My Last Duchess (The Wildes of Lindow Castle #0.5) - Eloisa James Page 0,99

at the beginning of High Street. They were gaily dressed in the brilliant embroidery and silks of nobility. There were grooms in scarlet livery, and even a coach following, its scarlet trim glittering in the sunlight.

“Lord Almighty,” Rodney muttered beside her.

The horses pranced down the street, their riders smiling and nodding to the villagers trotting from the cobbler and the smithy.

“It’s better than the fair!” she heard someone say shrilly.

But Philippa’s eyes were fixed on the rider in front, a man who was not wearing the exuberant embroidery of his royal brother nor the scarlet livery of the groomsmen. Nor was he wearing shining armor.

He was riding a snowy white horse. His costume was one her own father would have chosen: a dark, dark green coat with a snowy neckcloth. It was not ostentatious, but it proclaimed the wearer a gentleman.

Perhaps, even, a member of the gentry.

Perhaps, even, connected to a royal family, albeit a non-English royal family.

She stepped out from the shadow of the oak, her arm sliding from Rodney’s hand.

As Wick’s horse paced toward her, Philippa didn’t even smile. Her heart was too full for that: full of song and laughter and the love that would sustain her to the end of her life.

And Wick didn’t smile either. He was as grave as a king as he brought his mount to a trot, leaned down at just the right moment, swept out an arm, pulled her onto his saddle—and then galloped straight down the street and out of Little Ha’penny.

When they reached the edge of the town, alone now, since the royal party had stayed in Little Ha’penny, the better to dazzle the villagers, Wick jumped from the horse again and reached up.

She fell into his arms with a sob of pure joy.

Wick dropped to his knees there, in the dust of the road. “Miss Philippa Damson, would you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

“Wick, oh, Wick,” Philippa said, reaching out a shaking hand to bring him back to his feet.

But he waited. Had there been an observer standing in the ditch, that observer might have found his face impassive, unreadable. But to Philippa, his eyes spoke of deep love, a fierce passion, and just the tiniest amount of uncertainty.

She fell to her knees and wound her arms around his neck. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t come!”

His arms were warm and strong about her. He kissed her ear and whispered something, but she was sobbing too hard to comprehend. At last he tenderly picked her up and carried her into a field of buttercups, well away from the road. There he sat her down and began kissing every part of her face he could reach until she simply had to stop crying.

When he reached her mouth, he kissed her until her breath was quick, not with sobs but with a quite different emotion.

Finally, he pulled back and said, “May I ask you again?”

“Of course I will marry you,” she said, turning to catch his mouth again. “Yes, yes, yes!”

“My name,” he said, sometime later, “is Jonas. Jonas Berwick.”

“My husband,” Philippa said with great delight, “is a man named Jonas Berwick.”

He shook his head.

“No?”

“He’s a future doctor named Jonas Berwick. And he owns an estate called Yarrow House, which was the gift of his brother.”

Philippa swallowed. “Oh, Wick.”

“Jonas,” he said. “Wick was a majordomo at a castle once upon a time. Jonas is a gentleman of unknown birth but obvious gentility, who lives in England with his entirely English and altogether beautiful wife. He is apparently connected to a royal family, but because they are from a strange and small country, no one pays much attention to that.”

Tears were again sliding down her face, not from fear but from the deepest happiness.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I love you so much, Philippa, my future wife. The imprint of you is on my heart and will be there the day I die.”

“You sound like a doctor, diagramming your body,” she whispered back.

“I think you will not complain when I diagram your body,” he said, soft and low. The flame rose between them instantly, and when Jonas rolled his future wife over, sinking into a patch of buttercups so they couldn’t be seen from the road, indeed there were no complaints.

Epilogue

Several months later

Wick looked down at his bride with a surge of joy that came to him every time he saw her face.

Philippa was supine on their bed. They had retired to their bedchamber after luncheon,