Page 33 of To Catch a Viscount

Egads.

He drew his hand swiftly back. “You’re going to marry some respectable, honorable fellow who’ll give you love and his good name, and you’ll wonder that you were ever so brokenhearted by one such as Thornton.”

Did he speak that reminder for her benefit or his? Perhaps it was a mix of both.

Marcia’s lashes lifted. “I won’t,” she insisted with the dogged stubbornness she’d always possessed in spades. “It doesn’t matter.”

He suspected she’d convinced herself that she actually believed it. But she hadn’t.

“I’ve made some… decisions about my future,” she said.

Decisions.

He’d heard the distinct pause in her statement.

Warning bells clanged at the back of his mind that said to slip between the curtains and make a hasty exit from this conversation and ballroom, getting himself far, far away from this young, innocent woman and whatever plan she’d hatched.

“I want to live my life,” she said.

“Brava! That is precisely what you should do.”

He made to step around her, but she slid in front of him, blocking his path, positioning herself in a way that if he evaded her, they’d be revealed to all who might pass on the other side of the curtain.

“I want to go to fun gatherings.”

“This is a fun gathering,” he croaked.

Marcia gave him a long look.

“Fun for young ladies,” he amended.

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t patronize me, Andrew.”

“I’m… not. I’m… just…” Desperate. He was desperate, because he knew precisely where she was going, and he needed to get himself going before he heard any more.

“I am tired of polite affairs, Andrew. I want to experience the thrilling side of London. I want to go to those gaming hells that admit gentlemen and ladies. I want to know what it is to be wicked.”

“Gentlemen and ladies do not visit those gaming hells,” he gritted out. They were places of evil and ugliness and everything she wasn’t.

“You do.”

“Precisely,” he whispered. “That is it exactly.”

“Fine, then I want to see how the other half lives. The disreputable side.” She beamed. “Of which I am now a member.”

This was why she’d sought him out?

“Marcia,” he said imploringly. “You are not in our ranks.”

“Not yet,” she said with a smile. “At least not physically, but by way of reputation and name… I am.”

And damned if she didn’t somehow sound… pleased at the prospect.

“Marcia, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

Her smile faded to a dark frown, and she glared at him, and he’d have been properly terrified of such a blistering glower if they were having absolutely any other discussion but this one.

But they weren’t.

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