First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(29)

“I am,” she ground out. She was done. “You can tell your father,” she said, each syllable more clipped than the last, “that you have done your duty and asked me to marry you. And then you can tell him that I said no.”

“You’re not thinking.”

“Don’t you dare.” She stepped forward, jabbing her finger toward him. She poked it through the air, and then she poked him right in the chest. “Don’t you ever tell me I don’t know my own mind. Do you hear me?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Again! Do you hear yourself? If you have to say ‘that’s not what I meant’ three times in a single conversation, perhaps you should consider the in-clarity of your words.”

“Inclarity?” he repeated.

Now he was correcting her grammar? Georgie wanted to scream. “I think you should go,” she said, trying for a hushed tone. The boys weren’t that far ahead of them on the path.

“At least let me—”

She thrust one of her arms out, vaguely in the direction of Crake. “Go!”

Nicholas crossed his arms and looked her hard and square in the eye. “No.”

She drew back. “What?”

“No,” he said again. “I’m not going to go. Not until I am convinced that you have actually heard what I’ve had to say.”

“Will. You. Marry. Me,” she said, ticking the words off on her fingers. “I heard you quite clearly.”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Georgiana. It does not become you.”

She stepped forward. “When did you become so condescending?”

He stepped forward. “When did you become so short-sighted and full of pride?”

At this point they were nearly nose to nose, and Georgie was seething. “A gentleman would accept a lady’s refusal with grace.”

He countered with, “A lady would consider the proposal before rejecting it out of hand.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“I am not asking you to marry me because I pity you,” he said in a furiously tight voice. “I am asking because I have known you for as long as I have known my own memory. I like you, Georgiana. You are a good person, and you do not deserve to spend the rest of your life in isolation because of the misguided actions of a jackass.”

Her comeback died in her throat. Because now she felt like a jackass.

A jackass who had no idea what to say.

She swallowed, hating that the lump in her throat tasted like tears. Hating that he didn’t understand why she was so angry. And hating that he was actually a good person and he still didn’t understand.

But most of all, she hated that she’d fallen into this awful position where someone could make a kind gesture, born of nothing but care and good intentions, and all she wanted to do was scream.

“Thank you, Nicholas,” she said, picking through her words with careful cadence. “It was very thoughtful of you to ask.”

“Thoughtful,” he repeated, and she got the feeling that he was startled by the milkish, nondescript word.

“The answer is still no,” she said. “You don’t need to save me.”

He bristled. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Isn’t it?”

He stared at her for a moment before capitulating. “Yes, fine, I suppose it is, but it’s you, Georgie.”

“Me?”

“You must know I wouldn’t do it for anyone else.”

Her heart pricked. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cry so hard and she didn’t know why. Or maybe it was that there were simply too many reasons and the prospect of sifting through them made her want to cry the hardest of all.

She shook her head. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling grateful?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It wouldn’t be like that.”

“You can’t know that.”

He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but she could tell he wanted to. “You can’t know the opposite,” he said.

She took a steadying breath. “I can’t be your sacrifice.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s absurd.” Her voice turned to steel. “Kindly do me the honor of not disparaging my every word.”

He gaped at her. “You know—”

Georgie waited, breath held, as he turned on his heel and took a step away from her. Every line of his body was rigid with frustration—or maybe fury—even as he whirled back around. “Forget I said anything,” he said hotly. “Forget I tried to be a friend. Forget you’re in a difficult spot. Forget I tried to give you a way out.”

He started to walk away, but she could not bear to see him leave in such a temper, so she called out, “Don’t be like that, Nicholas. It’s not about you.”

He turned around. “What did you just say?” he asked, his voice chillingly soft.

She blinked with confusion. “I said it’s not about you,” she repeated.

And then he just laughed. He laughed so uproariously that Georgie couldn’t think of a thing to say. She just stood there like an idiot, wondering what on earth had led to this moment.