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The remaining color bled from his cheeks. “I am so very s-sorry.” His hoarse voice caught and broke. “I need you to know that. I need you to”—he paused, searching for words—“know I regret everything about that day.”

She should leave. Andrew waited, and what this faithless man had to say mattered not at all. And yet, she lingered. “Why, Charles?” she asked quietly, and that question came not from the place of agony of that day but, rather, from a desperate need to know how she could have been so very wrong in her judgment about him and his affections.

Charles stared intently at a point just over her head. “I… There was my sister to consider.” His tones were peculiarly flat.

“You feared for their reputations should their illustrious brother marry a sullied woman who was beneath him?” She lifted an eyebrow.

“No!” he exclaimed, his voice echoing, and he immediately glanced around to verify they were still alone. When he looked back, he lowered his voice. “It wasn’t that. Itisn’tthat. I love you,” he said raggedly.

“Just not enough,” she murmured and attempted to leave.

His features contorted in a paroxysm that sent a chill through her.

She stopped. Something he’d said, a slight omission and yet a significant one, registered.There was my sister to consider.Not hissisters. Reflexively, Marcia’s arms came up, and she rubbed them to ward off the chill. In vain.

Charles closed the remaining distance between them so a handful of steps separated them, and near as she was, she saw the grief and misery etched in the planes of his once-beloved features. “One of my sisters was once… acquainted with Lord Atbrooke.”

She stilled, and then her legs trembled underneath her as his meaning took hold.

Oh, God.

Atbrooke had inflicted the same hell he had upon her mother on other women, too.

Including one of Charles’s beloved sisters.

She bit down hard on her lower lip. Her entire body trembled. How was it possible to feel this cold and yet have one’s palms slicked with sweat?

Her former betrothed stretched a hand out as if to touch her cheek, but then, as if the revulsion of caressing her was too great, he let it fall, and she came whirring back to the moment. “It didn’t matter to me that you were illegitimate, you know,” he said hollowly. “I would have married you anyway. I just… I couldn’t… I didn’t know… I…”

Hearing something in those stammered words, Marcia sharpened her gaze upon his face.

But then, Charles took in a deep, unsteady breath. “If… you are running around with Waters, I’d ask you to… stop. To be careful.”

She tensed. “Are you threatening me?”

He drew back. “Never,” he whispered. “I just do not wish to see you hurt, but I’d never speak ill of you or spread gossip about you. I love you.”

He loved her. Odd those three words didn’t have the affect they had on her even days ago. “Just not enough,” she said softly. But then… “How could you?” she murmured, without judgment.

Pain ravaged his features.

She waited for Charles to say something more. Something. Anything.

For a moment, she thought he might state his desire to wed her after all. Only, there was no relief or joy at the thought. He was a stranger to her.

In the end, she was the one who spoke into the void of silence.

“I am so very sorry,” she said, and that apology came from a place deep in her soul, for the hurt his sister had known and for the regret she carried that her existence had wrought another person more pain.

“Marcia,” he croaked. “I—”

“You do not need to worry, Charles. Just as you’d not spread gossip about me, I shall not betray what you’ve shared.” That he’d come here, that despite his love and devotion for his sisters, he’d still revealed that most personal, most painful secret to her, of all people, indicated his regard hadn’t been feigned.

He was as disgusted by her blood as she was.

Marcia lifted her hood back into place; she turned on her heel and left.

Even as she made her way outside, she found herself suffocating all over again, struggling to get a breath.