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Andrew muttered another curse under his breath and then looked up. “Are you—”

Marcia remained frozen on her feet, her cheeks wan, her eyes rounded, her lashes unblinking.

His loss instantly forgotten, Andrew jumped up. He caught her by the waist and drew her close. “Let’s go,” he said, and she gave a slight, uneven nod as she allowed him to lead her into the aisle. Keeping her close, he used his body to shoulder a path for them—for her—through the crowded arena, which had swelled with more patrons since they’d arrived hours earlier.

As they neared the exit of the club, the number of patrons thinned.

Andrew opened the door and led Marcia outside.

Even the thick London air proved a cooling balm against the heat from the crush of bodies within the arena.

The moment he closed the door, Marcia drew in several slow, measured breaths, and squeezing her eyes shut, she tilted her face up, like she’d done as a girl counting stars in the night sky and asking him to help her keep track of that impossible number.

But she wasn’t that child anymore.

She was a grown woman.

A woman who tempted.

A woman who enticed.

Not just Andrew, but all men.

There’d been Thornton, who’d won her heart, and now Rothesby, who’d been intent on bedding her.

“Did you enjoy that, Dorothy?” he taunted, his voice emerging harsher than he’d intended as fury at her and Rothesby and at himself lent a sharp edge to it. “Was that everything you hoped for?”

Marcia’s lashes slowly lifted, and his chest quickened even as she glowered at him.

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off before she could speak. “And Dorothy?” he spat. “What is that name even?”

Her frown deepened. “It is my middle name,” she snapped.

He blinked. “Oh.” He’d not known that. It seemed like something he should have known, given how well he knew her.

“It was for my Aunt Dorothy, my mother’s godmother.”

“I… well, forgive me,” he said tightly. “I did not know that.”

The riotous sounds within the arena spilled into the streets, a muted background noise to his and Marcia’s discussion.

“Is that why you brought me here?” she demanded. Dropping her hands on her hips, she took a step closer. “To scare me?”

He took her lightly by the right arm, and drawing her nearer, he stuck his face close to hers. “Did you not ask me to show you how the demimonde spends their time? You asked for wickedness. Well, this is it. This is what you asked for, Marcia. This is what you asked to see.” He pulled her close. “What did you think? We sit around in quiet rooms drinking bloody brandy and whiskey?”

She shook her head. “I… don’t know.”

And then he kissed her.

Catching her at the waist, he guided her hard against the wall and took her mouth under his even harder.

She stiffened in his arms, and her hands came up… To push him away? Good, she should. Only, he was rake enough that he could admit that and scoundrel enough to revel in the moment she fisted her hands in the fabric of his cloak and drew him closer even as she leaned up into him.

And he was lost.

With a growl, Andrew filled his hands with her buttocks, sculpting that flesh, savoring the feel of her.

And then he remembered who this woman was, that she was an innocent, and yet, even as that reminder of who she was should compel him to release her, it only fueled his ardor. He gentled the kiss, teasing that slightly fuller upper lip that lent her mouth an upside-down pout.