First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(23)

“Oh, please. My mother was convinced I would die if she let me play outside.”

“That seems a little extreme.”

“Well, yes, I agree, but that’s what she thought, and there was hardly a way to convince her otherwise. I mean, I suppose I could go outside and not die, but that doesn’t prove much.” She shaded her eyes and frowned. “Not so close to the water, Benedict!”

Benedict pouted, but he stepped back.

“Speaking of going outside and not dying,” Nicholas murmured.

“He can swim,” Georgie said, “but I’m not sure how well.”

Nicholas thought back to his childhood, back to all the times he and Edmund had swum in this lake. Georgie had never joined them. Not once. Come to think of it, he couldn’t recall ever seeing her out of doors. Not in childhood, at least. She was always inside, propped up on a sofa with a book, or sitting on the floor setting up a tableau with her dolls.

“How do you feel now?” he asked. She did not look unhealthy. Her color was fine, and she did not seem to lack energy.

She shrugged. “I’ve mostly grown out of it.”

“Were you really that ill?” Nicholas asked. Because in all honesty he couldn’t recall the details. It seemed odd now, given his choice of profession, but he remembered almost nothing about Georgie’s being sick as a child, except that she was. “You used to have trouble breathing, right?”

She nodded. “But not all the time. Most of the time I was fine. But sometimes …” She turned, looking at him more squarely. “Have you ever had difficulty catching your breath?”

“Of course.”

“Imagine that, except that it doesn’t get better. That’s what would happen to me.”

“And now?”

“I can’t remember the last time it happened. Several years, at least.”

“Did you ever see a doctor about it?”

She gave him a look. “What sort of question is that? You know my mother. I saw so many doctors we could have opened up a medical school here in Kent.”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “That would have made my studies considerably more convenient.”

“Indeed,” she said with a laugh. “I’m surprised your parents let you go off to Edinburgh. It’s so far away.”

“It’s not up to them to let me or not let me,” he replied, bristling at the remark. “And at any rate, I’m sure it seemed positively local after Edward off and went missing in the Colonies.”

Nicholas had been at Eton when his brother had served in the army, first as a lieutenant and then as a captain in the 52nd Regiment. He had been missing and presumed dead for many months before finally returning home.

“True,” Georgie said. “I suppose that is a convenience of having older siblings. They do ease the way.”

He frowned.

“Oh, not for me,” she said. “Stop breathing just once in front of your parents and it doesn’t matter if your sister broke both her arms and accidentally set someone on fire. My mother didn’t take her eyes off me for three years straight.”

Nicholas leaned in. He’d heard the story many times but never with satisfactory detail. “Did Billie really set someone on fire?”

Georgie laughed with delight. “Oh, Nicholas, I adore that that’s what you want to know more about.”

“It might be the only thing that could have drawn my attention away from the part about your not breathing.”

“Well, you are a doctor. One would hope you’d find the part about not breathing interesting.”

“Almost a doctor,” he corrected. “I won’t be finished for another year. Fourteen months, actually.”

Georgie acknowledged this with a nod, then said, “I’m told she didn’t do it on purpose, but witnesses are few.”

“Suspicious indeed.”

She chuckled at that. “Actually, I believe her account. It happened just before she was presented to the queen. Have you seen the sort of dresses ladies must wear to be presented? Hoops out to here.” She stretched her arm out as far as it went. “Farther, actually. You can’t reach the end of your skirts. You can’t walk through doorways without turning sideways, and even then it’s a close thing. It’s ludicrous.”

“What did she do, knock over a candelabra?”

Georgie nodded. “But the girl she set on fire was also wearing court dress. The candle fell onto the other girl’s hoop, which was so far from her body that she did not immediately realize she’d been set aflame.”

“Dear God.”

“Oh, how I wish I’d seen it.”

“Rather bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”

“You have no idea,” she muttered.

While Nicholas was pondering what that might mean, she flopped onto her back and said, “Keep an eye on them, would you?”

“Are you planning to take a nap?” he asked, somewhat amused.

“No,” she said contentedly. “Just enjoying the sun on my face. Don’t tell my mother. She fears freckles. Says I’m more likely to get them because of my hair.”

Her hair did mark her as a bit of a changeling in the Bridgerton clan. Everyone else he’d met—cousins included—had brown hair, generally somewhere between chestnut and dark. But Georgie was most definitely a redhead. Not that bright orange that stuck out like a beacon, but rather something soft and delicate. People called it strawberry blond, but Nicholas had never liked that term. It didn’t seem at all accurate, and as he stole a glance at her basking in the sun, he marveled at how the light seemed to reflect off each individual strand.