He gave her a you-must-be-joking look.

“She is very clever.”

Nicholas stared at her for a long moment before executing a particularly sardonic combination of head-shaking and eye-rolling.

“You’re the one who wishes to conduct a scientific experiment on my cat.”

He looked pointedly at Cat-Head, still hanging from the hammock like an odd, furry plant. “I’m conducting experiments?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” she said. “He was completely quiet.”

“Until I kissed you.”

“Well … Yes.”

His eyes lit with anticipation. “Now it’s time for my experiment.”

“You’re scaring me a little,” she said.

He waved this off. “May I kiss you?”

Georgie was a little surprised—and to be honest, perhaps a little disappointed by the clinical tone of his voice. But she couldn’t think of any reason to say no, so she nodded.

Nicholas touched her chin, drawing her close. Their lips met, and once again, she melted into him. The mere touch of his mouth on hers seemed to set her fingers tingling, and her body was—

GRAO!

“I knew it,” Nicholas grunted. He whipped around, glaring at the cat.

Georgie blinked. “What?” She sounded dazed. She felt dazed.

“Damned, meddling …”

There were other words, but his voice went too low for her to hear them.

“Look how innocent he looks,” Georgie said. She reached out and scratched Cat-Head’s smushed little face. “There’s no way he’s purposefully sabotaging us.”

“Facts are facts, Georgiana. Your cat is a demon.”

She sputtered with laughter. There was simply no other possible response.

“Can I turn it?” Nicholas asked.

“The cat?”

“Is there any way to turn the hammock so he’s not facing us?”

“Ehrm, no, I don’t think so.” Georgie grimaced, looking over her contraption again. “Not unless we take him out and face him the other way.”

This, she did not want to do. It had been a struggle to get Cat-Head into the hammock in the first place, and she had the scratches to prove it.

But she also really wanted to continue kissing her husband, so she said, “We could move.”

He looked at her.

She pointed. “To the other side.”

“I thought you said you get sick on the rear-facing bench.”

“Not if you’re kissing me.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” he said.

She smiled. “I know.”

He looked at her. He looked at the rear-facing bench.

He looked at Cat-Head, smirking down at them both.

“Off we go!” He grinned and hopped over to the other side of the carriage, pulling her along with him.

Georgie tumbled onto the seat, laughing as Nicholas landed on top of her.

“Much better,” he growled.

This just made her giggle more. “I didn’t realize this could be so much fun.”

“You have no idea,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.

She pulled back, just far enough to look at him with a mischievous smile. “I thought you said your kisses had not been legion.”

He growled again, his weight settling on her in a thrillingly possessive manner. “I know enough to know I’m going to enjoy our wedding night immensely.”

“Just you?” she teased.

His eyes sobered, and he brought her hand to his mouth. “Georgie, I promise you that I will do everything in my power to make it a pleasant experience for you.”

He looked so serious; it made her smile. It made her want to make him smile. She reached up and touched his cheek. “Surely more than pleasant?”

He paused before saying, “It can be difficult for a woman the first time.”

She stared up at him. Could he be speaking from experience? “But you haven’t … I mean … Not with a woman who hasn’t …”

He shook his head. “No. No, of course not. But I …” He cleared his throat. “I’ve spoken with people.”

Georgie touched his cheek. He looked terribly embarrassed, and she loved him for it. She supposed some women wanted a husband with leagues of experience. Leagues of experience with leagues of women.

Ugh.

She liked that Nicholas had not been with many women before her. She didn’t want him comparing her to other women. And after the way society had treated her following the whole Freddie Oakes affair, she’d decided that if it wasn’t good for the goose, the gander could damn well do without too.

“Georgie?” Nicholas said with soft amusement. “Where’d you go?”

“Hmm?”

He kissed the corner of her mouth. “You look far too serious right now.”

“Just thinking.”

“Thinking, eh? You shouldn’t be thinking.”

She could not help but smile. “No?”

“If you have the capacity for thought, I must not be doing a very good job of this.”

“No, not at all, I—Oh!”

His hand continued to do devilish things to the back of her knee. “Like that, did you?”

“Where did you learn this?”

He grinned and shrugged. “Making most of it up as I go along.”

Georgie sighed, then sighed again. Because this was really just the loveliest way to pass a long carriage ride.

And lucky for them, they had all day.

Chapter 17

By the end of the day, Georgie was in a mostly wonderful mood.

Mostly.

Cat-Head’s hammock had held for a stunning five hours. Five glorious, lovely hours of kissing, then napping, then kissing again. And somewhere in the middle of all the napping and the kissing, Nicholas treated her to an incredibly detailed, thoroughly exciting, gruesomely recounted tale of the previous evening’s compound fracture.

Georgie was riveted. She wasn’t quite as immune to the gore as she might have liked—her stomach lurched when Nicholas described how he slid the bone back into place, but only a little, and she was sure it was something she could get used to with a little practice. She said so to Nicholas, and he admitted that he felt the same way when he was first beginning his studies. Some of his classmates had even fainted. They had taken a ribbing, but apparently it was all quite normal and to be expected. Almost a rite of passage for any new group of medical students.

Georgie was not used to tales of men fainting. Whenever someone gossiped about someone swooning it always seemed to be a woman. She’d long suspected, though, that this had less to do with a so-called weaker constitution and more to do with corsets. As someone who knew quite intimately the sensation of losing one’s breath, Georgie could not imagine who had thought it was a good idea to strap people into garments that squeezed the ribs, compressed the lungs and generally made it impossible to do anything that required energy or movement.

Or breathing.

The case of her sister and the fire at court was a prime example. Billie was the most athletic and coordinated person Georgie knew, male or female. She had once ridden a horse backward, for heaven’s sake. If she couldn’t manage to walk through a room in hoops and a corset without setting someone on fire, Georgie could not imagine who could.