Philippa lay awake until the thin gray light turned pale yellow, and Jonas stirred. She had no sooner washed and dressed herself and Jonas than a footman announced that her father requested to speak with her.

The moment she entered the sitting room, she threw herself into her father’s open arms. “I’m sorry, Papa; oh, you were worried! I told you not to be.”

For a moment, her father merely stood, his arms now tight around her. Then he sat down heavily, pulling her to his knee as if she were five years old. “You told me not to worry . . . and you truly believed your reassurance would be sufficient?”

“I did when I first ran away. But I’ve learned differently in the past weeks,” she confessed. “I thought it would be better for you if I was gone because I didn’t want to obey you. But I know now that love is far more possessive than that.” She leaned against his shoulder, as if she truly were a little girl again. “I missed you.”

“Were you treated well? I spoke to the prince, who seems a very orderly and mannered young fellow. But were you treated well?” He looked around. “I cannot countenance the fact that my daughter has been working as a nursemaid. Thank heaven your mother wasn’t alive to see it.”

“The prince and princess treated me with nothing but the greatest kindness, Papa.”

“I will give them my thanks, but then we must be away. I neglected the house, the estate, everything after you ran away.”

Philippa came to her feet and stood as straight as she could. “I will return home with you, Papa, but I will not marry Rodney. I will never, ever marry Rodney.” In that long hour before Jonas awoke, while she lay awake longing for Wick she had concluded that it was best not to inform her father that she planned to marry the butler.

“So I gathered from your note,” her father said, perplexed. “But why, sweetpea? You’ve always loved Rodney—”

“No, Papa,” Philippa interrupted. “You have always loved the idea of my marrying Rodney. And Rodney said he loved me. But no one ever asked me how I felt about marrying that fat-bottomed . . . fellow!”

Her father frowned. “Fat-bottomed? Is he?”

“Yes.”

“I never noticed. Still, you can’t make a decision of this nature based on something as unimportant as a bottom. It’s a man’s character that counts. Rodney is a sturdy lad, in character as well as physique.”

That may be true but it was beside the point.

“Would you call him intelligent?” she asked.

Her father gave this some thought. “Well, perhaps not precisely intelligent, but . . .”

“But?”

“A head is like a house,” he said. “If it’s crammed too full, it’s cluttered.”

“Rodney’s house doesn’t have a stick of furniture in it,” she said flatly.