George’s entire world lurched. “God, no,” he said. Instantly.

“I know,” she agreed. With equal alacrity. “I mean, you. And me. It’s laughable.”

“Absurd.”

“Anyone who knows us…”

“Will know we’d never…”

“And yet…” This time Billie’s words did not merely trail off, they sank into a desperate whisper.

He gave her an impatient look. “What?”

“If Andrew doesn’t come along as expected… and you’re missed… and I’m missed…” She looked up at him, her eyes huge and horrified in her face. “Eventually someone will realize that we’ve both been missed.”

“Your point?” he snapped.

She turned to face him directly. “Just that why wouldn’t someone assume…?”

“Because they have a brain in their head,” he shot back. “No one would ever think I would be with you on purpose.”

She lurched back. “Oh, well, thank you.”

“Are you saying you wish someone did?” he retorted.

“No!”

He rolled his eyes. Women. And yet, this was Billie. The least womanly woman of his acquaintance.

She let out a long, steadying breath. “Regardless of what you think of me, George…”

How did she make his name sound like an insult?

“… I do have my reputation to consider. And while my family knows me well enough, and” – her voice took on a reluctant edge here – “I suppose trusts you well enough to know that our concurrent disappearances signify nothing untoward…”

Her words trailed off, and she chewed on her lip, looking uncomfortable, and, if one was honest, vaguely ill.

“The rest of the world might not be as kind,” he finished for her.

She looked at him for a moment, then said, “Quite.”

“If we’re not found until tomorrow morning…” George said, mostly to himself.

Billie finished the horrifying sentence. “You’d have to marry me.”

Chapter 3

“W
hat are you doing?” Billie nearly shrieked. George had sprung to his feet with speed that was highly reckless, and now he was peering over the edge of the building with a calculating, furrowed brow.

Honestly, it looked as if he was performing complicated mathematical equations.

“Getting off the damned roof,” he grunted.

“You’ll kill yourself.”

“I might,” he agreed grimly.

“Well, don’t I feel special,” Billie retorted.

He turned, staring down at her with heavy-lidded superiority. “Are you saying you want to marry me?”

She shuddered. “Never.” But at the same time, a lady didn’t want to think that a man would prefer to hurl himself from a roof just to avoid the possibility.

“In that, madam,” George said, “we are agreed.”

And it stung. Oh, how it stung. Ah, irony. She didn’t care if George Rokesby didn’t want to marry her. She didn’t even like him most of the time. And she knew that when he did deign to choose a bride, the oh-so grateful lady wasn’t going to be anything like her.

But still, it stung.

The future Lady Kennard would be delicate, feminine. She would have been trained to run a grand house, not a working estate. She would dress in the latest of fashions, her hair would be powdered and intricately styled, and even if she possessed a backbone of steel, she would hide it beneath an aura of genteel helplessness.

Men like George loved to think themselves manly and strong.

She watched him as he planted his hands on his hips. Very well, he was manly and strong. But he was like the rest of them; he’d want a woman who flirted over a fan. God forbid he married someone capable.

“This is a disaster,” he spat.

Billie only somewhat resisted the urge to snarl. “You’re just realizing this now?”

His response was an equally immature scowl.

“Why couldn’t you be nice?” Billie blurted out.

“Nice?” he echoed.

Oh, God, why had she said that? Now she was going to have to explain. “Like the rest of your family,” she clarified.

“Nice,” he said again. He shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe her gall. “Nice.”

“I’m nice,” she said. Then she regretted that, because she wasn’t nice. At least not all the time, and she had a feeling she wasn’t being particularly nice right now. But surely she could be excused, because this was George Rokesby, and she couldn’t help herself.

And neither, it seemed, could he.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he said, in a voice that was positively bathed with a lack of niceness, “that I am nice to everyone but you?”

It hurt. It shouldn’t have, because they’d never liked each other, and damn it, it shouldn’t have hurt because she didn’t want it to.

But she would never let it show.

“I think you were trying to insult me,” she said, picking disdainfully through her words.

He stared at her, waiting for further comment.

She shrugged.

“But…?” he prodded.