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The nights she’d spent married to Andrew had been the most magical ones of her existence. Each time, Andrew brought her pleasure the likes of which she’d never known existed.

The mornings, however, she awakened to find herself alone, and he shut away in his office, working on his business matters, like a man absolutely driven.

No, there was no absence of intimacy between them… at night.

His work, however, had now… extended to this evening, and she was being a petulant child, but she wanted at least this time to be theirs.

What did you expect?the voice of reason whispered at the back of her mind.

She had far more than most any other woman in Polite Society. She had a husband who was a friend. And she had freedom to live her life out from under the thumb of overprotective parents. And she had her friends.

“You can always just go join them,” Anwen ventured.

“He has business he is working on,” Marcia said. Business he was now always working on.

“I daresay he’s not the wastrel society says he is,” Faith said, and then grunted as Anwen sent an elbow into her side.

Marcia frowned.

“What? I didn’t say he was a wastrel. Just that society says he is,” Faith said defensively. “I’m merely pointing out that if he were, he’d not be busy as he is seeing to his affairs.”

“Well, as I see it, we shouldn’t pout,” Anwen declared. “We have freedom, and there is something to be said for that.”

Her friends nodded in agreement, and even as Marcia belatedly bobbed her head, she knew the truth. She yearned for more than freedom. She wanted everything her mother and father had said she’d been deserving of, but more, she wanted it all with Andrew.

She knew that now.

It was a dangerous discovery to make so very late, particularly after she’d gone and married London’s most wicked rake.

It had been one thing not recognizing the shift that had occurred in her feelings for him over the years, denying the change that had befallen their relationship when she’d not been married to him and living with him. Then, when they’d been living their own lives, she’d not had to think about or be directly confronted with the fact that he was Andrew Barrett, Viscount Waters, lover of scandal and sin.

“Marcia?”

The hesitant call of her name brought her head flying up.

Her friends stared expectantly back.

Her mind went blank. They expected something of her, a response. “I…”Was lost in pitying self-musings, pining for a husband whom I’ve fallen in love with, but will not fully have. Not in the way she really wanted him. These were her best friends, and yet, she still found herself unable to share those pitiable thoughts with them.

“Of course she does not wish to go out,” Anwen said exasperatedly when Marcia failed to respond.

“And why shouldn’t she?” Faith shot back. “Why should she remain bereft and lonely while her husband…” The young lady gave a wave of her hand. “Does whatever it is he’s doing?”

Why indeed?

“I’m not bereft,” she muttered.

She might as well have not bothered speaking that lie as the other two young ladies launched into a debate, their voices rising as they each strove for her argument to be heard over the other’s.

Marcia frowned.

Faith was not wrong. In fact, she was very much right. She was a married woman. Granted, she desperately wished she’d married a man who’d want to spend his days with her—but she hadn’t. She had married a man now consumed by work. She’d entered into a logical arrangement, one that would give her a name and spare her siblings from further scandal.

“I want to go,” she said, and when she failed to make herself heard over the noisy debate, Marcia cupped her hands around her mouth and repeated more loudly, “I want to go.”

That immediately cut across the din of her friends’ quarrel.

Both looked over at her, surprise stamped on their features.