My Last Duchess (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #0.5) - Eloisa James Page 0,93

and fierce. “I will try, Philippa. But I could never make you a servant or a beggar at my side. Wait for me—”

“Forever,” she said.

“One week. If I don’t come for you before one week has passed, I could not manage it. But know this, Philippa.” He looked down into her face, as unyielding as the greatest emperor who ever lived. “If I do not come for you, it is not for want of desire for you, nor for want of love for you, nor for want of trying. I would do anything to be worthy of you.”

Her breath caught on a sob. “Oh, Wick . . .”

“And I will never love another woman above you.”

The deep, hungry yearning in his eyes made her knees weak. She caught at him, fumbling for words, the vow that would make him understand that she was his forever. That she would wait a lifetime.

But he was gone.

Chapter Ten

Philippa lay awake until the thin gray light turned pale yellow, and Jonas stirred. She had no sooner washed and dressed herself and Jonas than a footman announced that her father requested to speak with her.

The moment she entered the sitting room, she threw herself into her father’s open arms. “I’m sorry, Papa; oh, you were worried! I told you not to be.”

For a moment, her father merely stood, his arms now tight around her. Then he sat down heavily, pulling her to his knee as if she were five years old. “You told me not to worry . . . and you truly believed your reassurance would be sufficient?”

“I did when I first ran away. But I’ve learned differently in the past weeks,” she confessed. “I thought it would be better for you if I was gone because I didn’t want to obey you. But I know now that love is far more possessive than that.” She leaned against his shoulder, as if she truly were a little girl again. “I missed you.”

“Were you treated well? I spoke to the prince, who seems a very orderly and mannered young fellow. But were you treated well?” He looked around. “I cannot countenance the fact that my daughter has been working as a nursemaid. Thank heaven your mother wasn’t alive to see it.”

“The prince and princess treated me with nothing but the greatest kindness, Papa.”

“I will give them my thanks, but then we must be away. I neglected the house, the estate, everything after you ran away.”

Philippa came to her feet and stood as straight as she could. “I will return home with you, Papa, but I will not marry Rodney. I will never, ever marry Rodney.” In that long hour before Jonas awoke, while she lay awake longing for Wick she had concluded that it was best not to inform her father that she planned to marry the butler.

“So I gathered from your note,” her father said, perplexed. “But why, sweetpea? You’ve always loved Rodney—”

“No, Papa,” Philippa interrupted. “You have always loved the idea of my marrying Rodney. And Rodney said he loved me. But no one ever asked me how I felt about marrying that fat-bottomed . . . fellow!”

Her father frowned. “Fat-bottomed? Is he?”

“Yes.”

“I never noticed. Still, you can’t make a decision of this nature based on something as unimportant as a bottom. It’s a man’s character that counts. Rodney is a sturdy lad, in character as well as physique.”

That may be true but it was beside the point.

“Would you call him intelligent?” she asked.

Her father gave this some thought. “Well, perhaps not precisely intelligent, but . . .”

“But?”

“A head is like a house,” he said. “If it’s crammed too full, it’s cluttered.”

“Rodney’s house doesn’t have a stick of furniture in it,” she said flatly.

Her father’s shoulders slumped. “I thought I was doing the best for you.”

“Papa,” she said, “I will not marry Rodney. Ever.”

“Just come home,” he said, coming to his feet and taking her in his arms again. “Just come home, please, Philippa. These last weeks have been insupportable.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, realizing the depth of her own unkindness, however unintended it may have been. “I was as bad as the serpent’s tooth in the Bible, wasn’t I, Papa?”

“Not quite,” he said wearily. “And it was Shakespeare’s Lear who called his thankless daughter a serpent’s tooth. But I haven’t felt so distraught since your mother died, and that’s the truth. I’ll have to speak to Sir George. I told him that you were visiting my brother all this time, but he