Burn - Edmund Bridgerton II's story

Chapter 9 - Thunderstruck

NOTE: This chapter might get spicy, so I recommend that you do not read it next to your grandmother by the dinner table. Happy Holidays!

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Cambridge, August 1836

Geoffrey Dorset sat quickly down at the furthest away corner in the last row of desks in the large old auditorium. He held his satchel tightly pressed against his chest, like it would somehow shield him from any possible attack. So far, Cambridge had proved out to be more civilised than the school he had spent the last five years in, five years of utter living hell in Harrow. The bullies had of course immediately picked him as an easy target, a little odd, spindly boy, who was merely the only son of the second son of some baron that even the teachers did not care about. For five years his head had been dipped into chamber pots, his belongings had been stolen, he had been slammed against the walls of the hallways and beaten more times than he could count... And he was very good at counting.

At the moment, eighteen-year-old Geoffrey was sitting on his second day of college at his first lecture in mathematics, the other subject he was about to study except for his favourite - architecture. He put down the satchel on the chair next to him, nobody was going to come and sit by his desk anyway, so he might as well make it at least look like he was saving the seat for someone. His roommates had been pleasant enough towards him, but even they did not seem to care about him so much as to even sit beside him in the dining hall. The lecture was just about to start, so he dug out his pencils and opened his notebook, a thick red one with several sections for different subjects, and wrote the date and name of the course down on the first empty page in the section he had chosen for this particular subject.

"Hello, do I not know you? You are Geoffrey Dorset, right? Mr Thomas Dorset's son?" A voice suddenly spoke out next to him. Geoffrey winced and looked up like a scared rabbit, terrified that it was one of his tormentors from his old school who had recognised him. But it was not one of the bullies, it was even worse... It was the most gorgeous man Geoffrey had ever seen. His wild near-black hair lay on carefree locks on his brow, almost down to his huge blue-green eyes that studied Geoffrey with both curiosity and interest, while the corner of his painfully kissable lips was twitched into a slight smile. Somehow he managed to look absolutely stunning with his beautiful honey-coloured skin in the black college robes that seemed to drain out the last bit of colour from Geoffrey's already pale white complexion.

"I... I am, yes..." Geoffrey stuttered, trying to desperately remember where he had seen this knockout of a man before. Then it hit him. "You are Viscount Bridgerton's son, Miles! Right?" He exclaimed. His father and Anthony Bridgerton were good friends and Geoffrey's family had visited Aubrey Hall almost every summer before he went to his horrendous boarding school. After that, he had wanted to stay safe at the Dorset residence all summer and had not seen the Bridgertons in almost five years.

He remembered that he had always liked Miles, who was a bit calmer than the rest of his siblings and countless cousins who seemed to be all over the place all of the time. They had played chess, even fenced and solved puzzles or crosswords together, but back then Geoffrey had not yet fully understood what it was he felt for other boys, so it was all innocent from his side as well. And Miles had been a skinny, serious boy with his hair hanging even further down on his eyes than it was now, so nothing could have prepared Geoffrey for this magnificent hunk he apparently had grown into during his years at Eton, the fancy school that he himself had not been allowed into.

"Yes, it is I." Miles smirked. "Christ, it has been ages since we last saw each other. I did not know you got in here and major in mathematics as well! You did not go to Eton?"

"No, I went to Harrow..." Geoffrey muttered. "But I got a scholarship to Cambridge in mathematics and I also plan to major in architecture, which is my true passion."