She lurched back. "Oh, well, thank you."

"Are you saying you wish someone did?" he retorted.

"No!"

He rolled his eyes. Women. And yet, this was Billie. The least womanly woman of his acquaintance.

She let out a long, steadying breath. "Regardless of what you think of me, George..."

How did she make his name sound like an insult?

"... I do have my reputation to consider. And while my family knows me well enough, and" her voice took on a reluctant edge here "I suppose trusts you well enough to know that our concurrent disappearances signify nothing untoward..."

Her words trailed off, and she chewed on her lip, looking uncomfortable, and, if one was honest, vaguely ill.

"The rest of the world might not be as kind," he finished for her.

She looked at him for a moment, then said, "Quite."

"If we're not found until tomorrow morning..." George said, mostly to himself.

Billie finished the horrifying sentence. "You'd have to marry me."

Chapter 3.

"W hat are you doing?" Billie nearly shrieked. George had sprung to his feet with speed that was highly reckless, and now he was peering over the edge of the building with a calculating, furrowed brow.

Honestly, it looked as if he was performing complicated mathematical equations.

"Getting off the damned roof," he grunted.

"You'll kill yourself."

"I might," he agreed grimly.

"Well, don't I feel special," Billie retorted.

He turned, staring down at her with heavy-lidded superiority. "Are you saying you want to marry me?"

She shuddered. "Never." But at the same time, a lady didn't want to think that a man would prefer to hurl himself from a roof just to avoid the possibility.

"In that, madam," George said, "we are agreed."

And it stung. Oh, how it stung. Ah, irony. She didn't care if George Rokesby didn't want to marry her. She didn't even like him most of the time. And she knew that when he did deign to choose a bride, the oh-so grateful lady wasn't going to be anything like her.

But still, it stung.

The future Lady Kennard would be delicate, feminine. She would have been trained to run a grand house, not a working estate. She would dress in the latest of fashions, her hair would be powdered and intricately styled, and even if she possessed a backbone of steel, she would hide it beneath an aura of genteel helplessness.

Men like George loved to think themselves manly and strong.

She watched him as he planted his hands on his hips. Very well, he was manly and strong. But he was like the rest of them; he'd want a woman who flirted over a fan. God forbid he married someone capable.

"This is a disaster," he spat.

Billie only somewhat resisted the urge to snarl. "You're just realizing this now?"

His response was an equally immature scowl.

"Why couldn't you be nice?" Billie blurted out.

"Nice?" he echoed.

Oh, God, why had she said that? Now she was going to have to explain. "Like the rest of your family," she clarified.

"Nice," he said again. He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe her gall. "Nice."

"I'm nice," she said. Then she regretted that, because she wasn't nice. At least not all the time, and she had a feeling she wasn't being particularly nice right now. But surely she could be excused, because this was George Rokesby, and she couldn't help herself.

And neither, it seemed, could he.

"Has it ever occurred to you," he said, in a voice that was positively bathed with a lack of niceness, "that I am nice to everyone but you?"

It hurt. It shouldn't have, because they'd never liked each other, and damn it, it shouldn't have hurt because she didn't want it to.

But she would never let it show.

"I think you were trying to insult me," she said, picking disdainfully through her words.

He stared at her, waiting for further comment.

She shrugged.

"But...?" he prodded.

She shrugged again, pretending to look at her fingernails. Which of course meant that she did look at her fingernails, which were revoltingly filthy.

One more thing she didn't have in common with the future Lady Kennard.

She counted silently to five, waiting for him to demand an explanation in that cutting way he'd perfected before he'd been old enough to shave. But he didn't say a word, and finally she was the one to lose whatever asinine contest was simmering between them, and she lifted her head.

He wasn't even looking at her.

Damn him.

And damn her, because she just couldn't help herself. She knew that anyone with an ounce of restraint would have known when to hold her tongue, but no, she had to open her stupid, stupid mouth and say, "If you can't muster the -"

"Don't say it," he warned.

"- generosity of spirit to -"

"I'm warning you, Billie."

"Are you?" she shot back, "I rather think you're threatening me."

"I will do," he nearly spat, "if you don't shut -" He cut himself off with a muffled curse, snapping his head in the other direction.

Billie picked at a loose thread on her stocking, her mouth pressed into an angry, trembling pout. She shouldn't have said anything. She'd known that even as she spoke, because as pompous and annoying as George Rokesby was, it was entirely her fault that he was stuck up on the roof, and she'd had no call to be so provoking.

But there was something about him some special talent that only he possessed that stripped her of years of experience and maturity and made her act like a bloody six-year-old. If he were anyone else anyone else she'd be lauded as the most reasonable and helpful female in the history of Christendom. Tales would be spread once they'd got off the roof of her bravery and wit. Billie Bridgerton... so resourceful, so reasonable... It's what everyone said. It's what everyone had reason to say, because she was resourceful, and she was reasonable.

Just not with George Rokesby.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled.

His head turned slowly, as if even his muscles could not believe what they'd heard.

"I said I'm sorry," she repeated, louder this time. It felt like an antidote, but it was the right thing to do. But God help him if he made her say it again, because there was only so much of her pride she could swallow before she choked on it. And he ought to know that.

Because he was just the same.

His eyes met hers, and then they both looked down, and then after a few moments George said, "We are neither of us at our best just now."

Billie swallowed. She thought maybe she ought to say something more, but her judgment had not done her any favors thus far, so instead she nodded, vowing that she was going to keep her mouth shut until - "Andrew?" George whispered.

Billie snapped to attention.

"Andrew!" George all but bellowed.

Billie's eyes did a frantic scan of the trees at the far end of the field, and sure enough... "Andrew!" she screamed, reflexively starting to rise before remembering her ankle.

"Ow!" she yelped, plunking back down on her bottom.

George did not spare her so much as a glance. He was too busy over by the edge of the roof, waving his arms through the air in wide, vigorous swoops.

There was no way Andrew could miss them, hollering like a pair of deranged banshees, but if he picked up his pace, Billie couldn't see it. But that was Andrew. She should probably be glad he hadn't fallen over with laughter at their predicament.

This was not something he was going to let either of them forget.

"Ahoy there!" Andrew called out, once he'd halved the distance between them.

Billie glanced over at George. She could only see him in profile, but he looked visibly relieved at his brother's appearance. Also, oddly grim. No not odd at all, she realized. Whatever ribbing she was going to get from Andrew, George would suffer it a hundredfold.

Andrew drew closer, a spring in his step despite the sling on his arm. "Of all the delightful surprises," he declared, his face nearly split by his grin. "If I thought and thought and thought..."

He stopped, holding up one elegant forefinger, the universal sign, Billie realized, to ask for a moment's pause. Then he tipped his head as if getting back into the swing of things, and said, "and thought -"

"Oh, for the love of Christ," George growled.

"All that thinking for years..." Andrew chortled. "I still couldn't have come up with -"

"Just get us off the bloody roof," George snapped.

Billie rather sympathized with his tone.

"I've always thought the two of you would make a splendid pair," Andrew said slyly.

"Andrew," Billie growled.

He rewarded her with a purse-lipped smile. "Truly, you needn't have gone to such extremes for a moment of privacy. The rest of us would have been more than happy to oblige."

"Stop it," Billie ordered.

Andrew looked up, laughing even as he affected a frown. "Do you really want to take that tone, Billie-goat? I am the one on terra firma."

"Please, Andrew," she said, trying her very best to be civil and reasonable. "We would very much appreciate your help."

"Well, since you asked so nicely," Andrew murmured.

"I'm going to kill him," she said under her breath.

"I'm going to break his other arm," George muttered.

Billie choked down a laugh. There was no way that Andrew could have heard them, but she looked down at him, anyway, and that was when she realized he was frowning, his good hand on his hip.

"What is it now?" George demanded.

Andrew stared down at the ladder, his mouth twisting into a curious frown. "I'm not sure if it has occurred to either of you, but this isn't the sort of thing that's easy to do one-handed."

"Take it out of the sling," George said, but his last words were drowned out by Billie's shriek of "Don't take it out of the sling!"

"Do you really want to stay on the roof?" George hissed.

"And have him reinjure his arm?" she returned. They might have joked about breaking Andrew's good arm, but really. The man was a sailor in the navy. It was essential that his bone healed properly.

"You'd marry me for the sake of his arm?"

"I'm not going to marry you," she shot back. "Andrew knows where we are. He can go get help if we need it."

"By the time he gets back with an able-bodied man, we'll have been up here alone for several hours."

"And I suppose you've such a high opinion of your male prowess that you think people will believe you managed to compromise me on a roof."

"Believe me," George hissed, "any man with sense would know you are thoroughly uncompromisable."

Billie's brows came together for a second of confusion. Was he complimenting her moral rectitude? But then - Oh!

"You are despicable," she seethed. Since that was her only choice of reply. Somehow she didn't think You have no idea how many men would like to compromise me would earn her any points for dignity and wit.