“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.

“He was the one who attacked Freddie in the tree.”

“That was that one?”

“He was brilliant,” Georgie said, eyes flashing with the memory. “You would have loved it.”

“After having seen what he did to Oakes’s face, I’m inclined to agree.”

“First he did this”—Georgie made a motion with her arms that did a surprisingly good job of demonstrating a cat jumping out of a window—“then he did this”—her arms rose past her face in a clawed vee—“and then he did this.”

Nicholas could not make out this last motion. “What is that?”

Her face split in a gleeful grin. “He wrapped himself over Freddie’s face. Honestly, I don’t know how Freddie could breathe.”

Nicholas started to laugh.

“I would draw it for you if I had any talent. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Or rather, it is now. At the time I was too terrified Freddie would fall from the tree. But oh my goodness, if you had seen it for yourself … He was shrieking, ‘Get it off! Get it off!’ and he was clawing at Cat-Head …”

“Clawing,” Nicholas gasped, because that was somehow the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

And then his laughter set her off, as laughter often did, and the two of them completely lost the battle for dignity. They laughed and laughed, until Georgie had to set her head on the table and Nicholas feared he’d strained a muscle.

“Well,” Nicholas said, once he’d mostly recovered and Georgie had returned her attention to her meal. “I suppose I owe him a debt of gratitude. But you must admit, Cat-Head is a stupid name for a cat.”

He watched Georgie pause, spoon lifted midway to her mouth.

“What?” he said. Because honestly, she had the oddest expression on her face.

She set her jaw and lowered her spoon. “Oh?” she said with calculated pacing. “A stupid name, is it? And I wonder whose fault that is.”

Nicholas paused. This was clearly a question to which he was supposed to know the answer. “Edmund?” he guessed, because Edmund was usually responsible for such things.

“You, Nicholas. You named my cat Cat-Head.”

“I named a cat Cat-Head.” It came out more of a statement than a question.

“You named my cat Cat-Head.”

“Surely you jest.”

Georgie’s mouth dropped slightly open, and she neatly laid her spoon back on the table. “Surely you remember Pity-Cat.”

Nicholas had no idea what she was talking about.

“Mary’s cat?” Georgie prodded. “Your sister’s tabby from when you were at Eton …”

The memory came to him, then. It had been years and years before. He’d actually liked that cat. It was a scrappy little thing that liked to hide under his mother’s skirts and nip at her ankles. She’d cry out randomly in surprise and yes, it was funny.

Then he frowned. Pity-Cat?

He shook his head. “That cat wasn’t named Pity-Cat.”

Georgie’s whole face turned into a heart-shaped I-told-you-so. “No, Pity-Cat’s name was Turnip, but then you and Edmund thought it was much more fun to say Turnippity, and—

“It is more fun to say Turnippity.”

Georgie pursed her lips. He could tell she was trying not to laugh.

“I mean,” he continued, “who names any breathing creature Turnip?”

“Your sister did. She names all her pets after food.”

“Yes, well, let’s be thankful Felix didn’t let her name their offspring Dumpling, Pudding, or Bacon.”

“One of her cats is named Dumpling.”

He rolled his eyes. “It was only a matter of time.”

Georgie rolled her eyes at that. “I’d named Cat-Head Patch.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever looked at him?”

Not really. “Of course I have.”

Georgie’s eyes narrowed.

“Although mostly I’ve listened.”

She rolled her eyes again.

He snickered. “Oh come now, you must give me credit for that one.”

“Very well, touché.” And then she stared, waiting for him to set the conversation back on course.

“Very well,” he acquiesced, “tell me the story. How am I responsible for your cat’s ridiculous moniker?”

She needed no further encouragement. “As I said, I’d named him Patch. He has little markings around his eyes. Rather like how the broadsheets draw the Dutch sailors with the triangular patches over their eyes.”

Nicholas skipped over the obvious question of how broadsheets depicting piracy occurring mere miles from Aubrey Hall made it out of the security of Lord Bridgerton’s office and into the hands of an impressionable young girl, and instead merely said, “Just the one eye, I’d think.”

She mock-scowled. “Yes, well, I thought it a perfectly proper cat name, but then you and Edmund came home for a few weeks after term and by the time you went back, Turnip went from Turnip to Turnippity to Pity-Cat, and somehow that led to you deciding that Patch ought to be Cat-Head.”

“I have no recollection, although it does sound like something we would do.”

“I tried to bring him back to Patch, but he wouldn’t answer to it any longer. It was Cat-Head or nothing.”

Nicholas was skeptical that cats answered to their names at all, but forbore to argue. “I’m sorry?”

“You are?”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

She took a moment to consider this. Or at the very least, give the impression of doing so. “To be fair, I don’t know that it was you as much as Edmund who led the naming brigade.”

“Regardless, how about I stay out of the naming of our children, then?”

He wasn’t sure where the thought had come from, or why on earth he’d said it out loud, but the words our children seemed to shut down the feels-like-old-times familiarity with the swiftness of a guillotine.

He supposed it was a lot to joke about when they had not even shared a wedding night.

Then, a quirk in her cheek, Georgie raised her gaze to his. There was playfulness in her eyes as she said, “You trust me not to name a child Brunhilda then?”

“Brunhilda’s a fine name,” he replied.

“You think so? Then I’ll—”

But whatever she might have said was cut off by the sound of a door slamming open followed by a panicked male voice shouting, “Is there a doctor in the house?”

Without thinking, Nicholas rose to his feet.

“What do you think …” Georgie murmured, and she followed him to the doorway. In the main dining room they both saw a man—a groom by the looks of him—covered in mud and blood.