“I could say the same,” he commented.
She made it down to the halfway mark. “Touché.”
“There is nothing quite so invigorating as an able opponent,” he said, thinking of all the times they had crossed verbal swords. Billie had never been an easy person to best in conversation, which was why it was always so delicious when he did.
“I’m not sure that holds true on the battle—oh!”
George waited as she gritted her teeth and continued.
“—on the battlefield,” she said, after a rather angry-sounding inhalation. “My God, this hurts,” she muttered.
“I know,” he said encouragingly.
“No you don’t.”
He smiled yet again. “No, I don’t.”
She gave a terse nod and took another step. Then, because she was Billie Bridgerton and thus fundamentally unable to allow an unfinished point to lay dormant, she said, “On the battlefield, I think I might find an able opponent inspiring.”
“Inspiring?” he murmured, eager to keep her talking.
“But not invigorating.”
“One would lead to the other,” he said, not that he had any firsthand experience. His only battles had taken place in fencing salons and boxing rings, where the most serious risk was to one’s pride. He eased down another step, giving Billie room to maneuver, then peered over his shoulder at Andrew, who appeared to be whistling while he waited.
“Can I help?” Andrew asked, catching his glance.
George shook his head, then looked back up to Billie. “You’re almost to the bottom,” he told her.
“Please tell me you’re not lying this time.”
“I’m not lying.”
And he wasn’t. He hopped down, skipping the last two rungs, and waited for her to draw close enough for him to grab her. A moment later she was within reach, and he swept her into his arms.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, and he felt her collapse a little, for once in her life allowing someone else to take charge of her.
“Well done,” Andrew said cheerfully, poking his head in close. “Are you all right there, Billie-goat?”
Billie nodded, but she didn’t look all right. Her jaw was still clenched, and from the way her throat worked, it was clear she was trying her damnedest not to cry.
“You little fool,” George murmured, and then he knew she wasn’t all right, because she let that pass without a word of protest. In fact, she apologized, which was so wholly unlike her as to be almost alarming.
“Time to go home,” George said.
“Let’s take a look at that foot,” Andrew said, his voice still an obnoxiously bright note in the tableau. He peeled off her stocking, let out a low whistle, and said with some admiration, “Ech, Billie, what did you do to yourself? That looks brutal.”
“Shut up,” George said.
Andrew just shrugged. “It doesn’t look broken—”
“It’s not,” Billie cut in.
“Still, you’ll be off it for a week, at least.”
“Perhaps not quite so long,” George said, even though he rather thought Andrew was correct in his assessment. Still, there was no point in debating her condition. They weren’t saying anything Billie didn’t already know. “Shall we go?” he said.
Billie closed her eyes and nodded. “We should put the ladder away,” she mumbled.
George tightened his arms around her and headed east toward Aubrey Hall, where Billie lived with her parents and three younger siblings. “We’ll get it tomorrow.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Everything.”
“That covers quite a lot,” he said in a dry voice. “Are you sure you wish to be in such debt?”
She looked up at him, her eyes tired but wise. “You’re far too much of a gentleman to hold me to it.”
George chuckled at that. She was right, he supposed, although he’d never treated Billie Bridgerton like any other female of his acquaintance. Hell, no one did.
“Will you still be able to come to dinner tonight?” Andrew asked, loping alongside George.
Billie turned to him distractedly. “What?”
“Surely you haven’t forgotten,” he said, laying one dramatic hand over his heart. “The Family Rokesby is welcoming the prodigal son—”
“You’re not the prodigal son,” George said. Good God.
“A prodigal son,” Andrew corrected with good cheer. “I have been gone for months, even years.”
“Not years,” George said.
“Not years,” Andrew agreed, “but it felt like it, didn’t it?” He leaned down toward Billie, close enough to give her a little nudge. “You missed me, didn’t you, Goatrix? Come now, admit it.”
“Give her some room,” George said irritably.
“Oh, she doesn’t mind.”
“Give me some room.”
“An entirely different matter,” Andrew said with a laugh.
George started to scowl, but then his head snapped up. “What did you just call her?”
“He frequently likens me to a goat,” Billie said in the flat tone of one who has given up taking offense.
George looked at her, then looked at Andrew, then just shook his head. He’d never understood their sense of humor. Or maybe it was just that he’d never been a part of it. Growing up, he had always felt so separate from the rest of the Rokesbys and Bridgertons. Mostly by virtue of his age—five years older than Edward, who was the next one down the line—but also by his position. He was the eldest, the heir. He, as his father was quick to remind him, had responsibilities. He couldn’t bloody well frolic about the countryside all day, climbing trees and breaking bones.
Edward, Mary, and Andrew Rokesby had been born in quick succession, separated from each other by barely a year. They, along with Billie, who was almost precisely Mary’s age, had formed a tight little pack that did everything together. The Rokesby and Bridgerton homes were a mere three miles apart, and more often than not the children had met somewhere in the middle, at the brook that separated the estates, or in the treehouse Lord Bridgerton had had built at Billie’s insistence in the ancient oak by the trout pond. Most of the time George wasn’t sure what specific mischief they’d got up to, but his siblings had tended to come home filthy and hungry and in blooming good spirits.
He hadn’t been jealous. Really, they were more annoying than anything else. The last thing he’d wanted to do when he came home from school was muck about with a pack of wild urchins whose average age didn’t even scrape into the double digits.
But he had been occasionally wistful. What would it have been like if he’d had such a close cadre of companions? He’d not had a true friend his own age until he left for Eton at the age of twelve. There simply hadn’t been anyone to befriend.
But it mattered little now. They were all grown, Edward in the army and Andrew in the navy and Mary married off to George’s good friend Felix Maynard. Billie, too, had passed the age of majority, but she was still Billie, still romping around her father’s property, still riding her too-spirited mount like her bones were forged of steel and flashing her wide smile around the village that adored her.
And as for George . . . He supposed he was still himself, too. Still the heir, still preparing for responsibility even as his father relinquished none of it, still doing absolutely nothing while his brothers took up their arms and fought for the Empire.
He looked down at his own arms, currently cradling Billie as he carried her home. It was quite possibly the most useful thing those arms had done in years.
“We should take you to Crake,” Andrew said to Billie. “It’s closer, and then you’ll be able to stay for dinner.”
“She’s hurt,” George reminded him.
“Pfft. When has that ever stopped her?”
“Well, she’s not dressed properly,” George said. He sounded like a prig and he knew it, but he was feeling unaccountably irritated, and he couldn’t very well
take it out on Billie while she was injured.
“I’m sure she can find something to wear in Mary’s wardrobe,” Andrew said dismissively. “She didn’t take everything with her when she got married, did she?”
“No,” Billie said, her voice muffled against George’s chest. It was funny, that, how one could feel sound through one’s body. “She left quite a bit behind.”
“That settles it, then,” Andrew said. “You’ll come for supper, you’ll spend the night, and all will be right with the world.”
George gave him a slow look over his shoulder.
“I’ll stay for supper,” Billie agreed, moving her head so that her voice slid out into the air instead of George’s body, “but then I’ll go home with my family. I’d much rather sleep in my own bed, if you don’t mind.”
George stumbled.
“You all right?” Andrew queried.
“It’s nothing,” George muttered. And then, for no reason he could discern, he was compelled to add, “Just one of those things when one of your legs goes weak for a moment and bends a bit.”
Andrew gave him a curious look. “Just one of those things, eh?”
“Shut up.”
Which only made Andrew laugh.
“I have those,” Billie said, looking up at him with a little smile. “When you’re tired and you don’t even realize it. And your leg surprises you.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled again, a smile of kinship, and it occurred to him—although not, he realized with some surprise, for the first time—that she was actually rather pretty.
Her eyes were lovely—a deep shade of brown that was always warm and welcoming, no matter how much ire might lie in their depths. And her skin was remarkably fair for one who spent as much time out of doors as she did, although she did sport a light sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. George couldn’t remember if they’d been there when she was young. He hadn’t really been paying attention to Billie Bridgerton’s freckles.
He hadn’t really been paying attention to her at all, or at least he’d been trying not to. She was—and always had been—rather difficult to avoid.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Your freckles.” He saw no reason to lie.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “They’re there.”
Her lips pursed, and he thought that would be the end of the conversation. But then she said, somewhat abruptly, “I don’t have very many of them.”
His brows rose.
“Sixty-two,” she said.
He almost stopped walking. “You counted?”
“I had nothing else to do. The weather was beastly, and I couldn’t go outside.”
George knew better than to inquire about embroidery, or watercolors, or any of a dozen other indoor pursuits commonly taken up by ladies of his acquaintance.
“Probably a few more now,” Billie admitted. “It’s been a prodigiously sunny spring.”
“What are we talking about?” Andrew asked. He’d got a bit ahead of them and they’d only just caught up.
“My freckles,” Billie said.
He blinked. “My God, you are boring.”
“Or bored,” Billie countered.
“Or both.”
“Must be the company.”
“I’ve always thought George was dull,” Andrew said.
George rolled his eyes.
“I was talking about you,” Billie said.
Andrew only grinned. “How’s the foot?”
“It hurts,” she said plainly.
“Better? Worse?”
Billie thought about that for a moment, then answered, “The same. No, better, I suppose, since I’m not putting weight on it.” She looked back up at George. “Thank you,” she said. “Again.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, but his voice was brusque. He didn’t really have a place in their conversation. He never had.
The path forked, and George turned off to the right, toward Crake. It was closer, and with Andrew’s arm in a sling, he was going to have to carry Billie the entire way.
“Am I too heavy?” she asked, sounding a touch sleepy.
“It wouldn’t really matter if you were.”
“Gad, George, no wonder you’re starved for female companionship,” Andrew groaned. “That was a clear invitation to say, ‘Of course not. You are a delicate petal of womanhood.’”
“No, it wasn’t,” Billie said.
“It was,” Andrew said firmly. “You just didn’t realize it.”
“I’m not starved for female companionship,” George said. Because really.
“Oh, yes, of course not,” Andrew said with great sarcasm. “You’ve got Billie in your arms.”
“I think you might have just insulted me,” she said.
“Not at all, m’dear. Just a statement of fact.”
She scowled, her chestnut brows drawing down hard toward her eyes. “When do you go back to sea?”
Andrew gave her an arch look. “You’ll miss me.”
“I don’t believe I will.”
But they all knew she was lying.
“You’ll have George, at any rate,” Andrew said, reaching up and swatting a low-hanging branch. “You two make quite a pair.”
“Shut up,” Billie said. Which was a lot tamer than what came out of George’s mouth.
Andrew chuckled, and the three of them continued on toward Crake House, walking in amiable silence as the wind whistled lightly through the newly budded tree leaves.
“You’re not too heavy,” George suddenly said.
Billie yawned, shifting slightly in his arms as she looked up at his face. “What did you just say?”
“You’re not too heavy.” He shrugged. For some reason, it had seemed important to say it.
“Oh. Well.” She blinked a few times, her brown eyes equal parts puzzled and pleased. “Thank you.”
Up ahead, Andrew laughed, although for the life of him, George didn’t know why.
“Yes,” Billie said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Yes,” she said again, answering the question he didn’t think he’d asked, “he’s laughing at us.”
“I had a feeling.”
“He’s an idiot,” she said, sighing into George’s chest. But it was an affectionate sigh; never had the words he’s an idiot been imbued with more love and fondness.
“It’s nice to have him home, though,” George said quietly. And it was. He’d spent years being annoyed by his younger brothers, Andrew most especially, but now that they were grown and pursuing a life beyond the ordinariness of Kent and London, he missed them.
Almost as much as he envied them.
“It is nice, isn’t it?” Billie gave a wistful smile, then she added, “Not that I’d ever tell him so.”
“Oh no. Definitely not.”
Billie chuckled at their shared joke, then let out a yawn. “Sorry,” she mumbled. She couldn’t very well cover her mouth with her arms around his neck. “Do you mind if I close my eyes?”
Something odd and unfamiliar lurched in George’s chest. Something almost protective. “Of course not,” he said.
She smiled—a sleepy, happy thing—and said, “I never have trouble falling asleep.”
“Never?”
She shook her head, and her hair, which had long since given up any attempt to remain confined with pins, crept up and tickled his chin. “I can sleep anywhere,” she said with a yawn.
She dozed the rest of the way home, and George did not mind it at all.
Chapter 5
Billie had been born just seventeen days after Mary Rokesby, and according to their parents, they had been the best of friends from the moment they’d been placed in the same cradle when Lady Bridgerton called upon Lady Manston for their regular Thursday morning visit.
Billie wasn’t sure why her mother had brought along a two-month-old baby when there had been a perfectly able nanny back at Aubrey Hall,
but she suspected it had something to do with her rolling over from front to back at the improbably early age of six weeks.
The Ladies Bridgerton and Manston were devoted and loyal friends, and Billie was quite sure that each would lay down her life for the other (or for the other’s children), but it had to be said, there had always been a strong element of competition in their relationship.
Billie also suspected that her stunning prowess in the art of rolling over had less to do with innate genius and more to do with the tip of her mother’s forefinger against her shoulder, but as her mother pointed out, there were no witnesses.
But what was witnessed—by both their mothers and a housemaid—was that when Billie had been placed in Mary’s spacious cradle, she had reached out and grabbed the other baby’s tiny hand. And when their mothers tried to pull them apart, they both started howling like banshees.
Billie’s mother told her that she had been tempted to just leave her there at Crake House overnight; it was the only way to keep both babies calm.
That first morning was surely a portent of things to come. Billie and Mary were, as their nannies like to say, two peas in a pod. Two very different peas that happened to be quite fond of each other.
Where Billie was fearless, Mary was careful. Not timid, just careful. She always looked before she leapt. Billie looked, too; she just tended to do it in a somewhat more perfunctory manner.
And then she leapt high and far, often outdoing both Edward and Andrew, who had been more or less forced to befriend her after they realized that Billie would A) follow them to the ends of the earth except that B) she’d probably get there before they did.
With Mary—after a careful consideration of the ambient danger—right at her heels.
And so they became a foursome. Three wild children and one voice of reason.
They did listen to Mary occasionally. Truly, they did. It was probably the only reason all four had reached adulthood without permanent injury.
But like all good things, it came to an end, and a few years after both Edward and Andrew left home, Mary had fallen in love, got married, and moved away. She and Billie exchanged letters regularly, but it wasn’t the same. Still, Billie would always call Mary her best friend, and thus, when she found herself at Crake House with a sprained ankle and nothing to wear but men’s breeches and a rather dusty shirt and coat, she had no compunction raiding her friend’s wardrobe for a garment suitable for a family dinner. Most of the dresses were a few years out of fashion, but that didn’t bother Billie. In all truth, she likely wouldn’t have even noticed if the maid who was helping her to dress for dinner hadn’t apologized for it.