“She’s a widow?”

“Recently so,” Mr. Coventry confirmed. “Just out of blacks.”

Billie clenched her teeth, trying to keep her expression pleasant. The beautiful widow was very young, probably not more than five years Billie’s senior. She was exquisitely dressed in what Billie now knew was the latest style, and her complexion was that perfect alabaster Billie could never achieve without arsenic cream.

If the sun had ever touched Lady Weatherby’s perfect cheeks, Billie would eat her hat.

“She’ll need to remarry,” Mr. Coventry said. “Didn’t give old Weatherby an heir, so she’s living off the largesse of the new Lord Weatherby. Or more to the point…”

Again, the cotillion pulled them apart, and Billie nearly screamed with frustration. Why did people think it was a good idea to conduct important conversations while dancing? Did no one care about the timely impartation of information?

She stepped forward, back into Mr. Coventry’s conversational sphere, and said, “More to the point…?”

He smiled knowingly. “She must rely on the good graces of the new Lord Weatherby’s wife.”

“I am sure she will enjoy Lord Kennard’s company,” Billie said diplomatically. It wasn’t going to fool Mr. Coventry; he knew perfectly well that Billie was jealous to the teeth. But she had to at least try to put on a show of indifference.

“I shouldn’t worry,” Mr. Coventry said.

“Worry?”

Once again, Billie had to wait for her answer. She stepped daintily around another lady, all the while cursing the cotillion. Wasn’t there a new dance on the Continent that kept a lady and gentleman together for the entire song? It was being decried as scandalous, but honestly, could no one else see how very sensible it was?

“Kennard was not pleased to relinquish you to my care,” Mr. Coventry said when he could. “If he has asked Lady Weatherby to dance, it is nothing more than tit for tat.”

But that was not George’s way. His humor might be sly, but his behavior never was. He would not ask one lady to dance for no purpose other than to make another jealous. He might have felt some pique, he might be furious with Billie for embarrassing him in front of his friends, but if he was dancing with Lady Weatherby, it was because he wanted to.

Billie felt suddenly sick. She shouldn’t have tried to manipulate the situation earlier by saucily saying that she ought to dance with Mr. Coventry. But she had been so frustrated. The evening had all been going so well. When she had first seen George, resplendent in his evening clothes, she’d almost stopped breathing. She’d tried to tell herself that he was the same man she knew in Kent, wearing the same coat and shoes, but here in London, among the people who ran the country and quite possibly the world, he looked different.

He belonged.

There was an air of gravity around him, of quiet confidence and utter assurance of his place. He had this entire life that she knew nothing about, one with parties and balls and meetings at White’s. Eventually he would take his seat in parliament, and she would still be the reckless Billie Bridgerton. Except that in a few years reckless would give way to eccentric. And after that it was all downhill to crazy.

No, she thought firmly. That was not what was going to happen. George liked her. He might even love her a little. She’d seen it in his eyes, and she’d felt it in his kiss. Lady Weatherby could never —

Billie’s eyes widened. Where was Lady Weatherby?

And more to the point, where was George?

Five hours later George finally tiptoed through the front door of Manston House, tired, frustrated, and above all, ready to throttle Lord Arbuthnot.

When the general had asked him to deliver a message, George had thought – How simple this will be. He was already planning to attend the Wintour Ball, and Robert Tallywhite was precisely the sort of person with whom he might have an idle conversation. All in all, it would be ten minutes from his day, and he would be able to lay his head down that night knowing that he had done something for King and Country.

He had not anticipated that his evening would involve following Sally Weatherby to The Swan With No Neck, a somewhat unsavory pub halfway across town. It was there that he had finally found Robert Tallywhite, who appeared to be amusing himself by tossing darts at a tricorn hat pinned rather gruesomely to a wall.

Blindfolded.

George had delivered his message, the contents of which had not seemed to surprise Tallywhite in the least, but when he had attempted to take his leave, he had been compelled to stay for a pint of ale. And by compelled he actually meant compelled, as in shoved into a chair by two exceedingly large men, one of whom sported the most vivid black eye George had ever seen.

Such a bruise indicated a remarkable tolerance for pain, and George feared that this might correspond with a remarkable ability to deliver pain. So when old Violet Eye told him to sit down and drink up, George did as he was told.

He then spent the next two hours having a breathtakingly convoluted and inane conversation with Tallywhite and his henchmen. (Sally had disappeared immediately upon delivering him to the unfortunate neckless Swan.) They discussed the weather and the rules of cricket and relative merits of Trinity College versus Trinity Hall at Cambridge. They had then moved on to the health benefits of salt water, the difficulty of obtaining proper ice in summer, and whether the high cost of pineapples would affect the popularity of oranges and lemons.