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“I was hoping to enlist your help in a matter, Your Grace.”

Rothesby grinned. “I’m evenmoreintrigued, my lady.”

Oh, this was quite enough.

Gritting his teeth hard enough that pain shot from his jaw all the way up to his temples, Andrew took Marcia’s hand in his and tugged her along. “Let’s go.”

“Hey,” she gasped, yanking against his hand.

Retaining his hold on her, he pulled her away from his friends. She resisted.

“Stealing my fun, are you, Waters?” Rothesby called dryly.

“More like saving you,” he muttered, resorting to tossing her over his shoulder, earning a laugh from the young duke and an impressively fierce pinch on his lower back from the minx struggling against him.

He cursed. “See what I mean?”

“She looks like a handful. I would be happy to—”

He and Marcia spoke at the same time.

“No.”

“Yes,” she called over to Rothesby.

“Over my dead body,” Andrew snapped, stomping over to his carriage.

As though Andrew strolling the streets of London with a woman flung over his shoulder were the most natural thing in the world, his driver drew the door open.

“My lord,” he greeted.

“Evening, James.” Andrew deposited Marcia in the conveyance and then climbed swiftly onto the opposite bench.

James shoved the door closed.

“Andrew, I am not at all pleased with you,” she snapped, shoving her hood back and revealing a tangle of golden curls that hung like a sun-kissed waterfall about her shoulders. The combs some maid had surely, expertly tucked within those strands had slipped nearly free in the melee, and he stilled at the sight of her, an Athena with the fiery spirit of Nix, a veritable goddess of secrets and night mysteries.

“Are you listening to me, Andrew?”

“No,” he murmured. Now that he’d seen her in this siren’s light, he could not unsee her.

At least not in this moment.

Later, logic could be fully restored.

Marcia tipped her head at a little angle, and that slight shift sent her cloak gaping, and his gaze fell unbidden to the high neckline of her white silk evening dress.

His breathing came harder, shallower.

Revealing absolutely no hint that she knew the effect she was having on him, Marcia folded her arms and glared at him. “You are being ridiculous.”

That managed to right his thoughts.

“I’mbeing ridiculous?” he echoed, his temper flaring, his voice and anger both rising, and he welcomed those far safer sentiments. “This from a woman who took a damned hack to East London by herself and waited, alone, outside one of London’s seediest gaming hells. Alone.”

“You said ‘alone’ twice.”

“Well, it bore repeating.” Some of the anger went out of him. “Marcia,” he implored. “What are you doing?”