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She looked up, and the remainder of that lecture died a swift death.

“Marcia?” he asked, and his tones were instantly concerned. His eyes were, too, and it was too much.

Marcia flung herself at his chest, and Andrew immediately folded her in his arms.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice more than slightly panicked. “Are you hurt?” He ran his palms over her arms, searching for hurts and verifying that she was unharmed.

“N-no,” she rasped against his shoulder. At least not in the way he worried about now.

“Hey now, love,” he whispered against the top of her head and held her. Just held her, and it felt so very good and safe and wonderful.

This was Andrew, and he was uncomplicated. He was her friend, who’d become even more these past days.

He placed a kiss against her temple, and the tenderness of his lips brushing there brought her eyes closed.

As long as he drew breath, Andrew would forever recall the sheer terror of watching Marcia tear through London’s most scandalous and dangerous club and losing sight of her in the crush of men, women, and servers enjoying the revelry. His world had come undone at the loss of her.

Until he’d found her as he’d never before seen her—bereft and empty-eyed and hurting.

Everything hurt inside, and as he held her, he sought to reassure himself that he had her now, also vowing that if someone had harmed her, that person would pay with his life.

She clung to him, holding him tightly, seeming to want to anchor herself in his embrace and find some stability. “My father was here,” she whispered, her words muffled against his chest.

Andrew stiffened and then set her away. He looked frantically about.

“Not my real father, Marcus.” She folded her hands, looking down at them. “Lord Atbrooke.”

He stilled, and his heart thudded sickeningly against his chest. Lord Atbrooke and the cur’s sister, Lady Carew, possessed an evil that Satan himself could not manage, and that monster had sought out Marcia. Nor did he think it was a coincidence that he’d been conveniently waylaid by Marianne. This was Atbrooke’s sister, after all. “Atbrooke spoke with you,” he said slowly, needing to clarify.

She nodded.

“What did he want?” he asked carefully.

“He claims he wants a relationship with me, but he is just doing it because he wants my father to pay him, and I can’t have him come around, Andrew.” All her words came rapidly, rolling together. “He said he would, but then my mother would have to see him, and I can’t allow that. It would destroy her.” A pained half laugh, half sob, garbled and raw, ripped from her throat. “It will destroy her. I am his daughter.”

Andrew gripped her hard by the shoulders, drawing her close. “You are no such thing,” he said sharply, tightening his hold upon her and shaking her slightly, knocking her mask off. How could she see any of Atbrooke in herself? How could she not see she was joy and light and love to the other man’s darkness? “Do you hear me, Marcia?”

“But I am his daughter,” she said, lifting her ravaged, unmasked gaze to his. “And my mother must look at me every day and see…him.”

“Your mother looks at you and sees you, and there could be no greater joy in the world for her than that.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, and he brushed it away with the pad of his thumb. Bending his knees and dropping slightly so he could better meet her eyes, he said, “And you, Marcia, this… guilt you carry, there is no place for it. Your birthright is not a thing of shame unless you let it be.”

“if you really believed that, then why do you think your life has been determined by who your father is?” she countered, and Andrew paused.

He’d always just… taken it as fact that he was destined to be his father; he’d been so certain of it. He’d conducted himself precisely as his letch of a father had, and there was something both… freeing and unnerving in realizing that mayhap his life hadn’t been just destined because of his blood but, rather, because of choices he’d made, and how he’d conducted himself.

He gave her another light squeeze. “Many women and many men take lovers, and babes are born of those unions. That is just… the way. He was a dishonorable rogue who failed your mother and you. But that is not on you or your mother, Marcia.”

“No,” she whispered, drawing herself back. “I shouldn’t be here.”

He’d told her as much from the start of this harebrained scheme. Her belated realization didn’t make him feel any sense of real triumph. “No,” he said gruffly, catching her by the fingers, determined to get her far away from this place that had brought such sadness to her. He’d never come back, because he’d never see anything here but Marcia hurting and lost. “This place is terrible. Let’s leave.”

Marcia tugged free of him. “No. I wasn’t referring to this place.” Then she lifted slow, haunted eyes to his, and a chill stole through him. It seeped through every corner of his being, leaving every spot it touched cold inside. “Alive,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t be alive.”

His muscles contracted. “Do not say that,” he ordered harshly, not wanting to imagine a world where she was not in it. She was the one spot of light and good.

Her lips twisted in a sad smile that hit him square in the chest. “You misunderstand me. I… my birth should not have happened.” Hugging her arms close to herself, Marcia left his side and perched upon the satin-covered bed at the back of the room. And it was the first time in the whole of his rotten existence that he’d ever seen a woman as desirable as her seated upon a bed designed to make a man think of sinning and yet was unable to think about anything other than what was making her hurt. Marcia stared down at her interlocked fingers as if they contained the answer to existence—her existence. “It was not one that was intended.”