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This was why marrying her was a bad idea, because ultimately, she had hopes for him, and he’d only let her down.

“May I continue?” the vicar asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew caught the way Marcia’s father, and hell, more than three-quarters of the guests leaned in, as if bracing—hoping—for the moment that Marcia called all of this off.

“You may,” Marcia said, lowering her head, and Andrew relaxed his shoulders.

Coward that he was, Andrew made a show of attending the vicar.

“Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity…”

Prosperity and adversity.

The vicar spoke of a partnership between Andrew and the woman beside him. Perhaps it was because this was Marcia whom he’d marry, but he thought that description fit them.

There would decidedly be adversity.

His facial muscles strained, he looked down at the woman beside him and considered the question she’d put to him, and a cold sweat broke out on his skin.

Because he could not do this.

He should not do this.

Marcia would soon have her eyes opened, and whatever childlike opinion she had about his worth, which she had built in her mind like castles in clouds, would be quickly shattered. The illusion would die, the reality coming late to her when it had come quite early for the rest of the people who knew him.

He considered the doorway, but that merely brought his gaze colliding with the sea of angry family members—his and hers—who’d likely drag him back and beat him good for even daring to think of fleeing. That would put him in the ranks with Thornton and make Marcia jilted for a second time.

Or mayhap they’d be content with him running off?

“Are you all right?” she asked softly, and he whipped his attention back to her. “You’ve gone all… queer.”

“Fine,” he lied, his voice garbled. That word, spoken in haste, rose above the vicar’s prattling on the institution of marriage.

The vicar stopped once more and looked at them.

A flurry of whispers filled Lord Wessex’s offices.

“You’re having second thoughts,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact, but her eyes sad.

It was the first time he was the one responsible for her sadness, and it was an awful feeling that cleaved his chest and shredded him inside. And if he went through with marrying her, the expression she now wore would become a familiar one.

But, God help him, he couldn’t deny her anything, even if it was himself. Even if it would be to save her from him… and them.

So he did that which had come too naturally to him over the years. He lied. “Not at all,” he said.

“May I continue?” the vicar asked again.

Andrew hesitated a moment more, the last shred of decency he apparently possessed crying out within him to shake his head. Instead, Andrew nodded, and the man of God resumed.

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.”

I’m a wastrel.

I wager too much.

I like drink, also too much.

I’ve made cuckolds out of husbands and vow breakers out of unhappy wives.