Georgie couldn’t contain her gasp of shock. “What? No! Of course not! I’ve never … I mean…” She trailed off, utterly mortified at the suggestion, and took a deep, steadying breath. She should have anticipated such an assumption. “No. That’s not it at all. The problem was my cousin, Josiah.”

“Ah.”

His tone was neutral, and she tried to decide how best to phrase Josiah’s steady campaign of harassment. “Josiah has been trying to persuade me to marry him for years, but as I neared my majority, he became increasingly insistent—so much so that I feared he would engineer some compromising situation so we’d be forced to wed.”

She sneaked a glance at Wylde. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“I could not face placing my future, or my business, in Josiah’s hands, but there was no one else in the ton I trusted enough to marry. I was desperate. And then I realized that if I married a condemned man, I could control my own fate. I could tell Josiah I was married and fail to mention I was also a widow.”

She made a wry face at her own naivety. “Unfortunately, there were no condemned men in Newgate. When you were offered as an alternative, I reasoned that a living, but absent, husband would do. Josiah thinks I fell in love with a midshipman on one of my own brigs, who’s currently away at sea.”

“Very romantic. Swept off your feet by a burly sailor. How did your cousin take the news? Not well, I’d imagine.”

“Pieter showed him the marriage license, but he still suspects a trick. He’s probably trying to find a way to disprove it even as we speak.”

Wylde tapped one long forefinger on the arm of the chair. “So, apart from your hulking manservant, the two witnesses at Newgate, and dear Josiah, who else knows we’ve wed?”

“Only my mother and my sister—and they only think I’ve married a convict. They do not know the convict is you.”

“And you’re in no hurry to tell them,” he said wryly. “Because I’m even worse than a convict. Who’d want to be tied to someone like me?” His eyes crinkled at the corners in self-mockery.

She shot him an accusing glare. “Can you blame me? You do have the blackest reputation.”

He inclined his head as if accepting a compliment, the perverse man. “Why thank you. One tries one’s best. And yet I’m still welcome in the most select drawing rooms. It’s most unfair. A man can behave atrociously and escape with an indulgent slap on the wrist, but the same behavior from a woman causes the ton to immediately close ranks and expel her.”