My Last Duchess

by James, Eloisa

  It struck Wick that bedding his beloved was the most delightful, funny, and passionate activity he had ever engaged in. He kissed her again, letting his fingers wander, marking what made Philippa arch her back, instinctively falling into a position to give . . . and take.

  Slowly, slowly he inched her nightgown all the way above her breasts. She didn’t seem to notice until he replaced one of the hands that was caressing her breast with his mouth—well, she noticed that. And he stayed there, learning her secrets, tasting her sweetness. Savoring her. Every startled gasp made laughter and desire double in his chest.

  “Lovely Philippa,” he murmured, sometime later, “is this tiddle-taddling?” And just to make sure she knew what he was talking about, he leaned down and gave her other breast a kiss, the kind that claimed, that was a little rough and a little wild.

  “No!” she gasped and then, “Oh, Wick, that feels wonderful.”

  Her hands reached out, rather blindly, toward him. “Does it feel the same for you?”

  Once they had established to both their satisfaction that, yes, it did feel just as good for him, Wick was flat on his back with Philippa lying along his side, one of her legs entwined with his.

  “Philippa,” he said, dimly hearing the hoarseness in his voice. “May I remove your nightgown now?”

  She looked at him, her eyes shining. “If I kiss you here, Wick, your whole body jerks in response. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Quite,” he managed, and whipped her billowing nightgown over her head. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed, awestruck.

  Philippa followed Wick’s gaze down her body. The moonlight had turned her limbs to alabaster; she tried to imagine herself as he saw her. But she would rather look at him.

  “Just one thing,” she said trying to gather her thoughts. “What I said before . . .”

  But his hands were at her waist and his mouth closed over her breast and she lost the sentence, the words, the thought altogether.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  All the secret parts of her were throbbing, which was such an odd sensation that . . . still, she needed to make the point. “It’s just one of Rodney’s daft perversions,” she said, tugging his shoulders. “He called it diddling, but I know you won’t do such a thing.”

  Wick moved so his body was poised above hers and God save her, the only thing she wanted was that large body to rest on top of hers. She finally understood why women played the strumpet: it was because they caught a glimpse of a man like this one.

  “Wick,” she whispered, throwing the last of any remaining maidenly caution to the winds, “come to me . . . please?”

  “I thought it was tiddling that you didn’t like,” Wick said, his eyes glinting with an unholy mixture of laughter and lust. “Now I find you don’t like diddling either?”

  Philippa rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  A strong hand suddenly laid a scorching path up her leg, easing them apart, skating onto the inner flesh of her thigh. Philippa gasped. “That’s exactly where Rodney . . . you mustn’t!”

  “I won’t,” Wick said tenderly, dropping another kiss on the corner of her mouth. “I’ll never do something so ham-handed that Rodney partook in it . . . not unless you beg me to, of course.”

  And with that, he took her mouth in such a devouring kiss that at first Philippa hardly noticed the hand stroking her legs apart, dancing close to her most secret—but notice she did. She tore her mouth away, and said, “Wick, no.”

  “I would never,” he said, his eyes innocent. “On the Continent, we disdain diddling. We do this instead.” And without pausing for a response, he pulled open her legs with strong hands, slid down, and before she could even conceive of such a thing, put his mouth—there.

  Philippa didn’t even think of refusing. In fact, she couldn’t think at all. Her capacity for rational thought did not reemerge until after she found herself shaking from head to foot, trying to fathom how a scorching wave had burst over her head and dragged her down into its fiery depths.

  Wick was there, grinning down at her . . . nudging her.

  Her eyes widened. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” he said, husky and sweet. “Take me, Philippa. Because I’m the one who loves you, and because you love me. Make me yours.”

  She knew instinctively that this kind of ownership had nothing to do with ha’pennies, or even kisses. And when he was deep inside her, hers weren’t the only eyes shining with errant tears.

  “You’re mine,” she whispered.

  Wick cradled her face in his. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she whispered back, rather surprised. “It did with Rodney, and there’s so much more of you. But it feels . . .” She wiggled a little. “It feels good.”

  “Ah,” he said, with such a wealth of satisfaction in his voice that she started to smile, but then he drew back, slowly, and just as slowly, thrust forward, and the smile flew from her mind, along with everything but the wild pleasure, the ravishing feeling that had her arching to meet him, crying out with each stroke.

  He kept coming, and coming . . . like the tide washing up on the shore, only not so gentle, then it felt as if the ocean came to her, as if a flood of pure pleasure swept from her toes to the ends of her fingers.

  Dimly, she heard his groan, then her own cry.

  It was a night of discovery.

  She woke in the dim light of dawn to find that Jonas had slept through the night for the very first time. Wick was bent over her. She reached up, only to realize that he was, once again, dressed in his livery.

  “I must go,” he murmured, brushing strands of hair from her face. “And you must return to being Miss Philippa Damson rather than my favorite nursemaid.”

  She smiled at him drowsily, but she was waking up, and his words coalesced into something ominous. “What do you mean?”

  “I expect your father will arrive this morning to take you home.”

  Philippa sat up, her heart suddenly pounding. “I shan’t go.”

  “You must. Jonas is much better, and young ladies can’t serve in the nursery forever. You are no servant, Philippa.”

  “I don’t want—” She stopped. “If you are a servant, I want to be a servant.”

  “You mustn’t say such a thing.”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You must.” He said it gently, but she heard the stark truth of it in his voice. “There is no place for you here, in the castle. You might come as a visitor, but if I am in livery.” He hesitated. “I would rather you did not.”

  And there it was.

  She swung her legs from the bed and stood up, feeling the chill of his words spread through her body. “Please, Wick, don’t—don’t say this.”

  He ran his fingers through her hair and pulled her close. “I will try to come for you,” he said, low 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 suspects otherwise, of course. The servants have talked.”

  “Please not the first day,” Philippa implored. “Surely, we can have a quiet day to ourselves. I’ll have a posset made, and we’ll play a game of chess in your study.”

  They did just that.

  Chapter Eleven

  But the very next morning her father looked up from his plate and nodded to the butler, standing at a side table by the fire, ready to provide fresh toast. “That will do, Quirbles.”

  Philippa put down her fork as their butler closed the door quietly behind him. “What is it, Papa?”

  “You’re not the same,” he said abruptly.

  She blinked at him.

  “There’s something different about you.”

  “I hope not.” She didn’t know whether to hope that Wick’s French letter had worked just as it ought or not: there was nothing to the outward eye that admitted she’d been ravished—and loved.

  “What happened in that castle, Philippa?” her father asked. His voice was kind, but firm.

  She picked up her fork again and studiously pushed her eggs to the side of the plate. “I took care of the little prince. I told you that already, Papa.”

  “That’s not what I mean . . . His father didn’t do anything untoward, did he?”

  Philippa’s mouth fell open. “Of course not, Papa! What a thing to suggest!”

  “His Highness is not English.”

  “He is all that is honorable,” Philippa said reprovingly. “And the princess is perfectly lovely. We even became friends. And by the way, she is English—though really, Papa, you should not make assumptions about people’s characters based on where they come from.” In truth, she missed Kate, which was absurd because they had been acquainted for only a few weeks.

  “Nevertheless, you have changed somehow. What happened there?” her father persisted.

  With a deep breath Philippa took the plunge. “I fell in love.”

  “Ah, I thought so,” her father said, with the satisfaction that comes with having one’s guess confirmed. “You know, sweetpea, when your mother was dying, she was very worried about you. She was certain that I wouldn’t notice what you were feeling or thinking.”

  “Well, you didn’t, when it came to Rodney,” Philippa pointed out, rather unkindly.

  “I made up for that now,” he said, taking a bite of kipper.

  She watched him chew and smile to himself.

  But then the significance of it hit him. He put down his fork with a sharp click.

  “You fell in love—with whom did you fall in love? Some dissolute scrap of gentry hanging around the prince’s knees, hoping for a handout, I’ll warrant. One of those glittering court fellows with no more substance or ethics than a tomcat!”

  “No.” She took a bite of her now-cold eggs though she couldn’t taste them.

  He frowned at her.

  “The butler,” Philippa stated; having plunged, there was nothing for it but to keep going.

  At this unimaginable revelation the blood drained from her father’s face. “You’re jesting.” His voice was a whisper.

  Philippa squared her shoulders. “Mr. Berwick is the prince’s own brother. He is the son of a grand duke. He serves as His Highness’s majordomo out of strong loyalty and affection.”

  Her father blinked. “No gentleman would ever serve as a butler, no matter what fancy label you give the position.”

  “He is a gentleman,” Philippa snapped, in a tone she had never before used with her father.

  “Then there’s something else wrong with him . . . Oh, dear God, he’s a married man.” Mr. Damson dropped his head into his hands. “I should have wedded you to Rodney the day you turned sixteen.”

  Philippa rose, then slipped into the chair next to her father. “He is not married, Papa.”

  Her father raised his head. “Poor as a church mouse, I expect. No estate.”

  “None,” she admitted.

  “Still, that doesn’t explain why he’s the butler. The man could marry an heiress if he’s the son of a grand duke. There’s no need to put on livery; there’s many a rich merchant who would love to boast of a son-in-law with that pedigree.”

  Philippa bit her lip.

  It came to him. “Wrong side of the blanket,” her father stated, his mouth bunching up with disdain.

  She nodded.

  “Damnation!” The word echoed harshly in the little room.

  “Papa,” she said imploringly. “Wick is not—”

  “Wick? Wick? Like the wick of a candle? I’ll be damned if my daughter will have anything to do with a man named after a household necessity.” He surged to his feet. “Tell me that th
e bastard touched you, and I’ll kill him myself.”

  Philippa jumped up as well. “Papa, no!”

  He grabbed her arms and stared into her face. “No? No, you are still a virgin?” She didn’t answer, and he gave her a shake. “Does that fine prince over there know the consequences of his bastard brother deflowering an English lady? Does he?”

  “He didn’t deflower me,” she whispered.

  Her father’s face relaxed, but his grip didn’t. “Ah.” Then, more slowly: “That would explain why he’s not here, trying to make his way out of the servant class by marrying you.”

  “He refused to marry me!” She half shrieked it.

  Her father dropped her arms, tottered, and sank back in his chair. “Margaret, Margaret, why did you leave me?” he moaned.

  Philippa raised her chin. She couldn’t even imagine what her mother would make of the situation. “I asked him to marry me.”

  Her father’s only response was a loud groan.

  “And he refused on the grounds of his honor.”

  “Where did I go wrong?” he moaned. “What did we do wrong, Margaret?” He raised his head. “This is all because of Rodney, isn’t it? You got a bee in your bonnet about Rodney, and so you fell for a good-looking servant with an interesting tale.”

  “Wick is a gentleman and as honorable as you are. He means to be a doctor, just like your own brother.”

  “You are not the first,” her father said, unheeding. “There’s that daughter of the Earl of Southplank, a year or two ago. Everyone knew she ran off with a footman, some say for an entire week. But she’s properly married, right and tight now.” He stood again. “And that’s what you’ll be as well. I’ll visit Sir George this very afternoon.”

  “I will not marry Rodney!” A numbing wave of despair broke over her head.

  “You will.” Her mild-mannered father suddenly took on the look of a bulldog. “You’ll do as I say, Philippa. I won’t have you ruining your life, pining after a servant who has a better understanding of propriety than you do. I don’t know whether I’m more appalled that you played the fool enough to ask such a thing of the man, or more grateful that he didn’t lunge at the chance.”