G
eorge forced his face into an impassive mask. His mother meant well; she always did. But she was a woman. She could never understand what it meant to fight for one’s king and country. She could never understand what it meant not to do so.
“It doesn’t matter what I wanted,” he said gruffly. He took a large gulp of his brandy. Then he took another. “I was needed here.”
“For which I am grateful,” his mother declared. She turned back to the other ladies with a determined smile, but her eyes were overbright. “I don’t need all of my sons going off to war. God willing, this nonsense will be over before Nicholas is of an age to take a commission.”
At first no one spoke. Lady Manston’s voice had been just a little too loud, her words just a little too shrill. It was one of those awkward moments that no one quite knew how to break. George finally took a small sip of his drink and said in a low voice, “There will always be nonsense among men.”
That seemed to let some of the tension out of the air, and sure enough, Billie looked up at him with a defiant tilt to her chin. “Women would do a far better job if we were allowed to govern.”
He returned her volley with a bland smile. She was trying to goad him. He refused to indulge her.
Billie’s father, however, was hooked quite neatly on her bait. “I’m certain you would,” he said, with enough placation in his voice for everyone to know he did not mean it.
“We would,” Billie insisted. “Certainly there would be less war.”
“I would have to agree with her there,” Andrew said, lifting his glass in her direction.
“It’s a moot point,” Lord Manston said. “If God had wanted women to govern and fight, he would have made them strong enough to wield swords and muskets.”
“I can shoot,” Billie said.
Lord Manston looked at her and blinked. “Yes,” he said, almost as if he were contemplating an odd scientific curiosity, “you probably can.”
“Billie brought down a stag last winter,” Lord Bridgerton said, shrugging as if this were a normal occurrence.
“Did you?” Andrew said admiringly. “Well done.”
Billie smiled. “It was delicious.”
“I can’t believe you allow her to hunt,” Lord Manston said to Lord Bridgerton.
“Do you really think I could stop her?”
“No one can stop Billie,” George muttered. He turned abruptly and crossed the room to get another drink.
There was a long silence. An uncomfortable silence. George decided that this time he didn’t care.
“How is Nicholas?” Lady Bridgerton asked. George smiled into his glass. She’d always known how to deflect a conversation from delicate topics. Sure enough, her perfect social smile was evident in her voice as she added, “Better behaved than Edmund and Hugo, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure he isn’t,” Lady Manston returned with a laugh.
“Nicholas wouldn’t —” Georgiana started to say.
But Billie’s voice came out on top. “It’s difficult to imagine anyone getting sent down more often than Andrew.”
Andrew held up a hand. “I hold the record.”
Georgiana’s eyes grew wide. “Among Rokesbys?”
“Among everyone.”
“That cannot be true,” Billie scoffed.
“I assure you, it is. There’s a reason I left early, you know. I reckon if I showed up for a visit, they would not let me back through the gate.”
Billie gratefully accepted the glass of wine the footman finally brought over and then lifted it toward Andrew in a skeptical salute. “That only shows that the headmaster should be applauded for his great good sense.”
“Andrew, stop your exaggerations,” Lady Manston said. She rolled her eyes as she turned back to Lady Bridgerton. “He did get sent down from Eton more than once, but I assure you, he has not been banished.”
“Not for want of trying,” Billie quipped.
George let out a long breath and turned back to the window, peering out into the inky night. Perhaps he was an insufferable prig – an insufferable prig who, as it happened, had never been sent down from Eton or Cambridge – but he really didn’t feel like listening to Andrew and Billie’s endless banter.
It never changed. Billie would be deliciously clever, and then Andrew would play the rogue, and then Billie would say something utterly deflating, and then Andrew would laugh and twinkle, and then everyone would laugh and twinkle, and it was always, always the same damned thing.
He was just so bored of it all.
George glanced briefly at Georgiana, sitting morosely in what was, in his opinion, the least comfortable chair in the house. How was it possible that no one noticed she’d been left out of the conversation? Billie and Andrew were lighting up the room with their wit and vivacity, and poor Georgiana couldn’t get a word in. Not that she appeared to be trying, but at fourteen, how could she hope to compete?