First Comes Scandal

by Julia Quinn

  “Creation?”

  “And completion. And the knowledge that one is responsible for both.”

  Georgie looked down at the neat row of stitches marching across her embroidery hoop. She’d used blue thread, for no reason other than the fact that it was in her basket near the top of the pile, but now she found she liked it. It was soothing.

  And endless. Blue was the ocean, the sky. And the thread that, if she loosened the fabric from the hoop, could go on forever.

  All she had to do was remove the boundaries.

  She loved Aubrey Hall. She really did. And she loved her family, too. But the walls here had been closing in on her for years, so slowly she had not even realized it.

  Nicholas had offered her a choice. Maybe it wasn’t the right choice; but she had been foolish to dismiss his offer out of hand. She’d chosen pride over reason, and she hadn’t even given him a chance to explain himself.

  Yes, it stung that the only reason he’d proposed was that his father had called him down from Scotland to do so, but maybe . . .

  Maybe . . .

  Maybe there was more?

  Or maybe not, but maybe there could be?

  And even if there wasn’t, even if she wasn’t destined to find love and passion and hearts and flowers and whatever else it was that cupids and cherubs sang of on high . . .

  Maybe it would still be worth it.

  So how did one go about un-rejecting a marriage proposal?

  Georgie stood up. “I’m going to Crake.”

  Her mother regarded her with palpable surprise. “Now?”

  “Yes.” Now that she’d made her decision Georgie was determined to be on her way. “I’m going to take a cart.”

  “Really? A cart?”

  “It’s faster than walking.”

  “Are you in a rush?”

  “No.”

  Yes. What if Nicholas left for Scotland this afternoon? Highly unlikely, all things considered, but possible. And wouldn’t she feel like a fool?

  Her mother turned to the window and frowned. “It looks like rain, dear. I don’t think you should go.”

  What she really meant was—You shouldn’t go out in the rain because you could catch a chill, stop breathing, and die.

  Georgie gave her mother a reassuring smile. “It has been over a year since I had an episode, Mama. I really do think I’ve grown out of them.”

  Her mother did not reply, and Georgie half-expected her to order a steaming bowl of oversteeped tea for Georgie to hover over with a heavy linen over her head. It had been a common ritual in Georgie’s youth—one her mother no doubt was sure had saved her life many times over.

  “Mama?” Georgie prompted, after the silence stretched into the awkward.

  Her mother let out a sigh. “I would not recommend that anyone go out in this weather,” she said. “At least not in what I think the weather is going to be in a few minutes.”

  As if on cue, a fat raindrop hit the windowpane.

  Both Bridgerton ladies went still, staring out the window, waiting for another drop to fall.

  Nothing.

  “False alarm,” Georgie said brightly.

  “Look at that sky,” Lady Bridgerton countered. “It grows more ominous by the second. Mark my words, if you go to Crake right now, you’re either going to catch your death on the way over or be stranded there overnight.”

  “Or catch my death on the way home,” Georgie quipped.

  “What a thing to joke about.”

  Splat.

  Another raindrop.

  They both looked out the window again. “I suppose you could take a carriage,” Lady Bridgerton said with a sigh.

  Splat. Splatsplatsplat.

  The rain started to pelt the house, the initial fat droplets giving way to sharp little needles.

  “Are you sure you want to go now?” Lady Bridgerton asked. Georgie nodded.

  “I’m not even sure Billie’s home this afternoon,” her mother said. “She said something about barley fields and well, honestly, I don’t know what. I wasn’t really listening. But I got the impression she had a lot to do.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Georgie said, not bothering to correct her mother’s assumption that she intended to visit her sister.

  Ping!

  Lady Bridgerton turned to the window. “Is that hail?”

  “Good God,” Georgie muttered. The minute she decided to take action, the universe just went all in against her. She wouldn’t be surprised if it started to snow.

  In May.

  Georgie walked over to the window and looked out. “Maybe I’ll wait just a bit,” she said, chewing on her lower lip. “In case the weather improves.”

  But it didn’t.

  It hailed for an hour.

  Then it rained.

  Then it stopped, but by then it was dark. If Georgie was a more intrepid sort of female, or maybe just a more foolish one, she might have told her family that she was taking the carriage (they would never have allowed her to drive herself in a cart on dark muddy roads).

  But that would have invited far too many questions, both at home and at Crake, where her nocturnal arrival would have been most unorthodox.

  “Tomorrow,” she said to herself. Tomorrow she would head over to Crake. Tomorrow she would tell Nicholas that she’d been a fool, and while she wasn’t quite ready to say yes, would it be all right if she didn’t say no?

  She took her dinner in her room, plotted out what she might say to Nicholas when she next saw him, and eventually crawled into bed.

  Where she’d thought she’d stay until morning.

  She thought wrong.

  Chapter 9

  Georgie sat up suddenly in bed, muddled and groggy. She had no idea what time it was, or why she had woken up, but her heart was pounding, and her pulse was racing, and—

  Tap.

  Instinctively, she shrank back against the head of her bed. She was still too disoriented to identify the sound.

  Tap.

  Was it one of her cats?

  Taptaptap.

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth. That last noise was different, like a bunch of little taps all at once. Or rather, almost all at once. And it definitely wasn’t a cat.

  Taptaptaptap.

  There it was again, coming from . . . her window?

  That was impossible. Maybe a bird? But why would a bird tap repeatedly in one spot? It made no sense. It had to be a human, except it couldn’t be a human. She was too high up. There was a ledge, and she supposed it was wide enough for a person to stand on, but the only way to get there was to go up the massive oak her father always complained grew too close to the house. But even so, you’d have to crawl out on a branch.

  A branch she didn’t think would support a person’s weight all the way out to the house.

  Even her sister Billie, who had been known to take phenomenally stupid risks in the pursuit of treetops, had never attempted that one.

  Plus, it had only stopped raining a few hours earlier. The tree would be wet and slippery.

  “Oh, for the love of heaven,” Georgie said. She hopped down from her bed. It had to be an animal. An extremely intelligent animal or an extremely foolish human.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Or pebbles. Someone was throwing pebbles at her window.

  For a second she thought—Nicholas. But Nicholas would never be so stupid. Plus, why would he sneak?

  And again. Nicholas was not stupid. It was one of the things she liked best about him.

  She approached the window slowly, although for the life of her, she didn’t know why. If someone was throwing pebbles, it meant he couldn’t get in on his own. Still, she grabbed a candlestick for good measure, pushed the curtains aside, and peered out. But it was too dark to see, so she tucked the candlestick under her arm and then used both her hands to wrench the window up.

  “Who’s out there?” she whispered.

  “It’s me.”

  She froze. She k
new that voice.

  “I’ve come for you, Georgiana.”

  Bloody hell. It was Freddie Oakes.

  Judyth, who had jumped on silent paws up to the windowsill, immediately hissed.

  It was a cloudy night, but there was enough light coming from the lanterns on the house that she could see him in the tree, perched on the long branch right where it met the trunk.

  Georgie tried to shout her whisper. “What in the name of God are you doing here?”

  “Did you get my letter?”

  “Yes, and perhaps you noticed I didn’t write back.” Georgie grabbed the candlestick out from under her arm and jabbed it angrily in his direction. “You need to go away.”

  “I won’t leave without you.”

  “He’s mad,” she said to herself. “He is stark, raving—”

  “Mad for you,” he finished. He smiled, and all she could think was—what a waste of straight white teeth. By any measure, Freddie Oakes was a handsome young gentleman. The problem was, he knew it.

  “I love you, Georgiana Bridgerton,” he said, smiling that too-confident smile again. “I want you to be my wife.”

  Georgie groaned. She didn’t believe that for a second. And she didn’t think that he believed it, either.

  Freddie Oakes wasn’t in love with her. He just wanted her to think that he was so that she’d let him marry her. Did he really think she was that gullible? Had he had such previous success with the ladies that he thought she’d fall for such obvious bunk?

  “Is that your cat?” he asked.

  “One of them,” Georgie replied, pulling Judyth back. The silver gray cat was hissing loudly now, her little paws pinwheeling through the air. “She’s a very good judge of character.”

  Freddie seemed not to get the insult. “Did you get my second letter?” he asked.

  “What? No.” She plunked Judyth down on the floor. “And you shouldn’t be writing to me.”

  “I memorized it,” he said. “In case I arrived before it did.”

  Dear God.

  “Freddie,” she said, “you need to go before someone sees you.”

  “My dearest Georgiana,” he intoned.

  “Stop! Now.” She twisted her head to look up at the sky. “I think it’s going to rain again. It’s not safe in that tree.”

  “You do care about me.”

  “No, I was simply stating that it’s not safe in that tree,” she retorted. “Although heaven knows why I bother. Only a fool would climb it in this weather, and I could certainly do with fewer fools in my life.”

  “You wound me to the quick, Miss Bridgerton.”

  She groaned.

  “That wasn’t in the letter,” he explained.

  “I don’t care what was in the letter!”

  “You will when I finish reciting it,” he said.

  Georgie rolled her eyes. God save her.

  “Here is what I wrote.” He cleared his throat in that way people did before a grand speech. “It distresses me more than I can say that I have not heard back from you.”

  “Stop,” she begged.

  But he sailed on, as she knew he would. “I bared my heart to you in my letter. I wrote words of love and devotion and heard only silence. I can only believe that you never received my letter, for surely you are too gentle-hearted and lovely to wound me with silence.”

  He looked up expectantly.

  “I already told you I got the first letter,” Georgie said.

  This deflated him. But only momentarily. “Well,” he said, in the sort of tone one uses when deciding to ignore logic and fact, “I also wrote: I am sorry if I frightened you with my ardor. You must know it is because I love you so desperately. I have never felt this for another lady.”

  Georgie let her forehead fall into one of her hands. “Stop, Freddie. Just stop. You’re embarrassing both of us. But mostly you.”

  “I am not embarrassed,” he said, placing a dramatic hand over his heart. The motion caused him to sway, and Georgie gasped, convinced he was going down. But he must have had a better grip on the tree than she’d realized, because he remained solidly in his perch, legs wrapped around the long branch that stretched toward her window.

  “For the love of heaven, Freddie, you need to get back down before you kill yourself.”

  “I’m not getting out of this tree until you agree to marry me.”

  “Then you should consider building a nest, because that is never going to happen.”

  “Why are you being so bloody stubborn?”

  “Because I don’t want to marry you!” Georgie jerked to the side as first Judyth, and then Blanche hopped up onto the windowsill. “Honestly, Freddie, can’t you find someone else to marry?”

  “I want you.”

  “Oh, please. We both know you don’t really love me.”

  “Of course I—”

  “Freddie.”

  Judyth hissed. Blanche followed suit, but Blanche always did whatever Judyth did. At that point Cat-Head jumped up, and now there were three hostile cats in a row, all glaring at Freddie.

  “Fine.” His mouth came together in a hard line, and his entire demeanor changed. “I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone. But I do need to get married. And you’re the best woman for the job.”

  “One would think the best woman for the job would be a woman who actually wants the job.”

  “I don’t have the luxury of finding that woman,” he retorted. “I need to get married now.”

  “How far in debt are you?”

  “Quite,” he said. “You’re the perfect combination of dowry and tolerability.”

  “This is how you think to convince me?”

  “I tried to go about it the nice way,” he said.

  “Kidnapping?”

  He waved dismissively, causing Georgie to once again gasp for his safety. But he did not slip. She recalled that someone had once told her Freddie was a natural athlete, that he’d ruled the cricket fields at Eton. Thank God for that, because she had a feeling it was the only reason he hadn’t yet tumbled to the ground.

  “I did everything properly,” he said. “I danced with you. I took you to a bookshop.”

  “From which you kidnapped me.”

  He shrugged. “My creditors advanced my calendar considerably. Now please, if you would. You haven’t a choice. Surely you must know that. Your reputation is in tatters.”

  “Thanks to you!”

  “Then let me make it up to you. Once we’re married, it will all go away. You will have the protection of my name.”

  “I don’t want the protection of your name,” Georgie seethed.

  “You will be Mrs. Oakes,” he said, and Georgie honestly couldn’t tell if he was willfully ignoring her or too caught up in his own greatness to notice that she’d spoken.

  He leaned toward her. “When my father passes you will be Lady Nithercott.”

  “I’d rather remain Miss Bridgerton.”

  “Miss Bridgerton is a spinster.” He started scooting down the branch. “You don’t want to be a spinster.”

  “Stop it, Freddie!” Georgie eyed him with growing panic. Surely he didn’t think the branch would hold him all the way to her window.

  “I’m coming in.”

  “You are not.”

  “Accept your fate, Georgiana.”

  “I will scream,” she warned.

  He actually laughed at her, the cretin. “If you were going to scream, you would have done so by now.”

  “The only reason I haven’t is because my brother is here tonight, and he will disembowel you if he finds you anywhere near me.”

  “So you do care.”

  Dear God, this man was stupid. “About my brother,” she hissed. “I have no wish to see him jailed for murder. And I don’t need another scandal. You’ve already ruined my life.”

  “So let me fix it.”

  “Your plan all along, I assume.”

  He shrugged again as he nudged himself forward a few inches. “You�
��re not going to do better.”

  “Freddie, don’t! It won’t support your weight.”

  “Toss me a rope.”

  “I don’t have a rope! Why would you think I had a rope in my bedroom? And for the love of God, back up.”

  He didn’t listen.

  “Do not come closer,” Georgie warned. She was starting to worry that maybe the branch would hold his weight. It wasn’t bowing nearly as much as she would have thought.

  “You will marry me,” he growled.

  “Would it be easier if I just gave you money?”

  He paused. “You would do that?”

  “No!” She picked up the closest object she could put her hands on—a book—and hurled it at him.

  “Ow!” It clipped him on the shoulder. “Stop that!”

  She threw another book.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Defending my honor,” she ground out. She tried to lean forward, but the cats were in the way. Without taking her eyes off Freddie she picked them up one by one and tossed them down. “If you have any care to your well-being,” she warned him, “you’ll remember what happened last time you tried to convince me to marry you.”

  “Don’t be a—Jesus Christ!”

  She knobbed him on the head with an inkpot.

  “I’ve got another right here,” she growled. “I write a lot of letters.”

  His face curled into something unpleasant. “I’m beginning to think you’re not worth the trouble.”

  “So I’ve been telling you,” she hissed. She hurled the second inkpot at him, but as he moved to dodge it, Cat-Head (who had never been the brightest of her three cats) hopped back up onto the sill, let out an unholy scraw, and launched himself out the window.

  “Cat-Head!” Georgie lunged forward, trying to get hold of him, but the cat was on Freddie’s face before she even had her arms out the window.

  “Get it off me!” Freddie shrieked.

  “Cat-Head! Cat-Head, come back!” Georgie hissed, trying to keep her voice down. The other bedrooms were around the corner, so with any luck no one would have heard Freddie’s cry of distress.

  Freddie clawed at the cat, trying to dislodge it, but Cat-Head held firm, wrapped around Freddie’s head like half of a furry octopus.