First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4) - Julia Quinn Page 0,17
He must have been; she could not imagine that his parents would have not told him. And Lord and Lady Manston had to know; she couldn’t imagine that her parents wouldn’t have told them.
So he knew. He had to. And he was judging her.
Was this what her life had come to? Being judged by Nicholas Rokesby?
Goddamn this made her angry.
“Georgie, are you all right?”
She looked up. Violet was staring at her from across the table with a vaguely alarmed expression.
“I’m fine,” Georgie said in a clipped voice. “Splendid.”
“Well, we know that’s not true,” Edmund said.
Violet elbowed him. Hard.
“What?” Edmund grunted. “She’s my sister.”
“Which means you should be more careful of her feelings,” Violet hissed.
“I’m fine,” Georgie ground out.
“Splendid,” Lord Bridgerton said, having obviously missed the first half of the conversation. He turned to his wife. “The soup is delicious, darling.”
“Isn’t it?” Lady Bridgerton gushed. “Cook tells me it’s a new recipe.”
“It’s the toasted cheese,” Edmund said, still chewing. “It makes the soup taste better.”
“Whatever you do, don’t say that to Cook,” his mother replied. “And the toasted cheese was Georgie’s idea.”
“Well done,” Edmund said with a wink.
“If you must know, I wanted it in the nursery with your children,” she said to him.
“And who could blame you, delightful little terrors that they are.”
“Stop,” Violet said. “They’re perfect.”
“She forgets so quickly,” Edmund murmured.
“They take after you,” Lord Bridgerton said to his son. “It’s no more than you deserve.”
“To have a child just like me? I know, you’ve been saying as much for years.”
“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