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“He’s late to everything,” Benedict said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Hmm.” Andrew would have expected punctuality to be amongst the man’s many respectable—and tedious—habits. He splashed more water on his face.

Benedict beat a hand against his side, his features tense and his eyes harder than he’d ever recalled.

Andrew paused mid-rinse. “What is it?” he asked quietly when an odd heaviness settled over the room.

“He didn’t arrive,” Benedict bit out as Andrew resumed scrubbing the stench of women and sex from his person.

“Didn’t arrive?”

His friend gave him a look. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Benedict crossed over and held out the paper Andrew had failed to see in his hand until now. “The papers did not waste any time in printing a”—Wakefield’s lip peeled in a sneer—“special edition. It was being circulated while we all waited at the church.”

Reaching for a dry towel, Andrew dried his hands and accepted the newspaper.

Scandal

One of Polite Society’s most respected, most coveted young ladies is nothing more than an impostor. Everyone was well aware that…

Andrew skimmed his gaze over the front of the page. It appeared Marcia’s mother, the Viscountess Wessex, had taken a lover long ago, and Marcia was a product of that relationship.

He paused, lingering his gaze a moment on the gentleman in question’s identity—Lord Archibald Hamilton,the Marquess of Atbrooke.

His jaw tightened. The Hamilton family, from the marquess on down to his sister, Lady Carew, were vipers, and it appeared Marcia’s mother, Lady Eleanor, had been just one more victim of theirs.

With a grunt, Andrew tossed the scandal sheet aside. “Atbrooke’s back from his time in the penal colony.” That was a shame.

“That’sit?” Wakefield demanded. “That’s all you have to say?”

“What else is there?” What the papers wrote about Marcia Gray was irrelevant. “It doesn’t matter.” He knew who she was as a person, and she was all that was good. Who had sired her mattered not, and whoever disparaged her could go hang.

“It matters to Polite Society.” Wakefield spoke like he was a tutor schooling a young charge.

Andrew shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me, then.” He dunked his head in the basin to wash his hair.

“Well, it isn’t about you, Waters,” the other man snapped. “It’s about Marcia, and it mattered to Thornton, because he left her at the damned altar.”

Andrew whipped his head back, spraying drops of water upon the other man’s immaculate garments. “What?” That shocked question exploded from him.

Wakefield gave a tight nod. “He jilted her.”

Andrew cursed. “Thornton can go to hell.”

“Yes, and he undoubtedly will,” Wakefield said. “But this is notaboutThornton. It is about Miss Gray, and she is going to need the support of those who care about her.” He gave Andrew a pointed look.

“Us?”

“Yes, us!” That exclamation came filled with annoyance. “She is going to need respectable members of Polite Society to be there, supporting her through this.”

“I’m not respectable,” Andrew felt inclined to point out.