That wasn’t all. She could have more honest interactions with Philippa as a gentleman, rather than dressed as an old lady at her reading circle. Tommy rubbed the back of her neck nervously.Couldshe do it?
“Besides,” Jacob said. “The new heir has served his usefulness.”
Marjorie picked up a tea cake. “Baron Vanderbeanwasour entrée into society, but now Chloe provides that function. The approval of the Duke and Duchess of Faircliffe carries far more weight than ties to a reclusive foreign lord.”
Jacob stopped playing with his hedgehog. “Think about it, Tommy. The baron identity was for any Wynchester who needed it, however we needed it. And the person who needs it is you.”
“And maybe Philippa,” Marjorie added.
Tommy set down her tea. “Twenty minutes of conversation as Baron Vanderbean, and you’ll never mention my tendre for Philippa again?”
Jacob and Marjorie touched their hands to their hearts and lifted their fingers to the sky. The Wynchester salute was how the siblings swore their vows. Both their faces were innocent.
Tommy narrowed her eyes at them.
“Twenty complete minutes,” Jacob said. “Of actual words. Not twenty minutes of pining in close proximity.”
“It’s a promenade,” Tommy reminded him. “I’ll be lucky to speak to her fortenminutes.”
Jacob smiled. “Then you’ll have to do it twice.”
6
Tommy entered Hyde Park with trepidation.
Not because of her disguise. She made a striking and dapper Baron Vanderbean. She’d added deeper laugh lines to her eyes and a hint of shadow along her jaw. Her coat and buckskins were lightly padded, which, even if detected, was very much the current fashion. The cut of her hair would impress any dandy, as would the quality of her attire and the extravagant folds of her neckcloth.
She was tall for a woman and perhaps of average height for a man. In any case, she was astride a stunning steed. The horse’s height and breadth helped to muddy Tommy’s. She looked the part of a wealthy, fashionable gentleman, but no one would be able to relay accurate details as to her proportions.
Being a man waseasy.
Twenty minutes with Philippa was the difficult part.
Thus far, she had only managed to progress from “pining from afar” to “pining in proximity.” Her current position thirty yards behind the Yorks’ barouche gave her a wonderful vantage point for gazing at the back of Philippa’s head.
Her lovely head was currently hidden beneath a wide-brimmed bonnet, but Tommy had studied her enough to say with certainty that Philippa’s lustrous blond hair was the most spectacular in all of England, and the brain inside of that head perhaps the most singular in the world.
Ah—their carriage was turning. Philippa’s profile was now in view.
Could therebea finer flush to a delightfully round cheek? Tommy was too far away to see the blue in Philippa’s eyes or the curve of her light brown eyelashes, but therestof her curves…Philippa was more than pleasingly plump. Every inch of her looked soft and voluptuous, and oh God, Tommy was never going to be able to coax her horse close enough to attempt conversation.
What would she say? “I like your brain and I’d like to taste your body?”
Perhaps sheshouldhave brought Tiglet. “Miaow” was likely a better conversational opening than anything Tommy could come up with.
Philippa was soclever. She could look at a thing and fathom it out. Tommy liked to read for pleasure, but it was a good day if she could remember the title or plot a year later, much less competently debate literary structure or scientific theory the way Philippa did in her reading circle.
What if Tommy did manage to talk to her, only to discover they had nothing to talkabout? What if she bored Philippa? What if they didn’t have enough in common even to be platonic friends, much less—
She was doing it again. The thing she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do: imagining all the ways it could go wrong instead of envisioning how it might go right.
Begin anew.
Tommy had plenty of experience with flirtation. Not as a man, so that was a slight wrinkle. At least, she’d never flirted as a man without the other partyknowingshe was technically a woman, and dear heaven, this wassucha muddle, absolutely impossible, Jacob and Marjorie were the worst possible siblings for setting the unattainable objective of—
Philippa’s eyes met Tommy’s!
Briefly. Just as her carriage was turning from one gravel path to another. Soon Tommy’s horse was turning, too, and she was no longer within Philippa’s line of sight.
