When He Was Wicked is the sixth novel in Julia Quinn’s eight-book Bridgerton series. A Regency-set historical romance, the narrative moves between Mayfair drawing rooms and the Stirling family estate in the Scottish border counties between 1820 and 1824. The book centers on Francesca Bridgerton Stirling, the sixth of the eight Bridgerton siblings and a countess by marriage, and Michael Stirling, her husband’s first cousin and best friend, who has secretly loved her since the night they met. Written from the third-person point of view, the novel explores themes including Finding Love Again After Loss, The Pressures of Fertility on Intimate Life, and The Gap Between Social Duty and Private Longing. The novel was originally published by Avon Books in 2004 and was reissued as a trade paperback by Avon in June 2021 alongside the Netflix adaptation of the series.

This guide refers to the 2004 Avon paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, pregnancy loss, sexual violence, gender discrimination, sexual content, and substance use.

Plot Summary

At a supper celebrating his cousin John Stirling’s engagement, Michael Stirling falls in love with John’s bride, Francesca Bridgerton. John is the Earl of Kilmartin and was raised alongside Michael as a brother. Two years into the marriage, Michael, known in society as the “Merry Rake,” continues to hide his feelings for Francesca while remaining John and Francesca’s frequent companion.

One evening at Kilmartin House in London, John complains of a severe headache and lies down before a Parliamentary meeting. Francesca and Michael go for a walk. They return to find that John’s valet cannot wake him. Francesca runs upstairs and discovers that her husband has died in his sleep.

The next day, Lord Winston of the Committee for Privileges arrives to ask whether Francesca might be pregnant since a posthumous heir would determine succession of the earldom. Michael throws him out. Soon after, Francesca tells Michael that she is indeed carrying a child. Six weeks later, John’s mother, Janet, and Michael’s mother, Helen, have moved in with Francesca, who is pregnant but feels none of the usual symptoms. One afternoon, she rises from her chair, and Janet sees blood on the cushion. Francesca miscarries. She asks for Michael, but he’s unable to face her and sends his regrets through his mother before fleeing.

A month later, Michael formally inherits John’s title, which he never wanted. He has visited Francesca only once. When she comes to his rooms to ask why he’s been avoiding her, she tells him that the lost child would have needed him as a father. Michael panics, grabs her shoulders, shakes her, and shouts that he is not John. Frightened, Francesca asks him to release her and leaves saying that they shouldn’t see each other for a while. That night, Michael tells his valet to pack: They’re going to India.

Four years later, Francesca is 26 and has decided that she wants a child, which means she must remarry. She has run the Kilmartin earldom in Michael’s absence under the authority he gave her before he left. She arrives in London a month before the season to refresh her wardrobe and begin looking for a husband. On the same cold March night, Michael returns from three years of government work in Madras, hoping to reach Kilmartin House before Francesca comes to town. He finds her in the library in a thin crimson nightgown, and they speak awkwardly. He notes that she never answered his letters; she notices, with discomfort, that he has come back changed.

The next morning, Francesca moves to her mother Violet Bridgerton’s house on Bruton Street to keep her distance from Michael and avoid scandal until one of the dowagers arrives. Michael calls there, charms Violet, and walks with Francesca in Hyde Park. She tells him that she means to remarry and that he should marry as well. When she turns to look at him on a bench by the Serpentine, she registers him as a man for the first time; unnerved by her feelings, she invents an excuse to end the walk. Michael returns home and falls ill: He has malaria, his third attack, contracted in India. Francesca finds him feverish in bed, sits with him through the night, and agrees to keep the illness secret. When Janet and Helen arrive, Francesca moves back into Kilmartin House under their chaperonage.

At Violet’s birthday ball, the season’s matchmaking begins. Delighted that Francesca is coming out of mourning and wants to remarry, Francesca’s sisters and sisters-in-law agree to publicize her availability. Meanwhile, Michael is mobbed by women across the room, later inciting a quarrel between him and Francesca; she calls him fickle, and he tells her to be happy with her suitors.

The next morning, the Kilmartin drawing room fills with flowers for Francesca from the Marquess of Chester, Viscount Trevelstam, and the Duke of Cheshire. At his club, Michael nearly throttles Lord Hardwick for a crude remark about Francesca. Colin Bridgerton pulls him aside and bluntly tells him to marry her himself. Michael refuses but can’t stop turning the idea over in his mind.

A week later, at the Burwick ball, Michael notices Francesca slip into the garden and follows. He finds Sir Geoffrey Fowler pinning her against a tree. Michael knocks him down, threatens him, and orders him out of town. When Francesca asks how he knew where to find her, he tells her that he’s always watching her. Hours later at home, Francesca follows Michael into his bedchamber, accuses him of resenting her plans to remarry, and begins crying. Michael kisses her. The kiss deepens until she pulls away and flees. Two days later, she leaves for Scotland.

Francesca writes Janet and Helen a thin excuse about sheep at Kilmartin and leaves Michael only a brief apology. He spends an evening at a brothel, unable to perform, and ends up back at his club, where Colin tells him that he has just become engaged to Penelope Featherington and suggests that Michael take the news to Francesca in person. Michael travels north, having decided that he will propose marriage on practical grounds and hide his love.

At Kilmartin, Michael delivers Colin’s news and then proposes to Francesca, who refuses. Over the following days, he sets out to seduce her instead, asking permission at each step. They become intimate in the drawing room and again in a gardener’s cottage during a rainstorm, where she tells him that she will give him an answer only once she knows whether she’s pregnant with his child. Three weeks pass. They sleep together nightly while she continues to put off the marriage. Then, her menstrual cycle starts. Days later, during another sexual encounter, Francesca pushes Michael away and says that she shouldn’t feel this way for any man but John. A frustrated Michael confesses that he has loved her for six years, throughout her marriage. He tells her to leave because he’s not strong enough to end the relationship himself. Francesca runs out into the rain, sits for hours in the gazebo that John built her, and returns to tell Michael that she will marry him if he still wants her.

Francesca informs Michael that a letter from Violet revealed that Colin has moved up his wedding and that her sister Eloise is also marrying within days. Michael proposes that he and Francesca marry that afternoon in Scotland, where banns (public marriage announcements) are not required. She agrees. After their elopement that night, Michael tells Francesca he loves her. She answers only that she’s glad they married.

Two weeks into the marriage, Michael wakes pale and coughing. By evening, his fever climbs, and he privately fears that the malaria is killing him. Terrified that Michael will die, Francesca walks to the gazebo and weeps, realizing that she loves him as much as she loved John. The next morning, his fever hasn’t broken by daylight; Francesca is relieved, realizing that if Michael’s illness were malaria, the fever would have broken before returning again. She tells him that he’s not dying and nearly says she loves him but decides to wait instead.

Later, a recovering Michael sees Francesca cross the lawn carrying peonies, John’s favorite flower, and understands that she’s visiting John’s grave; he follows her to the churchyard. Francesca arranges the flowers at John’s headstone and tells her first husband aloud that she has fallen in love with Michael and believes that John would have approved. Michael, leaning against a tree behind her, hears every word. She turns, sees him, and professes her love directly. He holds her and tells her that he will spend his life loving her. Before they leave, he silently thanks John.

In an Epilogue letter dated June 1824, Janet writes to Michael that although she was shocked by his marriage to Francesca, she believes they are ideally suited, and she thanks him for letting John love Francesca first.

A second Epilogue follows Michael and Francesca three years on. Francesca remains childless and tracks her cycles in secret. At Aubrey Hall for a christening, she learns that Eloise and her sister-in-law Lucy are both expecting and cries in Violet’s arms. Days later, Eloise tells her that loving a biological child is different from loving stepchildren but not greater. That night, Michael notices that her menses are late. She tells him that she somehow knows the child is a son. A year later, they bring their son, John, to Aubrey Hall to meet Violet. Nine months after that, Francesca gives birth to a daughter, Janet Helen Stirling, who looks like her father.