First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(3)

“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.

Nicholas knelt to finally retrieve the glass tumbler he’d dropped. He regarded it for a few seconds, trying to decide if the moment required a clear head or a softening around the edges.

Probably something in between.

He looked at his father. “Perhaps you had better tell me what has happened,” he said, crossing the room to refill his glass. He could decide later if he wanted to drink it.

“Very well.” His father set his own glass down with a heavy clunk. “I’m not sure when they met, but Oakes had made his intentions clear. He was courting her. Your mother seemed to think that he was likely to propose.”

Nicholas could not imagine why his mother thought she could read the mind of Freddie Oakes of all people, but this was clearly not the time to point this out.

“I don’t know if Georgiana would have said yes,” Lord Manston continued. “Oakes gambles too much—we all know that—but he’ll eventually have the barony, and Georgie’s not getting any younger.”

At twenty-six, Georgie was precisely one year younger than Nicholas, but he was well aware that women did not age at the same rate as men, at least not as pertained to the customs and mores of English marriage.