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“Getting a bit of sun?” he inquired.
“Yes, I rather thought I could use a few more freckles,” she snapped.
He did not immediately respond. Instead he removed his tricorn hat, revealing an unpowdered head of thick, tawny brown hair, and regarded her with a steady, assessing gaze. Finally, after carefully setting his chapeau down on what had once been a stone wall, he looked back up and said, “I cannot say that I’m not enjoying this. Just a little bit.”
Any number of retorts danced on Billie’s tongue, but she reminded herself that George Rokesby was the only human being in sight, and if she wished to touch her feet to the ground before May Day she was going to have to be nice to him.
Until he rescued her, at least.
“How’d you come to be up there, anyway?” he asked.
“Cat.” Said in a voice that might charitably have been described as seething.
“Ah.”
“It was in the tree,” she explained, although heaven knew why. It wasn’t as if he’d requested further explanation.
“I see.”
Did he? She rather thought he didn’t.
“It was crying,” she ground out. “I couldn’t very well ignore it.”
“No, I’m sure you couldn’t,” he said, and even though his voice was perfectly cordial, she was convinced he was laughing at her.
“Some of us,” she pried her teeth apart long enough to say, “are compassionate, considerate individuals.”
He cocked his head. “Kind to small children and animals?”
“Quite.”
His right brow arched in that monstrously aggravating Rokesby manner. “Some of us,” he drawled, “are kind to large children and animals.”
She bit her tongue. First figuratively, and then literally. Be nice, she reminded herself. Even if it kills you…
He smiled blandly. Well, except for that little smirk at the corner.
“Are you bloody well going to help me down?” she finally burst out.
“Such language,” he scolded.
“Learned from your brothers.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “Never could quite convince them you were actually a girl.”
Billie sat on her hands. She actually sat on her hands, she was so sure she would not be able to resist the urge to throw herself off the roof in an attempt to strangle him.
“Never could quite convince myself you were actually human,” George added, rather offhandedly.
Billie’s fingers hardened into claws. Which was really uncomfortable, all things considered. “George,” she said, and she heard a thousand different things in her tone – pleading, pain, resignation, remembrance. They had a history, they two, and no matter their differences, he was a Rokesby and she was a Bridgerton, and when push came to shove, they might as well be family.
Their homes – Crake House for the Rokesbys and Aubrey Hall for the Bridgertons – lay a mere three miles apart in this cozy green corner of Kent. The Bridgertons had been there longer – they had arrived in the early 1500s, when James Bridgerton had been made a viscount and granted land by Henry VIII – but the Rokesbys had outranked them since 1672.
A particularly enterprising Baron Rokesby (so the story went) had performed an essential service to Charles II and been named the first Earl of Manston in gratitude. The details surrounding this elevation of rank had become murky over time, but it was generally accepted that it had involved a stagecoach, a bolt of Turkish silk, and two royal mistresses.
Billie could well believe it. Charm was inherited, was it not? George Rokesby might be precisely the sort of stick-in-the-mud one would expect of the heir to an earldom, but his younger brother Andrew possessed the sort of devilish joie de vivre that would have endeared him to a notorious philanderer like Charles II. The other Rokesby brothers were not quite so roguish (although she supposed that Nicholas, at only fourteen, was still honing his skills), but they easily outstripped George in all contests involving charm and amiability.
George. They’d never liked each other. But Billie supposed she could not complain. George was the only available Rokesby at the moment. Edward was off in the colonies, wielding a sword or a pistol, or heaven only knew what, and Nicholas was at Eton, probably also wielding a sword or a pistol (although hopefully to considerably less effect). Andrew was here in Kent for the next few weeks, but he’d fractured his arm doing some such derring-do in the navy. He could hardly have been helpful.
No, it would have to be George, and she was going to have to be civil.
She smiled down at him. Well, she stretched her lips.
He sighed. Just a little. “I’ll see if there’s a ladder around back.”
“Thank you,” she said primly, but she didn’t think he heard her. He’d always had a fast, long-legged stride, and he’d disappeared around the corner before she could be properly polite.
A minute or so later he came back into view, his arm slung over a ladder that looked like it had last seen use during the Glorious Revolution. “What actually happened?” he called up, setting it into place. “It’s not like you to get stuck.”
It was as close to a compliment as she’d ever heard from his lips. “The cat was not as grateful for my assistance as one might have expected,” she said, every consonant a haughty ice pick directed at the monstrous little feline.
The ladder thunked into position, and Billie heard George climbing up.
“Is that going to hold?” she asked. The wood looked somewhat splintered and was emitting ominous creaking noises with every step.