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That viper he’d been fortunate to find himself free of, but she’d returned and had spread her poison here.

“They did it to Charles,” Marcia reminded him. “When he did not pay timely enough, they revealed mine and my mother’s pasts to the world.” Her eyes flashed fury. “Or at least their version of our truths.”

And they would do it again. They would think nothing of hurting Marcia again.

And whereas he didn’t give a jot what they said of him, he knew firsthand how very much it mattered to her. With a curse, Andrew stalked over to the desk, and yanked out the center drawer.

“What… are you doing?” Marcia asked.

“I’m—”

“Surely you don’t not intend to pay them?” she asked, her tone equally part horrified and shocked.

Andrew stilled. “Marcia.”

“They won’t be content, Andrew. They will keep coming back for more and more. Charles is just more proof that they won’t. He paid them… to keep a secret in his own family safe, and then they merely switched to bribing him to keep the secrets surrounding my birth silent.” She squared her jaw. “Theonlyway to defeat people like them is to not be bullied by them.”

He searched his gaze over her features, her cheeks ripe with her fury, her eyes flashing. My God, she was brilliant in her strength and convictions.

And yet… he’d also seen firsthand, through the years, the ruthlessness Atbrooke and his sister were capable of. And where he didn’t care what they could or might do to him, he did care about this woman before him. “Marcia, I’d not see you hurt,” he began.

She swatted his arm. “They can’t hurt me. But you granting them power they don’t deserve over us, would.” Marcia held his gaze. “Promise me you won’t, Andrew. Promise me you won’t do anything where they are concerned.”

“I want to…” he finally acknowledged. “Because I would do anything to keep you from hurting.”

Something shifted in her eyes; her face softened, and her lips parted. “Oh.”

Some of the tension slipped from him as he dropped the letter, forgotten, and came around the desk to stand before her. “Surely you know how much I care about you,” he murmured, stroking the pad of his thumb along her lower lip.

Her lashes fluttered and then she opened her eyes. “Charles cared about me.”

Andrew went stock-still, recalling all over that there’d been another whom she’d loved, and who’d loved her in return, and who, had it not been for Atbrooke and his sister, would even now be married to Marcia. Jealousy singed the blood in his veins. “What is your point?” he asked, his tone sharper than he intended.

“He thought to protect me, too, Andrew,” she explained. “I don’t want that. I want someone who can be honest with me. Do not lie to me. Not as he did.”

Someone who can be honest with her. Someone who didn’t keep secrets from her…

Like the fact that you were offered a fortune if you married her,a voice taunted. Andrew tensed. For what was a worse secret than that?

But you were going to marry her anyway… as such, it wasn’t about the fortune. Not really.

“Andrew?” she prodded, startling him out of the guilty thoughts fomenting in his head.

Andrew caught her hands, and raised them one at a time to his lips. “You have my word, love.”

This was different. It was entirely not the same.

That was what he told himself, anyway.

“And you won’t give them a pence?” she pressed, having misunderstood the reason for his hesitation.

“Not a single one,” he vowed. Nay, with that money he had returned through his marriage to Marcia, he was more determined than ever to make something of himself, so he could care for her and the children they’d one day have together, as they deserved.

And he prayed that he’d not come to regret that decision, or the promise he’d made to her this day.

Chapter 21

Aweek later, seated in the parlor of her new home with her friends opposite her, Marcia should be only content.