“Delightful,” she said firmly. “Exciting. A constant joy. I am at once jealous and deeply appreciative that you’re including me today. I treasure all moments spent in the company of a Wynchester.”

She really meant, I cherish all time spent with you, Tommy, but dared not say so. Such confessions could not alter one’s destiny.

“Your family is so capable and fearless,” she said instead.

“Do you think so?” Tommy added a faint shadow along her jaw. Not the brown of Baron Vanderbean’s, but a mottled gray. “I am not.”

“You?” Philippa said in disbelief. “You are changing into an entirely new person before my eyes in preparation to steal an illuminated manuscript from a so-called gentlemen’s club.”

“Costumes are easy to hide behind,” Tommy answered. “They can mask anything. Age, sex, class, fear. No one sees anxiety when it is concealed behind layers of cosmetics and a distractingly flamboyant frock coat.”

Philippa stared at her. “You’re always so confident.”

“Always?” Tommy cleaned her sponge. “What about the year I spent admiring you from afar because I could not work up the courage to speak to you directly and face rejection?”

“You admired me…for a year?”

Philippa thought back. Great-Aunt Wynchester had first appeared at the reading circle the prior autumn. It had been a year. Tommy would have had plenty of time to learn more about Philippa. Time in which she failed to introduce herself…or have any meaningful conversation at all. Out of bashfulness?

“Or what about that night at Faircliffe’s end-of-season gala?” Tommy continued wryly. “I managed to plant myself directly in front of you, close enough to touch, and then my face combusted with embarrassment and I ran off in mortification.”

“That was you?” Philippa let out a startled laugh. “That was the most interesting thing that happened to me all evening. Possibly all season.”

Tommy slanted her a look. “More interesting than being courted by and subsequently rejecting the suit of an eligible duke?”

“Yes,” Philippa answered honestly. “I wasn’t interested in the duke. I very much wanted to know who the person was who had almost spoken to me, and what I had done to chase her off. I thought of that moment for months afterward.”

“You hadn’t done anything. It was me. When I am anxious or nervous, my brain thinks up all the ways a thing can go wrong and plays them for me over and over. By the time I was in front of you, I was certain that if I so much as opened my mouth, you’d toss your lemonade in my face.”

“I do that, too,” Philippa admitted. “I stand up for others without issue, but in my own life, stasis is so much safer than change. Society has its rules, and I memorized them all. I even sent out inquiries about a Balcovian equivalent to Debrett’s Peerage so that I could learn those rules, as well.”