“If you love me, if you respect me as a person who owns myself and my own body, who is servant to no one and owned by no one . . .”

“A gentleman wouldn’t,” he said hoarsely.

She smiled at that, picked up his hand. “You just told me, sir, that you are no gentleman.”

He followed her, through the darkened nursery, to the door at the far end, through the door.

From a chair at the side of the bedroom, she snatched her reticule, and opened it. “If the only way I may have you is to buy you . . .”

He let out a half groan, half laugh. “Philippa!”

She reached out, caught his hand, and wrapped his fingers around a ha’penny. “Then I own you. And although you didn’t ask, my price was very low. I was yours from your first kiss. I suppose you could say that I came for free.”

The hunger in his eyes made her feel more beautiful than she had in the whole of her life.

Still, he remained motionless, exercising that infernal self-control of his.

She let the silence grow, then: “I have bought a house, but not possessed it.” She was quite sure that the look in her eyes rivaled that of any light skirts on the streets of London. “And I am sold, but not yet enjoyed.”

There was another beat of silence in the room, during which Philippa’s heart drummed in her throat.

“That was a terrible pun,” Wick observed. There was something deep and slow in his voice. She bit back a smile.

He put one hand to his perfectly tied cravat. Philippa held her breath.

Eyes fixed on hers, he slowly, slowly lifted a fold of snowy linen, over, up, over, through . . . she saw his hands from the corner of her vision, because she was drinking in his expression, the taut desire that shaped his face.

Then she raised her hands to the cord that held her wrapper together. A moment later, she was wearing only a light muslin nightgown. One glance down at her chest and she felt herself turning pink with embarrassment. Instinctively, she folded her arms over her breasts, hoping to flatten her nipples before Wick saw them.

She couldn’t tell if he had. He shrugged off his heavy coat and put it over a chair.

“You,” Philippa said, and cleared her throat. “You look . . .”

“Without that livery,” Wick stated, “I am a man, nothing but a man.”

Joy sparked her heart. “Do you wish me to remove my nightgown?”

He straightened, a shoe in one hand. “If you’re having second thoughts, I’ll leave.”

She gasped no, and a smile quirked the corner of his mouth. Then she added: “I think I would feel more comfortable with my nightgown on.”

Wick nodded. He dispensed with his other shoe, pulled off his stockings, then paused, hands on his waistband.