First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4) - Julia Quinn Page 0,94
enough away to keep him out of earshot because he started to look ill within minutes.
It wasn’t surprising. Today’s lecture topic had something to do with wound care, and the professor had just begun talking about worms.
And maggots.
Georgie wasn’t sure she understood the relevance, but that was the least of her concerns. Jameson’s skin had gone gray and pasty and he was clutching the wall. Surely he would do better outside. “Jameson,” she whispered, trying to get his attention.
He didn’t hear. Or possibly he needed to focus all of his energy on remaining upright.
“Pssst. Jameson!”
Nothing, but he swallowed a few times.
Georgie’s eyes widened. This did not look good.
“Jame—” Forget that. She stood and hurried over. “Jameson, I think you shou—”
“Urg uh blear …”
Oh, God. He was going to—
“… uharff!”
Everything—and Georgie meant everything—that was in Jameson’s stomach came out of his mouth.
She jumped back, but she wasn’t fast enough to avoid it all. It hit her shoes, and probably the hem of her dress, and—Oh dear God he must have eaten fish.
Her own stomach started to turn. Oh no …
“Oh, Mrs. Rokesby,” Jameson groaned. “I don’t think I can …”
Apparently he hadn’t expelled everything the first time around because he heaved again, this time spewing the dregs of his breakfast.
Georgie clamped her hand over her mouth. The smell. Oh, God, the smell was making her sick, too.
“I have to go outside,” he moaned.
“Go!” Georgie clutched at her own roiling belly. She needed him gone. If she could get away from the smell she might be able to keep her own breakfast down. “Please!”
He ran out, just as men poured forth from the lecture theater.
“What’s going on?” more than one demanded.
“Is someone ill?”
“What is—”
Someone slipped in the mess on the floor.
Someone else crashed into her.
They all wanted to be of service, to be the doctor who would save the day.
“Are you ill, ma’am?
“Are you fevered?”
They kept pushing forward, and none of them were Nicholas, and she couldn’t get away from the smell …
She tried not to breathe.
She took a gulp of air.
And another. But it smelled terrible, and she gagged.
And then she tried for another, but it didn’t seem to come.
She gasped.
“Miss, are you—”
“Nicholas,” she wheezed. “Where is—”
She couldn’t breathe. She opened her mouth, and she thought she was pulling in air, but it wasn’t reaching her lungs.
She couldn’t breathe.
She needed air.
Everyone was so close.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t breathe.
NICHOLAS ALMOST ALWAYS sat near the front of the lecture hall. He had a sneaking suspicion that his eyesight was not what it once was—probably from all the close reading he’d had to do these past few years—and he’d found his attention was less likely to wander if he could see the expressions on his professors’ faces as they lectured.
Today he was in the second row, which was why he was among the last to realize that something odd was happening just outside the lecture hall. Most of the students near the exit were gone by the time he turned around, and several more had jumped up from their seats and were hurrying out.
Nicholas shared a glance with the man seated next to him. They both shrugged.
“Do you know what’s happening?” Nicholas asked.
“I think someone fainted in the hall,” another student said.
“What was someone doing in the hall?” yet another asked.
Nicholas shrugged again. The hallway outside the lecture theater was usually vacant while class was in session. Sometimes a tardy student rushed through, hoping to slide into one of the back seats without being noticed, and he supposed that occasionally people waited on the bench for class to get out. That’s what Georgie had done when she’d come a few days earlier, before her maid had insisted on waiting outside.
“Dr. Monro!” came an urgent holler.
The professor, who had been watching the exodus with visible irritation, set down his notes and bounded up the steep steps.
“Should we get up to help?” the man next to him asked.
Nicholas shook his head. “It’s too crowded. We’d only get in the way.”
And then, in the split second after he stopped speaking and before anyone else began, a panicked yell rang through the building.
“SHE’S NOT BREATHING!”
She?
Nicholas rose to his feet. Slowly at first, as his brain caught up with his legs.
She?
There were no women here. There were never women here, except when …
When Georgie …
He ran.
He tripped past the man sitting next to him, stumbling his way to the aisle.
Georgie was here. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. She was here, and she needed