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was coming, Ian returned to the entrance hall, satisfied that at least these basic precautions had been taken. Georgiana finished dealing with her anxious staff.
    She turned and looked at him in mild surprise, as though she had been wondering where he’d gone.
    Scanning her face, Ian marched to her side and took her elbow, gently steering her toward the nearest chair. “How are your lungs?”
    â€œMuch better now—thank you.”
    â€œYou are pale. Please sit down. Let me send for a doctor—”
    â€œNo—truly, my lord, I will be fine,” she interrupted. “The worst has passed now. Besides, I have—other medicine.”
    He frowned, folding his arms across his chest. “Very well, then. Go on and take it. I will wait.”
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    Goodness, he was an imperious fellow, giving orders mere moments after stepping through her door! Admittedly, he meant well, she thought. Still, she was uneager to share with him the full extent of her eccentricity. Best to keep it vague. “It’s, ah, not exactly a potion or pill.”
    His eyebrow lifted in skeptical fashion.
    Reading his stern countenance, polite but all business, Georgie recognized the piercing stare of a male in full protective mode and sighed. If he was anything like her domineering brothers, that stare meant that he had no intention of leaving the subject alone. “Very well. If you must know, there are breathing exercises I was taught when I was small—to help address the problem. Stretches, too, which benefit the lungs.”
    â€œI see.” His stare intensified. He did not look entirely convinced.
    â€œIt’s called yoga,” she mumbled. “It’s the only thing that helps.”
    â€œAh, I have heard of this.” He nodded slowly, studying her in wary interest. “An ancient art, is it not?”
    â€œIndeed. More importantly, it works,” she replied, surprised that he showed no sign of condemnation. Outside of her family, she did not like to admit to any of her British acquaintances that she practiced yoga, for most of them would have considered it over the line.
    Many in local Society already thought she had “gone native,” but all that the British doctors had ever been able to do for her was to bleed her with horrid leeches and to give her doses of laudanum, liquid opium, that had made the paintings in her bedroom come alive and the ceiling squirm. If she had stayed on that path, she’d have become an addict and an invalid by now.
    Fortunately, years ago, her beloved ayah, or Indian nurse, Purnima, had reached her wit’s end with her young charge’s ailment, and had sent for her kinsman, a yogi mystic, who had instructed Georgie in all the asanas to relax her chest and back and open up her lungs again.
    It had also been wise old Purnima who had pointed out that Georgie’s attacks seemed to have something to do with her loved ones leaving her. The ailment had become serious only after her mother’s death, striking hardest whenever Papa had to go away on business again, or when her brothers had to leave once more for boarding school.
    As a little girl, crying inconsolably with the panic of being left alone, she would sob until her grief impaired her breathing, turning from a fit of wild, wailing temper into a gasping, choking struggle for air. Whenever her loved ones left her behind, she had always felt like she was dying.
    Thus the importance of her friends. She had learned to cope with her loneliness by surrounding herself with so many companions that no matter who left her, there were always a dozen others on hand to take their place. British or brown-skinned, female or male, all friends had always been welcome in her life.
    By now, she knew nearly everyone in both Calcutta and Bombay, where her family had a second home—but she had never met the likes of Lord Griffith before.
    What a mysterious man he was, his