“Don’t ruin this for me,” Tommy warned. “I am quite pleased with myself at the moment.”

“As you should be.” Jacob strode into the room with a mouse peeking from his jacket pocket. “Marjorie and I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I knew she did,” Marjorie protested loudly as she entered the room. “I had a side bet with Elizabeth.”

Tommy’s jaw dropped. “You wagered on whether I’d speak to Philippa?”

“I stopped wagering with them months ago,” Graham muttered. “You cost me so many quid.”

Marjorie and Jacob took their usual seats, though it didn’t look right. The family always sat in the same order as their cherished family portrait—an oil painting of Puck and six fellow imps cavorting about a fire in a magical wood—just as they had done for nineteen years.

The canvas had been their first purchase as a family. For many of the siblings, their first purchase at all. It was more than art. It symbolized the team they had become, and the long future of togetherness that awaited them.

Their happy tradition of arranging themselves like the painting had ceased last summer, when Bean had died. It had become even less familiar once Chloe left home to live with Faircliffe. There were blank spaces now. In the parlor, in their home, and in Tommy’s heart.

“Wait.” She turned to Graham. “I cost you money?”

“Forty-six quid,” he said morosely.

Elizabeth stepped into the parlor and jangled a heavy coin purse. “Ah, the sweet, sweet sound of victory.”

Tommy stood next to Graham and whirled on the others. “You bet against me, you knaves!”

“And won.” Elizabeth jangled her coin purse. “Time and again.”

“Not today,” Marjorie informed her. “She did it. Er, Baron Vanderbean, that is.”

Elizabeth dropped her mouth open and widened her eyes. “Horace Wynchester, you sly dog. Never have I been happier to lose a wager in my life. I mean it.”

“Congratulations, Tommy.” Marjorie reached for the bell pull. “I’ll ring for cakes and champagne.”

“New bet,” said Jacob. “How long until she tells Philippa she’s not actually a baron?”

“No bets,” Tommy said firmly. “I’ll never tell her.”

Elizabeth shook her sword stick. “Didn’t you just prove that the world wouldn’t end if you tried for what you want?”

“It won’t end for the Horace Wynchesters of the world,” Tommy corrected. “I have proven repeatedly that I will expire on the spot before I am able to approach Philippa as myself.”

“But don’t you want her to know who you are?” Jacob’s pocket wiggled. The little mouse…was a bat. “Wouldn’t it be even nicer if the person she hoped to see tomorrow was Tommy Wynchester?”

Tommy did want that. Bean had loved her for herself, and so did her siblings. But no one else would.