She stared after the handsome lord as he rode away. Not to flirt with a young lady in the next carriage, but to gallop out of the park altogether, as though his inane conversation with Philippa was the entire reason he had come.

“You did it,” her mother breathed. “You chased him off in a way that makes him actually want to come back.”

“He was probably being polite,” Philippa said.

“He didn’t seem polite,” Mother replied. “Approaching us without an introduction was impertinent in the first degree. He let you be impertinent and bluestocking-ish, too. Do you think the baron means to court you?”

Of course he didn’t.

Did he?

8

8

Tommy couldn’t hear the galloping of her horse’s hooves over the pounding of her own heart as she raced back home to the safety of Islington and away from the curious eyes of the ton.

She’d done it. She’d spoken to Philippa!

Yes, yes, Philippa thought she was Horace Wynchester, the new Baron Vanderbean, but the only detail that mattered was that Tommy had pranced right up to her and said how-do-you-do and a hundred other things without garbling her words or tumbling from her horse.

And now—she had to do it again! She’d told Philippa she’d be back. And Philippa had said, “I’ll be here tomorrow.” Ha! It wasn’t exactly a lover’s assignation, but Tommy would take it. She never actually thought she’d manage to speak to Philippa at all, much less have a second such encounter planned for the very next day.

The moment she arrived at home, she tossed the reins to a footman and dashed up the path to the front door.

“Mr. Hastings, I did it!” she called out in glee. It was all she could do not to take the poor butler by the hands and dance him about at his post.

“What did you do?” Graham’s disembodied voice shouted down from the first floor. “Come upstairs and tell me!”

Tommy took the stairs by twos and skidded into the Planning Parlor with a smile so wide, her cheeks were already starting to ache. “I talked to Philippa!”

Graham stopped organizing his albums. “You talked to her? Or…who are you exactly, at the moment?”

“Pah.” Tommy waved this aside. “I had to pretend I’m the new Baron Vanderbean to overcome my nerves. Bean was never nervous. His heir would not embarrass him.”

“‘Horace’ acquitted himself nicely?”

“Horace flirted. A shameful rake, that new heir. Choosy, too. Eyes only for Miss York. Who, I might add, ended our Hyde Park tête-à-tête with, ‘I’ll be here tomorrow.’”

“Ooh,” Graham said appreciatively. “She enjoyed your flirting, Horace, you old rascal.”

Tommy beamed at him.

“Just think,” her brother said. “You could have done this last July instead of spending an entire year in a cowardly puddle of nerves.”