“And?”
“She had a baby. The princess that is, not Mrs. Pickle.”
“Oh,” Philippa said. “Very nice.”
“You’ll be having one soon enough,” Betty said comfortably. “One only has to take a look at the young master’s good, strong thighs to know that he’s all man, if you know what I mean. At any rate, this baby up at the castle cries all the time. Has the collywobbles, like my cousin’s second. I shouldn’t wonder if it will die. Some of them can’t take milk, and they just fade away.”
Philippa’s lips tightened. “Only if people insist on giving them cow’s milk as a substitute.”
“Well, my point is that the child isn’t doing so well,” Betty said. “The coachman said that he’d dropped off a footman in Manchester who is supposed to round up nursemaids and doctors, as many as he can find.”
“They must be desperate,” Philippa said.
“The baby’s a prince. ’Course they’re desperate. He’ll inherit the castle someday, though not if he’s dead.”
It was that easy. Philippa packed a small bag with her plainest clothes, and wrote a note to her papa. Then she made her way to what passed for a high street in the village and paid the old drunk, Fettle, who lay around in back of the Biscuit and Plow, to drive her to Bigger Ha’penny.
There she covered up her hair, which was distinctively silver-colored and therefore annoyingly recognizable, and bought a coach ticket to London. She hopped off in a bustling inn-yard in Lower Pomeroy, reasonably certain that with all the milling passengers, no one would notice that she didn’t get back on the coach.
An hour or so later, she was standing at the foot of Pomeroy Castle.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A New York Times bestselling author, Eloisa James is a professor of English literature who lives with her family in New York, but who can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. (Her husband is an honest to goodness Italian knight!) Eloisa’s Web site offers short stories, extra chapters, and even a guide to shopping in Florence. Visit her at www.eloisajames.com.
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ALSO BY ELOISA JAMES
Storming the Castle
A Fool Again
The Duke Is Mine
When Beauty Tamed the Beast
A Kiss at Midnight
A Duke of Her Own
This Duchess of Mine
When the Duke Returns
Duchess by Night
An Affair Before Christmas
Desperate Duchesses
Pleasure for Pleasure
The Taming of the Duke
Kiss Me, Annabel
Much Ado About You
Your Wicked Ways
A Wild Pursuit
Fool for Love
Duchess in Love
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from A Kiss at Midnight copyright © 2010 by Eloisa James
Excerpt from When Beauty Tamed the Beast copyright © 2011 by Eloisa James
Excerpt from The Duke Is Mine copyright © 2011 by Eloisa James
Excerpt from Storming the Castle: A Short Story copyright © 2010 by Eloisa James
WINNING THE WALLFLOWER. Copyright © 2011 by Eloisa James. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition DECEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780062191823
FIRST EDITION
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