Page 85 of The Boxing Baroness

She met his concerned gaze, her heart beating unsteadily as she accepted the truth: She simply didn’t care who or what he was—he could be the King of England for all that it mattered to her. She wasn’t willing to let him go. Not yet. Not when she might spend another few weeks with him.

She’d have the rest of her life to live without him.

Marianne smiled. “I’m going, Your Grace. Let’s not discuss it again.”

Chapter 22

“I forbid it, Marianne!” Barnabas shouted.

Marianne met the duke’s amused gaze and knew he was thinking the same thing she was: that her uncle was the second man to use exactly the same words in less than twenty-four hours.

“You can’t forbid me to go, Uncle.”

“I can! You are only twenty. You are still under my care.”

The duke snorted and Barnabas whirled on him. “You mock me—but you are the one wanting to drag her into danger.”

“I already told her to stay. But she is right, Farnham; she is her own woman.”

“Oh, now she is her own woman. But in London, you were singing another tune—then she had to do what you ordered. Then she was your pawn, or else you would pull everything down around our ears.”

The duke’s mouth flexed into an especially unpleasant smile, and he stared at Barnabas as if he were a roach that he was looking forward to crushing. “And who was the man she sacrificed herself to save, Farnham?”

Her uncle gave a squawk of inarticulate rage, and Marianne thought the top of his head would blow off.

The duke’s presence—how ever well-meaning—was not helping with this difficult conversation.

“Can you please give us some privacy, Your Grace?” Marianne asked. They were sitting in her chambers, which the duke had stubbornly continued to occupy all night, leaving only long enough for Cecile to help her bathe and dress this morning. Not that she needed help with those things, but the duke had insisted on that, too.

Staunton looked unhappy at her request, and he jabbed a finger into Barnabas’s shoulder, making him squeak—and then flush at his undignified reaction. “You don’t let her out of this room, Farnham—do you understand me? The doctor wanted her to rest at least one more day.”

Marianne took the duke by the elbow, and his big body jolted beneath her hand.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said before her uncle could commence yelling again. “Come, Your Grace.” She led Staunton slowly but inexorably toward the door.

“Fine, I’ll leave,” he said. “Just don’t allow him to talk you into helping load up all the wagons—or any other kind of exertion. You haven’t been downstairs and seen the pandemonium. If you go down there, you’ll be pulled into all the madness.”

“No exertion,” she promised.

Staunton opened the door but then paused. “For once, Farnham is right. You should go back with him, Marianne. That would be—”

“Yes, thank you.” She gave him a gentle shove and shut the door before turning to her uncle.

Barnabas was waiting for her, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression mulish. “You can’t do this.”

“I have to do this. A man’s life is at stake, Uncle.”

“But that is not your fault!”

Marianne wondered if the discussion she was about to have was even worth her breath. She knew her uncle had lied to her about the smuggling, the gambling, and probably dozens of other matters. It was unlikely that he would tell the truth now, but she had to try.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Marianne?”

“Not long before he staged his death, Dominic helped smuggle out a French prisoner of war, a man named Beauvais.”

His eyes bulged. “Surely you don’t think I—”

“I don’t want to know, Uncle. I really don’t. Because then I’d have to make sure you answered for such a crime and doing that would surely destroy me.”