First Comes Scandal

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 him.

He ran up the steps and pushed his way into the hall. A knot of people were surrounding someone on the floor.

“Out of the way,” someone yelled. “Give Dr. Monro room!”

Nicholas shoved his way forward. “That’s my wife,” he said, even though he couldn’t see her yet. “That’s my wife.”

Finally, he made it through the crowd, and there she was, sitting on the floor, gasping for breath.

“Lie her down!” Dr. Monro said. He spoke with the authority of a doctor who had been practicing for decades, who knew what to do.

Except the minute he lay her back, her body began to spasm.

“Stop!” Nicholas yelled. “She can’t get enough air like that.”

“Get him away from me,” the doctor snapped.

Nicholas grabbed him by the arm. “She’s my wife.”

Dr. Monro turned to him with a sharp expression. “If you value her well-being, you’ll back off and let me do my job.”

Nicholas swallowed and took a step back, watching as his professor—one of the most well-known and respected doctors in Great Britain—began his assessment.

“She has a history of spasmodic asthma,” Nicholas said, hoping it was true. Everything Georgie had told him indicated this diagnosis. And that was certainly what he saw when he looked at her now. Georgie’s inhales seemed more like gasps, her lungs convulsing as they tried desperately to fill.

Dr. Monro gave a curt nod.

“Sir,” Nicholas said, “I believe she needs to sit up.”

Georgie’s eyes met his. He could see she was trying to nod.

The doctor grunted but helped ease her into a sitting position. Georgie took a gulp of air, but Nicholas could tell it wasn’t enough.

Please, her eyes seemed to say. She thrust her hand out, toward Nicholas.

He shoved forward. Maybe the doctor needed room, but Georgie needed him.

“What did I just say?” Dr. Monro snapped.

“She wants my hand,” Nicholas replied, fighting to keep his voice calm. “She needs comfort.”

The doctor gave a single brisk nod, then said, “How often does she experience dyspnea?”

“Not often in adulthood,” Nicholas answered. “Far more frequently when she was a child.”

He looked to Georgie for confirmation. She gave a tiny nod. She was breathing more regularly now, but every exhale made a wheezy, whistling sound.

“It sounds as if she is improving, sir,” Nicholas said. He looked at her carefully as he put an arm around her shoulders to support her. “Are you getting more air?”

Again, another tiny nod. “It’s … better.”

“I’m not satisfied yet,” the doctor said grimly. “I’ve seen cases where the patient seems to improve but then relapses. Especially young women prone to hysteria.”

“She’s not prone to hysteria,” Nicholas said stiffly.

“I know—what—” Georgie tried to say something, but she was having too much trouble catching her breath.

“Don’t speak,” Nicholas said. “You need a bit more time.”

“But—he—”

“We need to bleed her,” Dr. Monro said.

“What?” Nicholas looked at him in shock. “No. She’s already improving.”