Page 9 of The Perks of Loving a Wallflower

Graham crossed the room to the wall of biographies and flipped through a journal. “He’s to receive a viscountcy, and enjoy a public ceremony on Saturday, the seventeenth of January.”

“How is that in your album already?” Chloe asked. “Wasn’t the news just announced this morning?”

“I get my news in advance.” Graham skimmed his notes. “Stopping the celebration might be tricky. The sheer number of guards alone—”

“I could hold some off with my rapier,” Elizabeth suggested. “And Jacob could release whatever trained creatures are proliferating in the barn this week.”

“Bats?” Chloe guessed. “Bloodthirsty bunnies? Pugilistic pigs?”

“We don’t need to stop the gala,” Tommy said. “We need to prevent Northrup from taking Damaris’s credit. The honor should go where it belongs.”

“Or nowhere at all,” Elizabeth amended. “Don’t be surprised if Prinny declines to name rooms in the Royal Military Academy after a bluestocking.”

“As long as the fame and fortune don’t go to her smug, undeserving uncle,” Chloe said. “Ironically, the book used in the fraud contains tales of chivalry.”

“Everything about chivalry is ironic,” Elizabeth said.

“Prinny already made the announcement,” Graham said. “Even if we could prove Captain Northrup unworthy, might Prinny shrug off that detail and continue on with the ceremony?”

“No.” Tommy leaned back. “He won’t, because ofhisbiggest problem.”

Graham raised his brows. “Which is what?”

“Us.” She smiled. “Prinny might have bested Boney, but no one has ever won a battle against a Wynchester.”

5

Absolutely not,” Tommy said to Jacob and Marjorie the following afternoon at tea. She handed a baby hedgehog back to her brother. “Stop meddling.”

“Is it difficult when you ask the pieman for a pie?” Jacob pointed out reasonably. “Or when you give your direction to a hackney driver? We call those ‘words.’ Extremely adept practitioners can advance all the way to ‘conversation.’ You and Philippa should try it.”

Marjorie refreshed the tea. “Tommy’s never been in love with a hackney driver or a pieman.”

“I’ve never been in love with any kind of man, no matter how delicious his pies,” Tommy said. “I would no sooner fall in love with a man than I would the moon. And the moon is much prettier.”

“But not as pretty as Philippa,” her cursed siblings sang out.

If she had a pie, she’d toss it at them.

“I’m not enamored,” she grumbled.

She was far past enamored. Tommy’s romantic thoughts had been filled with no one but Philippa almost from the first moment she saw her.

It might have stayed a passing infatuation if she and Chloe hadn’t had to join the reading circle in the course of a prior mission to recover a stolen work of art. In the process, Chloe had fallen in love with conversing with fellow literature enthusiasts—as well as with Philippa’s intended suitor.

And Tommy…had fallen for Philippa.

“When will Graham and Elizabeth return home?” Tommy asked in an unsubtle attempt to change the subject.

“Who knows?” Jacob turned over the baby hedgehog, which barely filled his palm. He rubbed its belly with a fingertip. The hedgehog responded by closing tight about his finger. “Graham is out gathering intelligence, and Elizabeth…is off shopping for rapiers.”

Tommy should have joined her. Sword shopping had to be better than suffering through sibling matchmaking while attempting to enjoy an afternoon repast.

How she missed Chloe! After Bean succumbed to smallpox last year, Tommy and Chloe had only grown closer. They’d spent months in a clandestine operation to liberate a stolen item from the Duke of Faircliffe.

And then Chloe married him.

Now she was theDuchess of Faircliffe. She wasn’t here anymore to eat tea cakes and tickle baby hedgehogs. Her old bedchamber was still down the corridor from Tommy’s, but nothing was left inside except unwanted furniture.