Philippa was so clever. She could look at a thing and fathom it out. Tommy liked to read for pleasure, but it was a good day if she could remember the title or plot a year later, much less competently debate literary structure or scientific theory the way Philippa did in her reading circle.

What if Tommy did manage to talk to her, only to discover they had nothing to talk about? What if she bored Philippa? What if they didn’t have enough in common even to be platonic friends, much less—

She was doing it again. The thing she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do: imagining all the ways it could go wrong instead of envisioning how it might go right.

Begin anew.

Tommy had plenty of experience with flirtation. Not as a man, so that was a slight wrinkle. At least, she’d never flirted as a man without the other party knowing she was technically a woman, and dear heaven, this was such a muddle, absolutely impossible, Jacob and Marjorie were the worst possible siblings for setting the unattainable objective of—

Philippa’s eyes met Tommy’s!

Briefly. Just as her carriage was turning from one gravel path to another. Soon Tommy’s horse was turning, too, and she was no longer within Philippa’s line of sight.

But for one glorious second…

“All right,” she scolded herself under her breath. “Tommy is a coward around Philippa, but you are Baron Vanderbean. Baron Vanderbean doesn’t give a fig what the Yorks think of him. He’s Baron Vanderbean. He outranks them! Just ride over. Everyone else is mingling. It’s the reason they came. Baron Vanderbean would not be afraid of a simple ‘How do you do.’”

Before she lost her nerve, Tommy gripped the reins and spurred her horse alongside the Yorks’ barouche.

And then she lost her nerve.

Philippa looked at her again, really looked at her, and it was that night in Chloe’s ballroom all over, when Tommy had tried to talk to Philippa at the Faircliffe end-of-season gala, and only succeeded in blushing hot enough to melt the cosmetics from her face and then running away.

It had not been her finest moment.

And she’d just repeated it.

Tommy had ceased all forward progress altogether. In a matter of minutes, her horse was no longer beside the Yorks’ barouche, but fifty yards behind.

She couldn’t do it. She shouldn’t do it. They hadn’t been formally presented to each other, and greeting Philippa without an introduction was an appalling breach of etiquette.

What’s more, Tommy wasn’t a lord any more than she was Miss Thomasina. Flirting as “Horace” would be easier from society’s perspective, but she still wouldn’t be courting Philippa as Tommy. So what was the use?

Perhaps she should just go home.

She—