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Andrew sank to a knee beside her at the foot of the bed. “Marcia,” he said gently. “There is nothing wrong with being born of a love affair. There was everything right about it because you came of it,” he said insistently, trying to will her to understand that.

A bitter, pained-sounding laugh exploded from her lips. “It wasn’t a love affair.”

“Then a night of passion,” he clarified.

“He was not her lover,” she whispered, her voice ragged and broken and faint.

Andrew looked at her askance.

“Lord Atbrooke… He… My mother was not willing,” she whispered. She lifted that ravaged gaze to his once more. “His desire was not reciprocated.”

Andrew heard the words, and yet, his mind proved sluggish to process their meaning because of the heinousness of what she was saying.

“My mother… She…” Marcia shook her head, as if unable to finish the thought. Her throat moved up and down wildly. “He forced himself upon her.”

He stilled, and that cold deepened, adding a layer of ice to the chill inside him.Oh, God.

“There was no God in this,” she whispered, and he realized he’d spoken those words aloud. Biting her lower lip, she looked at her lap. “I am the unwanted child of that unwanted night. I am the child of my mother’s rape.” She hugged herself in a lonely, forlorn-looking embrace. “I-I shouldn’t b-be telling you this. I-it is my m-mother’s secret. But i-it is my secret, too. It’s about me, and I can’t share it with anyone, and I don’t want to because it i-is awful what happened to her, and—”

Andrew drew her into his arms, and she immediately turned her cheek, resting it upon his shoulder. “It’s all right,” he assured. He knew she needed to speak of it for the impact it was having on her life. “I’ll honor your confidence.” This burden she carried was so very great for any person’s shoulders, and his soul ached that it should be upon this woman’s.

She closed her eyes. “It was easier to let you th-think I was ashamed of my bastardy. Because then I didn’t have to say… who I am. What I am. My mother being deceived by him was vastly different and preferable to her being raped by him.”

And she’d continue to carry this painful, awful secret, her mother’s secret, which by default also belonged to Marcia.

A strangled groan shook his chest, and he drew her tighter into his embrace and just held her.

And then the torrent opened.

Marcia sobbed, crying against him, shaking and trembling, and he was rendered helpless by her grief, wanting only to absorb it and make it his so that she wouldn’t feel any of this pain, yearning to take all of this from her shoulders and claim it as his own if he could. But that was the one thing he could not do.

So Andrew just held her, absorbing her body’s trembling against his and stroking her back.

“Every day my m-mother has h-had to look at me and see m-me and remember that day.”

“That isn’t true,” he whispered against the top of her turban, which had knocked loose in her run through the club.

“It is.”

“I know it’s not because I know you,” he said, drawing back slightly so that he could meet her gaze. “I know because when I’m with you, all I can see is your smile, and I laugh at your jests and listen to your stories, and it is impossible for any person to see anything but you, Marcia.”

Her lips parted, and in that moment, she looked at him in a way that no other soul on this planet ever had. Having this woman gaze upon him so—him, Andrew Barrett, the Viscount Waters, dissolute lord and son of a reprobate—alternately left him light inside and riddled with terror.

Marcia threw herself into his embrace once more, and he welcomed the slight weight of her form against him as he folded her close, holding her.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t know if what you’re saying is right, but when you say it like you did, it makes me believe that mayhap me being born wasn’t only evil and bad.”

“Listen to me,” he said, hugging her harder. “The world is a shite place, Marcia, but not because of you. It is better because of your place in it. Lord knows my miserable existence is certainly better for having you in it.”

Her breath caught.

He held her for a long while. Rather, they held each other.

And he knew the moment something shifted between them.

He felt it in the way she went still in his arms, but did not pull away, and he was hopeless to pull away even as he should.

Marcia pressed her cheek against the place where his heart beat, and then she parted his jacket so his lawn shirt proved the only barrier between them.