He hesitated for a moment in the doorway, waiting for one of his parents to notice his presence. They didn’t, so he stepped inside, pausing at the edge of the rug. He’d already left a trail of mud in the hall.

He cleared his throat, and finally they both turned.

His mother spoke first. “Nicholas,” she said, stretching her arm in his direction. “Thank God you’re here.”

He looked warily from parent to parent. “Is something wrong?”

It was the stupidest of questions. Of course something was wrong. But no one was wearing black, so …

“Sit down,” his father said, motioning to the sofa.

Nicholas took a seat next to his mother, taking her hand in his. It seemed the right thing to do. But she surprised him by tugging it away and rising to her feet.

“I will leave the two of you to your discussion,” she said. She laid her hand on Nicholas’s shoulder, signaling that he did not need to rise. “It will be easier if I am not here.”

What the devil? There was a problem that needed sorting and his mother was not just not taking charge, she was voluntarily exiting the scene?

This was not normal.

“Thank you for coming down so quickly,” she murmured, bending to kiss him on the cheek. “It comforts me more than I could ever say.” She looked back at her husband. “I will be at my writing desk, should you need me to …”

She seemed not to know what to say. Nicholas had never seen her so uncomposed.

“Should you need me,” she finally finished.

Nicholas watched as his mother departed, silent and likely slack-jawed until she shut the door behind her. He turned back to his father. “What is going on?”

His father sighed, and a long, heavy moment passed before he said, “There has been an incident.”

His father always had been a master of polite understatement.

“You should have a drink.”

“Sir.” Nicholas didn’t want a drink. He wanted an explanation. But this was his father, so he took the drink.

“It concerns Georgiana.”

“Bridgerton?” Nicholas asked in disbelief, as if there was another Georgiana to whom his father could possibly be referring.

Lord Manston nodded grimly. “You haven’t heard, then.”

“I’ve been in Edinburgh,” Nicholas reminded him.

His father took a sip of his brandy. A rather larger sip than was normal this early in the morning. Or any time of the day, for that matter. “Well, that’s a relief.”

“Respectfully, sir, I would ask you to be less opaque.”

“There was an incident.”

“Still opaque,” Nicholas muttered.

If his father heard him—and to be honest, Nicholas rather thought he had—he made no reaction. Instead he cleared his throat and said, “She was kidnapped.”

“What?” Nicholas sprang to his feet, his own glass of brandy sliding from his fingers to the priceless carpet below. “You didn’t think to begin the conversation with that? Good God, has anyone—”

“Calm yourself,” his father said sharply. “She has been recovered. She is safe.”

“Was she …”

“She was not violated.”

Nicholas felt something unfamiliar slide through his veins. Relief, he supposed, but something else along with it. Something acrid and sour.

He’d met women who’d been forced into sexual congress against their will. It did things to them. To their bodies, which he thought he might understand a little, and then to their souls, which he knew he could not understand at all.

This feeling inside … it was sharper than relief. It had teeth, and it came with a slow thrum of rage.

Georgiana Bridgerton was like a sister to him. No, not quite a sister. Not exactly. But her brother Edmund was like a brother to him, closer than his own, to be honest.

Lord and Lady Manston had thought they were finished having children when Nicholas happened along. He was a full eight years younger than his next closest sibling; by the time he was old enough to do more than toddle about in nappies, they were all off at school.

But Edmund Bridgerton had been around, just a few miles away at Aubrey Hall. They were almost precisely the same age, born just two months apart.

They’d been inseparable.

“What happened?” Nicholas asked his father.

“Bloody fortune hunter went after her,” his father bit off. “Nithercott’s son.”

“Freddie Oakes?” Nicholas said, with no small amount of surprise. They’d gone to school together. For a few years, at least. Freddie hadn’t finished. He was popular, personable, and insanely good at cricket, but it turned out that the only thing worse than failing one’s exams was cheating on them, and he’d been booted from Eton at the age of sixteen.

“That’s right,” Lord Manston murmured. “You know him.”

“Not well. We were never friends.”

“No?”

“Never not friends,” Nicholas clarified. “Everyone got on with Freddie Oakes.”

Lord Manston gave him a sharp look. “You defend him?”

“No,” Nicholas said quickly, although without any facts, he had no idea what had truly happened. Still, it was difficult to imagine a scenario that involved Georgiana being at fault. “I’m just saying that he was always very popular. He wasn’t mean, but you didn’t really want to cross him.”

“So he was a bully.”

“No.” Nicholas rubbed his eyes. Damn, he was tired. And it was near impossible to explain the intricacies of school social hierarchy to someone who hadn’t been there. “Just … I don’t know. As I said, we weren’t really friends. He was … shallow, I suppose.”

His father gave him a curious look.

“Or maybe he wasn’t. I honestly could not say. I never really spoke with him about anything more than what was for breakfast or who was going home for half term.” Nicholas thought for a moment, sifting through his memories of school. “He played a lot of cricket.”

“You played cricket.” “Not well.”

It was a sign of his father’s distress that he did not immediately leap to correct him on this. In the Earl of Manston’s mind, all four of his sons had been made in his image—splendid athletes who dominated the sporting fields of Eton College.

He was only twenty-five percent wrong.

Nicholas was not an incompetent athlete. To the contrary, he was a rather fine fencer, and he could outshoot any of his brothers with either rifle or bow. But put him on a field with a ball (of any sort) and a few other men and he was hopeless. There was a skill to knowing where one was in a crowd. Or maybe it was an instinct. Regardless, he did not have it. Cricket, the Field Game, the Wall Game …

He was terrible at them all. All of his worst memories of school took place on the playing fields. That sense of being watched and found wanting … the only thing worse was waiting while teams were chosen. It did not take boys long to figure out who could kick a ball or throw a googly.

And who could not.

He supposed it was the same in academics. He’d only been at Eton a few months before everyone knew he was the one with the perfect marks in the sciences. Even Freddie Oakes had come to him for help from time to time.