Page 51 of The Boxing Baroness

“Yes.”

She nodded and turned to face the road.

They finished the remainder of the run in silence.

Once she’d finished cooling down, Sin slipped from the horse and handed her the water. When she’d had her fill, she returned the bottle and glanced up at the sky. The snow was falling more heavily now.

“Do you want to brave the weather?” she asked him.

“Yes, I’m hungry.”

They walked in companionable silence, not speaking until they reached the place where he usually tethered Dobbin.

“It is my turn today,” Sin reminded her. “How many for you? I’m getting three.”

She grinned up at him, her joyous expression causing yet another blast of unwanted warmth in his belly. “Three! That’s a bit piggish, isn’t it?”

“I made the mistake of mentioning them to Guy. He considers himself something of an expert on pies and believes these can’t possibly be better than those we used to buy from the village near my house.” He didn’t tell her that as hungry and cold as he was, the third pie might not make it back to the other man.

“One will be fine for me,” she said and then shivered.

Sin took her hideous scarf out of the bag where he’d stuffed it. “Here,” he said, lowering the scarf onto her shoulders and then wrapping it around her neck twice. He was about to tuck the ends between the lapels of her coat when he realized what he was doing and dropped the scarf ends like hot coals.

Her eyes seemed darker and larger than normal when they looked up at him.

“Thank you,” she said, a strange, taut expression on her face.

Sin stared down at her for a long moment while neither of them moved.

When had her face become so familiar to him? When had he come to enjoy these painfully early mornings on a miserable old horse?

What was happening to him?

“Right, pies,” he said foolishly, wrenching his gaze away.

Sin turned and hurried toward the line with unwonted haste. Some part of him wanted to keep right on going.

Chapter 12

“Yer guard, lass! Mind yer guard,” Jack shouted at Marianne, prowling around the sparring fighters and muttering to himself in between yells.

Marianne dutifully raised her left hand, cursing her inattention.

The source of that inattention stood beside Elliot with his arms crossed over his broad, powerful chest, booted feet shoulder-width apart, and watched her with eyes that made her feel like an insect pinned to a board.

One would think she’d have become used to the duke’s unnerving attention after almost three weeks, but, if anything, she was jumpier around him with every day that passed.

Instead of finding reasons to drag Staunton into work more often, she was now looking for ways to get away from him.

It made no sense.

When he’d been an arrogant arse to her, Marianne had done everything in her power to keep him near. Now that he was being almost . . . human—all right, so he was being more than human, he was kind, even—she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

But all her attempts to keep him from her training sessions or runs had come to naught. Jack had become as irritable as a bear when Marianne had insisted she didn’t need him there.

“Lord, Annie! Yer leavin’ in only a few weeks. ’Course you need yer new trainer lookin’ on and learnin’ yer ways.”

Ha. The duke learning her ways was the last thing she wanted.