“But what about you? Shouldn’t you be getting settled? Oh no, what am I thinking? You’ll be sleeping right through this doorway, at least as long as you’re pretending to be a nursemaid. I’m too selfish to let you stop yet.”

Philippa smiled. “I’m happy to be a nursemaid, Your Highness. Truly, I love babies.”

“Kate,” Kate insisted, straightening up from the cradle. “I think it would be best if you brought Jonas to the dining room when he wakes up. We eat at eight, and I wouldn’t think he’ll be hungry again before then. You needn’t change, by the way.”

“I shan’t change,” Philippa said, shocked. “Nursemaids don’t eat in company.”

“Nursemaids don’t call their mistresses Kate, so you are obviously an exception.”

“What about the baby?” Philippa asked. “I wouldn’t want to leave him.”

“He will be with us, of course,” Kate said. “I don’t like to have him out of my sight.” And with a last touch of Jonas’s nose, she went out the door.

Chapter Four

Three hours later, Philippa was reconsidering her chosen profession. It seemed impossibly exhausting and boring. Jonas had woken, cried for an hour or so, taken some water, and gone back to sleep. Then he’d woken again, and cried again—but had fallen back to sleep just when she’d been trying to decide whether he was hungry.

She unpacked her tiny bag in the room next to the nursery, and, during one of Jonas’s quiet spells, brushed and re-brushed her hair, thinking all the while about Mr. Berwick. Wick, the princess had called him. He had lovely eyes, rather brooding, as if life wasn’t giving him what he wanted.

That had to be because he was a butler. He didn’t seem like a butler.

Jonas whimpered from the nursery, and she hastily pinned up her hair and went back into the room to soothe him.

She thought her uncle would be quite pleased with the way the baby now looked. The pinched look was gone, which meant that he had some water in him. What he needed now was more milk. And when she didn’t instantly produce it, he started crying again.

“I’m sorry, little scrap,” she murmured to him. “It’s going to hurt your tummy. But we just have to do it.”

She wrapped him in a light blanket and wondered what to do. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to find the dining room. By the time she opened the door and headed into the corridor, Jonas was wailing so vociferously that his face was purple.

A tall, yellow-haired footman with a nice open face was waiting for her. “Oh, thank goodness. What’s your name?” she asked over Jonas’s sobs.