“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 . . .”