“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.