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“She did help me pick out a lovely gown for this evening,” she blurted out.
“My mother?”
Billie nodded, then summoned a mischievous smile. “Although I did bring a pair of my breeches to town just in case I needed to shock her.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “Did you really?”
“No,” she admitted, her heart suddenly lighter now that he’d laughed, “but just the fact that I pondered it means something, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.” He looked down at her, his eyes so blue in the morning light, and his humor was replaced by something more serious. “Please allow me to apologize for my mother. I don’t know what’s come over her.”
“I think perhaps she feels” – Billie frowned for a moment, choosing the best word – “guilty.”
“Guilty?” George’s face betrayed his surprise. “Whatever for?”
“That neither of your brothers ever offered for me.” Another thing she probably should not have said. But as it happened, Billie did think that Lady Manston felt this way.
And when George’s expression slid from curiosity to something that might have been jealousy… well, Billie could not help but feel a little pleased.
“So I think she’s trying to make it up to me,” she said gamely. “It’s not as if I was waiting for one of them to ask me, but I think she thinks I was, so now she wants to introduce me —”
“Enough,” George practically barked.
“I beg your pardon?”
He cleared his throat. “Enough,” he said in a much more evenly tempered voice. “It’s ridiculous.”
“That your mother feels this way?”
“That she thinks introducing you to a pack of useless fops is a sensible idea.”
Billie took a moment to enjoy this statement, then said, “She means well.”
George scoffed audibly at this.
“She does,” Billie insisted, unable to suppress a smile. “She just wants what she thinks is best for me.”
“What she thinks.”
“Well, yes. There’s no convincing her otherwise. It’s a Rokesby trait, I’m afraid.”
“You may have just insulted me.”
“No,” she said, maintaining an impressively straight face.
“I’ll let it pass.”
“Very kind of you, sir.”
He rolled his eyes at her impertinence, and once again, Billie felt more at ease. Perhaps this wasn’t how the more refined ladies flirted, but it was all she knew how to do.
And it seemed to be working. Of that she was certain.
Maybe she did have a touch of feminine intuition after all.
Chapter 21
Later that night
At the Wintour Ball
Ninety minutes in, and still he had not seen Tallywhite.
George tugged at his cravat, which he was certain his valet had tied far more tightly than usual. There was nothing out of the ordinary about Lady Wintour’s Spring Soirée; in fact, he’d have gone so far as to say that it was so ordinary as to be dull, but he could not shake the odd, prickly sensation that kept crawling up his neck. Everywhere he turned, it felt like someone was looking at him strangely, watching him with far more curiosity than his appearance should warrant.
Clearly, it was all in his imagination, which led to a most salient point – that clearly, he was not cut out for this sort of thing.
He’d timed his arrival carefully. Too early, and he would draw unwanted attention. Like most single men of his age, he usually spent a few hours at his club before fulfilling his social obligations. If he showed up at the ball on the dot of eight, it would look strange. (And he would have to spend the next two hours making conversation with his nearly deaf great-aunt, who was as legendary for her punctuality as she was for her fragrant breath.)
But he didn’t want to follow his usual schedule, either, which involved arriving well after the party was underway. It would be too difficult to spot Tallywhite in such a crush, or worse, he could miss him altogether.
So after careful consideration, he stepped into the Wintour ballroom approximately one hour after the designated starting time. It was still unfashionably early, but there were enough people milling about for George to remain unobtrusive.
Not for the first time, he wondered if perhaps he was overthinking this whole thing. It seemed an awful lot of mental preparation for the task of uttering a line from a nursery rhyme.
A quick check of the time told him that it was nearly ten, which meant that if Billie had not already arrived, she would do so soon. His mother had been aiming for nine-thirty, but he’d heard numerous grumblings about the lengthy line of carriages queued up outside Wintour House. Billie and his mother were almost certainly stuck in the Manston coach and four, waiting for their turn to alight.
He didn’t have much time if he wanted to get this taken care of before they arrived.
His expression carefully bored, he continued to move about the room, murmuring the appropriate greetings as he brushed past acquaintances. A footman was circulating with glasses of punch, so he took one, barely moistening his lips as he peered out at the ballroom over the rim of the glass. He did not see Tallywhite, but he did see – damn it, was that Lord Arbuthnot?
Why the hell was he asking George to deliver a message when he could bloody well have done it himself?
But maybe there were reasons why Arbuthnot could not be seen with Tallywhite. Maybe there was someone else here, someone who could not be permitted to know that the two men were working together. Or maybe Tallywhite was the one in the dark. Maybe he didn’t know that Arbuthnot was the one with the message.