by Eloisa James
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 fo
r 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 privat
e. 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—”
