“I would let you buy me,” he said finally, his voice hoarse.

She managed a shaky smile. Then she took a deep breath and put her hands on his face, drawing his lips to hers.

“How much?” she whispered.

“I’ve been told I’m worth a fortune.” His voice had a bleak note.

“I haven’t much money.” Her tongue stole out, ran along the seam of his lips, tasted that wildness that he concealed with his upright body, his unmoving face.

“There’s a special rate on . . . I’m going for a ha’penny,” he whispered against her lips.

This time she kissed him.

Philippa didn’t know how long they stood in the corridor. With her eyes closed, her only sensations came from the press of Wick’s powerful body, the drugging sensation of his mouth, the way his hands shaped and teased her.

Then she became aware he was saying something. “I didn’t mean to insult you by talking of the women who offered to buy me.” His voice was low and rasping. “But I am constrained. I cannot ask you to marry me. The only conceivable relationship between a butler and a lady is if she . . . engages his services.”

She swallowed, biting her lip when she saw the pain in his eyes. “But I would marry you.”

The words had tumbled from her lips. “If you were to ask,” she added quickly.

“I am a servant, with a grand lineage on one side but no wealth,” Wick said bleakly. “And the truth of it is that I . . . I love you, Philippa.” It was his turn to cup her face in his hands. “Which means I cannot make you a servant. If I could marry any lady, any woman in the world, from queen to beggar, I would never choose another than you. And I mean that.”

Philippa’s lips trembled. “I love you too,” she whispered.

“But I cannot marry,” Wick said, his eyes searching hers, begging for understanding. “If I were a different person, and this a different place and time, I would have had a wedding ring on your finger a week ago.”

“Oh, Wick,” she whispered, collapsing forward against his chest. A tear dampened his shirt.

“I would give anything to call you mine.” His voice was harsh and true.

“Then I shall have to buy you,” Philippa said, brushing away that tear and another that followed it. She pulled back and caught his eye, because this was important. “I am not a child to be handed from one man’s hand to another.”

His brows drew together. “I do not—”

“You do.” She said it clearly, not angrily. “I love you.”

He swallowed hard.

“And I am perfectly capable of making up my own mind about the disposition of my body.”

“I know.”

She opened the door at her back. “Then come.” She held out her hand.

His voice emerged strangled from his chest. “Philippa, I cannot—”