“Because I was the same with Kate. I was trapped, thinking that I had to be as rich as Croesus before I could marry. You’re not responsible for our father’s idiocy. You’re afraid to just reach out and take her, even though she wants you.”

“I’m no coward,” Wick said between clenched teeth.

Gabriel actually laughed. “Luckily for Philippa, she’s beautiful enough that another man will come along who has the balls to accept what she’s offering.”

A muted roar erupted from Wick’s throat, and he threw himself at his brother. They fell to the ground with a thump, rolled over in a flurry of blows, rolled over again. Wick found himself on top. “She may want me now but—”

His sentence was derailed by a deft move by Gabriel, who managed to flip him on the ground and knock the wind out of him. It wasn’t until they were both lying on their backs panting and gingerly feeling their knuckles, that Wick said it. He said it flatly, because he’d examined it, night after night turning the facts over and over in his mind, and he knew it was true. “Years from now, she will wish she had a man who could take his place next to her in society.”

His brother pushed himself to his feet. “How do you know? Maybe she just wants a braver you, a man with the balls to stand up and say he’s as good as any other man, regardless of birth.”

Wick took the hand his brother held out to him. “I can’t be what she deserves,” he said, feeling his jaw.

Gabriel looked at him with disgust and turned on his heel. “She does deserve better than you—and I’m not talking about your pedigree.”

After Wick abandoned her in the sitting room, Philippa slipped back up to the nursery, fully conscious that she couldn’t continue to press him for what he told her—over and over—he could not give her. Moreover, Jonas was thriving: he no longer wailed after eating, and his little cheeks were filling out; just that day, he had smiled at Kate for the first time, and later, at his father, and then, at every one of the footmen.

It was time for her to go home.

She would miss the baby and Kate terribly, but it would be a simple matter to engage a new nursemaid. Her heart heavy, she sat down and wrote a letter to her father, sealed it, and gave it to a footman. Her father would have it by evening.

Leaving the castle now, like this, would mean leaving her heart behind. It had been stolen: stolen by a man with immaculate comportment, a quiet and intelligent face, and passionate kisses. She, a daughter of the landed gentry, had fallen in love with a butler.

She was in love with Wick.