Page 7 of The Boxing Baroness

“I received them.”

His blond eyebrows lowered. “I received no answer.”

“I threw them away without reading them.”

His eyebrows rose again, disappearing beneath an attractive sheaf of ash-blond hair. “Why would you do such a thing?”

“There is no law that says I need to explain my actions to you.”

“There is no law,” he agreed. “But there is common courtesy.”

Marianne burned at his cool, accusing words. She was not, in general, a discourteous person. Unless she was faced with an aristocratic man. And she had never met a man quite as aristocratic as this one.

Still, it shamed her to behave like an ignorant shrew and confirm his impression of her. “I can see you will not stop hounding me until you get what you want. What did your message say?”

“That I wish to speak to you.”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “Clearly I don’t wish to speak to you, Your Grace.”

Once again, it was his body that betrayed him, rather than any voluntary reaction. The color seemed to leach out of his eyes as his pupils shrank to specks, his irises like pale green glass that had been washed by the sea.

“You are not curious to know what I have to say?”

“No.”

Although he gave no sign of it, she suspected he was furious. A duke would be accustomed to command and would expect obedience from a woman like Marianne. She surmised that not very many people dismissed His Grace of Staunton.

Marianne’s face heated under his brooding stare, which—annoyingly—prodded her to speak. “I can guess your reason for wanting to speak to me, Your Grace.”

“Indeed? And what would that be?”

“Men of your kind only bribe my uncle’s employees for one reason.”

“My kind.” He repeated the words softly and the corner of his mouth lifted just enough to expose a flash of white.

Marianne would not have called the expression a smile.

“You may rest assured it is not my habit to importune circus entertainers to warm my bed, Miss Simpson.”

Marianne’s face scalded in the cool morning air. She had believed herself immune to aristocratic derision. Apparently, she had been wrong.

Rather than shut her mouth and retreat, she pressed forward. “Ah, that is correct—you are Lord Flawless, are you not?” she taunted. “Peerless among men and without any base urges.” She sneered at his narrowing eyes. “Although I suspect that even you do not entirely go without. No, you are a man like any other. You just choose your whores from a more elevated class of women.”

An expression of vindication settled on his handsome, austere features, as if her crude words had confirmed his opinion of her as the uncouth ex-strumpet of Baron Strickland, the man all England had called the Rake of Rakes.

As she stared into his forbidding green gaze a wave of hopelessness swamped her. Why shouldn’t this man think she was a trollop after what he’d likely heard about her? Thanks to Dominic, she was a target of offensive offers and subject to mockery from men of all orders, but especially wealthy, powerful men, who seemed to find her equal parts fascinating and repellant.

“What do you want, Your Grace?” she asked wearily.

“I want to speak to you.”

“We are speaking.”

“There is something I would like to show you, and I prefer to do so in private.”

She almost laughed. “This thing you wish to show me—is it at the ducal residence? No,” she said before he could respond, “that would not be your way at all. It will be in a more private location. Perhaps a small pied-à-terre. Someplace . . . discreet.”

Marianne had not believed his eyes could grow any colder.