“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
“What 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.