My Last Duchess, стр. 64

At this slur, a flush of hot rage, the kind that only his brother could inspire, surged up Wick’s chest. “You dare not saythat to me,” he said between clenched teeth.

“You’ve got the balls to love her, but not the balls to take her,” Gabriel said. “And do you want to know why I know that?”

“No.” Wick’s hands were curling into fists.

“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’renot 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 ballsto 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, rolledover 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 saidit 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 standup 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 yourpedigree.”

After Wick abandoned her in the sitting room, Philippa slipped back up to the nursery, fully conscious that she couldn’t continueto press him for what he told her—over and over—he could not give her. Moreover, Jonas was thriving: he no longer wailed aftereating, and his little cheeks were filling out; just that day, he had smiled at Kate for the first time, and later, at hisfather, 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, shesat 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 immaculatecomportment, a quiet and intelligent face, and passionate kisses. She, a daughter of the landed gentry, had fallen in lovewith a butler.

She was in love with Wick.

But Wick insisted he could not marry her. He respected her; if she loved him, she had to respect him. Even if it meant neverseeing him again.

Even then.

But still . . . she had given everything to Rodney—to revolting, despised Rodney. If she could give everything to a lumpendolt, why could she not give everything to Wick, whom she loved? Setting aside the fact that he kept refusing her, of course.

It wasn’t in her to simply give up.

At length, she decided to try once more, just one last time. That night.

The idea grew until her heart was racing with conviction. She would do it. She would ask, beg, seduce Wick into making love to her, just once. So that she knew what it was like, with him. Sothat, during all those evenings playing chess with her father that lay ahead, she could think back on this one night. It wasn’tjust chess that loomed in her mind.

There was Rodney. After that letter to her father, there would be no escaping Rodney.

There would be no “happily ever after” for her. Life with Rodney would be . . . whatever it was.

But if she managed to seduce Wick, she would have memories, at least. Still, she would have to be subtle . . . he had a willof iron, and mere sensuality would never break it.

One ethical question kept bothering her. Did she have the right to try to overcome his resolve? Wick’s enormous reserve andhis adherence to honor stemmed from the same place: his illegitimate birth. If she succeeded in persuading him to make loveto her, was she tarnishing that quality he held so dear?

With a wry little smile, she thought about the knight in shining armor her girlhood self had dreamed of. There was no manmore born to being a maiden’s champion than Wick. He was all that was honorable, good, and true.

In the end, she decided that as long as she didn’t cause Wick to break his code of honor, she could not do an injustice tohim. And that meant he had to make love to her not because he desired her, but because she needed him—or rather, the act—tosave her . . . to rescue her. In making love to her, he would become the instrument of her salvation.