“Still quite painful,” she admitted, “but I bound it with some wide ribbon, and that seems to be helping.”

His lips curved, and his eyes took on an azure sparkle of amusement. “Ribbon?”

To her maid’s horror, Billie hiked up her overlong skirt and stuck out her foot, revealing an ankle bound in a length of festive pink ribbon.

“Very stylish,” George commented.

“I could not justify tearing up a bedsheet when this would do just as well.”

“Ever practical.”

“I like to think so,” Billie said, her jaunty voice giving way to a slight frown when it occurred to her that this might not have been a compliment. “Well,” she said, brushing an invisible speck of dust off her arm, “they’re your sheets, at any rate. You should thank me.”

“I’m sure I do.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m mocking you. But only a little.”

Billie felt her chin rise an inch or so. “So long as it’s only a little.”

“I wouldn’t dare otherwise,” he replied. He leaned in, just a bit. “At least not in your presence.”

Billie stole a glance at the maid. She appeared thoroughly scandalized by the exchange.

“In all seriousness, though, Billie,” George said, proving that a sympathetic heart did beat somewhere in his chest, “are you certain you’re well enough to dine?”

She fastened an earring. Again, Mary’s. “I have to eat. I might as well do it in good company.”

He smiled at that. “It has been too long since we have had everyone—well, at least as many as we have tonight—together.”

Billie nodded, feeling wistful. When she was a child, the Rokesbys and Bridgertons had dined together several times each month. With nine children between the two families, suppers—or luncheons, or whatever odd holiday they’d elected to celebrate—could not be anything but loud and boisterous affairs.

But one by one, the boys left for Eton, first George, then Edward, and then Andrew. Billie’s two younger brothers, Edmund and Hugo, were boarding there now, along with the youngest Rokesby, Nicholas. Mary had found love and moved to Sussex, and now the only ones left in regular residence were Billie and her younger sister Georgiana, who at fourteen was perfectly pleasant but no bosom bow for a grown woman of three and twenty.

And George of course, but—eligible unmarried gentleman that he was—he split his time between Kent and London.

“Penny for them,” George said, crossing the room to where Billie sat at the vanity.

She shook her head. “Not worth even that, I’m afraid. It’s all quite maudlin, really.”

“Maudlin? You? I must learn more.”

She gave him a look, then said, “We are so diminished in number now. There used to be so many of us.”

“There still are,” he pointed out.

“I know, but we’re so rarely together. It makes me sad.” She could hardly believe she was speaking so frankly with George, but it had been such an odd, trying day. Perhaps it was making her less guarded.