“If you can convince her to read your agricultural treatise over your shoulder,” her mother said, her hand flitting delicately through the air.

Delicately like a bullet, Billie thought. “I’ll help with some of the planning,” she conceded.

“Oh, that will be marvelous!” Georgiana exclaimed. “And so very helpful. You’ll have much more experience with this sort of thing than I.”

“Not really,” Billie said frankly.

“But you’ve been to house parties.”

“Well, yes, but…” Billie didn’t bother finishing her sentence. Georgiana looked so happy. It would be like kicking a puppy to tell Georgiana that she had hated being dragged to house parties with their mother. Or if hate was too strong a word, she certainly hadn’t enjoyed herself. She really didn’t like traveling. She’d learned that much about herself.

And she did not enjoy the company of strangers. She wasn’t shy; not at all. She just preferred being among people she knew.

People who knew her.

Life was so much easier that way.

“Look at it this way,” Lady Bridgerton said to Billie. “You don’t want a house party. You don’t like house parties. But I am your mother, and I have decided to host one. Therefore, you have no choice but to attend. Why not take the opportunity to mold this gathering into something you might actually enjoy?”

“But I’m not going to enjoy it.”

“You certainly won’t if you approach it with that attitude.”

Billie took a moment to compose herself. And to hold down the urge to argue her point and defend herself and tell her mother that she would not be spoken to as if she was a child…

“I would be delighted to assist Georgiana,” Billie said tightly, “as long as I get some time to read my book.”

“I wouldn’t dream of pulling you away from Prescott’s,” her mother murmured.

Billie glared at her. “You shouldn’t mock it. It’s exactly that sort of book that has enabled me to increase productivity at Aubrey Hall by a full ten percent. Not to mention the improvements to the tenant farms. They are all eating better now that —”

She cut herself off. Swallowed. She’d just done exactly what she’d told herself not to do.

Argue her point.

Defend herself.

Act like a child.

She shoveled as much of her breakfast into her mouth as she could manage in thirty seconds, then stood and grabbed her crutches, which were leaning against the table. “I will be in the library if anyone needs me.” To Georgiana she added, “Let me know when the ground is dry enough to spread a blanket.”

Georgiana nodded.

“Mother,” Billie said to Lady Bridgerton with a nod to replace the normal bob of a curtsy she gave when she took her leave. Yet another thing one couldn’t manage on crutches.

“Billie,” her mother said, her voice conciliatory. And perhaps a little frustrated. “I wish you wouldn’t…”

Billie waited for her to finish her sentence, but her mother just shook her head.

“Never mind,” she said.

Billie nodded again, pressing a crutch into the ground for balance as she pivoted on her good foot. She thunked the crutches on the ground, then swung her body between them, her shoulders held tight and straight as she repeated the motion all the way to the door.

It was bloody hard to make a dignified exit on crutches.

George still wasn’t sure how Andrew had talked him into accompanying him to Aubrey Hall for a late morning visit, but here he was, standing in the grand entry as he handed his hat to Thamesly, butler to the Bridgertons since before he was born.

“You’re doing a good deed, old man,” Andrew said, slapping George’s shoulder with surely more force than was necessary.

“Don’t call me old man.” God, he hated that.

But this only made Andrew laugh. Of course. “Whomever you might be, you’re still doing a good deed. Billie will be out of her mind with boredom.”

“She could use a little boredom in her life,” George muttered.

“True enough,” Andrew conceded, “but my concern was for her family. God only knows what madness she’ll inflict upon them if no one shows up to entertain her.”

“You talk as if she’s a child.”

“A child?” Andrew turned to look at him, his face taking on an enigmatic serenity that George knew well enough to find suspicious in the extreme. “Not at all.”

“Miss Bridgerton is in the library,” Thamesly informed them. “If you will wait in the drawing room, I will alert her to your presence.”

“No need,” Andrew said cheerily. “We will join her in the library. The last thing we want is to force Miss Bridgerton to hobble about more than is necessary.”

“Very kind of you, sir,” Thamesly murmured.

“Is she in a great deal of pain?” George inquired.

“I would not know,” the butler said diplomatically, “but it may be worth noting that the weather is very fine, and Miss Bridgerton is in the library.”

“So she’s miserable, then.”

“Very much so, my lord.”

George supposed this was why he’d allowed Andrew to drag him away from his weekly meeting with their father’s steward. He’d known Billie’s ankle could not have been much improved. It had been grotesquely swollen the night before, no matter how festively she’d wrapped it with that ridiculous pink ribbon. Injuries like that did not resolve themselves overnight.