“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.