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He stared confusedly at her. “You want to… what?”

“Marry you,” she clarified, and her admission should have sent him running for the hills in terror. So why, then, did his heart move in this odd way in his chest?

Marcia drew in a deep breath. “But it would be selfish of me. I thank you, Andrew, but you are my friend, and because of that, I cannot do this, even if I want to. I cannot steal your freedom.”

Andrew frowned. She was resolute and determined to savehim?

But… blast. That was his role. He was saving her reputation, and giving her his name.

Suddenly, what he’d set out to do this morning—to make her an obligatory offer prompted by his brothers-in-law—shifted, and it became more of a need to protect this woman who was his friend. From Atbrooke’s harassment and from the scandal that was surely to come when it was discovered she’d been at Cyprian’s Den. And it was only a matter of time before the pieces of a not-so-difficult puzzle were assembled by the patrons who’d spied her father dragging some cloaked woman through the club.

“And what do you think will happen to your name and reputation if it is discovered you were at one of London’s most notorious clubs?” he asked quietly.

She hugged herself around the middle. “I’d be sacrificing you to save my siblings.”

“It is no sacrifice.” And oddly, in speaking those words to her, he found… it wasn’t. “You’re my friend.”

Taking advantage of her silence, Andrew stepped closer and twined their fingers. Drawing them to his lips, he placed a kiss on the top of her hand. “We get on better than anyone aside from my siblings and their spouses that I know of.”

“That is… true,” she acknowledged, her brow puckering in an endearingly contemplative way.

“And neither of us would enter into a union with any illusions about love.”

“That is also true.”

She spoke with so much adamance his chest constricted, and he alternately wanted to draw her into his arms to hold her close once more and hunt down her former betrothed to beat the man within an inch of his bloody life for having hurt this woman as he had.

You’ll only hurt her, too,a voice taunted.She may think she loved Thornton, but there will be another. And if you claim her, she’ll be denied the true future happiness she deserves.

He shoved aside those reservations. The time for that had come and gone. Rutland and Huntly were correct on that score.

He couldn’t offer her absolutely everything she deserved in a real marriage, but he could give her his name.

“I… confess I have thought some about marriage to you,” she shared.

Be it during girlhood or womanhood, she’d always been brutally honest and frank with him. She’d never held back her thoughts.

Mama and Papa are expecting a babe, and my mama told me where babies come from, Andrew, and it is absolutely horrific.

The memory trickled in, pulling a grin from him as he thought back to their lakeside meeting when she’d been a girl. He’d been a young man, pushing her on a swing because even that had been preferable to attending a staid house party he’d joined at his family’s urging.

Marcia sent him an arched look. “This is where you are supposed to ask me what exactly I thought about.”

Andrew forced his features into a mask of solemnity the level of which she required. “Forgive me. I merely expected you didn’t require any urging from me to continue sharing.” He inclined his head. “Do continue.”

“Well, I thought it could be good fun, as you and I share the same interests.”

He cocked his head. She thought they shared the same interests?

“We both like to fish,” she said.

Andrew started. Yes, he did. He’d always enjoyed the peace in staking out a spot at a lake, any lake, and he’d done so numerous times with her. “It’s been years since I’ve done that, Marcia,” he felt inclined to point out, this time needing to disabuse her of any illusions she might harbor about him possibly being someone different than he was.

She folded her arms before her. “You no longer enjoy fishing?”

“I… enjoy it. I just don’t do it.”

“We both enjoy card games.”