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She sat up excitedly, and he dealt her second card.

An ace.

She let out a happy squeal over his curse, even as she fought the niggling of hurt at his annoyed response to her win. “I shan’t let you steal my joy at winning,” she said, gathering up the cards. Suddenly, she shivered. A chill slipped through her as she felt a stare upon her.

Several patrons shifted, revealing a lone figure seated at a table some seven paces away.

Marcia froze.

Him.

The gentleman stared baldly back at Marcia.

As Andrew shuffled the deck, she made no attempt to look away.

The familiar man was one she’d met but once, some ten years earlier, believing he’d been a friend of her mother’s. Innocent as she’d been at that time, she had found herself enthralled by the man with a birthmark like her own.

Automatically, she touched the birthmark on her hand.

He flashed an icy smile. A knowing one. And then, ever so slowly, he lifted his hand. Anyone else would have construed that gesture as a greeting. But then, ever so slightly, he angled his palm to show his matching mark.

Her skin slicked hot and then cold, and nausea churned in her stomach. The ceiling shrank as the walls closed in around her. Her skin crawled. For even with her mask and her turban, he’d recognized her as his own.

Her father. The man who’d sired her. The man who’d raped her mother. The monster whose blood flowed in her veins.

“Marcia?” Andrew’s voice came as if from a distance.

She shook her head, incapable of a response when she couldn’t even manage a coherent thought.

Her hands quaking, Marcia grabbed her flute and drank down the bubbly brew.

“Hey now,” he said gently. “Slow down.”

I need to leave.

The pleasure of this night had been tainted with the reminder of who she was.

And yet, she could not make her legs move. Not in the direction she should. Because more than wanting to leave, she wanted to go to him. She wanted to rail at him and rage and pound her fists against his chest and face, leaving him bruised and bloodied and broken, as he’d left her mother.

A loud rush of air filled her ears. “Deal,” she snapped, and Andrew cocked his head.

She’d be damned if that man ran her off.

“But…”

“I saiddeal.”

Except one could always count on Andrew Barrett, the Viscount Waters, to never do that which was expected of him. With a small frown, he drew his chair forward and leaned across the table. “What is it, love?”

Tears threatened, and she was struck by his innate sense of knowing that something was amiss with her.

The gossip pages wrote about him as a rake who was self-absorbed in his own pleasures, but he’d never been that way with her.

Aware of the marquess’s eyes upon them, she gave silent thanks for the shelter Andrew’s body now provided, protecting her from the other man’s view.

“It is nothing,” she said softly.

“I know you,” he murmured. “Certainly well enough to gather when something has upset you. Is it because you’ll have my company at a polite event?”