Page 57 of The Boxing Baroness

The duke desired her.

That was bad.

What was even worse? She knew her eyes had the same hot need shining from them.

“Marianne?”

She shoved away the shocking knowledge and nodded. “I’m listening.”

His mouth—his stern, serious lips—twitched into a tiny smile that held more than a hint of savagery. “You can finish her in this round,” he said. “She’s bigger and slower and a couple good hits like those we talked about could put a stop to this.”

“But my uncle—”

“I know; he likes to drag things out to seven rounds and give the punters their money’s worth.” He scowled, his hawklike eyes sweeping over the raucous crowd, light glinting off his reddish-gold stubble. “They’ve already had their money’s worth. And more.”

The bell rang and his hands dropped to Marianne’s waist. He gave her a gentle squeeze, nodded, and then lifted her off his knee as if she weighed nothing. “Get in there and end this, Marianne.”

* * *

“I said I was sorry, Uncle,” Marianne repeated for the third time.

Barnabas was pacing the dressing room, his wiry body jerking with agitation as he repeatedly shoved his fingers through his thin gray hair.

“It’s not that I don’t understand how hard you work, Marianne, but if these men don’t get what they pay for, they get angry.” He shivered. “You weren’t here in ’12 when—”

“I know, I know—Puss in Boots.”

Those three words sent chills up and down the spines of anyone who’d been with Farnham’s Fayre when a violent riot had erupted during a bad play—a riot that had closed the theater for half a year.

“Those men—aristocratic men—didn’t just rip apart the theater, Marianne,” Barnabas said. “They were deranged beasts, attacking stagehands and even the poor linkboys I’d let watch from the gods. It was—”

She’d heard all this countless times before, how every part of the theatre—from the stage all the way up to the cheapest seats, or the gods as theatrical folk called it since it was so high up as to be in the heavens—was subjected to the anger of the maddened crowd. “I understand, Uncle.”

“I haven’t even mentioned how much ending a fight early costs us when it comes to loss of sales. You know these men buy more drinks with every—”

“I know. And I’m sorry about tonight. It won’t happen ag—”

The dressing room door banged open, and the duke stepped inside.

Barnabas, who’d passed through the haranguing stage and moved into the pleading stage, would soon have left Marianne in peace.

Instead, he got puffed up all over again when he saw the man he believed—rightly—responsible for his loss in revenue. “And you. It’s your job to see that she doesn’t—”

“Are you speaking to me?” the duke asked, his voice so cold and his gaze so haughty that Barnabas cringed from the much larger man, suddenly recalling exactly who it was that he was hectoring.

Marianne stood up from the dressing table where she’d been removing her face paint. “Let me talk to him, Uncle.” She stepped into a small gap between the men.

Emboldened, Barnabas straightened to his full height, which was still half a head below the duke. “Hmph. See that you do.” His eyes narrowed as he glared up at Staunton. “And perhaps you might remind His Grace that he is only here on sufferance.”

The duke stepped closer, the front of his body pressing against hers. “And perhaps I might remind you that you’d better find the locket and letter I asked you for weeks ago.”

Marianne hadn’t known the duke had asked him.

“I’ve already told you I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Marianne could hear the lie in her uncle’s voice and could tell by the duke’s expression that he heard it, too.

“Your friend Strickland says otherwise.”