First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(17)

“They are delightfully perfect little terrors,” Violet said.

While that conversation spiraled into something both adorable and nauseating, Georgiana turned back to Nicholas. For once he wasn’t staring at her, or pretending not to be staring at her. But he did look, well … odd.

“Are you all right?” she asked. Because maybe this wasn’t about her. Maybe he was ill.

He winced. Or not a wince, because he didn’t actually make a sound. But he did one of those things where the corners of his mouth twitched to the side without actually forming a smile. “I’m fine,” he said. “It was a long journey.”

“Of course.”

She said it politely, but she knew he was lying. Not about being tired. That was clearly the truth. But whatever it was that had him acting so strangely, it wasn’t a lack of sleep.

Frankly, she was starting to find this entire dinner tedious. If she could slap a happy expression on her face and keep up her end of the conversation, why couldn’t he? The only thing that had changed since the last time they’d seen each other was her social ruin.

Surely he did not condemn her for that?

Not Nicholas.

IT WAS AS if the entire world had been set to a ten-degree slant, and he was the only person to notice.

At first glance, everything seemed normal. Everything was normal. Nicholas knew that.

But it didn’t feel right.

Seated around the table were the people Nicholas knew best in the world, the people with whom he had always felt the most at ease. His parents, his older brother George and his wife Billie, Edmund and Violet, Lord and Lady Bridgerton, even Georgiana.

And yet he could not tamp down the sensation that everything was wrong. Or if not wrong, then at least a little bit not right.

A little bit not right.

Coming from a man of science, it was the most ridiculous statement imaginable.

But there it was. Everything was off. And he did not know how to fix it.

All around him the Rokesbys and Bridgertons were acting with complete normality. Georgiana was seated to his left, which was perfectly normal; he couldn’t begin to count the number of times he’d sat next to Georgiana Bridgerton at a dining table. But every time he looked at her— Which was to say far more often than he normally looked at her.

Which was also to say that every glance was abnormally quick because he was painfully aware that he was looking at her far too often.

Which was to say bloody hell, he felt awkward.

“Nicholas?”

He couldn’t stop thinking that—

“Nicholas?”

He blinked. Georgie was talking to him. “Sorry,” he grunted.

“Are you sure you’re feeling well?” she asked. “You look—”

Strange?

Mad?

Strangely mad?

“Have you slept?” she asked.

Madly strange it was, then.

“You must be terribly tired,” she said, and he could not help but wonder what was in his eyes to make her say that, since he had not managed to respond to either of her queries.

She cocked her head to the side, but he noticed that her eyes took on a different expression. She was no longer looking at him in that oddly penetrative manner, thank God.

“How long does it take to travel to Kent from Edinburgh?” she asked.

“It depends on how you do it,” he told her, grateful for a fact-based question. “Ten days this time, but I took the mail coach from Edinburgh to London.”

“That sounds uncomfortable.”

“It is.”

It was. But not as uncomfortable as he was right now, conversing with the lady he had a feeling he was going to end up marrying, despite his very great number of reservations.

“I was surprised to hear you would be joining us this evening,” she said. “Actually, I am surprised you are here at all. Weren’t you meant to come down next month?”

“Yes, but”—Nicholas felt his cheeks grow warm—“Father had some business to attend to.”

She stared at him with an open, curious expression.

“That he needed me for,” he added.

“Of course,” she murmured. But she didn’t look the least bit put off by his words. If she was blushing, it was with such delicacy that he could not detect it in the candlelight.

It occurred to Nicholas that he’d forgotten to ask his father one very crucial question: Had anyone told Georgiana that he’d been summoned from Scotland to marry her?

“I hope whatever he called you down for was worth it,” she said breezily. “If I were studying something as interesting as medicine I wouldn’t wish to be disrupted for an annoying family triviality.”

No, then. She didn’t know.

“What do you like best about it?” Georgie asked, dipping her spoon into her much-discussed soup. “Studying medicine, I mean. I think it sounds fascinating.”

“It is.” He thought for a moment about how to answer her question. “There is always something new. It is never the same thing.”

Her eyes lit with interest. “I watched Anthony get a wound stitched last month. It was splendidly gruesome.”

“Is it healing well? No infection?”

“I believe so,” she replied. “I saw him before dinner and he seemed perfectly healthy to me. Violet would surely have said something if there had been a complication.”