“Wasn’t it?” Claire repeated, unwilling to let this night pass without knowing the truth.

Andrew flinched and tried to pull away from her. “Why would you think that?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “You will not answer my questions with a question.”

And still, Andrew remained mute. Who was he protecting? Himself? Clarence? Her feelings? She had to know which it was. All of these years, she’d thought he hadn’t wanted her. If that weren’t the case…

She thrust his hands away. “Fine. If you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. Clarence saw us together earlier that night, in the garden.”

It had been uncommonly foggy that Christmas in London. Wet, but not overly cold. It had seemed so wonderfully exciting to slip out into the night, knowing the walks around the Danburys’ London mansion offered many cozy niches amidst the shrubbery and trees, made even more secluded by the blankets of fog. She’d felt so deliciously wicked.

Of course, being in the heart of London, the gardens weren’t overly large, so they couldn’t go far. Or be too wicked.

“After we slipped back into the ballroom” —separately, of course— “Clarence found you. As I was dancing my obligatory sets to make certain I was seen behaving as an innocent young miss should, he confronted you in Lord Danbury’s study about what lay between us. He knocked you flat with a punch, and when you refused to fight him, he challenged you to a duel.”

“How do you know this?” he rasped, and a flush of triumph washed over her. Finally, she’d know why she’d lost Andrew. “Surely Clarence didn’t—”

“Rosalie told me,” she interjected, and the momentary rush she’d felt deserted her at the reminder that her brother had trusted a stranger with the truth of what he’d done, but had never seen fit to tell her.

Tears pricked the backs of her eyes—tears of betrayal, yes, and of loss. But also from the fear of learning what she didn’t yet know. She straightened her back and looked him directly in the eye.

“Did you truly ask him for my hand?”

Andrew’s entire body seemed to relax into resignation. He tilted his head, his eyes closing briefly. When he opened them, there was relief and a tenderness in their depths that squeezed her heart.

“Yes.”

Her heartbeat trilled in her chest, then settled into a quickened rhythm as she asked the question she really wanted to know. Had he wanted to marry her? Or…

“Because you felt honor-bound to?”

“Yes.”

She winced. Who knew one tiny word could sting so?

Andrew blew out a breath and raked a hand through his hair. “And no. Of course I felt honor-bound, Claire, but…”

He shook his head, then stalked over to the sideboard, picked up the decanter of brandy and a fresh glass, and poured himself a healthy portion. He held the bottle out in question, and she nodded. After he refilled her snifter, he brought both glasses back to where she stood before the fire and handed her one.

“Let us sit.” He nodded to the brocade settee nearest the hearth.

Feeling as though another Claire moved the few feet to the settee, she nonetheless found herself perched upon it, Andrew sitting tantalizingly close. His heat warmed her right side, and in addition to the sharpness of the brandy, she smelled his all-too-familiar-after-all-this-time scent. Bergamot and bay rum. She’d never forgotten.

“What you were told is true,” Andrew began, his voice rough and quiet in the flickering firelight. “Clarence did strike me, and I would not fight back. Nor would I accept his challenge. He was fiercely angry, but I knew he didn’t truly wish for us to take up arms against one another. Luckily for us both, no one bore witness to his words, so it cost him little to back down from them.”

Claire tried to imagine the scene in that long-ago study. Clarence had loved Andrew like a brother, and vice versa. That she had come between them…

“My eye was swelling badly from one of the punches he landed, however. I couldn’t return to the ball, not without starting the gossip mill churning. Nor could we expect privacy to hash it out in Danbury’s study that night. So we agreed to meet at our club the next morning, where we could discuss the matter civilly in one of the private rooms there.”

The morning she’d spent fretting over why he hadn’t met her beneath the mistletoe as planned, Claire realized. Her mother had still been alive then, and had insisted she help with the many Christmas preparations, so she hadn’t had time to dwell. But even now, she remembered the sick foreboding she’d felt all day.

“I wasn’t certain how Clarence would be when I arrived. Still angry, I imagined. Or perhaps, I’d hoped, he’d had time to get over the shock of knowing his best friend was in love with his sister.”

Claire’s heart jolted, and she nearly sloshed her drink over the rim of the snifter in her surprise. Had Andrew just said he’d loved her?

“But I never expected the absolute coldness he showed that day.” Andrew paused for a swallow of his brandy, his chest rising with a deep breath.

She held her own breath as he collected himself, only letting it out when he started speaking again.

“He scoffed at my request for your hand. Told me that a fourth son who was destined to be nothing but a bloody spot on a battlefield had nothing to offer you.”

Clair gasped at her brother’s cruelty.

The corner of Andrew’s mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Don’t think too harshly of him,” he said. “I can see now that he was more than just angry. I’d betrayed his trust by sullying you.”

“You never sullied me,” she protested, then added with a bit of a grumble, “no matter how much I begged.”

He smiled at that, a welcome sight amidst all the tension. “Oh, I sullied you plenty,” he said, and the look he gave her nearly scorched the breath out of her. Flashes of memory of his hands and mouth upon her heated her skin.

“But I assured your brother that I had not ruined you,” he went on, snapping her attention back to their conversation.

Claire’s cheeks pinked that her virginity, or possible lack thereof, had been spoken about between her brother and Andrew, even though the conversation had taken place years ago.

“He was relieved, of course, but still furious. In his mind, I was the worst sort of bastard. He’d not thought he had to protect you from me, you see, and blamed himself for letting a fox into the henhouse.”

Claire scoffed. As if she’d had no part in the matter. “Men,” she muttered.

Andrew winged a brow, but continued. “I won’t go into everything that was said between us, but suffice it to say that I left that interview certain of two things: that I would never be allowed to see you again, and that my friendship with Clarence was over.”

Pain etched Andrew’s voice, and Claire swallowed against the answering ache scratching at her throat. All three of them had suffered such terrible loss, of friendship and of love. Over what?

She barely noticed as Andrew slipped her glass from her limp grasp and took her hands in his.

“Of the two, Claire,” he said, his gaze intense upon her, “no longer being with you was what gutted me the most.”

Tears sprang to her eyes at the realization of what her brother had taken from her.

Andrew had wanted to marry her.

And she…

She understood better now what happened that night, but he had still left her with no explanation.

“If you’d already lost Clarence’s friendship regardless, why did you not come for me?” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I’d have gone with you.”

Andrew dropped his head, but after a deep breath, he looked her in the eyes again.

“Because your brother was right. You had other suitors, better prospects who could give you much more than I ever could.”

“I didn’t care about that!”

“I know,” he said quietly. “But it wasn’t just about what I couldn’t give you if we’d eloped…it’s what I would have taken from you.”

A sharp ache pierced her heart as true understanding came. “Clarence.”

“Yes. I never could have come between you. Your home,” Andrew continued, “was like an oasis of love and laughter for me—so much different from the cold halls of Sedgewick House.”

Claire nodded. She’d asked Andrew once why he came down with Clarence every single school holiday, rather than going to his own home. After all, his father was a wealthy marquess. Her family lived modestly by comparison. Andrew had made some jest about Sedgewick House having a horrid cook, but she’d seen how he’d watched her family’s interactions with longing.

“I couldn’t be responsible for ruining that for you,” he said. “Or for turning you against your brother, whom I loved also.”

Andrew brought one of her hands up and pressed her knuckles against his lips for a long moment in a chaste kiss that nonetheless sent heat straight down to her toes.

“So, as I hadn’t yet ruined you, I just…I thought it best to let you forget about me and move on to another. Someone your brother approved of. That way you could be happy not only in your marriage, but in your life.”

Claire blew out a tight breath.

A noble sentiment, she supposed. And in the end, could she truly have been happy with a man who would have been willing to destroy her family, even for love?

She didn’t know.

But Andrew was wrong. He had ruined her. Oh, not in the literal sense, but after loving him, no one else had compared. Not a single suitor who came after him had been able to make her laugh as he had, or encouraged her intelligence and wit, or inspired her to dream of a future together.

She’d not been able to bring herself to accept any offers those first two seasons. Then her mother had died, and after she’d sat out her third season in mourning, Claire had refused to run through the marriage-mart gauntlet again.

Because no one else was him.

“What a bloody Greek tragedy,” Claire muttered. She’d been miserable for years, thinking she loved a man who didn’t want her. Andrew had apparently been miserable as well, having lost both her and his best friend. And if Rosalie were to be believed, even Clarence had suffered terribly over those long-ago choices.

“Not that it changes anything, but Rosalie told me that Clarence’s greatest regret in life was how he’d separated us,” she said softly.

Andrew’s moss-green eyes darkened with emotion.

“And…he missed you, terribly. He was sorry for what he’d done. He just didn’t know how to fix it after all these years.”

Andrew swallowed, his eyes blinking as he looked away from her.

She’d been right earlier tonight when she’d feared that knowing the truth would change everything—what she thought of Clarence, and of Andrew, and even of herself. She had much to consider in the days and weeks to come, but she knew that she could never look at her life, or her memories, the same way she had just hours before.

“We can’t undo our past,” she said, laying a palm against his stubble-roughened cheek and turning his face back toward her. “And as much as we both wish that Clarence was with us, he is no longer part of our present. Only we can decide our future.”

And she brought her other hand up to cradle his face and pulled his mouth to hers.