“I’m not busy,” Mother assured Baron Vanderbean. “I was just saying to Philippa, what I wished for most was a long, leisurely—”
Two maids and a footman rushed into the room carrying heavy trays.
“Your tea, madam,” panted one of the maids.
“Were we quick enough?” the other whispered.
“Ofcourseyou must have your long, leisurely tea,” said Baron Vanderbean, taking in the mountains of cakes and sandwiches. “I would not dream of interrupting your plans. Shall I return your daughter in thirty minutes?”
Mother pressed her lips together, visibly weighing her desire to insert herself into the situation against her even more fervent desire to keep Baron Vanderbean dangling on the proverbial hook for as long as possible.
“You may keep her for one hour,” Mother said at last. “And not a moment longer.”
Philippa stared at her in disbelief. Mother was allowing Baron Vanderbean to spirit Philippa away for an entire hour? What were they supposed totalkabout for an hour?
Unimportant, she realized. For Mother, the outing had nothing to do with the baron’s intentions, and everything to do with the number of eyes glimpsing the two together—and increasing the probability that gossip of Philippa’s apparent desirability would be all over London by morning.
Baron Vanderbean’s forwardness was playing right into Mother’s hands.
“Take the pink bonnet with the ostrich feathers,” Mother said. It was the most colorful bonnet in Philippa’s collection. The dramatic feathers alone were enough to command attention.
It could give them something to talk about when Philippa failed to banter properly.
She curtseyed. “Enjoy your tea, Mother.”
A private outing without constant interruptions and remonstrations had not even crossed her mind as a possibility, but now that it was within reach, she would do nothing to jeopardize it.
After buttoning her favorite green velvet pelisse and tying on her least favorite ostrich feather bonnet, Philippa followed the baron to his phaeton.
His brown eyes held hers as he handed her up into the carriage.
The strange excitement humming beneath Philippa’s skin was surely due to the novelty of the situation. Wasn’t it?
As Baron Vanderbean lifted the reins, his eyes twinkled with mischief. “We have an hour before we’re missed. Hyde Park? Or should we attempt to catch the balloon launch at Vauxhall? The pilot is a friend of mine and would let us on board if I beg.”
A burst of longing shot through her. Beingina balloon had never occurred to her. That sort of reckless antic must occur to Wynchesters all the time. Their lives were an unending series of adventures. The sorts of things Philippa read about, but never actually happened to her.
Saying yes would almost be worth her parents’ ire and the inevitable punishment.
“Hyde Park, I’m afraid,” she said with regret. “I’d wager my mother is peeking between the curtains to make certain we trot off in the right direction. Or is sending notes to all of our neighbors.”
“Next time, then,” Baron Vanderbean answered cheerfully, as though rides in hot-air balloons were as common as drives in the park.
He thought therewouldbe a next time, Philippa realized with a start. She hadn’t yet stared at him blankly and said all the wrong things for an hour. He simply assumed they’d get on well and that he’d be happy to repeat the encounter.
Perhaps Baron Vanderbean’s relatives had said kind things about her. Chloe, or even Great-Aunt Wynchester, with whom Philippa never felt self-conscious.
Perhaps Philippa was thinking far too much about a man she wasn’t going to marry.
“Have you ascertained your horse’s reading preferences?” she asked.
There. That would keep the topic on nothing at all.
“Ididinquire,” said Baron Vanderbean. “He declined to tell me.”
“He declined to tell you? Or you don’t speak horse?”
“I’ll have you know ‘horse’ is a species, not a language. He would be miffed to hear you conflate the two. Tulip happens to speak my Balcovian dialect.”
