“Indeed.”

“We are very lucky you decided to come to dinner, then.”

His brows rose, just a tiny bit.

Georgie dropped her voice to something closer to a murmur. “Or would it be correct to assume that you had no choice?”

“None whatsoever.” He quirked a wry smile, and Georgie had a feeling it was his first authentic expression of the evening.

“I sympathize utterly,” she replied. “I begged Mama to let me have toasted cheese with Anthony and Benedict in the nursery.”

“Are they getting toasted cheese?” He sounded undeniably jealous.

“They always get toasted cheese,” Georgie replied. “Why don’t we ever get it, that’s what I’d like to know. Because you know it’s what we all really want.”

He scratched his jaw. “I am quite fond of your cook’s famous rack of lamb …”

She leaned in. “But it would be better with a side of toasted cheese.”

He smiled. There, that was better, Georgie decided. Maybe she’d imagined the odd way he’d been looking at her.

Toasted cheese fixed everything. She’d been saying it for years.

Chapter 5

As it turned out, toasted cheese did not fix everything.

Georgie knew this now because her mother, in a rare display of whimsy over decorum, had requested that it be served alongside the soup, and now everyone was happily munching away, commenting on what a lovely, comforting surprise this was, and why didn’t they always have toasted cheese with dinner?

It should have been delightful.

It would have been delightful, except …

Georgie stole a glance to her right.

He was looking at her again.

Georgie wasn’t sure what was more aggravating—that Nicholas Rokesby kept looking at her with a strange expression or that she kept noticing that he was looking at her with a strange expression.

Because this was Nicholas.

Rokesby.

If ever existed a gentleman who should not make her feel awkward and out of place, it was he.

But he kept stealing sidelong glances, and while Georgie’s experience with gentlemen was limited, she could tell these weren’t admiring sorts of sidelong glances.

Freddie Oakes had given her plenty of those. Insincere ones, but still.

But Nicholas … He was looking at her differently. Almost like he was assessing her.

Inspecting her.

It was disconcerting in the extreme.

“Are you enjoying the soup?” she blurted out.

“What?”

“The soup,” she said. She tried to sound sweet and accommodating, but from the look on his face, she’d clearly failed. “How is it?”

“Er …” He looked down at his bowl with a perplexed expression. Georgie supposed she couldn’t blame him considering her query had come out more like a barked command than anything else.

“It’s delicious,” he finally said. “Are … you enjoying it?”

His voice rose more than was normal on the final word, as if the question itself was a question.

Georgie could only imagine what he was thinking. Should he talk to her? Had she gone a little bit feral?

She wondered what he’d do if she bared her teeth.

Had he been told of her downfall? 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—