“You’ve never seen him like this before?”

“No, I have.” She looked from the chair to the sofa and decided on the sofa. Andrew was now on the floor, and he wasn’t likely to want his spot back anytime soon. She sat down, leaning against the arm and stretching her legs out in front of her. Without really thinking about what she was doing she reached for the blanket that lay folded over the back and spread it over her legs. “I still find it disconcerting.”

“He is unexpectedly precise,” George said.

Billie considered that. “Unexpected because…?”

George shrugged and motioned to his brother. “Who would think it of him?”

Billie thought for a moment, then decided she agreed with him. “There’s an odd sort of sense to that.”

“I can still hear you, you know,” Andrew said. He’d got about a dozen more cards into place and had pulled back a few inches to examine the house from several angles.

“I don’t believe we were aiming for stealth,” George said mildly.

Billie smiled to herself and slid her finger into the correct spot in her book. It was one of those volumes that came with an attached ribbon to use as a bookmark.

“Just so you are aware,” Andrew said, moving to the other side of the table, “I will kill you if you knock this down.”

“Brother,” George said with impressive gravity, “I am barely breathing.”

Billie stifled a giggle. She rarely saw this side of George, teasing and dry. Usually he was so irritated by the rest of them that he was left entirely without humor.

“Is that Prescott’s?” George asked.

Billie turned to look at him over her shoulder. “Yes.”

“You’re making good progress.”

“Despite myself, I assure you. It’s very dry.”

Andrew didn’t look up, but he did say, “You’re reading an encyclopedia of agriculture and you’re complaining that it’s dry?”

“The last volume was brilliant,” Billie protested. “I could hardly put it down.”

Even from the back of his head, it was obvious that Andrew was rolling his eyes.

Billie returned her attention to George, who, it had to be said, had not once maligned her for her reading choices. “It must be the subject matter. He seems terribly stuck on mulch this time.”

“Mulch is important,” George said, his eyes twinkling in what was an impressively somber face.

She met his gaze with equal seriousness. And perhaps just the littlest twitch of her lips. “Mulch is mulch.”

“God,” Andrew grunted, “the two of you are enough to make me want to tear my hair out.”

Billie tapped him on the shoulder. “But you love us.”

“Don’t touch me,” he warned.

She looked back over at George. “He’s very touchy.”

“Bad pun, Billie,” Andrew growled.

She let out a light laugh and returned to the book in her hands. “Back to the mulch.”

She tried to read. She really did. But Prescott’s seemed so dull this time around, and every time George moved, his newspaper crinkled and then she had to look up.

But then he would look up. And then she’d have to pretend she’d been watching Andrew. And then she really was watching Andrew, because it was bizarrely riveting to watch a one-armed man build a house of cards.

Back to Prescott’s, she admonished herself. As dull as mulch was, she had to get through it. And she did, somehow. An hour drifted by in companionable silence, she on the sofa with her book, George in his chair with the newspaper, and Andrew on the floor with his cards. She got through the straw mulch, and she got through the peat mulch, but when she got to sour mulch, she just couldn’t do it any longer.

She sighed, and not elegantly. “I am so bored.”

“Just the sort of thing one says to company,” Andrew quipped.

She gave him the side eye. “You don’t count as company.”

“Does George?”

George looked up from his newspaper.

She shrugged. “I suppose not.”

“I count,” he said.

Billie blinked. She had not realized he’d even been listening.

“I count,” he said again, and if Billie hadn’t been looking at him she would have missed it. She would have missed the blaze of fire in his eyes, hot and intense, burning for less than a second before he banked it and returned his attention to his newspaper.

“You treat Andrew like a brother,” he said, turning a page with slow, deliberate movements.

“And I treat you…”

He looked at her. “Not like a brother.”

Billie’s lips parted. She couldn’t look away. And then she had to look away, because she felt very strange, and it was suddenly imperative that she get back to the sour mulch.

But then George made a noise, or maybe he just breathed, and she couldn’t stop herself, she was looking at him again.

He had nice hair, she decided. She was glad he didn’t powder it, at least not for everyday. It was thick, with just a hint of a wave, and it looked like it would curl if he grew it long. She gave a little snort. Wouldn’t her maid love hair like that? Billie usually just tied her hair back in a queue, but sometimes she had to fancify herself. They had tried everything with her hair – hot tongs, wet ribbons – but it just wouldn’t take a curl.