“Sorry,” he muttered. “I wanted to talk to you, actually. It’s why I came out here this morning.”

“Not for the worms?” she asked cheekily.

This, more than anything, cemented his belief that she had no idea what was afoot.

He cleared his throat.

“Tea?”

“What?”

She picked up a flask he had not noticed. “Would you like some tea? It’s cold by now, but it will take care of your throat.”

“No. Thank you. It’s not that.”

She shrugged and took a sip. “I swear by it.”

“Right. Georgie. I really do need to ask you something.”

She blinked, regarding him with an expectant expression.

“When I came down from Edinburgh it was, as I told you, because my father wished to consult with me about something. But—”

“Oh, sorry, hold on one moment,” she said before turning toward the lake and yelling, “Anthony, stop that this minute!”

Anthony, who was sitting rather cheerfully on his brother’s head, said, “Do I have to?”

“Yes!” Georgie looked for a moment as if she might get up to enforce her will, but Anthony finally rolled off his brother and went back to poking holes in the dirt with a stick.

Georgie rolled her eyes before returning her attention to Nicholas. “Sorry. You were saying …”

“I have no bloody idea,” he muttered.

Her expression was somewhere between perplexed and amused.

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. I do know what I meant to say.”

But he didn’t say it.

“Nicholas?”

In the end, he blurted it out, just like he’d told himself not to do.

“Will you marry me?”

Chapter 7

“I’m sorry,” Georgiana said slowly. “I thought you just asked me to marry you.”

Nicholas’s mouth moved in an odd manner, as if he didn’t quite understand what she’d said. “I did.”

She blinked. “That’s not funny, Nicholas.”

“It wasn’t meant to be funny. It was meant to be a proposal of marriage.”

She stared at him. He didn’t look as if he’d been struck by a temporary bout of insanity. “But why?”

Now he was looking at her as if she had been the one struck by a temporary bout of insanity. “Why do you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Most of the time marriage is proposed because two human beings have fallen in love with one another, but since we both know that isn’t true …”

Nicholas let out an impatient snort. “First of all, you know damn well that most of the time the two human beings are not in love, and—”

“This human being would like to be,” she snapped.

“So would this human being,” he snapped right back, “but alas, we don’t always get what we want.”

Georgie felt herself nod. It was all beginning to make sense. “So,” she said, “you’re asking out of pity.”

“Friendship.”

“Pity,” she corrected. Because that’s what it was. That’s all it could be. A man didn’t abandon his studies and travel for ten days just to make a kind gesture to a friend.

He didn’t love her. They both knew that.

And then she realized. “Oh my God,” she said with a horrified gasp. “This is why you came down from Scotland. It was because of me.”

He did not meet her eyes.

“How did you even know what had happened to me?” she asked. Had the gossip reached Scotland? How far would she need to travel to escape it? North America? Brazil?

“My father,” Nicholas said.

“Your father?” she choked out. “Your father told you? What, in a letter? The Earl of Manston has nothing better to put in a letter to his youngest son than the tale of my ruin?”

“Georgie, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t even know the details until yesterday.”

“So then what did he say?”

But she knew. She knew before Nicholas could reply, and then it became clear that he wasn’t going to reply. Because he was embarrassed. And that made her furious because he had no right to feel embarrassed. He didn’t get to blush and look at his feet when he had rained such complete mortification down on her. If he was going to do this to her, then damn him he had to take it like a stoic and watch.

She couldn’t stay still any longer. She jumped to her feet and began pacing back and forth, hugging her arms to her body. Tight … so tightly, as if she could hold her emotions inside with brute force.

“Oh no oh no oh no oh no,” she said to herself. Was this what her life had come to? Men were being begged to marry her?

Or bribed? Was Nicholas being bribed to ask for her hand? Had her dowry been doubled to sweeten the pot?

Her parents—they had promised they wouldn’t force her to marry Freddie Oakes, but they’d also made it clear they didn’t want her to choose the life of a spinster.

Had they asked Lord Manston to call Nicholas down from school? Did everyone know? Were they all plotting behind her back?

“Georgie, stop.” Nicholas grasped her arm, but she shook him off, casting a quick glance toward the lake to make sure Anthony and Benedict weren’t watching.

“It wasn’t even your idea, was it?” she whispered hotly. “Your father summoned you.”

He looked away. The aggravating little weasel, he couldn’t even meet her eyes.

“He asked you to ask me,” Georgie said with growing horror. Her hands covered her face. It had been bad enough that Freddie Oakes had tried to haul her off to Gretna Green, but this—this—

It was the pity. That was what she could not bear.

She had not done anything wrong.

She should not be pitied. She should be admired. A man had kidnapped her. Kidnapped her! And she’d got away.

Why wasn’t that something to celebrate?

There should be parties in her honor. A gala parade. Look at the brave and intrepid Georgiana Bridgerton! She fought for her freedom and won!

When men did that entire countries were created.

“Georgie,” Nicholas said, and his voice was awful. Condescending and superior and all those things men were when they thought they were dealing with a hysterical female.

“Georgie,” he said again, and she realized that actually his voice wasn’t any of those things. But she didn’t care. Nicholas Rokesby had known her his entire life. He didn’t want to marry her. He felt sorry for her.

Then she nearly choked on her thoughts. Because she knew Lord Manston. He was her godfather, her own father’s closest friend. And she’d seen him with his sons often enough to know exactly how the conversation must have gone.

He had not asked Nicholas to marry her.

She forced herself to look at him. “Your father ordered you to marry me, didn’t he?”

“No,” he said, but she could tell he was lying. He’d never been a good liar. She couldn’t imagine why his father thought he could fake his way through a proposal of marriage.

Honestly, he was the worst.

“He can’t order me to marry you,” Nicholas said somewhat stiffly. “I’m a grown man.”