Page 107 of The Boxing Baroness

“You’re going to tear that,” Cecile cautioned from beside her.

Marianne threw the shirt at her, and it smacked the water harder than she’d intended, splashing Cecile in the face.

“Sorry,” she muttered when the other woman’s eyes narrowed enough to make her glad Cecile didn’t have her pistols.

Marianne looked to where the duke was washing a towel, squinting at it as he pounded it on a rock, getting as much, if not more, water on himself in the process.

Cecile had flung the towel at the duke when he’d showed signs of settling beneath a tree and taking a nap. “Make yourself useful and wash that.”

He’d given the towel a horrified look. “What if I ruin it?”

“It’s an old, ragged towel, Your Grace. You cannot ruin it.”

He’d frowned at her use of his title but—wisely—hadn’t corrected her. Correcting Cecile about anything was never a good idea. Correcting her when she was in a mood could be downright dangerous.

Cecile had started calling both men by their titles a few days ago, and Marianne suspected she did so to remind not only herself, but also Marianne, of the great gulf between themselves and these aristocratic men.

She knew her friend and Guy had slept together the two nights Marianne had been with the duke because Cecile had told her.

“I want you to know so that you can slap me if I start behaving like a lovesick idiot,” she’d said when Marianne had looked surprised by the disclosure. She’d known the Frenchwoman took lovers, but this was the first time she’d told Marianne about one of them.

“And I will slap you if you do the same,” she’d said when Marianne hadn’t replied.

“I won’t need slapping,” Marianne had assured her.

Cecile had only laughed.

But then Cecile hadn’t heard the brief but illuminating discussion between the duke’s closest friend—Guy—and Marianne.

The conversation in question took place the morning after her wonderful evening with Sin, when Marianne had been looking through her caravan for a good place to hide the enamel box and locket.

Guy, who’d been staying in the men’s caravan, had popped his head out when he’d seen her. “Hello. What are you doing?”

“Something private.”

“Oooh, I love private activities.” He’d smirked so wickedly that her belly had fluttered. Although Marianne felt nothing for him other than amused tolerance, she couldn’t deny he was a gorgeous specimen of manhood.

“What’s that?” he’d asked, his sharp gaze on her hand.

She’d been on the edge of telling him that it was none of his affair, but then decided it didn’t matter if he knew. What was he going to do? Steal the locket and blackmail her? He’d need to get in line.

“It’s something that’s very important to me,” she said. “I need a place to hide it.”

“Hide it from whom?”

“None of your business.”

Predictably, he’d grinned. “Fair enough. I have an excellent hiding place.”

“Where?”

He’d taken her to Sin’s caravan and shown her the false bottom, which ran the entire length of the wagon and was a good ten or eleven inches high. It was also filled with weapons.

“Good God,” she’d whispered.

“Clever, isn’t it?”

It was. You’d never know the floor of the caravan was anything but a floor. “What are all those guns for?”