“No, I suppose not.” She swallowed nervously, waiting.

Waiting.

Why was he just looking at her like that? Why didn’t he kiss her?

Maybe this was up to her. He had been brave when he asked her to marry him. Now it was her turn.

She rose onto her tiptoes, leaned forward, and touched her lips to his. She lingered there a little longer than she thought she was supposed to, and then set herself back down.

Well. That was that.

Her first kiss.

All in all, it wasn’t very exciting.

She looked up at him. He was gazing down at her in a manner that was utterly inscrutable.

She cleared her throat. “I don’t suppose that was your first kiss too?”

He shook his head. “No. But my kisses have not been legion.”

She stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Your kisses have not been legion? What on earth does that mean?”

“It means that I have not had many of them,” he ground out.

And she realized—he was embarrassed.

Maybe. She wasn’t sure.

But it made sense if he was. Theirs was a stupid society, she was coming to realize. Men were supposed to have experience before they married and women were meant to be pure as snow.

Georgie had accepted this as the way things were, but after all that had happened in the last few weeks, she was fed up with the whole thing. It was the same hypocrisy that led the ton to celebrate Freddie Oakes while she was deemed soiled.

Very well, maybe they had not celebrated him, but his reputation had taken no hit.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “That was terribly rude of me. It was your wording that was amusing, not the sentiment behind it. Although, I must confess …”

“Yes?” he prompted.

Her cheeks were burning, but still she admitted, “I’m glad you haven’t kissed many women.”

He started to smile. “Are you?”

She nodded. “You won’t be much better at it than I am.”

“We could try it again,” he suggested.

“Now?”

“No time like the present.”

“I’m not sure if that’s strictly true,” she replied. “At present we are hiding behind a tree in the shadows of my home, and it’s, I don’t know, perhaps five in the morning. We’ve just treated the broken arm of my sworn enemy, which necessitated my literally cutting the shirt from a man’s body, and—”

“Georgie?” he interrupted. “Shut up.”

She looked at him, blinking like mad.

“Let’s try it again, shall we?”

Chapter 12

Once the engagement was announced, it was remarkable how quickly it all moved forward.

Nicholas was impressed. Or rather, he would have been impressed if he had not been so frustrated. And overwhelmed.

But mostly frustrated.

That kiss … the one he’d been so suave in suggesting when he’d murmured Let’s try it again, shall we …?

Disaster.

He’d leaned down to kiss Georgie, and honestly he didn’t know what had happened—maybe she’d jumped?—because his forehead knocked hers with enough force to make him lurch back in surprise.

He wouldn’t say he saw stars. That seemed far too grand a description for the jolt of pain that shot through his skull. Stars were a good thing, and this was … not.

He’d tried again, of course. He’d just spent the better part of twenty minutes in a rather uncomfortable state of arousal. And she had made it quite clear she wanted to be kissed. And he was going to marry her.

So yes. He was going to attempt another kiss. Frankly, he thought himself rather restrained considering he’d ridden from the farmhouse to Aubrey Hall with his future wife’s bare legs wrapped around his thighs. She’d tried to preserve her modesty with her dressing gown, but that had lasted no more than thirty seconds.

Even when he kept his eyes forward (which he did, some of the time), thus avoiding a glimpse of the moonlight rippling across her pale skin, there was still the matter of her breasts, which had been pressed up against his back, and her hands, which had been pressed up against his belly.

Everything. Her everything had been pressed up against his everything, and by the time they reached Aubrey Hall he was hard as a bloody rock, which was no way to ride a horse.

Or dismount from a horse.

Or help a lady dismount from a horse. When he’d placed his hands on Georgie’s hips it had been all he could do not to slide them down the length of her.

Instead he’d let go as if she’d caught on fire. Metaphorically speaking, it wasn’t that far from the truth.

He’d clasped his hands in front of himself because Good God, what else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t just stand there with his cock trying to bust out of his breeches.

But their first kiss had been uninspiring. And their second downright painful.

He’d pondered a third, but then the horse sneezed. On Georgie.

That was the end of it. The sun was close to rising, his ardor was cooled, and frankly, there were plans to be made.

He needed to go home, inform his parents that Georgie had accepted his proposal, and see to putting that special license to use. They’d be married in a day, maybe two, and he could be on his way back to Scotland. He wasn’t precisely sure how he and Georgie would manage once they reached Edinburgh—he was quite certain he could not bring her to live with him in his rented boardinghouse rooms. His father had said something about renting a house in New Town, but surely such arrangements took time. Georgie might want to wait in Kent until they could secure a lease.

But this was not the time to make such a decision. He could bring it up later, when she wasn’t in her dressing gown and he didn’t still have a handkerchief in his pocket stained with whiskey and Freddie Oakes’s blood.

They said their farewells—perhaps a little more stiffly than was warranted—and Nicholas remounted his horse.

“Wait!” Georgie called.

He turned his mount. “What is it?”

“How shall we tell them? Our families?”

“However you like.” Honestly, he had not thought about it.

“Yours already knows, I imagine.”

“Just my parents. And obviously they do not yet know you have accepted.”

She nodded, slowly, the way he’d come to realize she did when she was thinking something through. “Will you come with me?” she asked. “When I tell them?”

“If that is what you wish.”

“I do. They will have so many questions. I think it will be easier for me if you are there to share the burden.”

“The very definition of marriage,” he murmured.

She smiled at that.

“Shall I call upon you later this morning?”

“That would be most welcome.”

And that was that. There was nothing romantic about the moment, nothing to make his breath catch or heart leap or any of that nonsense.

Until she smiled.

His breath caught.

His heart leapt.

And he felt all the nonsense.

GEORGIE WAS EATING breakfast when Nicholas arrived. It was as they’d planned; she wanted to make sure that her parents were both available when he arrived, and as the Bridgerton family tended to keep to a regular morning schedule, it seemed the best time for him to find them all in attendance.