Page 95

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 imagine 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?”