Storming the Castle

Page 12

“Why not? I think it would be fascinating. I wouldn’t want to be a surgeon; I don’t like causing pain. But if the person has already left his body, why not try to find out how he died, and why?”
“All those blood and guts,” she said. “Obviously.”
“Entrails,” he said, almost dreamily. “Back when I was at university, I read that there are enough entrails in the human body to stretch all the way down an average street. I can’t imagine.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Philippa told Jonas, who had woken. “You’ll feel queasy and start crying again.”
Jonas burped and closed his eyes once more.
“I’m going to stop walking and sit down, Jonas,” she told him. “Just for a little while.” Then she sank carefully into the sofa that Wick had ordered placed in the portrait gallery after it became clear it was prime walking-Jonas territory.
“Why don’t you go and dissect some dead bodies, then?” she asked, trying to ignore the fact—and utterly failing to do so—that Wick had sat down beside her. Her pulse instantly quickened. For one thing, his leg was touching hers. For another, as soon as they sat down, it felt as if the world drew in and became as small as the three of them. As if she and Wick and sleeping Jonas were utterly alone in the whole castle.
“Me?” He seemed startled for a moment. “Nonsense.”
“Why nonsense? My uncle told me that there’s a terrible shortage of doctors in England. You told me the other night that you’d been at Oxford; did you take a degree?”
“Of course.”
“A good degree?” she persisted.
“A double first. Is that good enough for you?”
“Goodness. Well, then, all you have to do is attend the university in Edinburgh for a year,” she said. “I suppose it would be better to go a little longer, but my uncle told me that many doctors attend for only a year.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Well, because Gabriel and I—because I’m here.”
“I can see that it’s quite nice for your brother to have you as his majordomo,” she acknowledged, “but if you wish to heal people, I think every sick person would feel that you should forfeit the butler’s pantry.” She heard her own voice and winced with embarrassment. It was something about him. He made her feel joyful and slightly cracked.
“My father—”
“Your father isn’t here,” she said, cutting him off. “I know you’re a grand duke’s son, Wick, but it doesn’t seem to have done you much good. Why not just forget about that and do what you wish?”
“As I wish . . .” There was a tinge of wistfulness in his voice. “I would wish that my father had never seduced my mother although that would have had unfortunate consequences for myself.”
“I meant realistic wishes,” Kate said, sitting up straighter so she could rock back and forth in her place, in hopes of keeping Jonas asleep.
His reply came with a rueful smile. “I cannot believe that it would surprise you to know how many doors are closed to bastards.” Kate met his eyes, and the pain in them was unmistakable.
“Those doors hold only fools,” she said softly but fiercely. “You should be judged for the man you’ve become not by the circumstances of your birth.”
He was silent for a moment, his eyes still on hers. The expression in them changed somehow, and suddenly her heart was beating in her throat.
“At any rate,” she said quickly, taking refuge in words, “no one here in England would have the faintest idea whether your birth was irregular or not.”
“I have a responsibility to my brother,” Wick said. But that expression was still there. It was almost . . . tender.
Philippa started rubbing Jonas’s back again. “If I understood the conversation at dinner last night properly, Gabriel assumed responsibility for this castle along with some members of his brother’s court even though he would have preferred to be an archaeologist off somewhere . . . Tunis, was it? Looking for a city called Carthage? That seems to suggest that a sense of familial responsibility does not reside only in the lower echelons.”
Wick laughed at that. “I did my best to persuade him to go to Tunis, but he refused, thinking that he had to provide an income for the castle. Then he wrote a book—not to mention married—an heiress and now he is free to go where he wishes.”
“I expect you tried very hard to convince him. I can tell that you are extremely close.”
“He was so miserable before meeting Kate,” Wick explained.
“Yet he can’t manage without you? Would he not wish the same happiness for you?”
There was another moment of silence. Then he smiled down at her. Philippa suddenly thought she would love to kiss him. She would give him a scandalous kiss, the kind that Rodney had demanded and she hadn’t allowed.
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “I want to hear more about Rodney.” She should never—never—have told Wick about Rodney. Somehow, during these nocturnal tête-à-têtes, it was hard to keep secrets, and Wick had already guessed she was running from someone.
“Well . . . he has a tendency to start braying when he’s nervous,” she offered, feeling a wicked delight in betraying her former betrothed.
Wick nodded. “I know the type. I think it goes along with the English ancestry. I expect he hunts, and delights in shouting absurdities like tallyho.”
“I expect so,” she said. She could not help but conjure a mental picture of Rodney sitting on his horse in that red hunting coat that made his buttocks look four times wider than they actually were. Involuntarily, her eyes dropped to Wick’s legs.
They were all muscle, as different from Rodney’s as night from day.
“Are you comparing us?” His voice had gone low and husky.
Her nerves jolted again, but she nodded. She couldn’t lie to Wick any longer, now they were so close. Friends, or perhaps even something more. “You are very different.”
“Perhaps because he’s a baronet’s son.” He didn’t say it bitterly.
“He’s always had everything he wanted, but that doesn’t excuse his fat bottom,” she observed.
“Was he really seven when he fell in love with you?”
“He was nine. I was seven.”
“Astounding,” Wick said, staring at her as if she were some sort of exhibit in a traveling show.
Philippa caught back a smile and tossed her head. “Are you saying, Mr. Berwick, that I was not desirable at age seven?”
“You are as pretty as a fairy-tale princess,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “I’m quite certain that you were just as enchanting at age seven.”
“I actually used to dream of being in a fairy story,” she admitted.
“Vanity, thy name is woman!” Wick said, pulling a strand of her hair.
“Not from vanity. I always pictured a prince who would ride up on a white horse. I’d be there, in the village square, and he would sweep across and wrap his arm around me and pull me before him in the saddle.”
Wick’s eyebrow was up. “That would take quite a bit of skill. The story would be so disappointing if you took a hoof to the head. Was the prince wearing shining armor, by any chance?”