My Last Duchess (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #0.5) - Eloisa James Page 0,75
was something of a maid-of-all-work to my stepmother for years before Gabriel came along and tried to make me into a princess.”
“Tried?” Philippa asked, just stopping herself from inquiring what Kate meant by There’s Wick, of course. “By all indications, you are a princess,” she pointed out.
“It didn’t take,” Kate said, with another huge yawn. “Princesses swan about in satin-lined carriages. What’s more, everyone knows that when a princess has a child, it has a rosebud mouth and sunny blue eyes. Whereas I have birthed the ugliest baby in all Christendom.”
“He’s not that ugly,” Philippa said, feeling defensive on behalf of poor little Jonas.
“Yes, he is,” his mother said, leaning back over the cradle. She put a finger on his nose. “A little potato here.” His eyes. “Currants are bigger than his eyes.” His mouth. “Well, his mouth isn’t bad. But have you ever seen a baby open his mouth wider or make such a frightful noise?”
“Never,” Phillipa said truthfully. “You return to bed, and I’ll bring you the baby after your nap.”
“But what about you? Shouldn’t you be getting settled? Oh no, what am I thinking? You’ll be sleeping right through this doorway, at least as long as you’re pretending to be a nursemaid. I’m too selfish to let you stop yet.”
Philippa smiled. “I’m happy to be a nursemaid, Your Highness. Truly, I love babies.”
“Kate,” Kate insisted, straightening up from the cradle. “I think it would be best if you brought Jonas to the dining room when he wakes up. We eat at eight, and I wouldn’t think he’ll be hungry again before then. You needn’t change, by the way.”
“Nursemaids don’t call their mistresses Kate, so you are obviously an exception.”
“What about the baby?” Philippa asked. “I wouldn’t want to leave him.”
“He will be with us, of course,” Kate said. “I don’t like to have him out of my sight.” And with a last touch of Jonas’s nose, she went out the door.
Chapter Four
Three hours later, Philippa was reconsidering her chosen profession. It seemed impossibly exhausting and boring. Jonas had woken, cried for an hour or so, taken some water, and gone back to sleep. Then he’d woken again, and cried again—but had fallen back to sleep just when she’d been trying to decide whether he was hungry.
She unpacked her tiny bag in the room next to the nursery, and, during one of Jonas’s quiet spells, brushed and re-brushed her hair, thinking all the while about Mr. Berwick. Wick, the princess had called him. He had lovely eyes, rather brooding, as if life wasn’t giving him what he wanted.
That had to be because he was a butler. He didn’t seem like a butler.
Jonas whimpered from the nursery, and she hastily pinned up her hair and went back into the room to soothe him.
She thought her uncle would be quite pleased with the way the baby now looked. The pinched look was gone, which meant that he had some water in him. What he needed now was more milk. And when she didn’t instantly produce it, he started crying again.
“I’m sorry, little scrap,” she murmured to him. “It’s going to hurt your tummy. But we just have to do it.”
She wrapped him in a light blanket and wondered what to do. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to find the dining room. By the time she opened the door and headed into the corridor, Jonas was wailing so vociferously that his face was purple.
A tall, yellow-haired footman with a nice open face was waiting for her. “Oh, thank goodness. What’s your name?” she asked over Jonas’s sobs.
“William, miss,” he said. “Mr. Berwick said I was to escort you to the dining room. It’s awfully easy to get lost in this castle.”
“It’s big, isn’t it?”
“Huge,” William said feelingly. “The time it takes just to bring the linens round about, well, you wouldn’t countenance it.”
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