Mr. Berwick, oh, Mr. Berwick,” panted one of the footmen, as Wick turned toward him. “My apologies, Mr. Berwick, but Mrs. Apple says that the first of the new nursemaids has arrived, and she’d like you to be there for the interview.”

“How can that be?” Wick whispered. “I sent off to Manchester only yesterday.”

The footman had just realized what—or rather who—Wick held in his arms. He started walking backwards on his toes. “Don’t know,” he whispered back. “Shall I tell her you’re unavailable?”

Wick looked down at Jonas. The baby was turned against his chest, a fold of Wick’s shirt clutched in one tiny hand. “I can’t stop walking,” he said. “Send the woman up here. Mrs. Apple can see her first, then I will.”

Fifteen minutes later, Wick had just reached the far end of the gallery for the twentieth or perhaps fortieth time and was turning around to walk back the other way when the door opened and the nursemaid entered. His first thought was that she was too young.

He had sent a footman to Manchester with explicit instructions to find experienced nannies and doctors, at least two of each. The baby didn’t need a pretty bosom to nestle against: he needed someone who could figure out what was wrong with him.

But Wick walked back across the room, maintaining the same even stride with which he’d lulled Jonas to sleep. The girl didn’t meet his eyes; she was staring at the baby.

“Your name and your experience with children?” he asked briskly, thinking to get the whole thing over within two minutes. There were strands of bright hair peeking out from the girl’s cap, and her eyes were moss green. Plus, she had an entirely delectable bosom . . . she would never do. She’d have the footmen at fisticuffs within the week.

She didn’t seem to hear his inquiry. Instead, she came straight up to him and peered at Jonas’s face. “He’s wanting water, that’s for certain.”

“Babies don’t drink water,” Wick said, and never mind the fact that he’d never held a baby before this one. “Babies drink milk.” Her ignorance of this obvious truth was another strike against her employment.

“If they have the collywobbles, they need water as well.”

“How much experience have you had with infants?” He could see the nape of her neck as she peeked more closely at his nephew. It was delicate, pale, and translucent, like the finest porcelain. “Have you been a nursemaid for long?” Then, annoyed by the fact he was looking at her neck, he added, “You’re far too young.”

“I don’t have much experience, but what I have is the right sort,” she said, looking up at him, finally. He mentally revised his assessment of her eyes: they were not the green of moss, after all, but the green of the sea on a stormy day.

Wick felt an altogether uncomfortable warmth in the area of his groin. He’d be damned if he would line up with the footmen to ogle one of his fellow servants.

He’d accepted long ago that ladies were not for him. True, he was the son of a grand duke, albeit a grand duke in far-off Marburg. But he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Raised in a castle and yet a bastard—which meant that he couldn’t marry anyone of respectable birth. And he was too educated to settle for a milkmaid who wouldn’t mind his questionable parentage.

“What sort of experience is the right experience?” he asked.

But she had bent near again and was studying the baby’s face. “I don’t like the look of him,” she said, pursing her lips. They were rose-colored, those lips.

Wick looked past her lips to Jonas. “At least he’s sleeping,” he said. “He cried all night.”

“That’s because of the pain,” she said. “You’d better give him to me. We have to get some water in him, first thing, then we’ll deal with the milk.”

Before he knew what was happening, she slipped her hands around the baby and lifted him deftly out of Wick’s arms. “Here! You can’t do that,” he said, alarmed at the very thought of Gabriel or, God forbid, Kate, knowing that he’d allowed a stranger to take the baby.

But the girl—

“What did you say your name was?” he asked.

She finished tucking the fold of the blanket under Jonas’s face before she looked at him. “I didn’t,” she said. “I am Philippa Damson.”

“Like the jam?” Wick asked. She was sweet as jam, and that part of her name suited her. He’d like to lick—

He wrenched his mind away.

“Exactly like the jam,” she said, turning toward the door. “Now come along, Mr. Berwick. This baby needs water immediately.”

Wick stared after her for a moment.

At the door, she looked over her shoulder. “You have to show me to the kitchen.”

“Kitchen?” he echoed, trying to figure out how to get Jonas from her arms without waking him. Gabriel would never forgive him. He didn’t even want to think about how Kate would react. “Look, you must give the baby back to me. I promised His Highness that I, and I alone, would hold Jonas—that is, the young princeling.”

“He needs water,” Miss Damson said. “Or he will die.” She looked down again. “I think there’s a chance he won’t live through the night, actually. Babies die awfully quickly if they don’t drink enough.”

Wick walked forward and pushed the door open before her. “Straight to the end of the corridor and down two flights.”

When they reached the kitchen, nine or ten heads swiveled almost in unison. The castle’s kitchen was a vast space with a stone floor. Worktables were arrayed around the room, scrubbed to a fare-thee-well, and covered with copper pans of all sizes and shapes. It was full of people, as always: the cook, three kitchen maids, a dairymaid, and a couple of scullery maids working at the sink to one side.

They all snapped upright at the sight of Wick, except for Madame Troisgros the cook, who considered herself his equal, if not his better. The already complex hierarchy of castle staff was further complicated by Wick’s relationship to the prince. Even had Gabriel (who showed no such inclination) wished to keep their fraternity a secret, one of his elderly aunts regularly took pleasure in shocking polite company by announcing that she preferred Wick to his brother Gabriel.

By rights, a young nursemaid would find herself quite far below the cook, though certainly above the dairymaid. And yet Philippa Damson walked into that kitchen like the lady of the house. She unerringly put her eye on the cook, a lady twice as broad and four times as fierce as anyone else in the room.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?” snapped Madame Troisgros.

Without pausing for breath, Miss Damson broke into charming, if urgent, French. As all could see, she had the little prince in her arms. He needed water, but it must be special water, water boiled, then cooled. And she also needed a cloth, a clean linen cloth, to be boiled in a different pot of water, then cooled.

Madame Troisgros had the eyes, Wick thought, of a rabid French weasel, if such a thing existed—small and rather crazed-looking. As she opened her mouth, undoubtedly to refuse, Miss Damson walked across the kitchen to her.

“Regardez,” she said, drawing back the cover that protected the prince’s face.

Confronted by that tiny, exhausted face, Madame Troisgros flinched and pointed with her ladle to a chair. Miss Damson obediently sat down. A few minutes later, an immaculate piece of linen was shown to Miss Damson for her approval, then carefully placed in a pot of boiling water.

Even more servants began drifting into the kitchen, although the room remained as silent as a church as everyone strove to keep Jonas asleep. The housekeeper appeared and hovered in the background; two or three footmen had apparently deserted their posts in the front hall as they now stood quietly against the walls. The knife boy had stopped sharpening his wares and was sitting on a three-legged stool, his mouth open.

“Stop hovering!” Miss Damson ordered Wick in a low voice. “Babies don’t like nervous influences.”

“Gabriel might have woken; he might be searching for us in the gallery,” Wick said, entirely forgetting that he generally referred to his brother as His Highness in public. Miss Damson was that sort of woman. She made a man lose his head.

“Why not send a footman to stand outside the prince’s bedchamber so as to inform him of our location when he wakes? Meanwhile, you’ll have to take the baby while I wash my hands,” she said, and slipped Jonas back into Wick’s arms with no more fuss than if she were transporting a pudding.

To Wick, Jonas looked worse than he had even an hour before. The skin around his eyes was the deep blue of a bruise. His little nose stood out from his face, as if the skin had receded around it. He was an extraordinarily unattractive baby, which did nothing to assuage the feeling of pure grief and panic Wick felt at seeing his nephew in this state.

“It’s not too late, is it?” he heard himself saying. Everyone in the kitchen froze.

Miss Damson had washed her hands, and was now wringing out the cloth and dipping it in the pot of boiled, cooled water. “Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “Sit down.”

Wick thought a bit dazedly about the fact that he never took orders except from his own brother, but he sat. She bent over and slipped the corner of the wet cloth into the baby’s mouth. He sucked reflexively, realized it wasn’t milk, and let out a pained cry. Quick as she could, she dipped the cloth again, returned it to his lips. Over and over and over.

It was a messy business. Within minutes the baby was wet, Wick was wet, and Miss Damson’s dress was splashed with water. But Jonas kept swallowing, and soon he was crying only between sucks.

“Do you know if he has had normal bowel movements?” Miss Damson asked.

Wick blinked. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

She turned to the housekeeper. “Mrs. Apple, could you perhaps help with my question?”

“Lily’s the one you want,” Mrs. Apple said. With a nod, she dispatched a footman to fetch the appropriate maid.

“You can’t mean that the baby merely needs water,” Wick said. “One of the nursemaids who was here last week said he had sciatic gout.”

“Gout? Most unlikely. I think it’s colic,” Miss Damson said. “Surely a doctor has seen the child?”

“Yes, but he didn’t hold out much hope. He said Jonas was too ill for colic. First, he thought the baby had an intestine stone, then he suggested a quartan ague. Yesterday, he tried an emetic to clean out his guts, but it made Jonas vomit, and after that the princess ordered the doctor out of the castle.”

“She was absolutely right,” Miss Damson observed. “The child needs more fluids, not less.”

“I sent off to Manchester for other doctors. Someone must have some medicine they can give him. The doctor planned to try Dalby Carmel next, something like that.”

“Dalby’s carminative,” Miss Damson said with obvious disdain. “And I suppose castor oil as well.”

“His mother would be able to say more precisely. I believe he also suggested opium, but Her Highness disagreed.”

“No medicine will work,” she announced, dipping the cloth back in the pot once more.

There was a collective gasp from the kitchen staff. “No medicine,” Wick repeated, his heart speeding up. “But you said—”

“It’s simple colic,” Miss Damson said. “I’ve seen it before. There’s something about his stomach that doesn’t like milk at the moment. But he won’t die of it, not unless he goes without water or milk too long.”

At that moment, the door to the kitchen burst open and a wild-eyed apparition surged through. “How could you, Wick?” Kate cried, running to Jonas.

Miss Damson plucked Jonas from Wick’s arms and turned to the princess, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She put the baby straight into his mother’s arms. “Your son is going to be all right. You see? He’s not crying.”

Kate’s mouth was a tight line, and she glared as if this interloper were part of an invading army. “Just who are you?” she snapped.

“She’s your new nursemaid,” Wick intervened. He had already decided that Miss Damson’s calm command of the situation was just what they needed. “She gave Jonas water, Kate. And he drank it all up. I think he looks better already.”

“He’s wet,” Kate cried, horrified. “Now he’ll catch a cold. He’ll—he’ll—” Clutching her baby, she darted from the room without another word.

Miss Damson looked unsurprised. Rather than running after her new mistress, she turned to Madame Troisgros and, in French, thanked her for her help. Then she switched to English and thanked everyone else in the kitchen. And, finally, she had a detailed discussion with Lily, the maid in charge of the nursery, about exactly what sort of deposits Jonas had been making in his nappies.

“Are they green?” she was asking. “And how do they smell?”

She didn’t sound like someone who seemed barely old enough to have her first position. Wick couldn’t stop looking at her, though: at the rose color of her lips and the way her gown, where it was wet, clung to her bosom. It was a very nice bosom.

Very nice.

Wick glanced around the room and discovered that the footmen—not to mention the gaping knife boy—had noticed the same fact. With a jerk of his head, he sent them scurrying out of the kitchen.

Miss Damson, meanwhile, was giving Lily instructions about taking boiled water to the nursery three times a day. She didn’t sound like any nursemaid Wick had ever seen, not that he’d seen many.

Maybe that was what housekeepers sounded like when they were young. But that idea didn’t fit either.

She was a lady, Wick thought suddenly. Quality. He was amazed he hadn’t seen it immediately, but he knew why: because he wasn’t English. He’d bet everything he owned that she had a lady’s voice except that he wasn’t quite good enough with the language to tell the difference.

But then he listened closely and he realized he could tell the difference. After all, he and Gabriel had gone to Oxford back when they were striplings, before Gabriel took over this castle. Wick recognized the sound of her voice, the way it sounded at once sweet and a little sassy . . . that was a lady’s voice, not a nursemaid’s voice.

He had a cuckoo in his kitchen.

In her agitated state, Kate hadn’t noticed anything untoward, obviously. And Madame Troisgros had been far too glad to find someone who spoke French to consider the nursemaid’s origins. With Lily dismissed, the cook was now regaling Miss Damson with tales of the execrable vegetables she was forced to cook with, monstrous tubers fit only for pigs, or cochons. And Miss Damson was nodding and sympathizing . . .

Like a lady. A lady who spoke French, who had undoubtedly been brought up to a good marriage.

Wick became aware that water was running down the inside of his calf into his shoes. There was something about Miss Damson that made even a man with wet breeches hungry. Lustful. Those emotions that good servants could have only for each other—and never, ever, for the ladies they attended. Wick certainly never allowed himself that sort of inconvenient desire.

Just like that, he decided not to say a thing to Miss Damson about the question of her birth. If she was a lady who was merely presenting herself as a nursemaid for some obscure reason—well, then she wasn’t for him, not for the bastard brother of a prince.

But perhaps, if he was wrong, and she wasn’t a lady . . .

Not that he was looking for a wife, of course. But during the last year he had noticed the way Gabriel liked to hold Kate’s hand, the way he swept his wife into his arms, the way he kissed her when he thought no one was looking.

Back in Marburg, the king would have paired Wick off by now, given him to a third or fourth daughter of a gentleman, a woman grateful to be connected in any way to the royal family, a woman whose father would willingly overlook Wick’s ignoble birth. But here in England, he had volunteered to become his brother’s majordomo. He had chosen to run the castle, and he was damned good at it.

He’d known perfectly well what that choice meant for his future. As a servant, he was a servant, no matter how high in the hierarchy of service. He would never marry a gentleman’s daughter. And he’d accepted that, content with an occasional trip to London to meet cheerful women who were neither ladies nor servants but happy to share a bed for a time.

Content, at least, until his brother fell in love.

One night, before the baby was born, he was making his nightly rounds and recognized Gabriel’s laughter coming from the study. Thinking to find out the joke, he had his hand on the door when he heard his sister-in-law gasp in such a husky, pleading way that, disconcertingly, he realized his brother’s laughter was aroused by something rather different than a mere jest.

Needless to say, he didn’t go in.

Even so, he kept trying to tell himself that he had no use for a wife, given that his wife must necessarily be a servant. Kate, after all, was the granddaughter of an earl. She was a perfect person to marry a prince. Gabriel was extraordinarily lucky to have met her.

There were few Kates in the world, and none who ended up paired with bastards.

But still . . . as he followed Miss Damson’s admittedly delicious figure from the kitchen, he thought, for the first time in his life, that perhaps he could marry a servant after all.

If the servant was a lady.

Chapter Three

Philippa was feeling wildly self-conscious as she walked out of the kitchen ahead of the devilishly handsome Mr. Berwick. In fact, her skin prickled all over at the idea that he was just behind her.

Which was ridiculous. Absurd.

He was a majordomo, for goodness’ sake. A butler. Her mother would turn in her grave at the very idea that she was noticing a butler’s profile, let alone his voice.

True, he was the most handsome butler she’d ever seen. He didn’t bundle his hair into a little bag the way their family butler, Quirbles, did. Instead, it was pulled back from his face in a way that emphasized his brow. His eyebrows formed peaks over his eyes.

And those eyes . . . they were fierce and proud, like an eagle. Not like a butler. Nothing like a butler.

It wasn’t just she who saw it either. Back in the kitchen, they had all instinctively acted as if he were a gentleman rather than a butler. Fascinating.

Her mind returned to the baby. She was almost certain that Jonas merely had a very bad case of colic. She’d seen as much several times while accompanying her uncle on his rounds, and once in Little Ha’penny itself. But the worrisome question was whether the baby might have something called intussusception, if she remembered the name right. That was when the bowels were all going the wrong way, and no matter what anyone did, the baby died.

She started walking a little faster. There was no point in mentioning this possibility to the princess since it would terrify her for no good reason. If it was intussusception, there was nothing to be done. But she was fairly sure that her uncle had told her that intussusception was always accompanied by a very slow pulse. Jonas’s pulse had seemed quite normal, and in any case, Lily had not reported seeing any blood in his stool—another telltale sign.

She started ticking off in her mind all the things she had to do: reassure Jonas’s mother, first of all. Then give Jonas a warm bath, with a little massage of his tummy. She had some balsam in her bag that she could rub on it.

Her uncle had believed that massage did no good, but at least it didn’t hurt, not the way that spirits did, or copious amounts of castor oil. Her uncle always said that some baby’s bowels just weren’t ready to digest properly.

“Nothing to do but wait,” she said aloud, remembering her uncle’s brusque advice to new mothers.

“What did you say?” Mr. Berwick said from behind her.

Even his voice was bewitching, with its smoky foreign tone.

She didn’t turn around but just kept marching up the stairs. “I trust I am going in the right direction for the nursery?”

“It’s just above the portrait gallery where I was walking Jonas, so we have another flight to go.”

Philippa’s legs were starting to ache. Becoming a nursemaid at Pomeroy Castle would definitely make her stronger.

“How did you learn French?” came that voice from behind her.

Her foot hesitated on the step, then she said quickly, “My aunt was French.” That wasn’t true, and Philippa quite disliked telling lies. She was from thoroughly English stock, whose only claim to exoticism was the red hair that cropped up now and again.

“Your aunt was French?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“But your mother wasn’t French?”

Philippa felt panic, but managed to keep her invention aloft. “My aunt is on my father’s side, that is, she was raised in a French convent, then joined him in England sometime later.”

“How unusual,” Mr. Berwick said after a short pause. “I was under the impression that convents generally raised young ladies. Not that I mean to imply that your family has come down in the world, Miss Damson.”

“Oh, we have,” Philippa said madly. “Terribly far down. I have to find a position, you see. Because we’ve—because we’re so far down.”

“How far?” Mr. Berwick asked, with interest.

She stopped, as much to catch her breath as to glare at him. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you do sound a bit like a heroine in a melodrama,” he pointed out, stepping in front of her to push open the door.

“You shouldn’t mock our hardship. It’s been heartbreaking for my family!” she snapped, feeling a surge of virtuous anger before remembering that the family in question didn’t exist.

He looked down at her, and she saw something in his eyes that made her blink. “You must feel neither fish nor fowl.”

Philippa swallowed. What she felt was something no young lady should be feeling. “Precisely,” she said. “Fowl, fish, who knows what I am?”

“You are Jonas’s nursemaid,” he said, with a lightning smile as he held open the door.

She walked through, thinking about what he had just said: she had secured a position in the castle.

And now she had a position, she wasn’t a lady anymore. It felt rather peculiar. Her father never employed many servants, but of course there were some. She had grown up with Quirbles and a footman to answer the door, the kitchen staff, the upstairs maid and the downstairs maid, and a boy to do all the rest. And now she had joined their ranks. She was one of them, rather than a lady.

When they reached the nursery door, she instinctively waited for Mr. Berwick to open it for her, but instead he pushed it open and preceded her. She blinked at his broad back for a moment before realizing that the butler always preceded a nursemaid.

“Kate,” he was saying, “the new nursemaid is very sensible. She knew that Jonas needed water, and she boiled it before giving it to him.”

Philippa stepped out from behind him. Jonas’s mother sat in a chair, the baby clasped in her arms. The princess had the same battered, terrified expression that Philippa had seen on other mothers’ faces when her uncle paid his visits. Instinctively, she went over to her and knelt next to the chair. “Jonas will live,” she said as forcefully as she could. “He will not die.”

“Of course he will not,” Her Highness said. But her eyes were haunted.

“This is Miss Damson,” Mr. Berwick said. “Jonas’s new nursemaid.”

The princess seemed not to hear him. She looked up, and asked, “Wick, who is this person, and where did she come from?”

“This is your new nursemaid, from Manchester,” Mr. Berwick said, without a second’s hesitation, though he’d never asked Philippa where she lived. “Miss Damson came with the highest references from esteemed doctors. I know she looks young, but her charges have been special cases, not ordinary infants.”

The princess looked sideways at Philippa, still kneeling by her chair. “Sick babies,” she breathed. “You deal with sick babies.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Do you know what’s the matter with my son?”

“He has colic,” Philippa said. “I’m almost certain that it’s just colic. I can’t give him a miracle medicine, because there isn’t any. And my—that is, the esteemed doctors with whom I worked in Manchester—feel strongly that colic is simply something that a baby must outgrow.”

The princess looked down at her son. “Are you sure? The doctor who was here said that Jonas was too hot to have colic. He does seem to get a fever now and then. And then he screams so much after nursing that it seems he can hardly breathe. If you even touch his belly after he drinks, he cries and cries.”

“He has a bad case. But it’s still just colic. He will outgrow it.”

“And doctors are on their way from Manchester who will confirm everything she says,” Mr. Berwick stated.

Philippa felt a tingle of alarm. Her uncle was rather unorthodox in his ideas, and she had the impression that Manchester doctors were likely to be far more interested in doling out medicines. Her uncle was of the firm conviction that medicines did more harm than good, no matter what the disease might be.

“But my milk,” the princess said. Then she blinked and looked at Mr. Berwick. “Shoo.” He disappeared through the door in a flash.

It was all a bit odd. Philippa was very fond of their family butler, as was her father. But she would never say shoo to Quirbles. It simply wouldn’t be appropriate, and she might offend him.

“I’m poisoning Jonas, aren’t I?” the princess said. “It’s my milk that’s the problem. I’m killing my own baby.” Another tear rolled down her cheek.

Philippa got up; her knees had started to hurt. “No, you are not poisoning your child. He needs your milk, and in fact, you are doing an excellent thing by nursing him yourself. You have a flair for the dramatic, Your Highness.”

“Actually, I don’t,” the princess said wearily, tipping her head to rest it against the back of her chair. “I’m very sensible, in my normal state. But it’s just been so awful since he was born. Not that I mean he is awful,” she added.

Philippa bent over and took the baby from her. “This child needs you to rest. Your milk will give out if you don’t sleep.”

“My milk . . . Whenever I feed him, he screams so it breaks my heart. The sound goes through the whole castle. Moments like this, when he’s just sleeping and not crying, are so precious. Besides, I’m afraid that I’ll come back and—”

“As long as we give him enough water, he will not die,” Philippa said firmly. “He’ll be thin, but he’ll survive. And it will get better.”

At that very moment, Jonas’s eyes popped open. He looked at her blurrily, and then let out a bellow. Despite herself, Philippa flinched.

“Is that the first time you’ve heard it?” the princess asked wearily, rising from her chair and holding out her arms.

“He has a fine voice,” Philippa said. “No, you sit down. You feed him, then I’ll show you how to massage his tummy afterwards, which might help with his pain.”

Two hours later, Jonas’s tummy was tight as a drum, he’d been given the gentlest of massages, he’d screamed until he was blue and breathless . . . and finally, exhausted, he had fallen asleep.

Philippa carefully put him down in his cradle, humming the last few bars of the song with which she’d sung him to sleep.

“Do you still believe he will be all right?” his mother asked, bending over to tuck the blanket just under the baby’s chin.

“You saw his nappy. It was perfectly normal, with no blood. He’ll be fine. He’s a fighter. It hurts so much, and yet he kept on trying to tell us, so we can make the pain stop. He hasn’t given up.”

“That’s true,” the princess said, brightening a little despite her fatigue. Then she added, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this worn-out in my life.”

“You must go to bed,” Philippa said. “Jonas will sleep for a few hours. And if he wakes up, I’ll give him some water. He still needs more water.”

There was a moment of silence. Then: “What was that you sang to him?” the princess asked.

“It’s an Italian song,” Philippa said. “Something about sunshine and courting and all that nonsense. Mother made me—” She stopped.

“You’re no nursemaid,” the princess stated. “You’re a lady. You sing in Italian, your mother prepared you for a debut, and your dress is quite nice—even though I think that shade of green isn’t quite right with your hair, which is beautiful, by the way.”

“I am a nursemaid,” Philippa said, feeling a pulse of desperation. “My family’s come down in the world, that’s all.”

“If that’s the case, why are you wearing a pearl pendant?”

“It was a gift from my mother,” Philippa said firmly. Her voice didn’t wobble because that, at least, was the truth.

“It must be a very recent family downfall. Because your shoes are lovely and not in the least worn-out. I have some just like them, and they’re made of Italian leather.”

Philippa looked down at her slippers. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might be betrayed by the condition of her footwear.

She looked back up to find the princess grinning at her. “You’ve run away, likely from a loathsome marriage. Or no—you’re too young for that. A loathsome suitor. And, of course, you ran away to the castle. I’m sorry to say that the prince is already married to me, because otherwise you could have married him yourself, which would have been rather romantic.”

“Yes, it would have been,” Philippa said uncertainly. Then she added: “You should take a good rest now, Your Highness.”

“I suppose I could return to the south tower. I left my husband sleeping.” She bent over the cradle again. “Do you really believe that Jonas will get better? How on earth did you gain all this knowledge about babies? Has your family truly come down in the world?”

“I’d—well—”

“Whatever you tell me, I won’t be in the least shocked,” the princess said, with such a sweet smile that Philippa swallowed hard. “After my father died, my stepmother treated me abominably, so I gained all sorts of knowledge that I mightn’t otherwise have.”

“My uncle is a doctor,” Philippa found herself explaining. “I used to visit him and my aunt for a month at a time, and I always begged him to take me along on his rounds.”

“If you were a man, you’d be a doctor,” she said, nodding. “Sometimes I feel that, as women, we have the short end of the stick.”

“Exactly,” Philippa agreed. “If I were a man, I’d be a doctor, and no one could tell me what to do. I would choose—” She broke off.

“Oh, you did flee from someone awful,” the princess said, with evident delight. “Do you want to boil him in oil, or is it even worse than that?”

She was so charming that Philippa couldn’t help smiling back, but just then the princess gave a huge yawn.

“You really must sleep, Your Highness,” Philippa said. “Jonas is going to cry a great deal. Every time he’s fed, in fact, and much of the time in between, and that might go on for months. At the least, several more weeks, given his age. We must make certain that you eat and sleep sufficiently. I can hold Jonas, but I cannot feed him.”

“I’m Kate,” the princess said, yawning again.

“Oh, but I couldn’t—”

“Of course you can,” she said. “I want to hear all about the troll of a man you’re fleeing, but I think I will go to sleep for a bit. What did you say your name was?”

“Miss Damson,” Philippa said desperately.

“Really, Miss Damson, you and I just stood shoulder to shoulder and examined my son’s nappy. I’m Kate, and you’re—”

“Philippa,” she said, defeated. “But it just doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“Nonsense. We’re all strange birds here in the castle. There’s Wick, of course, and I was something of a maid-of-all-work to my stepmother for years before Gabriel came along and tried to make me into a princess.”

“Tried?” Philippa asked, just stopping herself from inquiring what Kate meant by There’s Wick, of course. “By all indications, you are a princess,” she pointed out.

“It didn’t take,” Kate said, with another huge yawn. “Princesses swan about in satin-lined carriages. What’s more, everyone knows that when a princess has a child, it has a rosebud mouth and sunny blue eyes. Whereas I have birthed the ugliest baby in all Christendom.”

“He’s not that ugly,” Philippa said, feeling defensive on behalf of poor little Jonas.

“Yes, he is,” his mother said, leaning back over the cradle. She put a finger on his nose. “A little potato here.” His eyes. “Currants are bigger than his eyes.” His mouth. “Well, his mouth isn’t bad. But have you ever seen a baby open his mouth wider or make such a frightful noise?”

“Never,” Phillipa said truthfully. “You return to bed, and I’ll bring you the baby after your nap.”

“But what about you? Shouldn’t you be getting settled? Oh no, what am I thinking? You’ll be sleeping right through this doorway, at least as long as you’re pretending to be a nursemaid. I’m too selfish to let you stop yet.”

Philippa smiled. “I’m happy to be a nursemaid, Your Highness. Truly, I love babies.”

“Kate,” Kate insisted, straightening up from the cradle. “I think it would be best if you brought Jonas to the dining room when he wakes up. We eat at eight, and I wouldn’t think he’ll be hungry again before then. You needn’t change, by the way.”

“I shan’t change,” Philippa said, shocked. “Nursemaids don’t eat in company.”

“Nursemaids don’t call their mistresses Kate, so you are obviously an exception.”

“What about the baby?” Philippa asked. “I wouldn’t want to leave him.”

“He will be with us, of course,” Kate said. “I don’t like to have him out of my sight.” And with a last touch of Jonas’s nose, she went out the door.

Chapter Four

Three hours later, Philippa was reconsidering her chosen profession. It seemed impossibly exhausting and boring. Jonas had woken, cried for an hour or so, taken some water, and gone back to sleep. Then he’d woken again, and cried again—but had fallen back to sleep just when she’d been trying to decide whether he was hungry.

She unpacked her tiny bag in the room next to the nursery, and, during one of Jonas’s quiet spells, brushed and rebrushed her hair, thinking all the while about Mr. Berwick. Wick, the princess had called him. He had lovely eyes, rather brooding, as if life wasn’t giving him what he wanted.

That had to be because he was a butler. He didn’t seem like a butler.

Jonas whimpered from the nursery, and she hastily pinned up her hair and went back into the room to soothe him.

She thought her uncle would be quite pleased with the way the baby now looked. The pinched look was gone, which meant that he had some water in him. What he needed now was more milk. And when she didn’t instantly produce it, he started crying again.

“I’m sorry, little scrap,” she murmured to him. “It’s going to hurt your tummy. But we just have to do it.”

She wrapped him in a light blanket and wondered what to do. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to find the dining room. By the time she opened the door and headed into the corridor, Jonas was wailing so vociferously that his face was purple.

A tall, yellow-haired footman with a nice open face was waiting for her. “Oh, thank goodness. What’s your name?” she asked over Jonas’s sobs.

“William, miss,” he said. “Mr. Berwick said I was to escort you to the dining room. It’s awfully easy to get lost in this castle.”

“It’s big, isn’t it?”

“Huge,” William said feelingly. “The time it takes just to bring the linens round about, well, you wouldn’t countenance it.”

They made their way down some stairs, through the portrait gallery, down the main stairs. “Shouldn’t we be going down by the servants’ stairs?” she asked.

He glanced at her. “Not you, miss.”

Philippa didn’t know quite what to say to that, so she jiggled Jonas against her shoulder—which had no effect whatsoever on his wails—and followed William through the vast entrance hall to the dining room.

When she entered the room, she was very relieved to find that it wasn’t a cavernous formal space but a tidy little room with a table set for six. What’s more, Kate was the only person in it. She rose the moment the door opened and hurried toward them. “I wanted to come to the nursery, but my foolish husband forced me to wait for you here instead. How is he?”

“Just fine,” Philippa said. “He’s hungry, as you can hear, but I think he feels a little better.”

Kate cocked her head. “You can hear a difference?”

“Yes,” Philippa said, though in reality she wasn’t at all sure. Being a nursemaid was making her into a terrible fibber. “He’s saying he’s hungry, but not in pain.” She said it firmly, the way her father would say, England’s coast is undefended. A fact.

Kate reached out and took her baby. “There’s my sweetheart,” she cooed. “I’ll just take him to my sitting room and feed him.”

She left, and Philippa drew in a long breath and reached up to check her hair. She’d pinned it on the back of her head, but it felt as if it might all tumble down her back any moment.

Just then the door opened, and Mr. Berwick entered.

“William left me here,” she said, feeling foolishly out of place.

“Where’s Jonas?”

“The princess took him to her sitting room in order to feed him. She’ll bring him back in a moment, then I’ll go straight back to the nursery,” she promised.

“You won’t,” he said, walking around the table and straightening a napkin. “You are eating with the prince and princess tonight.”

“I really shouldn’t—”

“A place for you has already been set,” he said, cutting her off. “We’ll be joined by Princess Sophonisba, the prince’s great-aunt, who will undoubtedly appear in an inebriated state, which is merely a hint at what will happen after she has had more to drink during supper.”

Another princess? She, plain Philippa Damson, who had only rarely been out of Little Ha’penny, and never even to the city of London, was to dine with not one princess but two? “I couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just a nursemaid.”

“I forgot that!” he said. His eyes laughed at her. “You’re a nursemaid. I suppose you don’t know how to use a knife and a fork.”

Philippa drew herself upright. “You may jest, Mr. Berwick, but I certainly do know how to use proper cutlery—as does every well-trained servant.”

“Are you well trained?” he asked cordially. “We never quite got around to that part of the interview.”

“Of course!”

He walked around the far end of the table and back toward her. “Do you know that there are a thousand things I ought to be doing at this moment?”

“I quite believe you,” she said. “Please feel free to attend to them.”

His dark eyes met hers, and he cocked a mocking eyebrow. “I can’t leave new staff alone in a room with the silver.”

Philippa suppressed the impulse to give him a set-down, reminding herself that she was now a servant—just a servant— before saying, as haughtily as she could, “Do be sure to count the forks after I leave the room.”

He came a step closer. “You would make an enticing thief. How did you hear of our need for a nursemaid, by the way? You simply appeared out of thin air, and the footman whom I sent to Manchester hasn’t even returned yet.”

“I didn’t come from Manchester,” Philippa said. His eyes made her feel rather hot, a feeling that Rodney’s gaze had never aroused. Though the very thought of Rodney was dispiriting.

“Then where did you come from?” He drifted a step nearer, and now he stood directly before her. Mr. Berwick wore beautiful claret-colored livery with frogged buttons. Somehow on him it didn’t look like livery but like the uniform of the Queen’s own Hussars. And, like them, he was broad-shouldered and muscled and immaculately kempt.

Philippa pulled herself together, and said, “I grew up in a village not far from here. When I heard about the baby, I thought I might be able to help.”

“You did?”

Perhaps he was more like a magician than one of Her Majesty’s Hussars. Something about his eyes was making her feel quivery. “And I have helped,” she stated, confident that this, at least, was not a fib.

“You are a mystery.”

“There is nothing mysterious about me. I’m a very ordinary girl.”

“You can sing in Italian—”

She began to explain, but he held up his hand. “Kate told me all about it.”

He was like no butler she’d ever heard about. And he knew she was thinking precisely that because he gave her a slow, naughty grin. Philippa barely stopped her mouth from falling open. No one had ever given her a smile like that, not to Miss Philippa Damson, the future bride of the future baronet.

Except . . . she wasn’t a future bride anymore.

Without taking a breath, she raised one eyebrow, in just the same manner as the innkeeper’s wife in Little Ha’penny—whom everyone agreed was no better than she should be. “Kate?” she said, purring a little. “What an odd way to refer to your mistress.”

For a moment she feared she’d overdone it, but his smile only deepened, causing a shiver to go right down her back. “Ah, but Kate’s not my mistress,” he said. “At least, not in the most important meaning of the word.”

She blinked, then frowned at him. “You shouldn’t even suggest something like that!”

He threw back his head and laughed. “A very young pigeon, aren’t you? A very, very young—”

“I’m not so young,” she said hotly.

“How old are you, Miss Damson?”

“Twenty. Which is quite old enough for—for all manner of things.”

“Too old to debut,” he said. But she was wise to him now.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “After my family fortunes fell, we never considered such a thing, of course.”

“Ah, the fall,” he said, sighing melodramatically. “Ever since the first fall, it’s just been downhill all day.”

“Are you talking about my family or Eve?” Philippa inquired, barely suppressing a giggle. “Because I’ve always thought that poor Eve was more sinned against than sinning.”

“Why so?” he asked, leaning against the wall next to her. It was scandalously casual. A butler never—but never—leaned against the wall. And yet, there he was.

“Eve wasn’t responsible for the sinful enticement of the serpent,” Philippa told him, feeling her heart speed up even further. “She merely offered the apple to her companion, which demonstrated good manners, not to mention generosity.”

“I don’t think that good manners are an acceptable excuse for all that trouble she caused,” Mr. Berwick observed.

“It’s true that she probably should have avoided that particular tree,” Philippa conceded. “Still, no one ever seems to notice that Adam ate the apple as well. It’s half his fault.”

“I blame them both,” Mr. Berwick said. “Just think, if they hadn’t been so foolish, we’d all be living in Paradise.” He leaned a bit closer. “Very warm, I’ve heard. None of this English rain.”

Philippa didn’t move back even though he was close enough that she could smell him. He smelled delicious, like lemon soap and something else, like the wind on the moors. “I like rain,” she said, unable to command her mind to come up with anything else.

“You wouldn’t,” Mr. Berwick said, “if we were both wandering about in it quite naked, without even a fig leaf to our name.”

That hung in the air for a good second. Or ten.

Then she heard it: down the corridor came a thin, protracted wail, an agonizing sound.

“Ah, bollocks,” Mr. Berwick muttered.

It was such an English expletive—and said in such a velvety, accented voice—that Philippa couldn’t help laughing.

A smile spread over his lips too. “You really aren’t worried about Jonas’s survival, are you?”

She shook her head. “He’s crying because milk doesn’t agree with him. But it’s not a mortal condition, and his stomach will eventually get used to it.”

“Fancy yourself a doctor?”

“No, but any person with common sense can see when a baby has colic,” she said. “It’s always better to do nothing in such cases.” She hesitated.

“What?”

So she told him, in a rush, about her fear that Jonas had intussusception. “But I’m sure that my uncle told me that there would be blood in his nappy,” she finished. “And there isn’t.” Jonas’s persistent wails were coming closer.

“It sounds to me as though you’re right,” Mr. Berwick said. “Still, we need your uncle to come take a look at the baby. Where is he? I’ll send a carriage immediately.”

“You couldn’t!” Philippa gasped, horrified. “He would—no!”

“But he’s the best doctor you know. We need him.”

The door opened, and Kate reentered, carrying Jonas and followed by a man who was the prince, presumably. A tottering elderly lady clutched his arm. She wore so much face paint, topped by a fuzzy and rather shabby wig, that she resembled a Chinese dog that had gone through Little Ha’penny along with a traveling fair.

But it was the prince who caught Philippa’s eye. She stood rooted to the spot and looked from Mr. Berwick’s eyebrows to the prince’s, at their hair, their eyes, their chins . . .

“Her Highness, Princess Sophonisba, and His Highness, Prince Gabriel Albrecht-Frederick William von Aschenberg of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld,” Mr. Berwick announced. Turning to them, he said, “May I present Miss Damson.”

“Most irregular, being introduced by the butler,” the old lady said irritably. “Well, who are you, then?”

“I’m—”

“She’s a friend of mine,” Kate interjected. “She’s come to help with Jonas.” She smiled at Philippa, and Philippa realized, rather to her surprise, that it was true. Even though she’d known Kate for only a matter of hours, they were friends.

“I can’t hear a word over that howling,” Princess Sophonisba said. “I never heard of a lady nursing her own baby before. I’m sure that’s the problem.” She leveled a thin finger at Kate. “What that child needs is the milk of a hardy peasant. Yours is probably thin and blue. Though now I think on it, you’re practically a peasant yourself.”

Philippa’s eyes met Kate’s, and Philippa said hastily, “I’ll just walk Jonas in the corridor until he calms, shall I?”

“Yes, do,” the elderly princess said. “He sounds like one of the devils they like to talk about in church, the kind who have nothing to do but yowl. Wick, why aren’t you offering us something to drink? Just because Rome is burning doesn’t mean we needn’t fiddle. This screeching is terrible for my nerves.”

Philippa settled Jonas into the crook of her left arm and nodded to the footman, who opened the door for her.

In the hallway, Jonas waved his tiny clenched fists and wailed. He was pulling up his legs again, so his stomach must be aching. Philippa settled him on her shoulder and patted his back gently as she walked.

If Mr. Berwick insisted on summoning her uncle, it would all be over. Her father would arrive within hours, and she would end up back in Little Ha’penny, married to Rodney. Jonas let out a big burp.

“You have a lot of air in your tummy,” Philippa said. He was still crying, but he sounded more halfhearted about it. Another big burp erupted from his stomach.

She kept walking, up and down, worrying at the problem of her uncle, her father, Rodney, Jonas, colic . . . what if she was wrong? If it was intussusception, her uncle would say there was nothing to be done. But . . .

Finally, the door to the dining room opened, and Kate emerged. “Bless you,” she said, taking the baby. The moment he came off Philippa’s shoulder, he screwed up his face and cried even louder.

“Hush, sweet one,” Kate crooned.

“Try your shoulder,” Philippa said. “Like this.” She arranged the baby so he was lying over his mother’s shoulder.

“But his head is hanging down. All the blood will go to his head.”

“This way feels better for his stomach. Listen.” Sure enough, his crying did not cease, but the wails weren’t quite so desperate.

“Go eat something,” Kate said, nodding toward the door. “We’ve worked it out. Gabriel is coming to take a turn in half an hour, and then Wick will take a turn.”

Philippa nodded. “And then Princess Sophonisba, I expect?”

Kate blinked. “Well—” She caught Philippa’s smirk and grinned. “Go eat!”

Philippa returned to the dining room to find the prince seated at the head of the table, and Wick at its foot. She hesitated for a moment, uncertain where to sit.

A footman stepped forward. “Miss Damson,” he murmured, pulling out the chair next to Wick.

Two slender silver candelabra threw light on the silk damask covering, the gold-plated dishes, and a greater assortment of cutlery than she knew existed. For a moment, Philippa felt dizzy. Was it really only yesterday that she had been lying in the straw under Rodney?

Could it really be her, sitting in a castle, eating with royalty? She didn’t dare look to her right, at Wick, or even more terrifying, to her left, at the prince himself.

Across from her, Princess Sophonisba sucked vigorously at the chicken bone she clutched. “You’re pretty enough, but you look like a bit of a goose,” the old lady said. “Haven’t you ever been in a castle before?”

“No, I haven’t, Your Highness,” she said, picking up her napkin and spreading it in her nap.

“Most people in this one are dim as a snuffed candle,” Sophonisba said. “In fact, one castle is the same as another. The lot of them sit around buggering each other, if not the sheep.”

The prince cleared his throat and leaned forward, giving Philippa a charming smile. A smile she recognized from his—

Brother? They looked almost identical, which couldn’t be accidental.

“You seem to have performed miracles already with Jonas,” he said. “I don’t know how we’ll be able to thank you.”

“Give her a gold chastity belt, I’d think,” Princess Sophonisba said. “The way your brother’s looking at her, she’ll be dropping a bastard in a matter of nine months.”

So Wick was the prince’s brother. No wonder they looked so much alike.

The prince closed his eyes for a moment. “I apologize—”

The princess talked right over His Highness. “Actually, that’s just what we need around here. More bastards. Look at Berwick, here.”

Philippa didn’t dare look. She could feel him sitting next to her, could feel his large body, his eyes resting on her.

“Look at him!” the princess ordered.

Philippa looked.

To her relief, he was grinning, his eyes alight with a deep pleasure that sent little shocks down her spine.

“A bastard,” the princess said with satisfaction, licking her fingers. “And yet he’s the best of the lot. My favorite, and I’m a judge of men. Always have been, ever since I dumped my barking-mad betrothed and decided never to marry.”

Philippa felt a smile playing on her lips as well.

“You may be in a castle, among royalty of sorts,” Prince Gabriel remarked from the other end of the table, “but I’m afraid you’ll find, Miss Damson, that we descend to the lowest type of behavior while in private.”

“Speak for yourself,” the irrepressible princess retorted. “I’ve no wish to know what sort of roguery you get up to in private. Ain’t a fit subject for the dinner table. Watch your manners!” And with that, she poked him in the chest with the chicken leg.

Philippa felt giggles rising in her throat. A footman leaned down beside her and gave her a portion of roast beef.

“If you want your own drumstick, I can request one,” Wick said. His voice was deep and husky, as different from Rodney’s as wine from water. And there was that enchanting accent, the one that made her a little breathless.

“No, thank you,” she said, pulling herself together. To her relief, the prince had engaged his aunt in a discussion of Emperor Napoleon’s height.

“Small as a flea,” the princess said scornfully. “And his eyebrows jut out like the casements of a shop window.”

“I suppose you will have gathered by now that my birth was not sanctified by matrimony,” Wick said to Philippa.

Philippa nearly choked on her bite of roast beef. “I—”

“Does it appall you to hear of it?” he inquired, putting on an innocent expression. “I’m afraid that we’re used to the circumstance around here since it’s been the case since birth. My birth, that is,” he added.

Philippa finally managed to swallow her beef. “Not at all,” she said weakly.

“Give that girl some chicken,” Princess Sophonisba bellowed across the table. “She’s got a lung weakness, likely won’t last the week.”

Prince Gabriel rolled his eyes and nimbly reeled his aunt back into another topic of conversation.

“My aunt drinks too much,” Wick observed.

Philippa put down her fork. She very much hoped it was the right fork; with three to choose from, she had chosen at random. “I have noticed that inebriates tend to have few teeth. However, the Princess Sophonisba seems remarkably endowed, in that respect.”

“Yes, she’s gnawing that bone like a champion bulldog,” Wick said. “Well, then. Have you decided to tell me where to find your uncle?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Please don’t ask me.” Wick had a beautiful mouth. She jerked her eyes away and hoped he hadn’t noticed she was gaping at him.

“How long does it take to ride to his house?”

“Please don’t—”

“If Jonas continues to improve, I won’t summon him. But if Jonas grows more ill, even suddenly, how long would it take to fetch him?”

“A day,” she said relieved. “He would be back here the next morning if I sent a note along. Especially . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Especially because said uncle is probably looking desperately for you under every hedge and hillock,” Wick stated.

There was a moment of silence between them.

Philippa decided that she’d rather not answer. She’d read somewhere that prisoners couldn’t be forced to incriminate themselves. So she took another bite of roast beef.

“You’ll rue the day you were caught in the parson’s mousetrap,” Princess Sophonisba said to Prince Gabriel. “Children are women’s work. Your father would be ashamed of you.”

“Ah, but the cheese in that mousetrap was irresistible,” the prince said politely. “If you’ll excuse me, dear aunt. Miss Damson, Wick. I believe my turn has come.” With that, he left.

“You’d better stop looking at that wiggle-eyed gal,” Princess Sophonisba said, waving another chicken bone at Wick. She didn’t seem to expect an answer because she turned about and started haranguing a footman.

“Wiggle-eyed?” Philippa asked.

“She means velvet,” Wick said. His smile was—well—it should be outlawed. It made her insides feel hot and yielding.

“Velvet eyes?” Philippa said, pulling herself together. “I think I prefer wiggle.”

“Smoky,” he offered.

She wrinkled her nose. “I sound like a brothel, all velvet and smoke.”

“And what do you know of brothels?” he asked. His smile made her heart pound.

“Nothing,” she admitted.

“Well, I can tell you this,” he said, leaning toward her. “There are no doxies with smoky sea-green eyes nor hair the color of pearls.”

“Not bad,” Sophonisba barked from across the table.

Philippa jumped. Caught by the sultry tone in Wick’s voice, she’d forgotten all about the princess.

“You’d better look out,” Sophonisba said to her, using a half-eaten chicken leg as a pointer. “The man’s a devil, of course. His brother was the same. Do you think the princess had a chance once Gabriel had her in his sights? Not a chance!” She snorted. “I almost had to give up my brandy, but he ended up marrying her.”

“Brandy?” Philippa repeated, completely bewildered.

“Don’t ask,” Wick murmured.

Sophonisba had apparently reminded herself of the drink; she was now demanding some to accompany her chicken.

“You seem remarkably unscandalized by the knowledge of unseemly circumstances of my birth,” Wick said. “I’m still waiting for you to shudder and avert your eyes.”

“Have people shuddered in the past?” she inquired.

“Ladies have.” There was something uncompromising in his voice. A little bleak.

“I am no longer a lady,” she said, shrugging. “Though of course, one must distinguish among bastards.”

“Must one?” Wick asked.

“Absolutely,” she said firmly. “There are those who earn the appellation, by their behavior, and those who are merely given it by circumstance. Besides, I’ve been thinking a great deal about what it means to be a lady.”

“I suppose your altered circumstances lead to such philosophical thoughts,” he asked, his eyes laughing again. “Because true ladies never contemplate the question. So what qualities did you conclude were necessary? Elegance, culture, discernment? Or perhaps the ability to live in luxury is enough?”

“Sacrifice,” she said flatly. “And sometimes, it just isn’t worth it.”

She thought his eyes . . . what she saw in his eyes couldn’t be respectable, or true, so she devoted herself to her roast beef.

Chapter Five

In the next weeks, Philippa’s life took on a rhythm. Every time Kate nursed Jonas, he would cry bitterly for hours. Philippa and Kate took turns walking him, rocking him, massaging him . . . none of it really seemed to help his aching stomach.

But, as Philippa pointed out with somewhat immodest pride, he was growing plumper, without the castor oil and emetics the doctor had prescribed. In fact, when she reached the end of her second week in the castle, Jonas’s improvement was undeniable. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Philippa crooned to him in the middle of the night after Kate had fed the baby and handed him over to her now-indispensable nursemaid. Jonas blinked up at her. His eyes fluttered, and he almost, almost went to sleep, but then another pang must have caught him because his face twisted in anguish, and he pulled up his legs and cried out.

“Poor baby,” Philippa said, kissing his cheek. then popping him up on and over her shoulder in his favorite position. It meant that he hung gracelessly down her back, rather like a sack of beans, but it worked. Unless she stopped walking, of course.

She decided to take him to the portrait gallery because she had walked around and around the nursery earlier in the evening, and she felt that one more turn around that well-worn path would drive her mad.

The castle was warm and dark. She descended a level and made her way to the portrait gallery to find that moonlight was streaming in the windows there, its color as pale and chilly as the white gooseberries she used to gather as a child. She didn’t stop for long before the portraits, just paused to examine how moonlight made the be-ruffed gallants look like faded copies of their daily selves.

She knew the moment Mr. Berwick—or Wick, as he’d insisted she call him—entered the room. It was as though the air changed somehow. He always found her in the middle of the night. He’d look for her in the nursery, or the gallery, and walk with her. When they encountered each other during the day, usually at dinner, they talked courteously enough of Jonas, of the castle, of whatever . . . but never of their nocturnal rendezvous.

All of that polite daylight conversation and observance of convention melted away in the soft glimmer of moon and candle. It was as though the obscurity of the night gave them sanction to be their true selves. The way he looked at her was nothing like the way Rodney used to look at her. Oh, Wick desired her. She could see a demand in his eyes, a hunger that he couldn’t mask.

But more than that . . . he liked her. He thought she was funny. He actually enjoyed listening to her. It was intoxicating, it was bewitching, it was everything Rodney had never demonstrated and never could.

Philippa turned around to see Wick walking toward her, his step unhurried. He was smiling, that lopsided grin that made her feel warm all over.

“How do you manage to always look so impeccable?” she asked, when he was near. “Do you never sleep?” She wore a nightdress and a wrapper, and her hair tumbled down her back every which way. After the first night or two, when the baby had cried all night long, she’d stopped worrying about what she looked like at night.

“I don’t sleep in my livery, if that’s what you mean,” Wick said. “How is our princeling tonight?” He peered at the baby’s little head. Seeing that he had a new audience, Jonas let out a howl but quieted again.

“I think he’s better,” Philippa said, rubbing the baby’s back. “He won’t let me sit down, though, or even stop walking.”

In the last nights, they had talked about everything from Shakespeare (she liked Romeo and Juliet; he thought Romeo was a tiresome melancholic) to lawyers (she thought they ought to donate their time to poor widows; he thought that was unlikely) to dissections (she found the idea disturbing; he was of the opinion that it was the only way to really identify the kind of illness a patient had suffered from).

Now he picked up their conversation directly where they’d left it the night before.

“I thought of another reason that dissection is important. How else are we to learn of the body’s systems if we don’t investigate them thoroughly?”

“I wouldn’t want to learn about the body if it required cutting one open,” she said with a shudder.

“Why not? I think it would be fascinating. I wouldn’t want to be a surgeon; I don’t like causing pain. But if the person has already left his body, why not try to find out how he died, and why?”

“All those blood and guts,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Entrails,” he said, almost dreamily. “Back when I was at university, I read that there are enough entrails in the human body to stretch all the way down an average street. I can’t imagine.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Philippa told Jonas, who had woken. “You’ll feel queasy and start crying again.”

Jonas burped and closed his eyes once more.

“I’m going to stop walking and sit down, Jonas,” she told him. “Just for a little while.” Then she sank carefully into the sofa that Wick had ordered placed in the portrait gallery after it became clear it was prime walking-Jonas territory.

“Why don’t you go and dissect some dead bodies, then?” she asked, trying to ignore the fact—and utterly failing to do so—that Wick had sat down beside her. Her pulse instantly quickened. For one thing, his leg was touching hers. For another, as soon as they sat down, it felt as if the world drew in and became as small as the three of them. As if she and Wick and sleeping Jonas were utterly alone in the whole castle.

“Me?” He seemed startled for a moment. “Nonsense.”

“Why nonsense? My uncle told me that there’s a terrible shortage of doctors in England. You told me the other night that you’d been at Oxford; did you take a degree?”

“Of course.”

“A good degree?” she persisted.

“A double first. Is that good enough for you?”

“Goodness. Well, then, all you have to do is attend the university in Edinburgh for a year,” she said. “I suppose it would be better to go a little longer, but my uncle told me that many doctors attend for only a year.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Well, because Gabriel and I—because I’m here.”

“I can see that it’s quite nice for your brother to have you as his majordomo,” she acknowledged, “but if you wish to heal people, I think every sick person would feel that you should forfeit the butler’s pantry.” She heard her own voice and winced with embarrassment. It was something about him. He made her feel joyful and slightly cracked.

“My father—”

“Your father isn’t here,” she said, cutting him off. “I know you’re a grand duke’s son, Wick, but it doesn’t seem to have done you much good. Why not just forget about that and do what you wish?”

“As I wish . . .” There was a tinge of wistfulness in his voice. “I would wish that my father had never seduced my mother although that would have had unfortunate consequences for myself.”

“I meant realistic wishes,” Kate said, sitting up straighter so she could rock back and forth in her place, in hopes of keeping Jonas asleep.

His reply came with a rueful smile. “I cannot believe that it would surprise you to know how many doors are closed to bastards.” Kate met his eyes, and the pain in them was unmistakable.

“Those doors hold only fools,” she said softly but fiercely. “You should be judged for the man you’ve become not by the circumstances of your birth.”

He was silent for a moment, his eyes still on hers. The expression in them changed somehow, and suddenly her heart was beating in her throat.

“At any rate,” she said quickly, taking refuge in words, “no one here in England would have the faintest idea whether your birth was irregular or not.”

“I have a responsibility to my brother,” Wick said. But that expression was still there. It was almost . . . tender.

Philippa started rubbing Jonas’s back again. “If I understood the conversation at dinner last night properly, Gabriel assumed responsibility for this castle along with some members of his brother’s court even though he would have preferred to be an archaeologist off somewhere . . . Tunis, was it? Looking for a city called Carthage? That seems to suggest that a sense of familial responsibility does not reside only in the lower echelons.”

Wick laughed at that. “I did my best to persuade him to go to Tunis, but he refused, thinking that he had to provide an income for the castle. Then he wrote a book—not to mention married—an heiress and now he is free to go where he wishes.”

“I expect you tried very hard to convince him. I can tell that you are extremely close.”

“He was so miserable before meeting Kate,” Wick explained.

“Yet he can’t manage without you? Would he not wish the same happiness for you?”

There was another moment of silence. Then he smiled down at her. Philippa suddenly thought she would love to kiss him. She would give him a scandalous kiss, the kind that Rodney had demanded and she hadn’t allowed.

As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I want to hear more about Rodney.” She should never—never—have told Wick about Rodney. Somehow, during these nocturnal tête-à-têtes, it was hard to keep secrets, and Wick had already guessed she was running from someone.

“Well . . . he has a tendency to start braying when he’s nervous,” she offered, feeling a wicked delight in betraying her former betrothed.

Wick nodded. “I know the type. I think it goes along with the English ancestry. I expect he hunts, and delights in shouting absurdities like tallyho.”

“I expect so,” she said. She could not help but conjure a mental picture of Rodney sitting on his horse in that red hunting coat that made his buttocks look four times wider than they actually were. Involuntarily, her eyes dropped to Wick’s legs.

They were all muscle, as different from Rodney’s as night from day.

“Are you comparing us?” His voice had gone low and husky.

Her nerves jolted again, but she nodded. She couldn’t lie to Wick any longer, now they were so close. Friends, or perhaps even something more. “You are very different.”

“Perhaps because he’s a baronet’s son.” He didn’t say it bitterly.

“He’s always had everything he wanted, but that doesn’t excuse his fat bottom,” she observed.

“Was he really seven when he fell in love with you?”

“He was nine. I was seven.”

“Astounding,” Wick said, staring at her as if she were some sort of exhibit in a traveling show.

Philippa caught back a smile and tossed her head. “Are you saying, Mr. Berwick, that I was not desirable at age seven?”

“You are as pretty as a fairy-tale princess,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “I’m quite certain that you were just as enchanting at age seven.”

“I actually used to dream of being in a fairy story,” she admitted.

“Vanity, thy name is woman!” Wick said, pulling a strand of her hair.

“Not from vanity. I always pictured a prince who would ride up on a white horse. I’d be there, in the village square, and he would sweep across and wrap his arm around me and pull me before him in the saddle.”

Wick’s eyebrow was up. “That would take quite a bit of skill. The story would be so disappointing if you took a hoof to the head. Was the prince wearing shining armor, by any chance?”

“Naturally,” Philippa confirmed.

“Near impossible,” Wick said. “Scoop a girl”—he pulled back and gave her a quick inspection from head to toe—“who’s no lightweight onto a horse while wearing armor?”

“My prince,” she said loftily, “would have had no problem with the feat. He considered me as light as a feather.” She gave him a look akin to the one he had given her. “That was thanks to his physique, you understand.”

Wick burst out laughing and then stopped suddenly when Jonas fluttered his eyelashes.

“You have no romance in your soul,” Philippa said. She leaned back against the sofa and sighed. “It was only very recently that I realized the fairy story had more to do with escaping Rodney than being carried off by an acrobatic prince.”

Wick leaned over and peered at Jonas. “Fast asleep.”

“I should bring him back to the nursery. I think he sleeps better in his cradle.”

“No, he sleeps better in your lap.” There was a note in his voice that transformed a simple comment into something altogether different.

She could feel her cheeks turning pink. Maybe he would lean over . . . maybe he would kiss her. She could almost feel his lips on hers.

But not quite.

So she stood up, and together, in the darkness, they made their way back to the nursery. Wick stood next to her, watching silently, as she gently tucked Jonas back into his cradle.

When she straightened and turned around, he was there, just before her. His head bent, slowly, and his lips slipped along her cheek. She stayed still, her heart beating in her throat, willing his lips to touch hers.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, low and sweet.

He was looking down at her with velvet dark eyes. He was too beautiful for her, too sophisticated, too princely . . .

“Yes, you should,” she said.

Chapter Six

From her first night spent in Pomeroy Castle, Philippa had lain awake in bed and imagined Wick’s kisses. They wouldn’t be like Rodney’s slavering invasions, she had decided. And yet—she couldn’t imagine what they would be like. What if he thrust his tongue into her mouth, the way Rodney had? Any tongue in her mouth, other than her own, would be disgusting. She knew it.

But now Wick kissed her lightly, just a brush of his lips. A jerk of fire went straight down her body, through her middle. She raised her arms and wound them around his neck. His lips were firm and not at all wet—so how on earth could such a simple motion make her feel so hot and needy?

For a few moments, she couldn’t help wondering when he was going to push his tongue between her lips, and what she would feel if he did. But instead, he simply stood there in the dark nursery, his head bent to hers, his mouth brushing hers, over and over. Gradually she forgot her worries; besides, her attention was caught by his hands, roaming over her back, sliding lower, shaping her. Soon enough she could think of nothing but the mesmerizing sensation of his touch; it made her feel quite odd. She shivered and tried to move closer to his warmth.

His lips slipped from hers and dusted along the line of her jaw, down the curve of her neck, leaving a little trail of fire everywhere they touched.

He smelled so good, Philippa thought in a daze. What must he taste like? Impulsively, she opened her mouth and tasted him, her tongue sneaking out to touch the hard line of his jaw.

A rough sound came from Wick’s lips, and he turned his face to hers. “Darling,” he said, his voice a husky thread in the silence.

Philippa pressed even closer, molding her body to his muscles. She was dimly aware that his hair had fallen from its ribbon, and she reached up, running her fingers through the loose strands. The touch felt almost as intimate as kissing.

His tongue ran along her lips, and then he breathed, “Kiss me back, Philippa. Please.” She opened her mouth. It was as natural as breathing, as turning one’s face up to the sunshine. Wick’s kiss wasn’t about invasion. It was about the taste of him, and the taste of her, and the way their bodies were trembling against each other.

A groan tore from his throat, then he was kissing her harder than Rodney ever had done, so ruthlessly that she could only hold on, helpless in the firestorm that shot down her legs.

Yet she remained aware enough to know that she wasn’t alone in that storm; Wick’s large hands were trembling as they slid down her back, rounded onto her bottom, and pulled her up and against his body. Which wasn’t a bit like Rodney’s doughy anatomy. In fact, he didn’t feel in the least like Rodney . . .

It was Wick who pulled back, Wick who stepped away, leaving Philippa trying to catch her breath. His chest was heaving too, and she could see the wildness in his eyes. She had never felt more feminine, more desired, and more powerful, in her life.

“I can’t marry you,” he said, low and fierce. “You’re a lady. I cannot marry you.”

“I haven’t asked you to,” she rejoined, her voice catching.

She had to stop him before he said anything, before he said he regretted kissing her. “Good night,” she whispered, pushing her hair back from her face.

Wick stepped forward, his hands reaching toward her as if he couldn’t stop himself. She turned quickly and walked to her bedchamber door, pausing to glance over her shoulder.

He was gazing after her, just as she’d thought—and hoped—he would be.

“I just want to point out,” she said, “that not only am I in the service of your brother, but I gave away my most prized possession, my chastity. As anyone in polite society would confirm, a woman in my situation could never marry a gentleman.”

Then, before he could respond, she whisked herself through the door. Because . . . Because she had, for all intents and purposes, just asked him to marry her.

And if that wasn’t enough to disqualify her as a lady, she didn’t know what would.

Chapter Seven

When Wick appeared in the portrait gallery the following night, he didn’t say a word about her implicit proposal. Instead he inquired about Jonas’s belly troubles, and then told her a story about his Great Aunt Sophonisba. Philippa nodded and smiled, but inside, she was wild with frustration.

Was he never going to mention what happened between them? She had lain awake half the night searching for magic words that would overcome his comment about her birth, and he wanted to talk of trivialities? Then, quite suddenly, Jonas stopped fussing, gave a little snort, and fell asleep.

And just as quickly, Wick snatched the baby from her shoulder and carried him back to the nursery.

Philippa trotted along behind, her heart pounding. She was having trouble remembering her lines, just like an actress about to enter the stage. What should she say? What should she — should she . . .

In the end, she said nothing, because—the baby having been tucked in his bed—Wick pinned her against the wall and kissed her until she was melting against him, and instead of carefully crafted questions designed to make him realize that he should marry her . . . well, he seemed to like those soft sounds she made when he kissed her, which was good because the way he kissed her, put together with the way he touched her, made her intoxicated. Even more intoxicated than old Fettle, when he was lying in the road singing.

The next night was the same, and the night after that. All during the daylight hours, she mulled over ways to make Wick marry her. Somehow. Because if he didn’t ask her soon—well, she really did have to write her father. She had begun to feel horribly guilty, certain that he was worried to death about what had become of her.

But when the nighttimes came, and Wick found her in the portrait gallery, their eyes would meet, and all those anxieties would fly from her mind. The world would shrink to fit that room. She would shiver if his arm touched hers, bite her lip at the look in his eyes.

And then, when Jonas was in his cradle, she would slip into Wick’s arms as naturally as the baby had settled down to sleep. Once she was there, the world disappeared entirely, and the only thought in her mind was a dazed wish to know more of him. Wick was like the best present she’d ever received, a gift wrapped in hundreds of different layers. Every night she learned something new, something that the rest of the world didn’t know.

He kept vital parts of himself secret, even from his own brother. Yet she’d found the magic key that shook him free of that enormous reserve: she kissed him and kissed him. Slowly, his face would change, move from its implacable cheer into something wilder and fiercer. A look that was for her alone. A look that came close—very close—to revealing a Wick who was no longer in control.

But every time she tried to coax him over that final barrier, allowing her hand (scandalously) to brush his thighs, or even, one night, arching against him like the worst kind of Jezebel . . .

He never broke. She could feel him tremble, hear the groan in his voice, but his self-control held.

And every time she tried to bring up the subject of their relationship, he withdrew. In a second his face would change to that of a calm and unmoved butler. He would bid her a polite good-bye and leave, closing the door politely, and quietly, behind him. Still . . . he came back the next night, as if he couldn’t stay away.

It drove her mad. The only way Philippa could imagine changing Wick’s mind was to seduce him. True, she didn’t know much about seduction. Rodney had thrown himself in the straw at her feet, after all, and even the memory of him scrabbling at her ankles made her shudder.

One day when Kate took the baby off to nurse, Philippa drifted around the castle until she found Wick inspecting the work of three footmen as they polished some silver. Gathering her resolve, she poked her head in, and said as calmly as she could, “Mr. Berwick, Her Highness would like to speak to you in the nursery.”

But when he emerged from the door, she pulled him into the small sitting room next door. They didn’t say a word, just came together with a giddiness that made them both shake with silent laughter until the glitter in Wick’s eyes became something else, something hotter and more private than mirth.

She kissed him until they were both shaking, until her blood raced, until she could feel him, hard and rigid against her.

And yet, after a few minutes he put her away, looking down into her face with that impenetrable expression that she was growing to hate. There was a frown in his eyes.

“You mustn’t do this,” he whispered, rubbing his thumb over her lip.

“Why not?”

“I’m not worth it. I’m not worth you. This cannot—we cannot—be together.”

“We are together,” she said. “I lo—”

His hand slipped over her hand. “Don’t say it. You must not. I am not a gentleman.”

“I love you,” she said, pulling her head sharply from his hand. “I will tell my father that; I will tell anyone: your brother, Kate, the footmen, the cook.”

She could see him swallow. “I could not bear it if you did that.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I would not wish that on my worst enemy.”

“What wouldn’t you wish?” she asked, genuinely bewildered.

“To ruin the woman he loves,” he said.

“I’m already ruined.”

He ran one finger down her cheek, and then let his hand drop. “You were not ruined by the loutish Rodney, no matter what you think. There’s many a lady who anticipated the marriage bed. But make no mistake, you would be ruined by marrying a servant.” He turned and withdrew, leaving her there.

Wick walked straight out of the castle, down the great marble stairs, and to the lake. He moved blindly, seeing nothing but the disappointment in Philippa’s eyes. He felt a queer ache in his heart at the thought of it.

Yet what could he do? He loved her—God, he loved her the way he never imagined was possible. He would step before a raging bull, he would throw himself in—

But he couldn’t do what she wanted. Marry her. Make her into the wife of a butler? Never. Never.

He was staring at the still surface of the lake, agonized by the turn of events that had brought Philippa to him, and the social conventions that would likely keep them apart, when he felt a touch on his shoulder, turned his head, and found his brother at his side. As brothers do, they understood each other without a word; Gabriel was squinting at him in a way that conveyed to Wick that his private kisses were no longer private.

“Damnation,” he said flatly.

“Hmm,” Gabriel said, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Philippa is a lovely girl. Kate adores her.”

“I can’t marry her.”

“Why not?”

It took a moment before Wick could compose himself and look over at his oblivious brother without rage in his eyes. He prided himself on never showing emotion of that sort. “I’m in your service,” he said, finally. “As a butler.”

“Only because you chose to be so,” Gabriel responded.

“Once that choice was made, the decision was irrevocable.”

“Rubbish. I can hire another majordomo in London. You only took over because we had no money, don’t you remember? Well, now we have Kate’s unexpectedly lavish inheritance, not to mention the payment I received for my book on Greek archaeology. In fact, I just bought Kate’s father’s estate from her stepmother. We could—”

“You could what? Make me legitimate? Make me the proper spouse for Philippa?” Wick couldn’t help it. The calm front he was so proud of maintaining cracked along with his heart, and bitterness poured like acid into his voice. “You can’t give me what I most need: a father who didn’t bed a dairymaid and impregnate her. You can’t give my mother her marriage lines, nor myself the pedigree that Philippa deserves.”

He saw his arguments hit home. “I’m no husband for a lady, Gabe,” he said more quietly.

“Philippa loves you,” Gabriel said rallying. “A blind man could see that. She doesn’t care about your pedigree.”

Wick’s throat was too tight to answer. He knew that his brother could see raw despair in his eyes because he pulled him into a rough embrace. “She couldn’t do better than you,” Gabriel said a moment later, thumping him on the back.

He just shook his head. “Bollocks.”

“There’s just one way in which you fall short.”

It didn’t seem like merely one way to Wick, but he waited for Gabriel to elaborate.

“You’re a coward.”

At this slur, a flush of hot rage, the kind that only his brother could inspire, surged up Wick’s chest. “You dare not say that to me,” he said between clenched teeth.

“You’ve got the balls to love her, but not the balls to take her,” Gabriel said. “And do you want to know why I know that?”

“No.” Wick’s hands were curling into fists.

“Because I was the same with Kate. I was trapped, thinking that I had to be as rich as Croesus before I could marry. You’re not responsible for our father’s idiocy. You’re afraid to just reach out and take her, even though she wants you.”

“I’m no coward,” Wick said between clenched teeth.

Gabriel actually laughed. “Luckily for Philippa, she’s beautiful enough that another man will come along who has the balls to accept what she’s offering.”

A muted roar erupted from Wick’s throat, and he threw himself at his brother. They fell to the ground with a thump, rolled over in a flurry of blows, rolled over again. Wick found himself on top. “She may want me now but—”

His sentence was derailed by a deft move by Gabriel who managed to flip him on the ground, and knock the wind out of him. It wasn’t until they were both lying on their backs panting and gingerly feeling their knuckles, that Wick said it. He said it flatly, because he’d examined it, night after night turning the facts over and over in his mind, and he knew it was true. “Years from now, she will wish she had a man who could take his place next to her in society.”

His brother pushed himself to his feet. “How do you know? Maybe she just wants a braver you, a man with the balls to stand up and say he’s as good as any other man, regardless of birth.”

Wick took the hand his brother held out to him. “I can’t be what she deserves,” he said, feeling his jaw.

Gabriel looked at him with disgust and turned on his heel. “She does deserve better than you—and I’m not talking about your pedigree.”

After Wick abandoned her in the sitting room, Philippa slipped back up to the nursery, fully conscious that she couldn’t continue to press him for what he told her—over and over—he could not give her. Moreover, Jonas was thriving: he no longer wailed after eating, and his little cheeks were filling out; just that day, he had smiled at Kate for the first time, and later, at his father, and then, at every one of the footmen.

It was time for her to go home.

She would miss the baby and Kate terribly, but it would be a simple matter to engage a new nursemaid. Her heart heavy, she sat down and wrote a letter to her father, sealed it, and gave it to a footman. Her father would have it by evening.

Leaving the castle now, like this, would mean leaving her heart behind. It had been stolen: stolen by a man with immaculate comportment, a quiet and intelligent face, and passionate kisses. She, a daughter of the landed gentry, had fallen in love with a butler.

She was in love with Wick.

But Wick insisted he could not marry her. He respected her; if she loved him, she had to respect him. Even if it meant never seeing him again.

Even then.

But still . . . she had given everything to Rodney—to revolting, despised Rodney. If she could give everything to a lumpen dolt, why could she not give everything to Wick, whom she loved? Setting aside the fact that he kept refusing her, of course.

It wasn’t in her to simply give up.

At length, she decided to try once more, just one last time. That night.

The idea grew until her heart was racing with conviction. She would do it. She would ask, beg, seduce Wick into making love to her, just once. So that she knew what it was like, with him. So that, during all those evenings playing chess with her father that lay ahead, she could think back on this one night. It wasn’t just chess that loomed in her mind.

There was Rodney. After that letter to her father, there would be no escaping Rodney.

There would be no “happily ever after” for her. Life with Rodney would be . . . whatever it was.

But if she managed to seduce Wick, she would have memories, at least. Still, she would have to be subtle . . . he had a will of iron, and mere sensuality would never break it.

One ethical question kept bothering her. Did she have the right to try to overcome his resolve? Wick’s enormous reserve and his adherence to honor stemmed from the same place: his illegitimate birth. If she succeeded in persuading him to make love to her, was she tarnishing that quality he held so dear?

With a wry little smile, she thought about the knight in shining armor her girlhood self had dreamed of. There was no man more born to being a maiden’s champion than Wick. He was all that was honorable, good, and true.

In the end, she decided that as long as she didn’t cause Wick to break his code of honor, she could not do an injustice to him. And that meant he had to make love to her not because he desired her, but because she needed him—or rather, the act— to save her . . . to rescue her. In making love to her, he would become the instrument of her salvation.

Chapter Eight

That night Phillipa put Jonas to bed and then sat down in the nursery rocking chair, facing the door. If he didn’t come by . . . by nine of the clock, she would try to find him. She revised that when nine o’clock came and went. Ten o’clock . . . eleven . . . Finally the nursery door opened.

With one look at Wick’s face, Philippa flew into his arms like a bird to its nest. Except this bird was in danger of being eaten alive, so perhaps that wasn’t a good analogy. His hands were rough, unsteady, and urgent, as if he already knew what she had to say. As if he guessed that it was to be her last night in the castle.

Yet it wasn’t long before he pulled back. She would have been angry if she couldn’t see raw lust fighting with regret in his eyes. “I’m no Rodney, taking a maiden in the stables,” he said, reminding himself as much as her.

If she was to execute her plan now was the moment.

“I’m no maiden,” Philippa reminded him. And: “I need you.”

Every inch of her body was aware of the coiled strength of his. The way he held himself utterly still, not twitching or fidgeting.

“I wrote to my father,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I couldn’t allow him to worry about me any longer. It was thoughtless and unkind to give him such anxiety.” Jonas made a snuffling sound in his cradle, like a baby piglet. “My father will take me home, of course.”

Wick made a sudden movement but stilled.

She swallowed and looked back up at him. “He will come to retrieve me, and take me home to Rodney. That’s what he must do, because I—I was fool enough to lie with Rodney in the stables.”

“Ah, Philippa,” Wick said. And then she was enveloped by his arms.

“I know,” she said carefully, “that you would help me if you could.”

He held her, warm and close.

“If I had, if I had slept with another man, perhaps Rodney would refuse to marry me.” It sounded absurd. She gave up and started over. “If I—”

He interrupted her. “Philippa.”

“I know,” she said miserably. “I know you’re too much of a gentleman to do what I am asking.”

“You are only playing at being a nursemaid, Phillipa. You will go home and be a lady again. But I have never had a gentleman’s rank. Servant or bastard . . . either one is ineligible to marry you.” His voice was fierce, as ferocious as a wolf in winter. “You ask the impossible.”

“I’m sorry! I should never have suggested it.” Her words caught on a sob. “I didn’t think of it that way. It’s just that I thought that you . . .”

“You knew that I desired you and thought I might help you escape from an odious marriage. I cannot have this conversation with the young prince in the room,” Wick stated. He walked across the room, bringing Philippa with him, and opened the door to the corridor.

Her heart was breaking. It had all gone wrong. She had insulted Wick. Of course, he couldn’t do as she asked. It was as ridiculous as the idea that he should marry her. He was the son of a grand duke. She was a fool—a stupid, naive fool from a small village, and she should have stayed there. Though if you looked at it another way, he was a servant, and she was a lady. The outcome was obvious.

Besides, her idea was ridiculous, born of desperation. Obviously Wick would never, ever, sleep with an unmarried lady—even if she had begged him.

Her cheeks were burning, as she followed Wick into the corridor and shut the door behind her.

But she came from strong stock, and she would not crumple. “I apologize for asking you to do something so insulting to your sense of honor,” she said, keeping her voice steady. And she even managed to summon up a wisp of a smile. “I know you are no debaucher of maidens.”

He did not return her smile. “My father was as much. My mother worked in the castle’s laundry. I cannot, ever, act as he did.”

Philippa nodded. “You are not like your father. And you mustn’t think twice about Rodney. I shall explain everything to my father, and I will make him understand.” She would not burden Wick with the truth: that her father would marry her to Rodney willy-nilly.

“I could kill Rodney, if you wish. Perhaps I should do it whether you wish me to or not.”

She blinked and saw that his eyes were entirely serious. She let out a muffled laugh. “No! Rodney is . . . Rodney is not terrible. I exaggerated the matter when I told you about him. I will tell my father that I don’t wish to marry Rodney, and that will be that.”

She held out her hand. “I have heard that fine ladies in London shake hands.”

He looked down at her hand in the dim corridor. “Are you a fine lady?”

“No, but I wish I were, for your sake.”

“So you could buy me?”

Her hand dropped. “Buy you?”

“I’m pretty, in my own way,” he said neutrally. “Ladies have indicated that they might be willing to support me in a grander fashion than does Gabriel.”

For a moment she didn’t understand him, then a flash of rage went through her body. “Now you have insulted me, as surely as I did you,” she snapped. “I think this conversation has gone quite far enough.” She turned to open the door to the nursery.

His hand shot out, held the door shut.

“Wick,” she said, staring at his hand against the dark wood, “I must enter that nursery. I should pack. I am leaving tomorrow.”

She didn’t feel him move, or sense a flash of his arms, nothing . . . and yet suddenly she was spun around and found herself wrapped in his arms.

“I would let you buy me,” he said finally, his voice hoarse.

She managed a shaky smile. Then she took a deep breath and put her hands on his face, drawing his lips to hers.

“How much?” she whispered.

“I’ve been told I’m worth a fortune.” His voice had a bleak note.

“I haven’t much money.” Her tongue stole out, ran along the seam of his lips, tasted that wildness that he concealed with his upright body, his unmoving face.

“There’s a special rate on . . . I’m going for a ha’penny,” he whispered against her lips.

This time she kissed him.

Philippa didn’t know how long they stood in the corridor. With her eyes closed, her only sensations came from the press of Wick’s powerful body, the drugging sensation of his mouth, the way his hands shaped and teased her.

Then she became aware he was saying something. “I didn’t mean to insult you by talking of the women who offered to buy me.” His voice was low and rasping. “But I am constrained. I cannot ask you to marry me. The only conceivable relationship between a butler and a lady is if she . . . engages his services.”

She swallowed, biting her lip when she saw the pain in his eyes. “But I would marry you.”

The words had tumbled from her lips. “If you were to ask,” she added quickly.

“I am a servant, with a grand lineage on one side but no wealth,” Wick said bleakly. “And the truth of it is that I . . . I love you, Philippa.” It was his turn to cup her face in his hands. “Which means I cannot make you a servant. If I could marry any lady, any woman in the world, from queen to beggar, I would never choose another than you. And I mean that.”

Philippa’s lips trembled. “I love you too,” she whispered.

“But I cannot marry,” Wick said, his eyes searching hers, begging for understanding. “If I were a different person, and this a different place and time, I would have had a weding ring on your finger a week ago.”

“Oh, Wick,” she whispered, collapsing forward against his chest. A tear dampened his shirt.

“I would give anything to call you mine.” His voice was harsh and true.

“Then I shall have to buy you,” Philippa said, brushing away that tear and another that followed it. She pulled back and caught his eyes, because this was important. “I am not a child to be handed from one man’s hand to another.”

His brows drew together. “I do not—”

“You do.” She said it clearly, not angrily. “I love you.”

He swallowed hard.

“And I am perfectly capable of making up my own mind about the disposition of my body.”

“I know.”

She opened the door at her back. “Then come.” She held out her hand.

His voice emerged strangled from his chest. “Philippa, I cannot—”

“If you love me, if you respect me as a person who owns myself and my own body, who is servant to no one and owned by no one . . .”

“A gentleman wouldn’t,” he said hoarsely.

She smiled at that, picked up his hand. “You just told me, sir, that you are no gentleman.”

He followed her, through the darkened nursery, to the door at the far end, through the door.

From a chair at the side of the bedroom, she snatched her reticule, and opened it. “If the only way I may have you is to buy you . . .”

He let out a half groan, half laugh. “Philippa!”

She reached out, caught his hand, and wrapped his fingers around a ha’penny. “Then I own you. And although you didn’t ask, my price was very low. I was yours from your first kiss. I suppose you could say that I came for free.”

The hunger in his eyes made her feel more beautiful than she had in the whole of her life.

Still, he remained motionless, exercising that infernal self-control of his.

She let the silence grow, then: “I have bought a house, but not possessed it.” She was quite sure that the look in her eyes rivaled that of any light skirts on the streets of London. “And I am sold, but not yet enjoyed.”

There was another beat of silence in the room, during which Philippa’s heart drummed in her throat.

“That was a terrible pun,” Wick observed. There was something deep and slow in his voice. She bit back a smile.

He put one hand to his perfectly tied cravat. Philippa held her breath.

Eyes fixed on hers, he slowly, slowly lifted a fold of snowy linen, over, up, over, through . . . she saw his hands from the corner of her vision, because she was drinking in his expression, the taut desire that shaped his face.

Then she raised her hands to the cord that held her wrapper together. A moment later, she was wearing only a light muslin nightgown. One glance down at her chest and she felt herself turning pink with embarrassment. Instinctively, she folded her arms over her breasts, hoping to flatten her nipples before Wick saw them.

She couldn’t tell if he had. He shrugged off his heavy coat and put it over a chair.

“You,” Philippa said, and cleared her throat. “You look . . .”

“Without that livery,” Wick stated, “I am a man, nothing but a man.”

Joy sparked her heart. “Do you wish me to remove my nightgown?”

He straightened, a shoe in one hand. “If you’re having second thoughts, I’ll leave.”

She gasped no, and a smile quirked the corner of his mouth. Then she added: “I think I would feel more comfortable with my nightgown on.”

Wick nodded. He dispensed with his other shoe, pulled off his stockings, then paused, hands on his waistband.

Philippa realized her voice had died. It was just that his body was so taut and muscled, like nothing she’d seen or imagined. It was a wicked smile he threw her, the kind that seducers threw maidens . . . though she was no maiden.

“I should probably warn you,” Wick said, but she hardly heard him. He removed his breeches, and now his hands were on his smalls.

“What?” she breathed.

“It could be that Rodney and I don’t—” Still his hands didn’t move.

“Don’t what?” she said, unable to image what he was getting at.

“Don’t resemble each other.” His smalls hit the floor, and Philippa’s mouth fell open. She instinctively fell back a step, ending up against the wrought-iron bed frame.

“Oh dear.” Her voice came out in a squeak. The memory of Rodney’s member flashed through her mind: Rodney’s little member, she now realized. There was no comparison.

“I gather we don’t,” Wick said, a wry, yet tender note in his voice.

“No,” Philippa breathed. “You don’t.”

Chapter Nine

Wick hadn’t known—hadn’t dared to think—about what was about to happen, and what it would mean for him. But as laughter gathered in his chest at the look in Philippa’s eyes, the helpless, desiring, appalled look on her face, he knew.

He meant to have her, to have and to hold, any way he could. Whether that meant becoming a butler in her house, or a gardener in her fields . . . He had to be near her.

This funny, delicious, intelligent woman had walked into the castle and straight into his heart and she would never leave it, as long as he lived.

But that was a problem to be worked out tomorrow. Just at present, he had to pry his beloved off the bed railings.

“Darling,” he said, walking closer.

Philippa flicked her eyes to his face, then back down. The agonized doubt on her face almost had him doubling over with laughter, but he couldn’t do that. Instead, he swept her up in his arms and lowered her onto the bed.

She lay in the path of the moonlight coming through the window; it flowed across the floor, up and over the bed, spilling on the window and splashing light over her white-blonde hair as it spilled over the pillow and down the side of the bed. She looked ethereal, like a fairy and not an Englishwoman, some sort of fabulous sprite he’d captured and brought to his bed for the night.

He sat next to her on the bed. “Why did you ask me whether you should undress?”

“Rodney didn’t, that is, he undressed but he didn’t remove my clothes.”

“Rodney,” Wick stated, “is a fool and a bungler. I don’t suppose he used a French letter either, did he?”

“No.”

“It will prevent your being with child,” he told her. “Our child.” There was a little stab to his heart as he said it. He would give anything to have his baby growing inside Philippa, to watch her stomach round, to see her eyes in the face of a little boy or girl . . . But since he didn’t know if the obstacles to their marriage could be overcome, the French letter was necessary.

A ghost of a smile touched her lips, but still, she looked strained and uncertain. He lowered himself slowly until he lay on his side, and gently, very gently, leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. His hands tangled in all that gorgeous hair, drawing locks of it through his fingers like silk spun on Jove’s own looms.

He kissed her until she opened her mouth to him and turned toward him. He kept kissing her not moving, letting her body inch toward his, letting her hands take the initiative, slipping from his neck to his shoulders, down his back.

Her touch made him shake with ferocious need, but he schooled himself. He remained still, telling himself that he must not frighten her. Philippa had already had one unpleasant experience; if he muffed this, she’d likely be put off for life.

He waited until her eyes flew open, and she said, “Wick.”

“Yes?” He couldn’t stop grinning.

“Don’t the gentlemen do more with the strumpets they buy?”

“What sort of thing would you like me to do?”

“You should know. And stop smiling at me like that.”

“I can’t help it,” he said, leaning forward and kissing her lips, her cheek, her feathery eyelashes. “I’ve never laughed in bed with a woman before.”

“That’s probably because you were more busy than you are now,” she remarked, and he nipped her earlobe, then felt the shudder that pulsed down her body.

“You look like a fairy, a sprite,” he said, running his hand down the long line of her leg. She seemed to have a fascination with his chest: she was tracing little patterns on it. “But you sound like a schoolmarm.” The last word was strangulated, as Philippa had leaned toward him and was tracing the same patterns with her tongue.

Slowly, slowly, he slid his hand under her nightgown, over her slender thigh, the tender curve of her waist.

“I just want to say one thing,” Philippa said, abandoning his chest, much to his regret.

“Mmmmm,” he said, his fingers gliding over skin as soft as daisy petals. His heart was thudding in a way he had never experienced before.

“No tiddle-taddling,” she said.

Wick’s hand was caressing her generous, lush breast, and couldn’t think very clearly. Philippa’s head fell back against the pillow as he brushed past her nipple and a small moan broke from her lips, so it seemed she wasn’t exactly clearheaded either. “Is this tiddle-taddling?” he asked, rubbing that sweet raspberry with his thumb.

Another strangled moan, a tiny pulse of air, flew from her throat. “No,” she said with a gasp. Then: “You don’t know what it is, do you? I should have known only Rodney would try to engage in something so distasteful.”

It struck Wick that bedding his beloved was the most delightful, funny, and passionate activity he had ever engaged in. He kissed her again, letting his fingers wander, marking what made Philippa arch her back, instinctively falling into a position to give . . . and take.

Slowly, slowly he inched her nightgown all the way above her breasts. She didn’t seem to notice until he replaced one of the hands that was caressing her breast with his mouth—well, she noticed that. And he stayed there, learning her secrets, tasting her sweetness. Savoring her. Every startled gasp made laughter and desire double in his chest.

“Lovely Philippa,” he murmured, sometime later, “is this tiddle-taddling?” And just to make sure she knew what he was talking about, he leaned down and gave her other breast a kiss, the kind that claimed, that was a little rough and a little wild.

“No!” she gasped and then, “Oh, Wick, that feels wonderful.”

Her hands reached out, rather blindly, toward him. “Does it feel the same for you?”

Once they had established to both their satisfaction that yes, it did feel just as good for him, Wick was flat on his back with Philippa lying along his side, one of her legs entwined with his.

“Philippa,” he said, dimly hearing the hoarseness in his voice. “May I remove your nightgown now?”

She looked at him, her eyes shining. “If I kiss you here, Wick, your whole body jerks in response. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Quite,” he managed, and whipped her billowing nightgown over her head. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, awestruck.

Philippa followed Wick’s gaze down her body. The moonlight had turned her limbs to alabaster; she tried to imagine herself as he saw her. But she would rather look at him.

“Just one thing,” she said trying to gather her thoughts. “What I said before . . .”

But his hands were at her waist and his mouth closed over her breast and she lost the sentence, the words, the thought altogether.

“Yes?” he asked.

All the secret parts of her were throbbing, which was such an odd sensation that . . . still, she needed to make the point. “It’s just one of Rodney’s daft perversions,” she said, tugging his shoulders. “He called it diddling, but I know you won’t do such a thing.”

Wick moved so his body was poised above hers and God save her, the only thing she wanted was that large body to rest on top of hers. She finally understood why women played the strumpet: it was because they caught a glimpse of a man like this one.

“Wick,” she whispered, throwing the last of any remaining maidenly caution to the winds, “come to me . . . please?”

“I thought it was tiddling that you didn’t like,” Wick said, his eyes glinting with an unholy mixture of laughter and lust. “Now I find you don’t like diddling either?”

Philippa rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

A strong hand suddenly laid a scorching path up her leg, easing them apart, skating onto the inner flesh of her thigh. Philippa gasped. “That’s exactly where Rodney . . . you mustn’t!”

“I won’t,” Wick said tenderly, dropping another kiss on the corner of her mouth. “I’ll never do something so ham-handed that Rodney partook in it . . . not unless you beg me to, of course.”

And with that, he took her mouth in such a devouring kiss that at first Philippa hardly noticed the hand stroking her legs apart, dancing close to her most secret—but notice she did. She tore her mouth away, and said, “Wick, no.”

“I would never,” he said, his eyes innocent. “On the Continent, we disdain diddling. We do this instead.” And without pausing for a response, he pulled open her legs with strong hands, slid down, and before she could even conceive of such a thing, put his mouth—there.

Philippa didn’t even think of refusing. In fact, she couldn’t think at all. Her capacity for rational thought did not reemerge until after she found herself shaking from head to foot, trying to fathom how a scorching wave had burst over her head and dragged her down into its fiery depths.

Wick was there, grinning down at her . . . nudging her.

Her eyes widened. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” he said, husky and sweet. “Take me, Philippa. Because I’m the one who loves you, and because you love me. Make me yours.”

She knew instinctively that this kind of ownership had nothing to do with ha’pennies, or even kisses. And when he was deep inside her, hers weren’t the only eyes shining with errant tears.

“You’re mine,” she whispered.

Wick cradled her face in his. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” she whispered back, rather surprised. “It did with Rodney, and there’s so much more of you. But it feels . . .” She wiggled a little. “It feels good.”

“Ah,” he said, with such a wealth of satisfaction in his voice that she started to smile, but then he drew back, slowly, and just as slowly, thrust forward, and the smile flew from her mind, along with everything but the wild pleasure, the ravishing feeling that had her arching to meet him, crying out with each stroke.

He kept coming, and coming . . . like the tide washing up on the shore, only not so gentle, then it felt as if the ocean came to her, as if a flood of pure pleasure swept from her toes to the ends of her fingers.

Dimly, she heard his groan, then her own cry.

It was a night of discovery.

She woke in the dim light of dawn to find that Jonas had slept through the night for the very first time. Wick was bent over her. She reached up, only to realize that he was, once again, dressed in his livery.

“I must go,” he murmured, brushing strands of hair from her face. “And you must return to being Miss Philippa Damson rather than my favorite nursemaid.”

She smiled at him drowsily, but she was waking up, and his words coalesced into something ominous. “What do you mean?”

“I expect your father will arrive this morning to take you home.”

Philippa sat up, her heart suddenly pounding. “I shan’t go.”

“You must. Jonas is much better, and young ladies can’t serve in the nursery forever. You are no servant, Philippa.”

“I don’t want—” She stopped. “If you are a servant, I want to be a servant.”

“You mustn’t say such a thing.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You must.” He said it gently, but she heard the stark truth of it in his voice. “There is no place for you here, in the castle. You might come as a visitor, but if I am in livery.” He hesitated. “I would rather you did not.”

And there it was.

She swung her legs from the bed and stood up, feeling the chill of his words spread through her body. “Please, Wick, don’t—don’t say this.”

He ran his fingers through her hair and pulled her close. “I will try to come for you,” he said, low and fierce. “I will try, Philippa. But I could never make you a servant or a beggar at my side. Wait for me—”

“Forever,” she said.

“One week. If I don’t come for you before one week has passed, I could not manage it. But know this, Philippa.” He looked down into her face, as unyielding as the greatest emperor who ever lived. “If I do not come for you, it is not for want of desire for you, nor for want of love for you, nor for want of trying. I would do anything to be worthy of you.”

Her breath caught on a sob. “Oh, Wick . . .”

“And I will never love another woman above you.”

The deep, hungry yearning in his eyes made her knees weak. She caught at him, fumbling for words, the vow that would make him understand that she was his forever. That she would wait a lifetime.

But he was gone.

Chapter Ten

Philippa lay awake until the thin gray light turned pale yellow, and Jonas stirred. She had no sooner washed and dressed herself and Jonas than a footman announced that her father requested to speak with her.

The moment she entered the sitting room, she threw herself into her father’s open arms. “I’m sorry, Papa; oh, you were worried! I told you not to be.”

For a moment, her father merely stood, his arms now tight around her. Then he sat down heavily, pulling her to his knee as if she were five years old. “You told me not to worry . . . and you truly believed your reassurance would be sufficient?”

“I did when I first ran away. But I’ve learned differently in the past weeks,” she confessed. “I thought it would be better for you if I was gone because I didn’t want to obey you. But I know now that love is far more possessive than that.” She leaned against his shoulder, as if she truly were a little girl again. “I missed you.”

“Were you treated well? I spoke to the prince, who seems a very orderly and mannered young fellow. But were you treated well?” He looked around. “I cannot countenance the fact that my daughter has been working as a nursemaid. Thank heaven your mother wasn’t alive to see it.”

“The prince and princess treated me with nothing but the greatest kindness, Papa.”

“I will give them my thanks, but then we must be away. I neglected the house, the estate, everything after you ran away.”

Philippa came to her feet and stood as straight as she could. “I will return home with you, Papa, but I will not marry Rodney. I will never, ever marry Rodney.” In that long hour before Jonas awoke, while she lay awake longing for Wick she had concluded that it was best not to inform her father that she planned to marry the butler.

“So I gathered from your note,” her father said, perplexed. “But why, sweetpea? You’ve always loved Rodney—”

“No, Papa,” Philippa interrupted. “You have always loved the idea of my marrying Rodney. And Rodney said he loved me. But no one ever asked me how I felt about marrying that fat-bottomed . . . fellow!”

Her father frowned. “Fat-bottomed? Is he?”

“Yes.”

“I never noticed. Still, you can’t make a decision of this nature based on something as unimportant as a bottom. It’s a man’s character that counts. Rodney is a sturdy lad, in character as well as physique.”

That may be true but it was beside the point.

“Would you call him intelligent?” she asked.

Her father gave this some thought. “Well, perhaps not precisely intelligent, but . . .”

“But?”

“A head is like a house,” he said. “If it’s crammed too full, it’s cluttered.”

“Rodney’s house doesn’t have a stick of furniture in it,” she said flatly.

Her father’s shoulders slumped. “I thought I was doing the best for you.”

“Papa,” she said, “I will not marry Rodney. Ever.”

“Just come home,” he said, coming to his feet and taking her in his arms again. “Just come home, please, Philippa. These last weeks have been insupportable.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, realizing the depth of her own unkindness, however unintended it may have been. “I was as bad as the serpent’s tooth in the Bible, wasn’t I, Papa?”

“Not quite,” he said wearily. “And it was Shakespeare’s Lear who called his thankless daughter a serpent’s tooth. But I haven’t felt so distraught since your mother died, and that’s the truth. I’ll have to speak to Sir George. I told him that you were visiting my brother all this time, but he suspects otherwise, of course. The servants have talked.”

“Please not the first day,” Philippa implored. “Surely, we can have a quiet day to ourselves. I’ll have a posset made, and we’ll play a game of chess in your study.”

They did just that.

Chapter Eleven

But the very next morning her father looked up from his plate and nodded to the butler, standing at a side table by the fire, ready to provide fresh toast. “That will do, Quirbles.”

Philippa put down her fork as their butler closed the door quietly behind him. “What is it, Papa?”

“You’re not the same,” he said abruptly.

She blinked at him.

“There’s something different about you.”

“I hope not.” She didn’t know whether to hope that Wick’s French letter had worked just as it ought or not: there was nothing to the outward eye that admitted she’d been ravished—and loved.

“What happened in that castle, Philippa?” her father asked. His voice was kind, but firm.

She picked up her fork again and studiously pushed her eggs to the side of the plate. “I took care of the little prince. I told you that already, Papa.”

“That’s not what I mean . . . His father didn’t do anything untoward, did he?”

Philippa’s mouth fell open. “Of course not, Papa! What a thing to suggest!”

“His Highness is not English.”

“He is all that is honorable,” Philippa said reprovingly. “And the princess is perfectly lovely. We even became friends. And by the way, she is English—though really, Papa, you should not make assumptions about people’s characters based on where they come from.” In truth, she missed Kate, which was absurd because they had been acquainted for only a few weeks.

“Nevertheless, you have changed somehow. What happened there?” her father persisted.

With a deep breath Philippa took the plunge. “I fell in love.”

“Ah, I thought so,” her father said, with the satisfaction that comes with having one’s guess confirmed. “You know, sweetpea, when your mother was dying, she was very worried about you. She was certain that I wouldn’t notice what you were feeling or thinking.”

“Well, you didn’t, when it came to Rodney,” Philippa pointed out, rather unkindly.

“I made up for that now,” he said, taking a bite of kipper.

She watched him chew and smile to himself.

But then the significance of it hit him. He put down his fork with a sharp click.

“You fell in love—with whom did you fall in love? Some dissolute scrap of gentry hanging around the prince’s knees, hoping for a handout, I’ll warrant. One of those glittering court fellows with no more substance or ethics than a tomcat!”

“No.” She took a bite of her now-cold eggs though she couldn’t taste them.

He frowned at her.

“The butler,” Philippa stated; having plunged, there was nothing for it but to keep going.

At this unimaginable revelation the blood drained from her father’s face. “You’re jesting.” His voice was a whisper.

Philippa squared her shoulders. “Mr. Berwick is the prince’s own brother. He is the son of a grand duke. He serves as His Highness’s majordomo out of strong loyalty and affection.”

Her father blinked. “No gentleman would ever serve as a butler, no matter what fancy label you give the position.”

“He is a gentleman,” Philippa snapped, in a tone she had never before used with her father.

“Then there’s something else wrong with him . . . Oh, dear God, he’s a married man.” Mr. Damson dropped his head into his hands. “I should have wedded you to Rodney the day you turned sixteen.”

Philippa rose, then slipped into the chair next to her father. “He is not married, Papa.”

Her father raised his head. “Poor as a church mouse, I expect. No estate.”

“None,” she admitted.

“Still, that doesn’t explain why he’s the butler. The man could marry an heiress if he’s the son of a grand duke. There’s no need to put on livery; there’s many a rich merchant who would love to boast of a son-in-law with that pedigree.”

Philippa bit her lip.

It came to him. “Wrong side of the blanket,” her father stated, his mouth bunching up with disdain.

She nodded.

“Damnation!” The word echoed harshly in the little room.

“Papa,” she said imploringly. “Wick is not—”

“Wick? Wick? Like the wick of a candle? I’ll be damned if my daughter will have anything to do with a man named after a household necessity.” He surged to his feet. “Tell me that the bastard touched you, and I’ll kill him myself.”

Philippa jumped up as well. “Papa, no!”

He grabbed her arms and stared into her face. “No? No, you are still a virgin?” She didn’t answer, and he gave her a shake. “Does that fine prince over there know the consequences of his bastard brother deflowering an English lady? Does he?”

“He didn’t deflower me,” she whispered.

Her father’s face relaxed, but his grip didn’t. “Ah.” Then, more slowly: “That would explain why he’s not here, trying to make his way out of the servant class by marrying you.”

“He refused to marry me!” She half shrieked it.

Her father dropped her arms, tottered, and sank back in his chair. “Margaret, Margaret, why did you leave me?” he moaned.

Philippa raised her chin. She couldn’t even imagine what her mother would make of the situation. “I asked him to marry me.”

Her father’s only response was a loud groan.

“And he refused on the grounds of his honor.”

“Where did I go wrong?” he moaned. “What did we do wrong, Margaret?” He raised his head. “This is all because of Rodney, isn’t it? You got a bee in your bonnet about Rodney, and so you fell for a good-looking servant with an interesting tale.”

“Wick is a gentleman and as honorable as you are. He means to be a doctor, just like your own brother.”

“You are not the first,” her father said, unheeding. “There’s that daughter of the Earl of Southplank, a year or two ago. Everyone knew she ran off with a footman, some say for an entire week. But she’s properly married, right and tight now.” He stood again. “And that’s what you’ll be as well. I’ll visit Sir George this very afternoon.”

“I will not marry Rodney!” A numbing wave of despair broke over her head.

“You will.” Her mild-mannered father suddenly took on the look of a bulldog. “You’ll do as I say, Philippa. I won’t have you ruining your life, pining after a servant who had a better understanding of propriety than you do. I don’t know whether I’m more appalled that you played the fool enough to ask such a thing of the man, or more grateful that he didn’t lunge at the chance.”

“No, Papa!” Philippa cried. “You don’t understand. You can’t!”

“I can,” he said. He took her arm and began towing her up the stairs. “And don’t think you’re going to run away again. I’ll tell the baronet that you suffered from a bout of sun-sickness. You will marry the fat-bottomed Rodney on the morrow and count yourself lucky. The last of the banns were said Sunday, just as you were flitting around that castle making a fool of yourself!”

“Papa,” Philippa said, her voice catching with tears. “I love Wick. I love him more than—”

“You will forget him,” her father stated. They reached the top of the stairs, and he pushed her directly into her bedchamber. “Someday you’ll look back on this episode as if it were a bout of fever. I always thought you were a sensible girl, Philippa.”

“I am!” she cried. “I loathe Rodney, Papa. I loathe him, and I will not marry him.”

“You will,” he said, shutting the door in her face. She heard him through the wood, his voice only slightly muffled. “Tomorrow!”

A few hours later Philippa heard the front door burst open, and she knew that her father had returned, and not waited for Quirbles to open said door to admit him. She hurried down the stairs, her heart pounding. Her father’s face was gleaming with sweat, his usual rather mournful expression metamorphosed into pure anger.

Without a word, Philippa ran into the sitting room before him. “That bastard!” her father bellowed, slamming the door behind him.

Philippa fell into a chair, judging that the bastard in question was not her beloved Wick. Evidently, Rodney had revealed all.

“He took advantage of you, a maiden, a gently born maiden. And he did so”—her father wheeled and glared down at her—“in a barn? In the straw?”

Philippa swallowed, but honesty made her admit, “I allowed him to do so, Papa.”

Rage twisted the corner of her father’s mouth. “That is irrelevant. Irrelevant! You are a gently born damsel, the only child of my house, and you were deflowered in a barn!” He spluttered to a halt. “Your mother,” he added heavily, “would kill me for this.”

Philippa bit her lip but said nothing.

“Sir George threw his son across the room once that young fool confessed,” her father said, seating himself opposite her. He reached up and pulled at his neckcloth as if it were strangling him.

“He did?” Philippa squeaked. “Across the room?”

“The baronet was as appalled as I,” her father said, dropping his head back on his chair’s high back. “That donkey didn’t even seem to realize what he’d done. Of course you ran from the house. You, a damsel, taken without the benefit of marriage, my daughter—in a barn.” That seemed to be the worst detail. “I shall never recover from this, never.”

“Papa,” Philippa began, hardly knowing what to say.

Her father jerked his head upright. “I want you to know, dear, that Sir George and I understand entirely why you fled. Entirely. It must have been an awful experience for you. Terrible. Like those suffered by women in wartime, I have no doubt. In the Egyptian campaign, for example—” He stopped and shook his head. “Irrelevant to the present situation.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as terrible as that,” Philippa said tentatively, as her father had never instructed her on the plight of women in wartime.

“No gently bred lady should be introduced to a situation that she instinctively finds distasteful except in the most acceptable circumstances.”

Philippa frowned, and her father frowned back. “In the dark,” he clarified. “In a proper bed, within the sanctity of matrimony, and with the knowledge that your husband respects and admires you, even though the act itself—to wit, consummation of the marriage—is necessarily distasteful to you, if not painful.”

“Oh,” Philippa said. That would have summed up her probable marital relations with Rodney. But it had no relevance for intimacies with Wick.

“As I said, neither of us blames you,” her father repeated.

“Thank you,” Philippa said.

“Your mother would have fled as well.” Her father pulled off his neckcloth and mopped his face with it. “I simply cannot countenance the idiocy of that young man. Idiocy!”

Philippa waited, a sick feeling in her stomach.

“But be that as it may,” her father said, “you have made your bed, albeit in the stables. Did you confide to this Candlewick what happened to you?”

“His name is Berwick, not Candlewick.” But she nodded.

Her father wiped his face again and threw the neckcloth to the floor. “I shall send the man a gratuity. One hundred pounds. In refusing you, he showed the breeding of his paternal lineage. Obviously, he realized that you were slightly cracked because of the horrendous experience you endured. And he responded as a gentleman must. Two hundred pounds,” he added.

“Be that as it may, you’re to marry Rodney immediately,” he continued. “We’ll forget that episode with the castle and the butler ever happened. Rodney is not the man I should have chosen for you; I see that now. And I am sorry. But you know as well as I do, my dear, that all other doors are closed to you at this point.”

To Philippa, his voice seemed to take on a brassy sound, like someone speaking a foreign language. “Papa,” she pleaded. “I cannot marry him. Please.”

“Do you think that your mother wished to remain married to me after our wedding night?”

There was no possible answer to that.

“She did not,” her father said heavily. “The act is horrifying to a delicately bred creature. But we managed, and we loved each other, and there’s no one else in the world I would rather have married.”

“She didn’t have to marry Rodney!” Philippa cried.

“I want your word of honor that you will not run away again, Philippa.”

“Wick might come for me,” she blurted out.

Her father’s eyes softened. “Oh, sweetheart. Didn’t you just say that he refused to marry you?”

She nodded miserably.

“He truly is a gentleman,” he said gently.

“But he might come for me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “He—He knows how much I detest Rodney, and he loves me.”

“He can’t support you,” her father said, standing up and pulling her into his arms. “Were I he, I would loathe the idea of lowering the woman I loved, a lady, to the level of a servant. Did he say anything of that sort?”

A sob rose in Philippa’s breast.

Her father held her even closer. “I see he did. Well, my dear, the truth of it is that you have met two young men. One of them is a true gentleman, though perhaps his birth is not the best. And the other is no gentleman, though he’s a baronet’s son.”

“P-Please don’t make me marry him,” Philippa managed.

“There’s no choice,” he said, rocking her a little. “You know that, Philippa. There’s no choice. You’ll forget your noble butler in time. Rodney genuinely loves you, for all the boy’s a fool. You could do much worse.”

“I can’t bear it,” Philippa said, sobbing.

“You mustn’t run away,” her father said. “It broke my heart. I aged ten years, sweetpea. I couldn’t bear it if I didn’t know where you were. Please.”

Silent tears seeped into his coat.

“And you’re a lady,” her father said, pressing forward where he obviously saw an advantage. “You must marry Rodney.” Then he played his strongest card.

“It’s what your mother wanted.”

She knew it was the truth.

“Margaret’s heart would break to think of you, her only child, as a servant, or withering into an old maid,” he said. “I promise you, child, I promise that you will learn to love Rodney. He’s a fool, but he’s not vicious or unkind. He genuinely loves you, in a way that I’ve rarely seen among gentlemen, to tell the truth. He will always care for you, and for the children you will have.”

The weight of his words felt like heavy brambles, rooting her in Little Ha’penny, in Rodney’s arms, in Durfey Manor.

“I—” She swallowed, made herself say it. “I will marry Rodney, but only if you give me a week. If you force me to marry him tomorrow, Papa, I will run away tonight. I will crawl out my window if I have to.”

Her father sighed. “Waiting for the butler?”

“He’s a gentleman,” she said stoutly. “You acknowledged it yourself. He loves me. He told me so. He’ll find a way, some way, to come to me.”

Her father turned away, but not before she saw raw sympathy in his eyes. “As you wish,” he said. “I owe you that at least.”

Chapter Twelve

Hour by agonizing hour, day by day, the week of Philippa’s temporary reprieve crept past. She tried not to look out the window in the direction of the castle. Wick had promised her a week. He would try. He would . . . try. She kept repeating that to herself though she went to sleep sobbing at the possibility that he wouldn’t come.

Or at the possibility he would come to ask for her hand, but a day too late, a week too late, a year too late.

On the fifth day in the early afternoon, her father found her, sitting in a back room without a view of the dusty road leading in the direction of the castle. She was tired of leaping to her feet every time she heard the slightest sound that might be a carriage.

“My dear,” he said, “would you do me a great kindness and take this book to the vicar? I borrowed it sometime ago, and I expect he’d like it back.”

She took the book from his hand. “The Hellenica, by Xenophon,” she read. “What on earth is it?”

“A most interesting account of military prowess,” her father said. “Xenophon was an ancient Greek warrior.”

“Of course, Papa,” she said. “I’m trying to finish hemming before suppertime, but I’ll take it to the vicarage first thing in the morning.”

“No, the vicar is waiting for the book,” her father stated. “Please do so at once.”

Philippa saw that her father’s jaw was set. He seemed to be vibrating with a kind of wordless excitement, one that she instantly interpreted.

“You’re having another argument with the vicar, aren’t you?” she asked, with a sigh. “And I suppose The Hellenica proves your point.”

“Exactly,” her father said with satisfaction. “Riggs will be quite surprised.”

“Must I go this very moment?”

“You could . . . do your hair,” her father said, waving vaguely at her. “After all, no one has seen you since your return.”

Philippa made her way upstairs, thinking about that. No doubt the villagers were agog with excitement. Certainly by now they knew all about her stint as a nursemaid in the castle. The realization made her put on her second-best gown, a fetching pale blue one caught up under her breast with navy ribbons. She had a bonnet to match, a silly little thing that emphasized the color of her hair.

Once in Little Ha’penny the first person she saw was the baker’s wife, delivering hot rolls to the Biscuit and Plow. “Aye, so you’ll be a baroness as of Saturday,” Mrs. Deasly said comfortably. “When I think of you as just a little scrap, coming in here with your nursemaid, I can hardly believe you’re all grown-up. Your hair was like sunshine, even then, and you were the prettiest little thing I’d ever seen. It’s a lucky girl you are, Miss Philippa!”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at Mrs. Deasly. Even if she had to marry Rodney, she had loved and been loved, and that was more than many a woman could say.

As she approached the village square, she saw the vicar in front of his church, chatting with the blacksmith. Father Riggs was a gentle, stooped man, as dear to her as a grandfather. He was standing under an oak tree. The sun was slanting through the boughs, and his black cassock was dappled, as if it had been spotted with rainwater.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, my dear Miss Philippa. And it will be my honor to perform your wedding ceremony on Satursday,” he said, rocking back on his heels.

Philippa couldn’t quite manage a smile, but she nodded.

The vicar drew a little closer and scrutinized her face. “My dear, are you . . .” He stopped and began again. “Often those of the fair sex feel a trifle reluctant to marry, but I assure you that the rewards of being a dutiful and loving wife are remarkable, and realized not merely in heaven.”

Philippa nodded absently. She was wondering whether a broken heart ever scarred over. She returned her attention to the vicar when she saw that his face had grown soft and regretful, as if he were consigning her to the gallows rather than the altar.

He put a consoling hand on her arm. “I will certainly—” But at that moment she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves on cobblestones and her heart bounded. Surely it was Wick at last! She spun about so quickly that the priest’s hand fell from her arm. It was—

It was Rodney.

As soon as he saw her, he jerked his head to the two young men riding with him. They withdrew to the opposite side of the square, and Rodney swung off his horse. For a moment, he simply stood before her, his face tight, before by an effort of will, it seemed, he regained his habitual sleepy look.

At last, he bent into a bow. “Miss Philippa.” At the bow’s lowest point, she saw that he would be bald quite soon. Bald as an egg, likely.

She curtsied, and held out her hand to be kissed. “Mr. Durfey.”

“Ah, the dear betrothed couple!” Father Riggs chortled beside her.

They ignored him.

Rodney took her hand in his, raised it to his lips, and didn’t release it. “Philippa,” he said, with a windy sigh. “Ah, Philippa.”

Philippa said nothing. Instead, she looked at Rodney as a naturalist might examine a specimen, cataloging the thinning hair, the arrogant yet indolent slope to his chin, the genuine—yes, genuine—affection in his eyes.

“I am sorry,” he said finally, still clinging to her hand.

Philippa forced her mouth to curve upwards, but pulled her fingers away. “It’s quite all right.”

“I—I didn’t understand. I was slightly mad, I think. Your beauty is intoxicating.”

Philippa didn’t think he was mad. She thought that he was simply lustful, and that he would always be lustful. It was part of Rodney, together with his fleshy thighs and his warm eyes. She knew in that second that he would not be faithful to her. Not Rodney, not once he was a baronet. He would rove on, cheerfully deflowering maidens in barns, or perhaps even inns.

But at the moment, he was all hers, for good or ill. He snatched up her hand again, and held it tightly. “I love you,” he said, turning his shoulder on the vicar. “I love you, Philippa. I’ll do whatever you wish.”

She could see that he meant it. Rodney would frolic now and then with a willing woman—in a barn or otherwise—but at night he would return to her, with that love shining in his eyes.

For a second she felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she were trapped behind a pane of glass, looking out at a world she couldn’t touch. Panic filled her, the suffocating fear that she would spend the rest of her life without ever being in the arms of the person she loved.

And all the more suffocating for being always in the arms of a person who loved her.

Dimly, Philippa became aware that she was swaying, her heart clenched at the thought of the life that lay ahead of her. Father Riggs squealed something, began fanning her with his hat.

Rodney pulled her to his chest, smashing her nose into his coat. She smelled starched linen and sweat. She was held there for several moments, lights playing behind her closed eyes, like the dappled sunlight on the vicar’s cassock. Her heart was beating in her ears as loudly as if a hunting party was pounding through the forest.

No . . .

It wasn’t her heart.

She pulled away sharply and turned to see a great party, all on horseback, slow to a walk at the beginning of High Street. They were gaily dressed in the brilliant embroidery and silks of nobility. There were grooms in scarlet livery, and even a coach following, its scarlet trim glittering in the sunlight.

“Lord Almighty,” Rodney muttered beside her.

The horses pranced down the street, their riders smiling and nodding to the villagers trotting from the cobbler and the smithy.

“It’s better than the fair!” she heard someone say shrilly.

But Philippa’s eyes were fixed on the rider in front, a man who was not wearing the exuberant embroidery of his royal brother nor the scarlet livery of the groomsmen. Nor was he wearing shining armor.

He was riding a snowy white horse. His costume was one her own father would have chosen: a dark, dark green coat with a snowy neckcloth. It was not ostentatious, but it proclaimed the wearer a gentleman.

Perhaps, even, a member of the gentry.

Perhaps, even, connected to a royal family, albeit a non-English royal family.

She stepped out from the shadow of the oak, her arm sliding from Rodney’s hand.

As Wick’s horse paced toward her, Philippa didn’t even smile. Her heart was too full for that: full of song and laughter and the love that would sustain her to the end of her life.

And Wick didn’t smile either. He was as grave as a king as he brought his mount to a trot, leaned down at just the right moment, swept out an arm, pulled her onto his saddle—and then galloped straight down the street and out of Little Ha’penny.

When they reached the edge of the town, alone now, since the royal party had stayed in Little Ha’penny, the better to dazzle the villagers, Wick jumped from the horse again and reached up.

She fell into his arms with a sob of pure joy.

Wick dropped to his knees there, in the dust of the road. “Miss Philippa Damson, would you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

“Wick, oh, Wick,” Philippa said, reaching out a shaking hand to bring him back to his feet.

But he waited. Had there been an observer standing in the ditch, that observer might have found his face impassive, unreadable. But to Philippa, his eyes spoke of deep love, a fierce passion, and just the tiniest amount of uncertainty.

She fell to her knees and wound her arms around his neck. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come!”

His arms were warm and strong about her. He kissed her ear and whispered something, but she was sobbing too hard to comprehend. At last he tenderly picked her up and carried her into a field of buttercups, well away from the road. There he sat her down and began kissing every part of her face he could reach until she simply had to stop crying.

When he reached her mouth, he kissed her until her breath was quick, not with sobs but with a quite different emotion.

Finally, he pulled back and said, “May I ask you again?”

“Of course I will marry you,” she said, turning to catch his mouth again. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“My name,” he said, sometime later, “is Jonas. Jonas Berwick.”

“My husband, Philippa said with great delight, “is a man named Jonas Berwick.”

He shook his head.

“No?”

“He’s a future doctor named Jonas Berwick. And he owns an estate called Yarrow House, which was the gift of his brother.”

Philippa swallowed. “Oh, Wick.”

“Jonas,” he said. “Wick was a majordomo at a castle once upon a time. Jonas is a gentleman of unknown birth but obvious gentility, who lives in England with his entirely English and altogether beautiful wife. He is apparently connected to a royal family, but because they are from a strange and small country, no one pays much attention to that.”

Tears were again sliding down her face, not from fear but from the deepest happiness.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you so much, Philippa, my future wife. The imprint of you is on my heart and will be there the day I die.”

“You sound like a doctor, diagramming your body,” she whispered back.

“I think you will not complain when I diagram your body,” he said, soft and low. The flame rose between them instantly, and when Jonas rolled his future wife over, sinking into a patch of buttercups so they couldn’t be seen from the road, indeed there were no complaints.

Epilogue

Several months later

Wick looked down at his bride with a surge of joy that came to him every time he saw her face.

Philippa was supine on their bed. They had retired to their bedchamber after luncheon, and now she lay in a patch of sunlight, her cheeks pink and her chest still heaving.

“I like our house,” he said, picking up a few strands of silky hair and curling them around his finger. “I like this bed. I’m sorry we’re leaving for Edinburgh.”

“I’m not sorry,” Philippa said, squinting at him. “You’re driving our poor butler out of his mind. I know you were an astonishingly competent majordomo, Jonas, but you can’t expect the poor man to ascend to your heights.”

“All I asked was that the silver be thoroughly polished on a regular basis.”

Philippa closed her eyes. “I cannot imagine how you did all that you claim a butler should manage in one day, and neither can poor Ribble. At this rate, you will know all there is to know about medicine in six months rather than a year.”

“Did you see that your father sent another letter?” he inquired.

She nodded. “He has launched into a ferocious battle with a benighted professor from Cambridge who had the temerity to disagree with his reconstruction of Napoleon’s first campaign.”

“I like your father,” Wick said. “He is a model of perseverance.”

“He’s too rigid,” Philippa said. “He will never accept that anyone else is right, even about the trivial detail.”

Wick grinned down at her. “And yet . . . here I am.”

“Well, that’s true,” Philippa said. “He did change his mind about you. And I still smile every time I think about his insisting that I go to the village merely to return that silly book. It was very unlike him to participate in your charade.”

“What you should smile about is the image of me practicing that horse business,” Wick said. “I could have been at your side a full two days earlier had it not been for the hours and hours I lost, sweeping the knife boy up before me in the saddle.”

“Oh dear,” Philippa said sleepily. “I hope you didn’t drop him.”

“Often,” Wick said. “But he didn’t break anything. I came to you the moment I felt reasonably certain that I wouldn’t drop you.” He touched her nose lightly. “You are the most precious thing in the world to me.”

The corner of her mouth quirked, and she whispered, “Love you,” then she was asleep.

Wick lay beside her, watching as the sunlight shifted across the bed, making stripes over the bare skin of his exquisite wife. The doctor side of him cataloged the tiny swell in her stomach, and the way she dropped asleep at any time of the day. The man side of him noticed that her bosom was even more enthralling than it had been when they married, three months ago.

And the child side . . . the small boy inside, who was never quite sure of his place in life . . . That small boy had vanished.

He belonged here, next to a woman whom he loved more than life itself.

Though how that happened he didn’t know. In fact, he didn’t really understand his own luck until years later when his eldest daughter Clara grew old enough to discover fairy tales. Then, with stories of knights, dragons, lovely maidens, and magic beans swirling through the house, Wick realized who he was. Not an illegitimate son of a grand duke. Not the best doctor in the country. He was the stable boy who won the princess.

The stories never said much about the stable boy’s birth. They just said that the princess was as beautiful as the sun and the moon.

But most importantly, those stories all end the same way.

They lived happily ever after.

About the Author

ELOISA JAMES is the author of nineteen award-winning romances. She’s also a professor of English literature, teaching in New York City, where she lives with her family. With two jobs, two cats, two children, and only one husband, she spends most of her time making lists of things to do—letters from readers are a great escape! Connect with Eloisa on her Facebook page (www.facebook.com/EloisaJamesFans), through her website (www.eloisajames.com), or through e-mail at eloisa@eloisajames.com.

By Eloisa James

When Beauty Tamed the Beast

A Kiss at Midnight

A Duke of Her Own

This Duchess of Mine

When the Duke Returns

Duchess By Night

An Affair Before Christmas

Desperate Duchesses

Pleasure for Pleasure

The Taming of the Duke

Kiss Me, Annabel

Much Ado About You

Your Wicked Ways

A Wild Pursuit

Fool for Love

Duchess in Love

Kiss at Midnight

“Eloisa James’s writing is absolutely exquisite.
She is one of the brightest lights. ...
Her writing is truly scrumptious.”
Teresa Medeiros

“You’re extraordinarily beautiful.”

While Kate was still registering that comment, he gathered her up in his arms and lowered his head to hers.

All that restless, wild energy she felt in him poured into his kiss. She thought kissing was about a brush of the lips, but this ... this was about tasting and feeling. He felt like silk and fire.

He tasted like fire. She leaned into it, opened her mouth, feeling a tremor go down her back. He murmured something hot and sweet. She dimly remembered that she meant to give him a lesson, to teach him not to kiss any lady he met.

She ought to slap him.

But then he might take his lips away.

Yet one rather small, cool voice in her head reminded her exactly who she was, and who she was kissing.

By Eloisa James

A KISS AT MIDNIGHT
A DUKE OF HER OWN
THIS DUCHESS OF MINE
WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS
DUCHESS BY NIGHT
AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS
DESPERATE DUCHESSES
PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE
THE TAMING OF THE DUKE
KISS ME, ANNABEL
MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU
YOUR WICKED WAYS
A WILD PURSUIT
FOOL FOR LOVE
DUCHESS IN LOVE

A Kiss at Midnight

Eloisa James

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Eloisa James
ISBN 978-0-06-162684-5

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Carol Bly. She didn’t care too much for the genre of romance—or so she said. But she read my sister and me fairy tales over and over, enchanting us with princes who swept in on white chargers and princesses whose golden hair doubled as ladders. She gave me my first copies of Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, and Pride and Prejudice. In short, Mom, it’s all your fault!

Acknowledgments

My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my personal village: my editor, Carrie Feron; my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and last, but not least, my personal team: Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. I am so grateful to each of you!

Prologue

Once upon a time, not so very long ago . . .

This story begins with a carriage that was never a pumpkin, though it fled at midnight; a godmother who lost track of her charge, though she had no magic wand; and several so-called rats who secretly would have enjoyed wearing livery.

And, of course, there’s a girl too, though she didn’t know how to dance, nor did she want to marry a prince.

But it really begins with the rats.

They were out of control; everybody said so. Mrs. Swallow, the housekeeper, fretted about it regularly. “I can’t abide the way those little varmints chew up a pair of shoes when a body’s not looking,” she told the butler, a comfortable soul by the name of Mr. Cherryderry.

“I know just what you’re saying,” he told her with an edge in his voice that she didn’t hear often. “I can’t abide them. Those sharp noses, and the yapping at night, and—”

“The way they eat!” Mrs. Swallow broke in. “From the table, from the very plates!”

“It is from the plates,” Cherryderry told her. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Mrs. Swallow, that I have! By the hand of Mrs. Daltry herself!”

Mrs. Swallow’s little shriek might have been heard all the way in the drawing room ... except the rats were making such a racket that no one in that chamber could hear anything.

Chapter One

Yarrow House

The residence of Mrs. Mariana Daltry; her daughter, Victoria; and Miss Katherine Daltry

Miss Katherine Daltry, known to almost all as Kate, got down from her horse seething with rage.

It should be said that the condition wasn’t unfamiliar to her. Before her father died seven years earlier, she found herself sometimes irritated with her new stepmother. But it wasn’t until he was gone, and the new Mrs. Daltry—who had held that title for a matter of mere months—started ruling the roost, that Kate really learned the meaning of anger.

Anger was watching tenants on the estate be forced to pay double the rent or leave cottages where they’d lived their whole lives. Anger was watching the crops wilt and the hedges overgrow because her stepmother begrudged the money needed to maintain the estate. Anger was watching her father’s money be poured into new gowns and bonnets and frilly things ... so numerous that her stepmother and stepsister couldn’t find days enough in the year to wear them all.

It was the pitying glances she had from acquaintances who never met her at dinner anymore. It was being relegated to a chamber in the attic, with faded furnishings that advertised her relative worth in the household. It was the self-loathing of someone who can’t quite bring herself to leave home and have done with it. It was fueled by humiliation, and despair, and the absolute certainty that her father must be turning in his grave.

She stomped up the front steps girding her loins for battle, as her father himself would have said. “Hello, Cherryderry,” she said, as their dear old butler opened the door. “Are you playing footman now?”

“Herself sent the footmen off to London to fetch a doctor,” Cherryderry said. “To be exact, two doctors.”

“Having a spell, is she?” Kate pulled her gloves off carefully, since the leather was separating from its lining around the wrist. Time was when she might have actually wondered if her stepmother (known to the household as Herself) was malingering, but no longer. Not after years of false alarms and voices screaming in the middle of the night about attacks ... which generally turned out to be indigestion.

Though as Cherryderry had once commented, one can only hope.

“Not Herself, this time. It’s Miss Victoria’s face, I gather.”

“The bite?”

He nodded. “Dragging the lip down, so her maid told us this morning. There’s a swelling there as well.”

Sour as she felt, Kate felt a pulse of sympathy. Poor Victoria didn’t have much going for her outside of her pretty face and prettier frocks; it would break her stepsister’s heart if she were permanently disfigured.

“I have to talk to Herself about the vicar’s wife,” she said, handing her pelisse to Cherryderry. “Or rather, the former vicar’s wife. After his death, I moved the family to the far cottage.”

“Bad business,” the butler said. “Especially in a vicar. Seems that a vicar shouldn’t take his own life.”

“He left her with four children,” Kate said.

“Mind you, it’s not easy for a man to get over the loss of a limb.”

“Well, now his children have to get over the loss of him,” she said unsympathetically. “Not to mention that my stepmother sent an eviction notice to his widow yesterday.”

Cherryderry frowned. “Herself says you’re to dine with them tonight.”

Kate stopped on her way up the stairs. “She said what?”

“You’re to dine with them tonight. And Lord Dimsdale is coming.”

“You must be joking.”

But the butler was shaking his head. “She said that. What’s more, she’s decided that Miss Victoria’s rats have to go, but for some reason she banished them to your chamber.”

Kate closed her eyes for a moment. A day that had started out badly was only getting worse. She disliked her stepsister’s pack of little dogs, affectionately, or not so affectionately, known to all as the rats. She also disliked Algernon Bennett, Lord Dimsdale, her stepsister’s betrothed. He smiled too easily. And she loathed even more the idea of sitting down to dinner en famille.

She generally managed to forget that she had once been mistress of the household. After all, her mother had been bedridden for years before she died, and sickly most of Kate’s life. Kate had grown up sitting opposite her father at the dining room table, going over the menus with Mrs. Swallow, the housekeeper ... She had expected to debut, and marry, and raise children of her own in this very house.

But that was before her father died, and she turned into a maid-of-all-work, living in the garret.

And now she was to come to dinner, in a gown that was out-of-date, and endure the smirking pleasantries of Lord Dimsdale? Why?

She ran up the stairs with a sickening foreboding in her stomach. Kate’s stepmother was seated at her dressing table, examining her complexion. The afternoon light fell over her shoulder, lighting her hair. It had a glare to it, that hair, a fierce yellow tint as if the strands were made of minerals. She was wearing a morning dress with a pleated bodice of lilac net, caught under the breasts with a trailing ribbon. It was lovely ... for a debutante.

But Mariana could not abide the fact that she was no longer in her thirties. In fact, she had never really accepted the loss of her twenties. And so she dressed herself to create an approximation of Mariana-at-Twenty. One thing you had to say for Kate’s stepmother: She had a reckless bravery, a kind of fierce disregard for the conventions governing women’s aging.

But of course if Mariana’s costumes were the outward expression of her ambition, they were also the refuge of the failed. For no woman yet has appeared twenty in her forties, and a deliciously sensual gown cannot restore youth.

“I gather you finished your peregrinations amongst your friends and bothered to come home,” Mariana said acidly.

Kate took one look around her stepmother’s boudoir and decided to remove a heap of clothes from what she was almost certain was a stool. The room was mounded with piles of light cottons and spangled silks; they were thrown in heaps over the chairs. Or at least where one presumed chairs to be. The room resembled a pastel snowscape, with soft mountains of fabric here and there.

“What are you doing?” her stepmother demanded as Kate hoisted the gowns in her arms.

“Sitting down,” Kate said, dropping the clothing on the floor.

Her stepmother bounded up with a screech. “Don’t treat my gowns like that, you stupid girl! The top few were delivered only a day or two ago, and they’re magnificent. I’ll have you ironing them all night if there’s the least wrinkle, even the least.”

“I don’t iron,” Kate said flatly. “Remember? I put a scorch mark on a white gown three years ago.”

“Ah, the Persian belladine!” her stepmother cried, clasping her hands together like a girlish Lady Macbeth. “I keep it ... there.” She pointed a long finger to a corner where a towering mound of cloth went halfway to the ceiling. “I shall have it altered one of these days.” She sat back down.

Kate carefully pushed the stack of gowns a little farther away from her foot. “I must speak to you about the Crabtrees.”

“God, I hope you managed to shovel the woman out the door,” Mariana said, lighting a cigarillo. “You know the bloody solicitor is coming next week to assess my management of the estate. If he sees that scrap heap of a cottage, he’ll make no end of fuss. Last quarter he prosed on and on till I thought I’d die of boredom.”

“It’s your responsibility to keep the cottages in good repair,” Kate said, getting up to open a window.

Mariana waved her cigarillo disdainfully. “Nonsense. Those people live on my land for practically nothing. The least they can do is keep their own houses in good nick. That Crabtree woman is living in a pigsty. I happened by the other day and I was positively horrified.”

Kate sat back down and let her eyes wander around the room. The pigsty of a room. But after a moment she realized that Mariana hadn’t noticed her silent insult, since she had opened a little jar and was painting her lips a dark shade of copper.

“Since her husband died,” Kate said, “Mrs. Crabtree is both exhausted and afraid. The house is not a pigsty; it is simply disorganized. You can’t evict her. She has nowhere to go.”

“Nonsense,” Mariana said, leaning closer to the glass to examine her lips. “I’m sure she has a bolt-hole all planned. Another man, most like. It’s been over a year since Crabtree topped himself; she’ll have a new one lined up by now. You’ll see.”

Talking to her stepmother, to Kate’s mind, was like peeing in a coal-black outhouse. You had no idea what might come up, but you knew you wouldn’t like it.

“That is cruel,” she said, trying to pitch her words so that she sounded like the voice of authority.

“They have to go,” Mariana stated. “I can’t abide sluggards. I made a special trip over to the vicarage, you know, the morning after her husband jumped from the bridge. Bringing my condolences.”

Mariana preferred to avoid all the people working on the estate or in the village, except on the rare occasions when she developed a sudden taste for playing the lady of the manor. Then she would put on an ensemble extravagantly calculated to offend country folk, descend from her carriage, and decipher in her tenants’ startled expressions their shiftless and foolish natures. Finally she would instruct Kate to jettison them from their homes.

Luckily she generally forgot about the demand after a week or so.

“That woman, Crabtree, was lying on the settee crying. Children all over the room, a disgusting number of children, and there she was, shoulders shaking like a bad actress. Crying. Maybe she should join a traveling theater,” Mariana said. “She’s not unattractive.”

“She—”

Mariana interrupted. “I can’t abide idlers. Do you think I lay about and wept after my first husband, the colonel, died? Did you see me shed a tear when your father died, though we had enjoyed but a few months of matrimonial bliss?”

Kate had seen no tears, but Mariana needed no confirmation from her. “Although Mrs. Crabtree may not have your fortitude, she has four small children and we have some responsibility to them—”

“I’m bored with the subject and besides, I need to speak to you about something important. Tonight Lord Dimsdale is coming to dinner and you shall join us.” Mariana blew out a puff of smoke. It looked like fog escaping from a small copper pipe.

“So Cherryderry said. Why?” She and her stepmother had long ago dispensed with pleasantries. They loathed each other, and Kate couldn’t imagine why her presence was required at the table.

“You’re going to be meeting Dimsdale’s relatives in a few days.” Mariana took another pull on her cigarillo. “Thank God, you’re slimmer than Victoria. We can have her gowns taken in quite easily. It would be harder to go the other way.”

“What are you talking about? I can’t imagine that Lord Dimsdale has the faintest interest in eating a meal with me, nor in introducing me to his relatives, and the feeling is mutual.”

Before Mariana could clarify her demand, the door was flung open. “The cream isn’t working,” Victoria wailed, hurtling toward her mother. She didn’t even see Kate, just fell to her knees and buried her face in her mother’s lap.

Instantly Mariana put down her cigarillo and wrapped her arms around her daughter’s shoulders. “Hush, babykins,” she crooned. “Of course the cream will work. We just need to give it a little time. I promise you, Mother promises you, that it will work. Your face will be as beautiful as ever. And just in case, I sent off to London for two of the very best doctors.”

Kate was beginning to feel a faint interest in the matter. “What kind of cream are you using?”

Mariana threw her an unfriendly glance. “Nothing you would have heard of. It’s made from crushed pearls, among other things. It works like a charm on all sorts of facial imperfections. I use it myself, daily.”

“Just look at my lip, Kate!” Victoria said, popping her head back up. “I’m ruined for life.” Her eyes glistened with tears.

Her lower lip did look rather alarming. There was an odd violet-colored puffiness around the site that suggested infection, and her mouth had a slight, but distinct, list to the side.

Kate got to her feet and came over for a closer look. “Has Dr. Busby seen it yet?”

“He came yesterday, but he’s an old fool,” Mariana said. “He couldn’t be expected to understand how important this is. He hadn’t a single helpful potion or cream to offer. Nothing!”

Kate turned Victoria’s head to the side so that the light fell on it. “I think the bite is infected,” she said. “Are you sure this cream is hygienic?”

“Are you questioning my judgment?” Mariana shouted, standing up.

“Absolutely,” Kate retorted. “If Victoria ends up with a deformed mouth because you sloshed on some quack remedy you were swindled into buying in London, I want it clear that it’s your fault.”

“You insolent toad!” Mariana said, stepping forward.

But Victoria put out an arm. “Mother, stop. Kate, do you really think there’s something wrong with the cream? My lip throbs terribly.” Victoria was a tremendously pretty girl, with a beautiful complexion and wide, tender eyes that always looked a bit dewy, as if she had just shed a sentimental tear, or was just about to. Since she shed tears, sentimental and otherwise, throughout the day, this made sense. Now two tears rolled down her face.

“I think that there might be some infection inside the wound,” Kate said, frowning. “Your lip mended quickly, but ...” She pushed gently, and Victoria cried out. “It’s going to have to be lanced.”

“Never!” Mariana roared.

“I couldn’t allow my face to be cut,” Victoria said, trembling all over.

“But you don’t want to have a disfigurement,” Kate said, schooling her tone to patience.

Victoria blinked while she thought about that.

“Nothing will happen until the London doctors arrive,” Mariana announced, sitting back down. She had a wild enthusiasm for anyone, and anything, from London. Kate suspected it was the result of a childhood spent in the country, but since Mariana never let slip even a hint about her past, it was hard to know.

“Well, let’s hope they arrive soon,” Kate said, wondering whether an infected lip created any risk of blood infection. Presumably not ... “Why do you want me to join you for dinner, Mariana?”

“Because of my lip, of course,” Victoria said, snuffling like a small pig.

“Your lip,” Kate repeated.

“I can’t go on the visit, can I?” Victoria added, with a characteristic, if maddening, lack of clarity.

“Your sister was to pay a very important visit to a member of Lord Dimsdale’s family in just a few days,” Mariana put in. “If you weren’t so busy traipsing around the estate listening to the sob stories of feckless women, you’d remember that. He’s a prince. A prince!”

Kate dropped onto her stool again and looked at her two relatives. Mariana was as hard and bright as a new ha’penny. In contrast, Victoria’s features were blurred and indistinct. Her hair was a delightful pale rose color, somewhere between blonde and red, and curled winsomely around her face. Mariana’s hair had the sharp-edged perfection of someone whose maid spent three hours with a curling iron achieving precisely the look she wanted.

“I fail to see what the postponed visit has to do with me,” Kate said, “though I am very sympathetic about your disappointment, Victoria.” And she was, too. Though she loathed her stepmother, she had never felt the same hatred for her stepsister. For one thing, Victoria was too soft-natured for anyone to dislike. And for another, Kate couldn’t help being fond of her. If Kate had taken a great deal of abuse from Mariana, the kind of affection that her stepmother lavished on her daughter was, to Kate’s mind, almost worse.

“Well,” Victoria said heavily, sitting down on a pile of gowns about the approximate height of a stool, “you have to be me. It took me a while to understand it, but Mother has it all cleverly planned out. And I’m sure my darling Algie will agree.”

“I couldn’t possibly be you, whatever that means,” Kate said flatly.

“Yes, you can,” Mariana said. She had finished her cigarillo and was lighting a second from the first. “And you will,” she added.

“No, I won’t. Not that I have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Be Victoria in what context? And with whom?”

“With Lord Dimsdale’s prince, of course,” Mariana said, regarding her through a faint haze of smoke. “Haven’t you been listening?”

“You want me to pretend to be Victoria? In front of a prince? Which prince?”

“I didn’t understand at first either,” Victoria said, running her finger over her injured lip. “You see, before Algie can marry me, we need the approval of some relative of his.”

“The prince,” Mariana put in.

“He’s a prince from some little country in the back of beyond, that’s what Algie says. But he’s the only representative of Algie’s mother’s family who lives in England, and she won’t release his inheritance without the prince’s approval. His father’s will,” Victoria confided, “is most dreadfully unfair. If Algie marries before thirty years of age, without his mother’s approval, he loses part of his inheritance—and he’s not even twenty yet!”

Very smart of Papa Dimsdale, to Kate’s mind. From what she’d seen, Dimsdale Junior was about as ready to manage an estate as the rats were to learn choral music. Not that it was her business. “The doctors will take a look at you tomorrow morning,” she told Victoria, “and then you’ll be off to see the prince. Rather like the cat looking at the queen.”

“She can’t go like that!” Mariana snapped. It was the first time that Kate had ever heard that edge of disgust applied to her daughter.

Victoria turned her head and looked at her mother, but said nothing.

“Of course she can,” Kate stated. “This sounds like a fool’s game to me. No one will believe for a moment that I’m Victoria. And even if they did, don’t you think they’d remember later? What happens when this prince stands up in the church and stops the ceremony, on the grounds that the bride isn’t the bride he met?”

“That won’t happen, if only because Victoria will be married directly afterwards, by parish license,” Mariana said. “This is the first time Dimsdale has been invited to the castle, and we can’t miss it. His Highness is throwing a ball to celebrate his betrothal, and you’re going as Victoria.”

“Why not just postpone your visit and go after the ball is over?”

“Because I have to get married,” Victoria piped up.

Kate’s heart sank. “You have to get married?”

Victoria nodded. Kate looked at her stepmother, who shrugged. “She’s compromised. Three months’ worth.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Kate exclaimed. “You hardly know Dimsdale, Victoria!”

“I love Algie,” Victoria said, her big eyes earnest. “I didn’t even want to debut, not after I saw him at Westminster Abbey that Sunday back in March, but Mother made me.”

“March,” Kate said. “You met him in March and now it’s June. Tell me that darling Algie proposed, oh, say three months ago, just after you fell in love, and you’ve kept it a secret?”

Victoria giggled at that. “You know exactly when he proposed, Kate! I told you first, after Mother. It was just two weeks ago.”

The lines between Mariana’s nose and mouth couldn’t be plumped by a miracle cream made of crushed pearls. “Dimsdale was slightly tardy in his attentions.”

“Not tardy in his attentions,” Kate said. “He’s seems to have been remarkably forward in that department.”

Mariana threw her a look of dislike. “Lord Dimsdale very properly proposed marriage once he understood the situation.”

“I would kill the man, were I you,” Kate told her.

“Would you?” She gave an odd smile. “You always were a fool. The viscount has a title and a snug fortune, once he gets his hands on it. He’s utterly infatuated with your sister, and he’s set on marrying her.”

“Fortunate,” Kate commented. She looked back at Victoria. She was delicately patting her lip over and over again. “I told you to hire a chaperone, Mariana. She could have had anyone.”

Mariana turned back to her glass without a comment. In truth, Victoria probably wasn’t for just any man. She was too soft, too much like a soggy pudding. She cried too much.

Though she was terribly pretty and, apparently, fertile. Fertility was always a good thing in a woman. Look how much her own father had despaired over his lack of a son. Her mother’s inability to have more children apparently led to his marriage a mere fortnight after his wife’s death... he must have been that anxious to start a new family.

Presumably he thought Mariana was as fertile as her daughter had now proved to be. At any rate, he died before testing the premise.

“So you’re asking me to visit the prince and pretend to be Victoria,” Kate said.

“I’m not asking you,” Mariana said instantly. “I’m commanding you.”

“Oh, Mother,” Victoria said. “Please, Kate. Please. I want to marry Algie. And, really, I rather need to ... I didn’t quite understand, and, well ...” She smoothed her gown. “I don’t want everyone to know about the baby. And Algie doesn’t either.”

Of course Victoria hadn’t understood that she was carrying a child. Kate would be amazed to think that her stepsister had even understood the act of conception, let alone its consequences.

“You’re asking me,” Kate said to her stepmother, ignoring Victoria for the moment. “Because although you could force me into the carriage with Lord Dimsdale, you certainly couldn’t control what I said once I met this prince.”

Mariana showed her teeth.

“Even more relevant,” Kate continued, “is the fact that Victoria made a very prominent debut just a few months ago. Surely people at the ball will have met her—or even just have seen her?”

“That’s why I’m sending you rather than any girl I could find on the street,” Mariana said with her usual courtesy.

“You’ll have my little doggies with you,” Victoria said. “They made me famous, so everyone will think you’re me.” And then, as if she just remembered, another big tear rolled down her cheek. “Though Mother says that I must give them up.”

“Apparently they are in my bedchamber,” Kate said.

“They’re yours now,” Mariana said. “At least for the visit. After that we’ll—” She broke off with a glance at her daughter. “We’ll give them to some deserving orphans.”

“The poor tots will love them,” Victoria said mistily, ignoring the fact that the said orphans might not like being nipped by their new pets.

“Who would accompany me as chaperone?” Kate asked, putting the question of Victoria’s rats aside for the moment.

“You don’t need one,” Mariana said with a hard edge of scorn, “the way you careen about the countryside on your own.”

“A pity I didn’t keep Victoria with me,” Kate retorted. “I would have ensured that Dimsdale didn’t treat her like a common trollop.”

“Oh, I suppose that you’ve preserved your virtue,” Mariana snapped. “Much good may it do you. You needn’t worry about Lord Dimsdale making an attempt at that dusty asset; he’s in love with Victoria.”

“Yes, he is,” Victoria said, sniffing. “And I love him too.” Another tear slid down her cheek.

Kate sighed. “If I am pretending to be Victoria, it will create a scandal if I appear in a carriage alone with Dimsdale, and the scandal will not attach to me, but to Victoria. In short, no one will be surprised when her child appears on an abbreviated schedule after the wedding.”

There was a moment of silence. “All right,” Mariana said. “I would have accompanied Victoria, of course, but I can’t leave her, given her poor state of health. You can take Rosalie with you.”

“A maid? You’re giving me a maid as a chaperone?”

“What’s the matter with that?” Mariana demanded. “She can sit between you in case you lose your head and lunge at Lord Dimsdale. You’ll have the rats’ maid as well, of course.”

“Victoria’s dogs have their own maid?”

“Mary-Downstairs,” Victoria said. “She cleans the fireplaces, but she also gives them a bath every day, and brushes them. Pets,” Victoria added, “are a responsibility.”

“I shall not take Mary with me,” Kate stated. “How on earth do you expect Mrs. Swallow to manage without her?”

Mariana just shrugged.

“This won’t work,” Kate said, trying to drag the conversation back into some sort of sensible channel. “We don’t even look alike.”

“Of course you do!” Mariana snapped.

“Well, actually, we don’t,” Victoria said. “I—well, I look like me and Kate, well ...” She floundered to a halt.

“What Victoria is trying to say is that she is remarkably beautiful,” Kate said, feeling her heart like a little stone in her chest, “and I am not. Put that together with the fact that we are stepsisters related only by marriage, and there’s no more resemblance between us than any pair of Englishwomen seen together.”

“You have the same color hair,” Mariana said, dragging on her cigarillo.

“Really?” Victoria said doubtfully.

Actually, Mariana was probably right. But Victoria’s hair was cut in pretty curls around her head, in the very newest style, and fixed with a delicate bandeau. Kate brushed hers out in the morning, twisted it about, and pinned it flat to her head. She had no time for meticulous grooming. More accurately, she had no time for grooming at all.

“You’re cracked,” Kate said, staring at her stepmother. “You can’t pass me off as your daughter.”

Victoria was frowning now. “I’m afraid she’s right, Mother. I wasn’t thinking.”

Mariana had a kind of tight look about her eyes that Kate knew from long experience signaled true rage. But for once, she was rather perplexed about why.

“Kate is taller than I am,” Victoria said, counting on her fingers. “Her hair is a little more yellow, not to mention long, and we don’t have the same sort of look at all. Even if she put on my clothing—”

“She’s your sister,” Mariana said, her mouth tight, as if the copper pipe had been hammered flat.

“She’s my stepsister,” Kate said patiently. “The fact that you married my father does not make us blood relatives, and your first husband—”

“She’s your sister.”

Chapter Two

Pomeroy Castle

Lancashire

Your Highness.”

The prince in question, whose given name was Gabriel Albrecht-Frederick William von Aschenberg of Warl-Marburg-Baalsfeld, looked up to find his majordomo, Berwick, holding a salver. “I’ve got this unguentarium all in pieces, Wick. Speak quickly.”

“Unguentarium,” Wick said with distaste. “It sounds like a salacious item one might buy in Paris. The wrong side of Paris,” he added.

“Spare me your quibbles,” Gabriel said. “This particular jug was meant for the dead, not the living. It used to hold six small bones for playing knucklebones, and was found in a child’s grave.”

Wick bent nearer and peered at the pieces of clay scattered across the desk. “Where are the knucklebones?”

“The knuckleboned Biggitstiff threw them out. In fact, he threw this little jug out too, since the child was poor, and he is only interested in ravaging the tombs of kings. I’m trying to see whether I can identify how the top, which I don’t have, was attached. I think there were bronze rivets attached to both these pieces.” He pointed. “And the rivets were mended at least once before the unguentarium was put in the tomb, see?”

Wick looked at the pieces. “Needs mending again. Why are you bothering?”

“This child’s parents had nothing to give him to bring to the underworld but his knucklebones,” Gabriel said, picking up his magnifying glass. “Why shouldn’t that gift be honored equally with the trumpery gold Biggitstiff is after?”

“A message has arrived from Princess Tatiana’s delegation,” Wick said, apparently accepting Gabriel’s edict in regard to the knucklebones. “She is now in Belgium and will arrive on schedule. We’ve had some two hundred acceptances for your betrothal ball, among them your nephew, Algernon Bennett, Lord Dimsdale. In fact, the viscount will arrive before the ball, by the sound of it.”

“Bringing the Golden Fleece?” Gabriel’s nephew, whom he vaguely remembered as a boy with a fat bottom, had affianced himself to one of the richest heiresses in England.

“His Lordship will be accompanied by his betrothed, Miss Victoria Daltry,” Wick said, glancing at his notes.

“It’s hard to believe that Dimsdale could have garnered such a prize; perhaps she has freckles or a squint,” Gabriel said, carefully aligning the clay fragments so that he could determine where the rivets originated.

Wick shook his head. “At her debut this spring Miss Daltry was accounted one of the most beautiful women on the marriage market.” They had been in England for a matter of months, but he already had a firm grasp on relevant gossip among the aristocracy. “Her adoration for her betrothed was also universally noted,” he added.

“She hasn’t met me,” Gabriel said idly. “Maybe I should steal her away before my own bride arrives. An English Golden Fleece for a Russian one. My English is far better than my Russian.”

Wick didn’t say a word, just slowly looked from Gabriel’s hair to his feet. Gabriel knew what Wick was seeing: black hair pulled back from a widow’s peak, eyebrows that came to points over his eyes in a way that frightened some women, the shadow of a beard that never seemed to really go away. Something in his expression scared off the soft ones, the ones that thought to cuddle and wrap his hair around their fingers after sex.

“Of course, you could try,” Wick commented. “But I expect you’ll have your hands full trying to charm your own bride.”

Not his best insult, but pretty good.

“You make it sound as if Tatiana will run for the hills at the sight of me.” Gabriel knew damn well that the glimmer of ferocity in his eyes frightened ladies who were more used to lapdogs. But for all that, he had yet to meet the woman whose eyes didn’t show a slight widening, a sparkle of happiness, at the prospect of meeting a prince. They liked to have a prince under their belt.

Still, this was the first time he would be trying to charm a wife, rather than a lover. One had to assume that women took the business more seriously than they did the occasional bedding.

A curse sounded in his head but died before reaching his lips. He turned back to the little pot before him. “Perhaps fortunately, my betrothed has no more choice in the matter than I do.”

Wick bowed. He left as silently as he had arrived.

When Beauty Tamed the Beast

“Eloisa James is extraordinary.”
Lisa Kleypas

Lisle curled her fingers under his arm. She rather liked all that muscle under her hand. It felt as if she were taming the wild beast.

“I suppose you think I’ll fall in love with you,” he said.

“Quite likely.”

“How long do you give yourself?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“Two weeks at the outside.” And then she did give him the smile—dimples, charm, sensuality, and all.

He didn’t even blink. “Was that your best shot?”

Despite herself, a giggle escaped, then another. “Generally, that’s more than enough.”

“She is one of the brightest lights. . . . Her writing is truly scrumptious.”
Teresa Medeiros

By Eloisa James

WHEN BEAUTY TAMED THE BEAST

A KISS AT MIDNIGHT

A DUKE OF HER OWN

THIS DUCHESS OF MINE

WHEN THE DUKE RETURNS

DUCHESS BY NIGHT

AN AFFAIR BEFORE CHRISTMAS

DESPERATE DUCHESSES

PLEASURE FOR PLEASURE

THE TAMING OF THE DUKE

KISS ME, ANNABEL

MUCH ADO ABOUT YOU

YOUR WICKED WAYS

A WILD PURSUIT

FOOL FOR LOVE

DUCHESS IN LOVE

When Beauty
Tamed the Beast

Eloisa James

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Eloisa James
ISBN 978-0-06-202127-4

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to my fabulous editor, Carrie Feron. She always pushes me to my very best writing, but with this book, her editing brought the novel to a whole new level. This one’s for you, sweetie.

Acknowledgments

My books are like small children; they take a whole village to get them to a literate state. I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my personal village: my agent, Kim Witherspoon; my website designers, Wax Creative; and last but not least, my personal team—Kim Castillo, Franzeca Drouin, and Anne Connell. I am so grateful to each of you!

Chapter One

Once upon a time, not so very long ago . . .

Beautiful girls in fairy stories are as common as pebbles on the beach. Magnolia-skinned milkmaids rub shoulders with starry-eyed princesses and, in fact, counting two eyes in each bright-eyed damsel would result in a whole galaxy of twinkling stars.

That sparkle makes it all the more sad that real women rarely live up to their fictional counterparts. They have yellowing teeth, or spotty skin. They have the shadow of a mustache, or a nose so big that a mouse could ski down it.

Of course there are pretty ones. But even they are prone to all the ills that flesh is heir to, as Hamlet had it in a long-ago complaint.

In short, it’s a rare woman who actually outshines the sun. Let alone all that business about pearly teeth, the voice of a lark, and a face so beautifully shaped that angels would weep with envy.

Linnet Berry Thrynne had all of the above, except perhaps the claim to lark-like melody. Still, her voice was perfectly agreeable, and she had been told that her laughter was like the chiming of golden bells and (though not larks) linnet songs were often mentioned.

Without even glancing at the glass, she knew that her hair was shining, her eyes were shining, and her teeth—well, perhaps they weren’t shining, but they were quite white.

She was just the sort who could drive a stable boy to heroic feats, or a prince to less intrepid acts such as whacking through a bramble patch merely to give her a kiss. None of which changed a basic fact:

As of yesterday, she was unmarriageable.

The calamity had to do with the nature of kisses, and what kisses are purported to lead to. Though perhaps it’s more accurate to point to the nature of princes. The prince in question was Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex.

He had kissed Linnet more than once; in fact, he had kissed her a great many times. And he had vehemently declared his love for her, not to mention thrown strawberries at her bedchamber window late one night (which had made an awful mess and had driven the gardener into a fury).

The only thing he hadn’t done was offer his hand in marriage.

“It’s a shame I can’t marry you,” he had said apologetically, when the scandal broke the evening before. “We royal dukes, you know . . . can’t do everything we’d like. My father is slightly deranged on the subject. Really, it’s most unfortunate. You must have heard about my first marriage; that one was annulled because Windsor decided Augusta wasn’t good enough, and she’s the daughter of an earl.”

Linnet was not the daughter of an earl; her father was a viscount, and not a very well-connected one at that. Not that she’d heard of the prince’s first marriage. Everyone who had watched her flirting with him in the last few months had unaccountably forgotten to tell her that he was apparently prone to courting those he couldn’t—or shouldn’t—marry.

The prince had bowed sharply, turned, and abruptly left the ballroom, withdrawing to Windsor Castle— or wherever it was that rats went when the ship sank.

This had left Linnet alone but for her dour chaperone and a ballroom of gentlepersons, a circumstance that led her to quickly realize that a great many maidens and matrons in London were eagerly—if not gleefully—certain that she was a hussy of the first degree.

Within moments of the prince’s retreat, not a soul would meet her eyes; she was faced with a sea of turned backs. The sound of upper-class tittering spread all around her like the hissing of a gaggle of geese preparing to fly north. Though, of course, it was she who had to fly—north, south, it didn’t matter as long as she fled the scene of her disgrace.

The unfair thing was that she wasn’t a hussy. Well, not more than any girl bowled over by a prince.

She had enjoyed snaring the greatest prize of them all, the blond and winsome prince. But she hadn’t had any real hope that he would marry her. And she certainly would not have given her virginity to a prince without having a ring on her finger and the approval of the king.

Still, she had considered Augustus a friend, which made it all the more painful when he didn’t pay her a call the morning following her humiliation.

Augustus wasn’t the only one. In fact, Linnet found herself staring out of a front window of her town-house, the better to convince herself that no one was coming to call. No one. Not a soul.

Ever since she’d debuted a few months earlier, her front door had been the portal to the Golden Fleece— i.e., her dowered, delectable self. Young men pranced and trotted and strolled up that path, leaving cards and flowers and gifts of all kinds. Even the prince had lowered himself to make four morning calls, an unheard-of compliment.

But now . . . that path was nothing more than a row of flagstones shining in the sunlight.

“I simply don’t believe this has come out of nothing!” her father said now, from somewhere behind her.

“I was kissed by a prince,” Linnet said dryly. “Which might have counted as nothing, if we hadn’t been seen by Baroness Buggin.”

“Kissing—pah! Kisses are nothing. What I want to know is why it is being reliably reported that you are carrying a child. His child!” Viscount Sundon came, stood at her shoulder, and looked with her at the empty street.

“Two reasons. Neither of which involves a baby, you’ll be happy to learn.”

“Well?”

“I ate a bad prawn at Lady Brimmer’s morning musicale last Thursday.”

“So?” her father asked.

“It made me ill,” Linnet told him. “I couldn’t even make it to the ladies’ retiring chamber. I threw up in a potted orange tree.” She shuddered a little at the mere memory.

“Uncontrolled of you,” the viscount commented. He hated bodily processes. “I gather that was taken as a sign of childbirth?”

“Not childbirth, Papa, the condition that precedes it.”

“Of course. But you do remember when Mrs. Underfoot spewed in the throne room, narrowly missing His Majesty, the King of Norway? That was no prawn, nor a baby either. Everyone knew the lady had drunk herself into a standstill. We could put it about that you’re an inebriate.”

“Would that solve my problem? I doubt many gentlemen wish to marry a drunk. At any rate, it wasn’t just the prawn. It was my gown.”

“What about your gown?”

“I wore a new ball dress last night, and apparently my profile gave people cause to think that I was carrying a child.”

Her father swung her around and peered at her middle. “You don’t look any different to me. A bit chilly around the shoulders, perhaps. Need you show quite so much bosom?”

“Unless I want to look like a fussocking matron,” Linnet said with some asperity, “then yes, I do need to show this much bosom.”

“Well, that’s the problem,” Lord Sundon said. “You look like Bartholomew ware. Damn it, I specifically told your chaperone that you had to look more prudish than anyone else in the room. Do I have to do everything myself? Can no one follow simple instructions?”

“My ball gown was not revealing,” Linnet protested, but her father wasn’t listening.

“I have tried, God knows how I’ve tried! I postponed your debut, in the hopes that maturity would give you poise in the face of the ton’s undoubted scrutiny, given your mother’s reputation. But what’s the good of poise if your neckline signals you’re a wanton?”

Linnet took a deep breath. “The affair had nothing to do with necklines. The gown I wore last night has—”

“Affaire!” her father said, his voice rising. “I raised you with the strictest of principles—”

“Not affaire in the French sense,” Linnet interrupted. “I meant that the disaster was provoked by my gown. It has two petticoats, you see, and—”

“I want to see it,” Lord Sundon announced, interrupting in his turn. “Go and put it on.”

“I can’t put on a ball gown at this hour in the morning!”

“Now. And get that chaperone of yours down here as well. I want to hear what Mrs. Hutchins has to say for herself. I hired her specifically to prevent this sort of thing. She put on such a priggish, puritanical air that I trusted her!”

So Linnet put on the ball gown.

It was designed to fit tightly over her breasts. Just below, the skirts pulled back to reveal an under-dress of charming Belgium lace. Then that skirt pulled back, showing a third layer, made from white silk. The design looked exquisite in the sketchbook at Madame Desmartins’s shop. And when Linnet had put it on last night, she had thought the effect lovely.

But now, as her maid adjusted all those skirts while Mrs. Hutchins looked on, Linnet’s eyes went straight to where her waist ought to be—but wasn’t. “My word,” she said, a bit faintly. “I really do look as if I’m with child.” She turned to the side. “Just look how it billows out. It’s all the pleating, right here at the top, under my breasts. I could hide two babies under all that cloth.”

Her maid, Eliza, didn’t venture an opinion, but her chaperone showed no such reticence. “In my opinion, it’s not the petticoats so much as your bosom,” Mrs. Hutchins stated. Her voice was faintly accusing, as if Linnet were responsible for her cleavage.

Her chaperone had the face of a gargoyle, to Linnet’s mind. She made one think of the medieval church in all its stony religious fervor. Which was why the viscount had hired her, of course.

Linnet turned back to the mirror. The gown did have a low neckline, which frankly she had considered to be a good thing, given how many young men seemed unable to drag their eyes above her chin. It kept them occupied and gave Linnet license to daydream about being somewhere other than a ballroom.

“You’re overly endowed,” Mrs. Hutchins went on. “Too much on top. Put that together with the way the dress billows out, and you look as if you’re expecting a happy event.”

“It wouldn’t have been happy,” Linnet pointed out.

“Not in your circumstances.” Mrs. Hutchins cleared her throat. She had the most irritating way of clearing her throat that Linnet had ever heard. It meant, Linnet had learned over the last few months, that she was about to say something unpleasant.

“Why on earth didn’t we see it?” Linnet cried with frustration, cutting her off before she could launch her criticism. “It seems so unfair, to lose my reputation and perhaps even my chance at marriage, just because this gown has too many pleats and petticoats.”

“Your manners are at fault,” Mrs. Hutchins said. “You should have learned from your mother’s example that if you act like a hussy, people will take you for a jade. I tried to give you tips about propriety as best I could over the last months, but you paid me no mind. Now you must reap what you have sown.”

“My manners have nothing to do with this dress and its effect on my figure,” Linnet stated. She rarely bothered to examine herself closely in the glass. If she had just looked carefully, if she had turned to the side . . .

“It’s the neckline,” Mrs. Hutchins said stubbornly. “You look like a milking cow, if you’ll excuse the comparison.”

Linnet didn’t care to excuse it, so she ignored her. People should warn one of the danger. A lady should always look at herself from the side while dressing, or she might discover that all of London suddenly believed her to be carrying a child.

“I know that you’re not enceinte,” Mrs. Hutchins continued, sounding as if she were reluctant to admit it. “But I’d never believe it, looking at you now.” She cleared her throat again. “If you’ll take a word of advice, I’d cover that chest of yours a bit more. It’s not seemly. I did try to tell you that several times over the last two months and twenty-three days that I’ve been living in this household.”

Linnet counted to five and then said, stonily, “It’s the only chest I have, Mrs. Hutchins, and everyone’s gowns are designed like this. There’s nothing special about my neckline.”

“It makes you look like a light frigate,” she observed.

“What?”

“A light frigate. A light woman!”

“Isn’t a frigate a boat?”

“Exactly, the type that docks in many harbors.”

“I do believe that it is the first jest you’ve ever told me,” Linnet said. “And to think I was worried that you might not have a sense of humor.”

After that, the corners of Mrs. Hutchins’s mouth turned down and she refused to say anything more. And she refused to accompany Linnet back to the drawing room. “I’ve naught to do with what’s come upon you,” she said. “It’s the will of heaven, and you can tell your father I said so. I did my best to instill principles in you, but it was too late.”

“That seems rather unfair,” Linnet said. “Even a very young light frigate should have the chance to dock at one harbor before she’s scuppered.”

Mrs. Hutchins gasped. “You dare to jest. You have no idea of propriety—none! I think we all know where to put the blame for that.”

“Actually, I think I have more understanding of propriety and its opposite than most. After all, Mrs. Hutchins, I, not you, grew up around my mother.”

“And there’s the root of your problem,” she said, with a grim smile. “It’s not as if her ladyship were a felt-maker’s daughter who ran away with a tinker. No one cares about that sort. Your mother danced like a thief in the mist while everyone was watching her. She was no private strumpet; she let the world see her iniquity!”

“A thief in the mist,” Linnet repeated. “Is that biblical, Mrs. Hutchins?”

But Mrs. Hutchins pressed her lips together and left the room.

Chapter Two

Castle Owfestry
Pendine, Wales
Ancestral Seat of the Dukes of Windebank

Piers Yelverton, Earl of Marchant, and heir to the Duke of Windebank, was in a considerable amount of pain. He had learned long ago that to think about discomfort—a blasted, silly word for this sort of agony—was to give it a power that he didn’t care to acknowledge. So he pretended not to notice, and leaned a bit more heavily on his cane, relieving the pressure on his right leg.

The pain made him irritable. But maybe it wasn’t the pain. Maybe it was the fact that he had to stand around wasting his time with a roaring idiot.

“My son is suffering from acute diarrhea and abdominal pain,” Lord Sandys said, pulling him closer to the bed.

Sandys’s son was lying in bed looking gaunt and yellow, like tea-stained linen. He looked to be in his thirties, with a long face and an unbearably pious air. Though that might have been due to the prayer book he was clutching.

“We’re desperate,” Sandys said, looking indeed quite desperate. “I’ve paraded five London physicians past his bed, and bringing him here to Wales is our last resort. So far he’s been bled, treated with leeches, given tinctures of nettles. He drinks nothing but asses’ milk, never cows’ milk. Oh, and we’ve given him several doses of sulfur, but to no effect.”

That was mildly interesting. “One of those fools you saw must have been Sydenham,” Piers said. “He’s obsessed with sulfur auratum antimonii. Gives it out for stubbed toes. Along with opium, of course.”

Sandys nodded. “Dr. Sydenham was hopeful that the sulfur would relieve my son’s symptoms, but it didn’t help.”

“It wouldn’t. The man was enough of a fool to be admitted to the Royal College of Physicians, and that should have told you something.”

“But you’re—”

“I joined purely as a kindness to them.” He peered down at Sandys’s son. He was certainly looking the worse for wear. “It likely didn’t make you feel any better to trudge all the way to Wales to see me.”

The man blinked at him. Then he said, slowly, “We were in a carriage.”

“Inflamed eyes,” Piers said. “Signs of a recent nose-bleed.”

“What do you gather from that? What does he need?” Sandys asked.

“Better bathing. Is he always that color?”

“His skin is a bit yellow,” Sandys acknowledged. “It doesn’t come from my side of the family.” That was an understatement, given that Sandys’s nose was the color of a cherry.

“Did you eat a surfeit of lampreys?” Piers asked the patient.

The man looked up at him as if he had sprouted horns. “Larkspy? What’s a larkspy? I haven’t eaten any of it.”

Piers straightened up. “He doesn’t know the history of England. He’s better off dead.”

“Did you ask if he’d eaten any lampreys?” Sandys said. “He hates seafood. Can’t abide eels.”

“More to the point, he’s deaf as a post. The first King Henry ate lampreys, one of the many mad kings we’ve had in this country, though not as cracked as the current one. Still, Henry was thickheaded enough to have eaten a surfeit of eels and died of it.”

“I am not deaf!” the patient said. “I can hear as well as the next, if people would just stop mumbling at me. My joints hurt. They’re the problem.”

“You’re dying, that’s the problem,” Piers pointed out. Sandys grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away. “Don’t say such a thing in front of my son. He’s no more than thirty-two.”

“He’s got the body of an eighty-year-old. Has he spent much time consorting with actresses?”

Sandys snorted. “Certainly not! Our family goes back to—”

“Nightwalkers? Hussies? Mollishers, mopsies, or mackerels? Though mackerels brings fish back into this conversation and you already told me that the man can’t abide seafood. But what about fish of the female variety?”

“My son is a member of the Church!” Sandys blustered.

“That settles it,” Piers said. “Everyone lies, but churchmen make an art of it. He’s got syphilis. Churchmen are riddled with it, and the more pious they are, the more symptoms they have. I should have known the moment I saw that prayer book.”

“Not my son,” Sandys said, sounding as if he actually believed it. “He’s a man of God. Always has been.”

“As I was saying—”

“Seriously.”

“Hmm. Well, if not a mopsy—”

“No one,” Sandys said, shaking his head. “He’s never—he’s not interested. He’s like a saint, that boy is. When he was sixteen, I took him to Venus’s Rose, in the Whitefriars, but he didn’t take the slightest interest in any of the girls. Just started praying, and asked them to join him, which they didn’t care for. He’s a candidate for sainthood.”

“His sainthood is about to become a question for a higher authority. There’s nothing I can do.”

Sandys grabbed his arm. “You must!”

“I can’t.”

“But the other doctors, all of them, they gave him medicines, they said—”

“They were fools, who didn’t tell you the truth.” Sandys swallowed. “He was fine until he was twenty. Just a fine, healthy boy, and then—”

“Take your son home and let him die in peace. Because die he will, whether I give you a solution of sulfur or not.”

“Why?” Sandys whispered. “He has syphilis. He’s deaf, he’s diarrhetic, he’s jaundiced, he’s got eye and joint inflammation and nosebleeds. He likely gets headaches.”

“He’s never been with a woman. Ever. I swear it. He hasn’t any sores on his private parts or he would have mentioned it.”

“He didn’t have to be with a woman,” Piers said, nipping his coat out of Sandys’s hand and shaking his sleeve straight again.

“How can he have syphilis without—”

“It could have been a man.”

Sandys looked so shocked that Piers relented. “Or it could have been you, which is far more likely. The rosy ladies you visited as a youth infected the boy before he was even born.”

“I was treated with mercury,” Sandys protested.

“To no avail. You still have it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have important things to do. Like treat a patient who might live for another year.”

Piers strolled out, finding his butler Prufrock in the hallway. “I wonder how you ever get anything done,” he said to him. “It must be hard to run a household when you have to conduct all your business in the corridors so you can hear every golden word that falls from my lips.”

“I do not find it a particular problem,” Prufrock said, falling in beside him. “But then I have lots of practice. You don’t think that you were a trifle hard on Lord Sandys?”

“Hard? Was I hard? Surely not. I told him exactly what was wrong with his son, and what to do next— in short, go home and wait for choirs of angels, because there are no miracles on this side of the divide.”

“It’s his son that’s dying. And if I got you right, he gave the poor lad the illness. That’s a blow, that is.”

“My father wouldn’t have minded a bit,” Piers assured him. “If he had another heir, that is. But Sandys has a whole passel of children. An heir and more to spare.”

“How do you know that?”

“The Church, you fool. He put this boy into the Church and seems to have trained him up to it from an early age, too. The heir must be rousting about in brothels just like good old Pa. Sandys would never have allowed the spare near a Bible if he were, in fact, the heir. This one is expendable, which is a bloody good thing, under the circumstances.”

“Your father the duke would be greatly disturbed at the very idea that he’d passed on a disease of this nature,” Prufrock said.

“Perhaps,” Piers said, pretending to consider it. “And perhaps not. I’m amazed my father hasn’t married a fresh young thing of twenty. Or sixteen. Time’s a-wasting, and at this rate he’ll never have the spare he needs.”

“His Grace was devoted to Her Grace and wounded by the terrible events of the past,” Prufrock said with a palpable lack of attention to the truth.

Piers didn’t bother answering that. His leg hurt as if someone had stuck a hot poker into his thigh. “I need a drink, so why don’t you rush ahead like a good butler and meet me at the door of the library with a strong brandy?”

“I’ll keep walking next to you in case you keel over,” Prufrock said.

“I suppose you have visions of breaking my fall,” Piers said, giving his scrawny butler a sidelong glance.

“Actually, no. But I would call for a footman, who could drag you along the corridor. It’s marble, so you might get a concussion, and that might make you a bit kinder to your patients, not to mention your staff. You had Betsy in tears again this morning. You seem to think scullery maids grow on trees.”

Thank God, they were getting close to the library. Piers paused for a moment, the idea of amputation flitting through his mind, and not for the first time. He could get one of those Egyptian bed-things that Cleopatra had herself carried about on. Walking would be a damned sight more difficult, but at least he’d be free of this infernal pain.

“Your father has written,” Prufrock told him. “I took the liberty of putting the letter on your desk.”

“Took the liberty of steaming it open, more like,” Piers said. “What does he have to say?”

“He expresses some interest in your marital future,” Prufrock said cheerfully. “It seems that last missive you sent him, the one listing all your demands for a spouse, did not dissuade him. Rather surprising, I must say.”

“The one that called him an idiot?” Piers asked. “Did you read that one too, you pestilent polecat?”

“You’re quite poetical today,” Prufrock observed. “All that alliteration in the ser vice of mopsies and mollishers, and now for your lowly butler. I’m honored, I assure you.”

“What’s the duke writing about now?” Piers said. He could see the library door. He could almost feel the brandy going down his throat. “I told him that I wouldn’t accept a wife unless she was as beautiful as the sun and the moon. Which is a quote from literature, in case you don’t know. And I added quite a lot of other provisions as well, ones guaranteed to send him into a frothing fit of despair.”

“He’s looking for a wife,” Prufrock said. “For himself, I would hope. Although he’s waited a bit long,” Piers said, failing to summon any particular interest in this news. “Men of his age don’t have the balls they once had, if you’ll excuse the vulgar truth of it, Prufrock. Lord knows you have more delicate sensibilities than I do.”

“I used to, before I began working for you,” Pru-frock said, pushing open the library door with a flourish.

Piers had one thing in mind. It was golden, tasted like fire, and would cut the pain in his leg.

“So he’s looking for a wife,” he repeated without paying any attention to the words, but heading straight for the brandy decanter. He poured out a hefty dose. “It’s been a rotten day. Not that it matters to me, or you, for that matter, but there’s nothing I can do for that young woman who showed up at the back door this morning.”

“The one who’s all swollen in the belly?”

“It’s not the usual swelling, and if I cut her open, I’ll kill her. If I don’t cut her open, the disease will kill her. So I took the easier of the two options.” He threw back the brandy.

“You sent her away?”

“She had nowhere to go. I turned her over to Nurse Matilda, with instructions to bed her down in the west wing with enough opium to keep her mind off what’s happening next. Thank God this castle is big enough to house half the dying people in England.”

“Your father,” Prufrock said, “and the question of marriage.”

He was trying to distract him. Piers poured another glass, smaller this time. He had no wish to stick his head in a bottle of brandy and never come out again, if only because he’d learned from his patients that overindulgence meant that brandy wouldn’t blunt the pain anymore. “Ah, marriage,” he said obediently. “About time. My mother’s been gone these twenty years. Well, gone isn’t quite the word, is it? At any rate, darling Maman is over on the Continent living the good life, so His Grace might as well remarry. It wasn’t easy to get that divorce, you know. Probably cost him as much as a small estate. He should make hay while the sun shines, or in short, while he’s still able to get a rise every other day.”

“Your father’s not getting married,” Prufrock said. Something in his tone made Piers glance up.

“You weren’t joking.”

The butler nodded. “It is my impression that His Grace sees you—or your marriage—as a challenge. It could be that you shouldn’t have listed quite so many requirements. One might say that it fired up the duke’s resolve. Got him interested in the project, so to speak.”

“The devil you say. He’ll never manage to find anyone. I have a reputation, you know.”

“Your title is weightier than your reputation,” Pru-frock said. “Additionally, there is the small matter of your father’s estate.”

“You’re probably right, damn you.” Piers decided he could manage another small glass. “But what about my injury, hmm? You think a woman would agree to marry a man—what am I saying? Of course a woman would agree to that.”

“I doubt many young ladies would see that as an insurmountable problem,” Prufrock said. “Now, your personality . . .”

“Damn you,” Piers said, but without heat.

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

STORMING THE CASTLE. Copyright © 2011 by Eloisa James. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition January 2011 ISBN: 978-0-06-207405-8

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by the Author

Kiss at Midnight

Cover

Front Sales

By Eloisa James

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

When Beauty Tamed the Beast

Cover

Front Sales

By Eloisa James

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Copyright

About the Publisher