First Comes Scandal

“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 window-pane.

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 knew 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.”