"I wasn't," Ford insisted automatically. He didn't even mind that Ty had laughed, because the very idea of him hanging around for some great length of time in a dark room with an undressed woman was laughable. "I was —"

And it occurred to him then that he had no reasonable explanation to offer Tycho, either. He hadn't told Ty that he'd been sneaking away from well-attended parties for the past year to go and rob well-off houses, obviously, and it wasn't as though he could admit to it now either. An expression flickered across his face as he suddenly felt caught. It was the same conundrum he'd been in that night, when he'd let Mrs. Dempsey believe that they were doing something they shouldn't have been, except now even the most obvious explanation was off the table, because he knew that Tycho wouldn't believe it of him.

"I had to leave the party for a bit," he said, swallowing. Ty would either press him on this or he wouldn't, so there was nothing for it but to press past it and hope they could focus on the more serious bits — the consequences, rather than the cause. "I came back through the floo and found her like that, and then Mrs. Dempsey found us like that, and now I'm — going to have to marry her."

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