“No gently bred lady should be introduced to a situation that she instinctively finds distasteful except in the most acceptable circumstances.”

Philippa frowned, and her father frowned back. “In the dark,” he clarified. “In a proper bed, within the sanctity of matrimony, and with the knowledge that your husband respects and admires you, even though the act itself—to wit, consummation of the marriage—is necessarily distasteful to you, if not painful.”

“Oh,” Philippa said. That would have summed up her probable marital relations with Rodney. But it had no relevance for intimacies with Wick.

“As I said, neither of us blames you,” her father repeated.

“Thank you,” Philippa said.

“Your mother would have fled as well.” Her father pulled off his neckcloth and mopped his face with it. “I simply cannot countenance the idiocy of that young man. Idiocy!”

Philippa waited, a sick feeling in her stomach.

“But be that as it may,” her father said, “you have made your bed, albeit in the stables. Did you confide to this Candlewick what happened to you?”

“His name is Berwick, not Candlewick.” But she nodded.

Her father wiped his face again and threw the neckcloth to the floor. “I shall send the man a gratuity. One hundred pounds. In refusing you, he showed the breeding of his paternal lineage. Obviously, he realized that you were slightly cracked because of the horrendous experience you endured. And he responded as a gentleman must. Two hundred pounds,” he added.

“Be that as it may, you’re to marry Rodney immediately,” he continued. “We’ll forget that episode with the castle and the butler ever happened. Rodney is not the man I should have chosen for you; I see that now. And I am sorry. But you know as well as I do, my dear, that all other doors are closed to you at this point.”

To Philippa, his voice seemed to take on a brassy sound, like someone speaking a foreign language. “Papa,” she pleaded. “I cannot marry him. Please.”

“Do you think that your mother wished to remain married to me after our wedding night?”

There was no possible answer to that.

“She did not,” her father said heavily. “The act is horrifying to a delicately bred creature. But we managed, and we loved each other, and there’s no one else in the world I would rather have married.”

“She didn’t have to marry Rodney!” Philippa cried.

“I want your word of honor that you will not run away again, Philippa.”

“Wick might come for me,” she blurted out.

Her father’s eyes softened. “Oh, sweetheart. Didn’t you just say that he refused to marry you?”

She nodded miserably.

“He truly is a gentleman,” he said gently.

“But he might come for me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “He—He knows how much I detest Rodney, and he loves me.”