My Last Duchess (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #0.5) - Eloisa James Page 0,89

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 wedding 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 eye, 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.

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