In her agitated state, Kate hadn’t noticed anything untoward, obviously. And Madame Troisgros had been far too glad to find someone who spoke French to consider the nursemaid’s origins. With Lily dismissed, the cook was now regaling Miss Damson with tales of the execrable vegetables she was forced to cook with, monstrous tubers fit only for pigs, or cochons. And Miss Damson was nodding and sympathizing . . .

Like a lady. A lady who spoke French, who had undoubtedly been brought up to a good marriage.

Wick became aware that water was running down the inside of his calf into his shoes. There was something about Miss Damson that made even a man with wet breeches hungry. Lustful. Those emotions that good servants could have only for each other—and never, ever, for the ladies they attended. Wick certainly never allowed himself that sort of inconvenient desire.

Just like that, he decided not to say a thing to Miss Damson about the question of her birth. If she was a lady who was merely presenting herself as a nursemaid for some obscure reason—well, then she wasn’t for him, not for the bastard brother of a prince.

But perhaps, if he was wrong, and she wasn’t a lady . . .

Not that he was looking for a wife, of course. But during the last year he had noticed the way Gabriel liked to hold Kate’s hand, the way he swept his wife into his arms, the way he kissed her when he thought no one was looking.

Back in Marburg, the king would have paired Wick off by now, given him to a third or fourth daughter of a gentleman, a woman grateful to be connected in any way to the royal family, a woman whose father would willingly overlook Wick’s ignoble birth. But here in England, he had volunteered to become his brother’s majordomo. He had chosen to run the castle, and he was damned good at it.

He’d known perfectly well what that choice meant for his future. As a servant, he was a servant, no matter how high in the hierarchy of service. He would never marry a gentleman’s daughter. And he’d accepted that, content with an occasional trip to London to meet cheerful women who were neither ladies nor servants but happy to share a bed for a time.

Content, at least, until his brother fell in love.

One night, before the baby was born, he was making his nightly rounds and recognized Gabriel’s laughter coming from the study. Thinking to find out the joke, he had his hand on the door when he heard his sister-in-law gasp in such a husky, pleading way that, disconcertingly, he realized his brother’s laughter was aroused by something rather different than a mere jest.

Needless to say, he didn’t go in.