First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(55)

“Are you all right?” Nicholas asked, and she felt him start to twist in her arms.

“I’m fine, I—” She stopped, realizing that she was hugging him. Her face was pressed into his strong back, cradled in a curve she hadn’t even known was there.

“I’m fine,” she said again, reluctantly loosening her grip. He finished turning, and they were face-to-face. How were his eyes so luminously blue, even now when the night air stole the color from the sky?

Was it just because she knew what he looked like? She’d grown up around the Rokesbys; they all possessed those marvelous azure eyes.

But this felt different. She felt different.

“Are you sure?” he asked. And she realized his hand had covered hers. It felt …

Intimate.

She looked down at their hands, then back up at his face. She had known him forever, but suddenly the whole world was strange and new. He was holding her hand, and she was suddenly full of emotion and confusion and something she couldn’t quite define.

“Georgie?” he said softly. “Are you all right?”

She smoothed out her breathing, and said, “Yes.”

Then the moment was over.

But something inside her had changed.

IT TURNED OUT that The Brazen Bull’s private dining room was private only insofar as it was separated from the main dining room by a wall with a doorway in it.

But just a doorway. If a door had once resided there, it was long gone, and while the inn’s other patrons respected the boundary with their bodies, the same could not be said for their words and conversation, which poured loud and bawdy through the air.

It made conversation a challenge, and Nicholas almost wished they’d pressed for their meal to be had up in the room with the maids, but then he remembered that the maids had the cats, and at least one of those cats was probably howling, and frankly, he wanted nothing to do with it.

Uncharitable of him, perhaps, but it was the truth. Even the raucous singing wafting in through the doorway wasn’t bothering him. Not that it normally would, but Georgiana was a lady and if he was hearing correctly, someone was extolling—in rhyming couplets, no less—the tongue-related talents of an unnamed, yet highly industrious, female.

He should get up and say something. But he was damned hungry, and the beef stew was surprisingly good.

Oh my sweet Martine, something, something quite unclean.

Nicholas grinned in spite of himself. Martine. She was probably French.

And hopefully imaginary, poor woman, if the lyrics were anything to go by.

He stole a glance at Georgie, hoping she wasn’t too bothered by the coarse language. She had her back to the doorway, so at least she couldn’t see the men dancing along in their clumsy jigs.

Georgie’s brow was fixed into a frown. Nothing distressing, just that faraway look people got when their mind was somewhere else.

Nicholas cleared his throat.

She seemed not to hear him.

Nicholas reached forward and waved his hand in front of her eyes. “Georgiana,” he said, his voice a little bit singsong. “Georgiana Bridgerton.”

Rokesby, he realized with a start. Georgiana Rokesby.

He didn’t think she noticed his mistake; instead, she seemed to be embarrassed that he’d caught her woolgathering.

She blushed. Blushed! And she looked … beautiful.

“Pardon,” she murmured, looking down. “I was thinking on a dozen different things. This noise makes it hard to concentrate.”

“Yes,” he said, but what he was really thinking was that looking at her made it hard to concentrate . She was pretty, of course, she’d always been pretty with her strawberry blond hair and intelligent blue eyes. She was his wife now, he thought, and when he looked at her, it felt different.

And strangely, he wasn’t so sure it was only because they were married. He had the oddest feeling that even if they had not stood before the priest that morning and said their vows, he would see something new every time his gaze touched her face.

She had become a discovery, and he had always had an endlessly curious mind.

She took a sip of her wine, then dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. Her eyes flicked over her shoulder at a particularly loud burst of laughter from the men in the other room.

“Are coaching inns always so noisy?” she asked.

“Not always,” he replied. “But I find this quite soothing after the cat.”

She let out a little snort of laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was not well done of me.”

“Who do you fear offending? The cat?”

“He tried his best,” she said.

“He is a demon.”

“Don’t say that! He just doesn’t like to travel.”

“Neither do I,” Nicholas said. “He’s ruined it for me.”

She gave him a look, lips pressed together and eyes both narrowed and thoroughly amused. “He will grow on you,” she said primly.

“If I don’t kill him first.”

“Nicholas!”

“Don’t worry,” he said with purposeful blitheness. “It’s not me you need to fear. The maids will surely crack first.”

“Cat-Head is a very brave kitty.”

At this he could only raise his brows.