“I hope your library is on the ground floor,” said Philippa. “It would add insult to injury to expect your horse to clop up stairs to have a look about, only to discover your taste in books is not in alignment with his.”
“Or that the books are in the wrong language,” Baron Vanderbean added. “It would be the height of presumption for me to presume an Arabian horse prefers his novels in English.”
“It would be the height of presumption to presume he prefers novels at all,” Philippa answered.
Baron Vanderbean grinned at her.
Philippa’s breath caught. Was thisbanter? Was shebantering?
“What makes you think your horse doesn’t enjoy history tomes or natural philosophy?” she asked archly. “Is it his long hair? The way he shakes his tail? His curling eyelashes?”
Baron Vanderbean tapped the side of his jaw. “I have not performed a comprehensive study to correlate eyelash shape with literature preferences. You have sent me in an entirely new direction of inquiry, and I am afraid I must depart at once in order to address this very pressing oversight. I shall report back with my findings, the first of which is thatyoureyelashes are very pleasing indeed.”
Report…back?
After one conversation with Philippa, Baron Vanderbean wanted to have…another?
“Tell him you’ll be here tomorrow,” Mother whispered.
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” Philippa parroted.
There. She was a bird, after all.
Perhaps therewashope.
Baron Vanderbean touched the brim of his hat. “Until tomorrow, then.”
She stared after the handsome lord as he rode away. Not to flirt with a young lady in the next carriage, but to gallop out of the park altogether, as though his inane conversation with Philippa was the entire reason he had come.
“You did it,” her mother breathed. “You chased him off in a way that makes him actually want to come back.”
“He was probably being polite,” Philippa said.
“He didn’t seem polite,” Mother replied. “Approaching us without an introduction was impertinent in the first degree. He letyoube impertinent and bluestocking-ish, too. Do you think the baron means to court you?”
Of course he didn’t.
Did he?
8
Tommy couldn’t hear the galloping of her horse’s hooves over the pounding of her own heart as she raced back home to the safety of Islington and away from the curious eyes of the ton.
She’d done it.She’d spoken to Philippa!
Yes, yes, Philippa thought she was Horace Wynchester, the new Baron Vanderbean, but the only detail that mattered was that Tommy had pranced right up to her and said how-do-you-do and a hundred other things without garbling her words or tumbling from her horse.
And now—she had to do it again! She’d told Philippa she’d beback. And Philippa had said, “I’ll be here tomorrow.” Ha! It wasn’t exactly a lover’s assignation, but Tommy would take it. She never actually thought she’d manage to speak to Philippa at all, much less have a second such encounter planned for the very next day.
The moment she arrived at home, she tossed the reins to a footman and dashed up the path to the front door.
“Mr. Hastings, I did it!” she called out in glee. It was all she could do not to take the poor butler by the hands and dance him about at his post.
“What did you do?” Graham’s disembodied voice shouted down from the first floor. “Come upstairs and tell me!”
Tommy took the stairs by twos and skidded into the Planning Parlor with a smile so wide, her cheeks were already starting to ache. “I talked to Philippa!”
Graham stopped organizing his albums. “Youtalked to her? Or…who are you exactly, at the moment?”
