Tommy gazed at her. She wasn’t ready for their time to end.
Graham lifted his brows. “Do you think every volume contains a hidden letter?”
“Mycopy did,” Philippa answered. “It might not be the only one.”
He grinned. “Tommy will steal you as many books as you like.”
“Philippa can help,” Tommy said quickly. “I shan’t nick a single illuminated manuscript without her.”
More to the point, Tommy didn’t wish to endure another day without Philippa. Then again, her presence had led to kissing—the highlight of the adventure—and the kissing had led to almost ruining the entire mission. If she’d let that happen, there wouldn’t have been any future kisses.
The carriage pulled to a stop beside the Wynchesters’ home. Jacob handed off the reins and opened the door to take possession of Lord Fluffinghop.
Graham waited for Tommy and Philippa to exit, and then entered their home not through a door, but by scaling the rear wall.
As soon as they entered the house, Philippa turned to Tommy and took a deep breath.
“I must apologize,” she said. “My actions—”
“Youractions?” Tommy interrupted humorlessly. “I am the one who owes you an apology. I have never been less a Wynchester than the moment I allowed a child to make off with the thing I ought to be protecting. If it hadn’t been for your quick thinking—”
“I finallystoppedthinking,” Philippa said. “All I do is think, and it gets me nowhere.Thinkingis what kept me away from you, when all I want is to be back in your arms.”
“When you…what?” Tommy stammered. Her chest lightened.
“I’ll belong to some lord by the end of the season,” Philippa said. “But until then, I don’t want to waste a minute more of the time wedohave together.”
“W-what?” Tommy said again, even less elegantly. “You do want me?”
“Is it not obvious?” Philippa’s expression was wry. “It wasn’t to me. Not at first. That said, I’ve come across enough Sapphic literature to imagine sexual female relationships—”
“Youhave?” Clearly Tommy had been attending all the wrong reading circles.
“I havenow. I researched the topic after I met you. All my life I believed I could not feel physical attraction because I had never felt that way about a man. I could become aroused…er…on my own…” Her face went bright red.
Tommy touched Philippa’s fingers.
Philippa took her hand and held on tight. “I got to know you and trust you. The closer we became, the more…flutteryI felt inside. Perhaps I needed to feel connected to you and trust you before I could relax and unlock my desire. It’s not that I don’t ‘mind’ that you can be both a man and a woman. Ilikethat about you. You’re the first puzzle piece that fits. My feelings are real. I’m glad to have found them.”
Tommy had tried so hard to keep her own inconvenient emotions tucked away where they would not bother Philippa. She could not quite credit that it wasn’t a bother at all. That Philippa wanted her. That she felt the same. That she understood Tommy would never be Miss Thomasina or Horace Wynchester and liked her exactly for who and how she was. Sometimes masculine, sometimes feminine, and always Tommy.
Her voice was rough. “May I kiss you?”
“Yes.” Philippa lifted her face and smiled. “I would like that very much.”
Tommy claimed her mouth with a kiss.
The maps she had created in her mind of Philippa’s kisses seemed inadequate for this new terrain. It was more intimate than before. This wasn’t a tentative kiss between acquaintances testing each other, but the possessive kiss of two lovers who knew each other’s mouths very well. Who returned time and again because there was nowhere else they’d rather be but locked in these arms, in this kiss.
There was nothing more courageous than admitting one’s innermost feelings to another person. She loved Philippa more at this moment than she ever had before. What little hope she’d had of keeping her emotions buried was now gone forever.
This kiss was a kiss of truth. OfI want you, andI accept you. A kiss of honesty. Despite the wigs and the wrinkles, they were truly themselves. Vulnerable to each other in a way they never had been before.
It wasn’t a game anymore, or flirtation or curiosity. It was real. It was Tommy and Philippa. Together at last, with nothing holding them back.
Until some eligible gentleman took Philippa away for good.
27
