“I am eaten alive with envy,” Philippa confessed.
“You’rewhat?”
“Of your family, to be precise.” Philippa gave a lopsided smile. “You were an orphan, and now you’re surrounded by a found family of siblings who love you. I live with the same parents I was born to, and it could not be more different. My father rarely speaks to me, and my mother only talks about her eagerness to marry me off. If those—prigs, did you say?—aren’t clever enough to see how splendid you are, more fool them.”
“Thank you,” Tommy said softly. “I—”
“Philippa, darling,thereyou are!” Mrs. York burst from the crowd and latched on to her daughter’s free arm, tugging her away from Tommy. “What can you be thinking to go out-of-doors in weather like this? No more sets with the baron tonight. Come, come. You must dance to warm those cold fingers. I’ve been taking names in your absence, and now we have Lord…”
Tommy watched in dismay as Philippa disappeared into the crowd.
The whispers behind her grew louder. She didn’t want to hear them. She lifted her chin and strode past. If Philippa were to spend the rest of the night dancing, then so, too, would Tommy.
Even if she could not have the person she longed for most.
16
As Philippa took luncheon by herself in the York dining room, she could not stop thinking about Tommy.
How easy it had been to talk to her. How lovely it had been to dance with her. That moment in the garden, when it had almost felt like—
But no, of course it wasn’t that. Philippa had spent the rest of the evening gazing over the shoulders of endless dance partners to watch Tommy conquer debutante after widow after wallflower. How they flirted and smiled and gave full-throated laughs instead of the false little titters Mother insisted were the proper way for young ladies to giggle.
Of course, none of those women had realized Tommywasn’tBaron Vanderbean, but Philippa supposed they wouldn’t have been any less charmed to know the truth. It certainly hadn’t impededher. Philippa’s admiration for Tommy grew with every moment in her company.
It was so easy to believe that Tommy was exactly who she pretended to be! Philippa frequently found herself forgetting Tommy wasn’t actually a man, even though she knew better. She occasionally even managed to forget Tommy wasn’t a real suitor, even though she knew the truth about that, as well.
Mother was in raptures over the ball. The surprise appearance and subsequent popularity of Baron Vanderbean had catapulted Philippa into new heights. She’d had to clamp her lips together not to point out that they’d been social climbing up a dreaded foreign lord. Hangers-on to a Wynchester.
Philippa yearned to be like Tommy’s family, part of them, one of them. It had to be better than sitting alone at an empty dining table for the five hundred and sixty-third time this year.
The number would have been even higher if Philippa didn’t break her fast in her bedroom.
When she’d finished the final course, she made her usual route through the ground floor in search of her parents.
Underwood handed her a stack of letters and tipped his head meaningfully toward the cerulean sitting room.
Mother? Or Father?
Philippa tried not to feel hurt that neither of them ever came to the dining room in search ofher. She smoothed her lace overdress and presented herself at the threshold.
Father.Presumably. An open broadsheet hid everything from his lap up. Only his fingers were visible on either side of the newspaper.
Philippa hesitated, then cleared her throat.
Her father did not lower his paper.
Was it too soft? Had he thought her sound the noise of a horse from a passing carriage?
She cleared her throat again, with gusto this time. A very clear, obvious, female throat-clearing. The most theatrically exaggerated throat-clearing ever heard off a London stage.
Father shook his paper pointedly and did not lower it.
Her shoulders sank. Hehadknown it was her. Or at least, he’d known it wassomeone, and did not care enough to find out who, even if it was his own daughter.
She wanted to tear the paper from his hands. Would he notice her then? Or would she be irrelevant and worthless until she landed a lord? The match was as much for Father’s sake. Unlike peers, Father actually had to campaign to keep his seat in the House of Commons. A familial connection in the House of Lords could cement his career.
A connection like…the Duke of Faircliffe, whom Philippa had failed to marry when she’d had the chance. Guilt ate at her. Father would have put down the paper if she’d been a more dutiful daughter.
