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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.”