First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4) - Julia Quinn Page 0,21

behind her hand. “Because I know when I laugh that hard …”

“I’m fine,” he gasped. In fact, he was better than fine. His ribs were sore, and it felt good.

Georgie turned to answer a question her sister had asked her—presumably something about why Nicholas was acting like a loon. He took the moment to catch his breath and also to think about what had just happened.

He’d forgotten, for a moment, why he was here.

He’d forgotten that his father had summoned him home, all but ordered him to marry a girl he’d known all his life and never shown a whit of romantic interest in.

To be fair, she’d never displayed a whit in his direction, either.

But that hadn’t mattered. Not while he was laughing so hard he probably should have taken Georgie’s advice and excused himself. Now all he could think was—this wasn’t bad at all.

Maybe he could marry her. It might not be love, but if this was what life with Georgie would be like, it was a damn sight better than most people had.

She laughed at something Billie had said, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. She was looking at her sister, but she was still enough in profile that he could see the shape of it, the fullness and curve of her lower lip.

What would it be like to kiss her?

He had not kissed many women. He’d usually chosen to study while his contemporaries caroused, and the one man—Edmund—with whom he might have gotten drunk and made foolish decisions had married young. No sowing of wild oats there.

Then he’d started his medical studies, and if ever there was a hard and fast lesson on why a man should keep himself in check, that was it. He’d told Georgie that there was rarely a shortage of illness, and that was true. He’d seen enough syphilis to curdle his brain.

He’d seen how syphilis curdled other men’s brains.

So no, he did not have a wide range of sexual experience.

But he had thought about it.

He’d imagined all the foolish decisions he could have made, the things he might have done if he’d met the right woman. Usually the women in his fantasies were nameless, maybe even faceless, but sometimes they were real. A finely dressed lady he’d passed on the street. The woman serving ale at a public house.

But never, never Georgiana Bridgerton.

Until now.

Chapter 6

Crake House, later that night

By any standard, Nicholas’s first non-platonic thoughts about Georgiana Bridgerton were disconcerting.

Almost to the point of bewilderment.

She was certainly pretty—he’d never have said otherwise if asked—but he’d also never really looked at her beyond her just being … her.

She was Georgiana Bridgerton, and she had blue eyes like her mother and gingery hair like no one else in her family. And that was the extent of what he’d noticed.

Wait. No. Her teeth were straight. He supposed he’d noticed that. She was of average height. He hadn’t really noticed that, but if someone had asked him how tall she was, he could have made a reasonably decent estimation.

But then they had joked about exploding babies and she’d done that little twist with her hand. His gaze had fixed inexplicably on her wrist.

Her wrist.

He had been laughing, and looking at her, and she’d done that thing … A curve, a flip, a sweeping gesture—whatever it was that women did with tiny movements that spoke volumes and seemed to envelop them in a fine mist of Pretty. It was an innocent enough move, clearly executed with no coy forethought, simply done to punctuate her dry humor.

Simple, innocent.

And if his father had not suggested they marry, Nicholas was sure he’d never have looked at the inside of Georgie’s wrist, much less noticed it.

But then he’d moved his gaze from her wrist to her face.

And he’d thought about kissing her.

Georgie.

Georgie.

He couldn’t kiss Georgie. It would be like kissing his sister.

“Sister? No,” he said to the nighttime air. He was sitting by his open bedchamber window, staring up at stars he could not see.

It was a cloudy night. The air was turbulent.

Georgie was not his sister. Of that he was certain. The rest of it, though …

Thinking about exploding babies felt a whole lot safer than thinking about Georgie’s wrist. Or to be more precise, thinking about laughing about the ludicrousness of exploding babies felt safer than thinking about turning Georgie’s wrist upward and pressing his lips to it.

Could he kiss her? He twisted one of his own hands palm up—or rather, fist up; he wasn’t feeling terribly relaxed—and