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. Of I want you, and I 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

27

Philippa adjusted the positioning of the circle of armchairs in the Duke of Faircliffe’s ballroom. No one sniffed in disapproval or scolded her that moving a chair was conduct unbefitting a future viscountess. She was free to be Philippa.

Her reading circle would arrive in half an hour. Er, that was, the Duchess of Faircliffe’s inaugural reading circle, which just happened to take place on the same day, at the same time, with the same people.

Philippa wanted everything to be perfect.

The room was empty other than the chairs and a pianoforte upon the dais. It wasn’t quite the same feel as a room filled with books, but there was plenty of space for her friends.

“Thank you,” she said to Tommy for the tenth time.

“I told you.” Tommy swaggered up to her with an exaggerated leer. “I shan’t accept words. Only kisses.”

Philippa grinned. “Even though I know better, it’s difficult to remember that you’re really Tommy and not Great-Aunt Wynchester.”

“Does that mean no torrid kisses?” Tommy quavered in her old-lady voice.

“I’ll allow one,” Philippa answered primly.