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Flora drew back and angled a look up at her. “But you haven’t been as sad these past few days,” Flora noted, her gaze entirely too astute for her tender years. “These past days, you’ve seemed… excited. Like you were climbing out of your skin, but in a good way.”

And… she had been.

Marcia wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulders, and they leaned into each other. “You should go to bed, poppet,” she said, dropping a kiss on the top of her head.

Flora hopped up. “You… will be all right?”

“I will,” she promised. With Andrew as her escort, she had no doubt that her safety would be ensured. What she could not, however, guarantee was that she would continue to evade notice, and though she didn’t worry what that would mean for her, she did care about how it could affect her siblings.

With a good deal less enthusiasm than that which had gripped her all day, Marcia made her way outside, finding her way to the end of the street.

The moment she appeared, Andrew opened the carriage door and helped her inside. “Mar,” he greeted as if nothing had transpired last evening.

She was grateful for that very casual greeting, for it again felt like nothing had changed between them.

As the carriage rolled along for her second night of sinning, she was given pause for the first time since she’d embarked on this quest. If her actions were discovered, if it was discovered that she was joining the demimonde, her sisters’ reputations would suffer. That was, her sisters’ reputations would suffermorebecause of Marcia. As it was, the latest gossip in the papers speculated that Marcia’s mother had made a cuckold of her husband and that none of the children had been fathered by the Viscount Wessex.

She stilled.

All this time, she’d been so fixed on her own hurt and resentment: about how the world now treated her. Her frustration and shame at knowing the man responsible for siring her. She’d been so self-absorbed, she’d not given proper thought to how her mother must feel in all this. Her mother, who’d given her life and who’d only shown her love now found her circumstances splashed upon the pages of newspapers. What misery her mother must be suffering.

And how much more she will suffer if your antics are discovered, and added to those pages…

“Second thoughts,” Andrew remarked, and his wasn’t a question but, rather, a statement from one who knew her well.

Because he was her friend, she nodded. “I… I am ashamed to say I’ve not properly thought about what will happen to my family if I’m discovered.” It proved she was selfish. With all the sacrifices Marcia’s parents had made, she’d repay them with this…

“Society will feed on the gossip, and they will be talked about,” Andrew said with his usual bluntness.

He was trying to dissuade her.

As if he felt her weakening, Andrew spoke again, but in quieter, more solemn tones than she’d ever recalled from him. “You don’t have to do this, Marcia.”

No, she didn’t.

She did have to go to polite affairs and be subjected to stares and gossips. “But I want to. I’ve only ever been respectable, and what has that gotten me?” she asked softly. “If they are going to talk, then I may as well experience what they’re all accusing me of.” Only, in her voice, she could not hear the same conviction she’d once felt over her decision.

“Tell me this, Marcia,” Andrew murmured, leaning across the bench, angling his body closer to hers. That slight movement brought his mouth dangerous close to hers. “Why do you care so much?”

Her senses were all muddled at his nearness, and she had to fight her way through to figuring out the answer to that question: her thoughts disordered for altogether different reasons than before.

“You don’t care what people think when they look atyou?” she asked.

He grinned, the devil’s half smile that tempted like that succulent apple in Eden. “Precisely.”

Through the dangerous fluttering of her heart, Marcia lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “It’s different, Andrew.”

“Oh? Because I assure you, people look when I enter a ballroom, and those expressions, are far from favorable.”

He was correct on that score, and by his matter-of-fact deliverance, he was unbothered.

“You chose your path, Andrew. I didn’t. And they aren’t looking at you with pity, and they revel in my fall.” She’d felt inclined to point out that key, defining difference.

“They once did,” he said softly, so softly she strained to hear and thought she’d imagined that solemn admission from a gentleman so very rarely somber.

“They did?” she asked, her voice faltering slightly.

“Oh, yes. When I first made my entrance at polite affairs, everyone looked at me with the same pity they did my sister Phoebe. I was the pitiable young gentleman whose sire was the worst reprobate in London. They knew my path before I did,” he murmured.