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“Those mean the same.”

“—woman I’d ever deliberately seduce,” he finished over her droll interruption.

Marcia kept her features deadpan. “So you accidentally seduced me?”

“Yes,” he exclaimed. “No!”

Marcia laughed and swatted his arm. “I’m teasing. It was just a kiss, Andrew. Only one more kiss we shared.” She’d just wanted it to be more.

“Marcia,” Andrew began again, his voice strained, and he stole a look at the door. “All of this was a mistake.” He spoke in tones more solemn than she’d ever heard from him.

A vise gripped her heart. He’d call everything that transpired between them amistake? In a bid for nonchalance, she rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “Why, thank you.”

“I did not mean to offend you,” he said on a rush and proceeded to explain, but as he did, she gave her head a shake.

This hardly seemed a promising start to a marriage.

He was determined that they should be no more than friends.

Well, that was fine. As he’d said, they were friends, and well, friendship was more than most couples had.

Not her parents and not most of her parents’ friends.

She went absolutely motionless as an idea slipped in.

And… you would be free of your parents’ home.

Andrew offered her a way out of this household, and if Atbrooke thought to use her to access her father’s money, then he’d be without that opportunity. There’d be no reason for him to darken this doorstep. Rather, she’d have her own doorstep for him to visit—along with her own servants to throw him out on his arse. There would be no reason to tell her parents and worry them with Atbrooke’s presence. Nay, he’d have no ability to leverage her against her parents.

“But I do want to offer,” Andrew was saying, bringing her back to the moment.

She dampened her mouth with the tip of her tongue. “Do you believe I’ll… say no?”

He blinked slowly, his golden lashes fluttering up and down. “Er…” He scrabbled with his cravat in that endearing way he always had when he was unsettled.

Then it hit her. He’d not believed she’d say no. Was it that he… hoped she would?

Marcia pushed away from the door and started a slow stroll over to him. “You only came to offer me marriage because you expected I’d say no, and you could ease your conscience, knowing you did the right thing, while being saved from actually having to marry me.”

By the silence that met her supposition and the guilty color splotching his cheeks, she was on the mark.

Marcia stopped so that just a pace separated them, far enough from him that she might tip her head back and meet his eyes, and she crossed her arms before her.

“I… It occurred to me that you would likely say no.” He hesitated. “You… are not? Saying no, that is?”

She’d already taken enough from him. To steal his freedom so that she could secure her own and keep Atbrooke away would be the height of selfishness.

She looked away first. “You don’t have to marry me, Andrew,” she said softly. “I’ll be just fine.” She would have to talk to her parents and face down Atbrooke with them. Marcia, however, had ruined too many lives. Her parents’. Her siblings’. She could not be selfish where Andrew was concerned, too. “My reputation was ruined long before last night.”

“Your reputation was not. Your name was talked about, Marcia, and by people who don’t really know you,” he said with a gentleness that he’d always shown her, a tenderness at odds with the image he presented to Polite Society as a cynical, unfeeling scoundrel.

“Don’t patronize me, Andrew,” she said flatly. “I’ve been given the cut direct many times. People have actually presented me with their shoulders. They’ve whispered about me and talked about me, and I’ve been shunned across ballrooms, even as they treated my father with only respect.” There was, in short, nothing the people of High Society could do to her that they’d not already done.

He frowned. “Well, I’m not letting you live in this world without the protection of my name. I was complicit in these antics.”

“We both were,” she pointed out.

“But then we both know the world is hardly fair where women are concerned, Marcia.”