Storming the Castle

Page 3

When Wick let go of his arm, Gabriel actually tottered.
“How long has it been since you slept?” Wick demanded, taking hold of his arm again and hauling him along the corridor.
“Exactly how old is Jonas? I’ve lost track.”
“Not even a fortnight. You need to get yourself and Kate to sleep,” Wick said, pushing him through the nursery door. A moment later, he was holding his nephew.
“I’ll sleep for one hour, then I’ll be back,” his sister-in-law stated. She was a beautiful woman, but just at the moment she resembled one of those weird sisters in the Shakespeare play. Wick couldn’t remember which play it was, but there were three of them in the production he’d seen, and Kate would have fit right in. Her eyes were red, her face drawn, and grief and fear vibrated in the air around her. “He just had some milk . . . at least I think he did.”
“More than an hour,” Gabriel said firmly, pulling her toward the door.
She managed to stop her husband in the doorway. “Don’t let anyone else touch him,” she told Wick in a threatening tone.
He nodded.
“And whatever you do, if that doctor comes, don’t let him give the baby anything. I’m certain his dose made Jonas sicker, and he wanted to try opium. I know that’s a bad idea.”
“I already forbade him entrance to the castle,” her husband said, managing to get Kate into the hallway.
As the sound of their footsteps receded, Wick looked down at the baby, and Jonas looked back at him. Then Jonas opened his mouth so wide that Wick could view his interesting lack of teeth and screamed until his face turned red.
Wick’s ears hurt. But something hurt in his chest too. Jonas looked thinner now than he had when he was born. His eyes were sunken, and there seemed to be a little less fire in his cry. He looked like a wizened old man, as if he’d lived an entire life in a week or two.
Wick swore under his breath and set off down the corridor, then down a flight and into the portrait gallery. After he had walked for five minutes, Jonas settled down some. He turned his face against Wick’s chest and sobbed more quietly. He curled his finger around Wick’s rather than flailing it in the air.
“Just don’t die,” Wick found himself whispering. “Please don’t die.”
Jonas gave an exhausted sob.
Wick walked for another half hour or so, up the portrait gallery, out into the corridor, around the bend, back down the corridor, back into the portrait gallery . . . at last, Jonas slept.
Sometime later, footsteps sounded in the stone corridor behind him. “Mr. Berwick, oh, Mr. Berwick,” panted one of the footmen, as Wick turned toward him. “My apologies, Mr. Berwick, but Mrs. Apple says that the first of the new nursemaids has arrived, and she’d like you to be there for the interview.”
“How can that be?” Wick whispered. “I sent off to Manchester only yesterday.”
The footman had just realized what—or rather who—Wick held in his arms. He started walking backwards on his toes. “Don’t know,” he whispered back. “Shall I tell her you’re unavailable?”
Wick looked down at Jonas. The baby was turned against his chest, a fold of Wick’s shirt clutched in one tiny hand. “I can’t stop walking,” he said. “Send the woman up here. Mrs. Apple can see her first, then I will.”
Fifteen minutes later, Wick had just reached the far end of the gallery for the twentieth or perhaps fortieth time and was turning around to walk back the other way when the door opened and the nursemaid entered. His first thought was that she was too young.
He had sent a footman to Manchester with explicit instructions to find experienced nannies and doctors, at least two of each. The baby didn’t need a pretty bosom to nestle against: he needed someone who could figure out what was wrong with him.
But Wick walked back across the room, maintaining the same even stride with which he’d lulled Jonas to sleep. The girl didn’t meet his eyes; she was staring at the baby.
“Your name and your experience with children?” he asked briskly, thinking to get the whole thing over within two minutes. There were strands of bright hair peeking out from the girl’s cap, and her eyes were moss green. Plus, she had an entirely delectable bosom . . . she would never do. She’d have the footmen at fisticuffs within the week.
She didn’t seem to hear his inquiry. Instead, she came straight up to him and peered at Jonas’s face. “He’s wanting water, that’s for certain.”
“Babies don’t drink water,” Wick said, and never mind the fact that he’d never held a baby before this one. “Babies drink milk.” Her ignorance of this obvious truth was another strike against her employment.
“If they have the collywobbles, they need water as well.”
“How much experience have you had with infants?” He could see the nape of her neck as she peeked more closely at his nephew. It was delicate, pale, and translucent, like the finest porcelain. “Have you been a nursemaid for long?” Then, annoyed by the fact he was looking at her neck, he added, “You’re far too young.”
“I don’t have much experience, but what I have is the right sort,” she said, looking up at him, finally. He mentally revised his assessment of her eyes: they were not the green of moss, after all, but the green of the sea on a stormy day.
Wick felt an altogether uncomfortable warmth in the area of his groin. He’d be damned if he would line up with the footmen to ogle one of his fellow servants.
He’d accepted long ago that ladies were not for him. True, he was the son of a grand duke, albeit a grand duke in far-off Marburg. But he had been born on the wrong side of the blanket. Raised in a castle and yet a bastard—which meant that he couldn’t marry anyone of respectable birth. And he was too educated to settle for a milkmaid who wouldn’t mind his questionable parentage.
“What sort of experience is the right experience?” he asked.
But she had bent near again and was studying the baby’s face. “I don’t like the look of him,” she said, pursing her lips. They were rose-colored, those lips.
Wick looked past her lips to Jonas. “At least he’s sleeping,” he said. “He cried all night.”
“That’s because of the pain,” she said. “You’d better give him to me. We have to get some water in him, first thing, then we’ll deal with the milk.”
Before he knew what was happening, she slipped her hands around the baby and lifted him deftly out of Wick’s arms. “Here! You can’t do that,” he said, alarmed at the very thought of Gabriel or, God forbid, Kate, knowing that he’d allowed a stranger to take the baby.
But the girl—
“What did you say your name was?” he asked.
She finished tucking the fold of the blanket under Jonas’s face before she looked at him. “I didn’t,” she said. “I am Philippa Damson.”
“Like the jam?” Wick asked. She was sweet as jam, and that part of her name suited her. He’d like to lick—
He wrenched his mind away.
“Exactly like the jam,” she said, turning toward the door. “Now come along, Mr. Berwick. This baby needs water immediately.”