“But I want to help,” she said, lowering her voice as she turned her back on the rest of the room.

“So do I, but this is not the way.”

“It may be the only way.”

For a moment he could do nothing but close his eyes. Was this a taste of the rest of his life as Billie Bridgerton’s husband? Was he destined to live in terror, wondering what sort of danger she’d thrown herself into that day?

Was it worth it?

“George?” she whispered. She sounded uneasy. Had she seen something in his expression? A sign of doubt?

He touched her cheek, and he looked into her eyes.

He saw his whole world there.

“I love you,” he said.

Someone gasped. It might have been his mother.

“I cannot live without you,” he said, “and in fact, I refuse to do so. So no, you will not be going on some ill-advised mission to the coast to hand off a potentially dangerous package to people you don’t know. Because if anything happened to you . . .” His voice broke, but he didn’t care. “If anything happened to you, it would kill me. And I’d like to think you love me too much to let that happen.”

Billie stared at him in wonder, her softly parted lips trembling as she blinked back tears. “You love me?” she whispered.

He nearly rolled his eyes. “Of course I do.”

“You never said.”

“I must have done.”

“You didn’t. I would have remembered.”

“I would remember, too,” he said softly, “if you’d ever said it to me.”

“I love you,” she said immediately. “I do. I love you so much. I—”

“Thank God,” Lady Manston exclaimed.

George and Billie both turned. He didn’t know about Billie, but he’d quite forgotten they had an audience.

“Do you know how hard I’ve been working toward this? My word, I thought I was going to have to beat you with a stick.”

“You planned this?” George asked in disbelief.

She turned to Billie. “Sybilla? Really? When have I ever called you Sybilla?”

George looked over at Billie. She couldn’t seem to stop blinking.

“I have waited a long time to call you daughter,” Lady Manston said, tucking a lock of Billie’s hair behind her ear.

Billie frowned, her head moving from side to side as she tried to puzzle it all out. “But I always thought . . . you wanted Edward. Or Andrew.”

Lady Manston shook her head with a smile. “It was always George, my dear. In my mind, at least.” She looked over at her son with a considerably more focused expression. “You have asked her to marry you, I hope.”

“I might have demanded it,” he admitted.

“Even better.”

George suddenly straightened, glancing about the room. “What happened to Lord Arbuthnot?”

“He excused himself when the two of you started declaring your love,” his mother said.

Well, George thought. Maybe the old man had more discretion than he’d thought.

“Why was he here, anyway?” Lady Manston asked.