Page 3

The creaks paused for a moment. “It doesn’t really matter if it holds or not, does it?”
Billie swallowed. Another person might not be able to translate his words, but she’d known this man since the dawn of her memory, and if there was one fundamental truth to George Rokesby, it was that he was a gentleman. And he would never leave a lady in distress, no matter how fragile a ladder’s appearance.
She was in trouble, ergo he had no choice. He had to help, no matter how aggravating he found her.
And he did. Oh, she knew he did. He had never made any effort to disguise it. Although to be fair, neither had she.
His head popped into view, and his Rokesby-blue eyes narrowed. All the Rokesbys had blue eyes. Every last one of them.
“You’re wearing breeches,” George said with a heavy sigh. “Of course you’re wearing breeches.”
“I would hardly have attempted the tree in a dress.”
“No,” he said dryly, “you’re much too sensible for that.”
Billie decided to let this one pass. “It scratched me,” she said, jerking her head toward the cat.
“Did it?”
“We fell.”
George looked up. “That’s quite a distance.”
Billie followed his gaze. The nearest branch was five feet up, and she had not been on the nearest branch. “I hurt my ankle,” she admitted.
“I reckoned as much.”
She looked over at him in question.
“You would have just jumped to the ground, otherwise.”
Her mouth twisted as she peered past him to the packed dirt that surrounded the ruins of the farmhouse. At one point the building must have belonged to a prosperous farmer because it was two full stories high. “No,” she said, assessing the distance. “It’s too far for that.”
“Even for you?”
“I’m not an idiot, George.”
He did not agree with her nearly as fast as he should have done. Which was to say, not at all.
“Very well,” was what he did say. “Let’s get you down.”
She breathed in. Then out. Then said, “Thank you.”
He looked over at her with a strange expression. Disbelief, maybe, that she’d uttered the words thank and you in the same sentence?
“It’s going to be dark soon,” she said, her nose crinkling as she looked up at the sky. “It would have been awful to have been stuck —” She cleared her throat. “Thank you.”
He acknowledged this with the briefest of nods. “Can you manage the ladder?”
“I think so.” It would hurt dreadfully, but she could do it. “Yes.”
“I could carry you.”
“On the ladder?”
“On my back.”
“I’m not getting on your back.”
“It’s not where I’d want you,” he muttered.
She looked up sharply.
“Right, well,” he continued, climbing another two rungs up. The edge of the roof was now even with his hips. “Can you stand?”
She stared at him dumbly.
“I would like to see how much weight you can put on that ankle,” he explained.
“Oh,” she mumbled. “Of course.”
She probably shouldn’t have attempted it. The slant of the roof was such that she’d need both her feet for balance, and her right was near to useless by this point. But she tried, because she hated showing weakness in front of this man, or maybe she tried just because it wasn’t in her nature not to try – anything – or maybe she just didn’t think the matter through in the first place, but she stood, and she stumbled, and she sat right back down.
But not before a choked cry of pain tore across her lips.
George was off the ladder and on the roof in a second. “You little fool,” he muttered, but there was affection in his voice, or at least as much affection as he ever showed. “May I see it?”
Grudgingly, she poked her foot in his direction. She’d already removed her shoe.
He touched it clinically, cupping her heel in one hand as he tested her range of motion with the other. “Does it hurt here?” he asked, pressing lightly on the outside of her ankle.
Billie let out a hiss of pain before she could stop herself and nodded.
He moved to another spot. “Here?”
She nodded again. “But not quite as much.”
“What about —”
A bolt of pain shot through her foot, so intense it was positively electric. Without even thinking, she yanked it back from his hands.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said with a frown. “But I don’t think it’s broken.”
“Of course it’s not broken,” she practically snapped. Which was a ridiculous thing to say because there was no of course about it. But George Rokesby always brought out the worst in her, and it didn’t help that her foot hurt, damn it all.
“A sprain,” George said, ignoring her little outburst.
“I know.” Petulantly. Again. She hated herself right now.
He smiled blandly. “Of course you do.”
She wanted to kill him.
“I’ll go first,” George announced. “That way if you stumble I’ll be able to stop you from falling.”
Billie nodded. It was a good plan, the only plan, really, and she’d be stupid to argue just because he was the one who’d come up with it. Even if that had been her initial impulse.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded again. “You’re not concerned that I’ll knock you off the ladder?”