“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” Maggie had explained.

Jane had professed to understand. But Maggie couldn’t help feeling as though her friend was disappointed in her.

Fred was disappointed in her, too. Terminally disappointed. This evening, when he’d arrived for dinner, he’d fixed Maggie with a contemptuous glare, condemning her without saying a word.

She didn’t have to guess what he was thinking. He’d said it plain enough at the tavern. She was a light-skirt. A ruined woman. Someone who had thrown her innocence away on a scoundrel, and whose reputation was now past the point of recovery.

“It doesn’t matter about any of them,” Maggie said. “My only concern is for you.” She searched St. Clare’s eyes. There was an expression in them that was hard to read. “Will your grandfather be joining us later?”

“I don’t know. He left no word for me. He was already gone when I awoke this morning. According to the innkeeper, he departed in the early hours, shortly after I retired to bed. Just climbed into his carriage with his luggage and…” St. Clare shrugged.

Maggie’s heart clenched. The earl had abandoned him. Now that St. Clare’s true identity had been exposed, Allendale had no more use for his grandson. No more affection for him either, it seemed. As if St. Clare were as disposable as a piece of counterfeit paper. Something that, once revealed to be a fake, had no value at all.

Anger rose in her breast. With it, came a sharp pang of guilt.

None of this would have happened if she hadn’t insisted on accompanying St. Clare to Market Barrow. It was all her fault.

Grasping his hand, she tugged him down the hall and into the library. The wall sconces were lit, along with an overhead chandelier. She didn’t bother shutting the door. This wouldn’t take long.

Which was just as well.

The two of them had only a few moments. Everyone else was already assembled in the drawing room—Jane and her Aunt Harriet, Lionel Beresford and his mother, Fred, and even Sir Roderick. They were enjoying a preprandial drink, waiting for her to return, and if she didn’t do so promptly, one of them was bound to follow after her.

“Your grandfather’s not coming back, is he?” she asked.

St. Clare gazed down at her, his hand still holding hers. “Does it matter?”

“Not to me,” she said. And she meant it. “To put it in terms you might understand…I’d take you in your underclothes.”

He huffed a laugh. “Is that what I told you?”

“You did.”

“Well. Your underclothes are a vast deal more pleasing than mine.”

There was a heaviness in her chest that prevented her from laughing with him. She had too much of a sense of what he’d lost on her account.