“Not a boatman,” Marjorie said quickly. “Be someone Mrs. York would allow near her daughter.”

A crafty smile spread on Jacob’s face. “Be Baron Vanderbean.”

“The new heir only exists on paper,” Tommy reminded him.

Her brother raised his brows. “If no one’s seen him, then no one can say you aren’t him, can they?”

She supposed not.

The Baron Vanderbean who had rescued them all had held a minor peerage in his native Balcovia, a small principality in the Low Countries.

Although Bean had left generous trusts to each of his adopted children, a society connection was one thing money could not purchase. Before he died, Bean had created a fictitious heir and heiress: Horace and Honoria Wynchester. By maintaining the sponsorship of the new Baron Vanderbean and the chaperonage of his highborn sister, the Wynchester orphans could still enjoy access to places and people that would have snubbed them if they had no titled connection.

Ironic that an imaginary lord held more power than a real woman.

“You want me to be Baron Vanderbean,” Tommy repeated.

Just saying the words sent gooseflesh over her skin. Baron Vanderbean was Bean.

Bean was dead.

Tommy would do anything to have her father back. She wanted nothing to do with a made-up relative. And she couldn’t imagine taking over Bean’s name. If she pretended to be his “son,” Horace Wynchester, everyone would call her Baron Vanderbean. She wasn’t certain she could handle it.

But she also didn’t want her family to see her hesitant and meek. Tommy was the one who did things. She could be anyone. She just wasn’t sure she could do…this.

“It’s a bad idea,” she said. There. She wasn’t weak. The plan was defective.

“Why?” Jacob asked.

“For one,” she replied slowly, “if I play Baron Vanderbean, no one else can do it.”

Jacob smirked. “Who else was going to do it?”

Well, fair enough.

Marjorie and Elizabeth were horrid at playing men, and Jacob’s dark brown skin made it unlikely for him to be Bean’s son by blood. Graham’s golden bronze coloring might let him get away with it, but his temperament never would.

Tall, thin, white, curve-less Tommy was the most believable as Bean’s male heir.

That wasn’t all. She could have more honest interactions with Philippa as a gentleman, rather than dressed as an old lady at her reading circle. Tommy rubbed the back of her neck nervously. Could she do it?

“Besides,” Jacob said. “The new heir has served his usefulness.”

Marjorie picked up a tea cake. “Baron Vanderbean was our entrée into society, but now Chloe provides that function. The approval of the Duke and Duchess of Faircliffe carries far more weight than ties to a reclusive foreign lord.”