Page 153 of The Boxing Baroness

“Yes, I apologize for that.”

Sin waved his words away. “Nonsense. You know what I mean.”

Elliot bent to the leather bag beside his chair. “I have something that might be . . . very important.” He pulled out an official-looking letter and handed it to Sin.

“What’s this?”

“It’s better if you read it yourself.”

Sin studied the seal and his eyes widened. He quickly glanced up. “Are you sure I should—”

“No, actually. I’m breaking several dozen laws and no small number of international agreements by giving you that. I’m only partly jesting,” he said at Sin’s startled look. “Just open it and . . . don’t tell me anything.”

Intrigued, Sin cracked the heavy wax seal and unfolded a document that made even him—a man long accustomed to the sight of royal decrees and missives—raise his eyebrows.

It wasn’t long, but it was written in flowery, almost illegible script. When he came to the pertinent section—and a very familiar name—his head whipped up.

Elliot was already grinning.

“You devil,” Sin whispered. “How did you—”

“I had nothing to do with it. In fact, there seems to be a considerable amount of confusion as to how or who was behind it. Although scuttlebutt would indicate it came from outside the country.”

Sin carefully refolded the document—which both of them had broken the law by opening—and handed it back to Elliot.

“No. I don’t want it.”

“What?”

“I thought you might like to deliver it.”

Sin opened his mouth to argue, but then stopped, his mind racing. When he looked up, his friend—always a step ahead of him, it seemed—was nodding knowingly.

For the first time in weeks—hell, in months—Sin felt a genuine smile crease his face.

“Indeed, I would like to deliver it very much.”

* * *

Marianne had heard the phrase tear one’s hair out more than once.

Since taking over her uncle’s circus, she truly knew what it meant.

Francine, her magician, was holding her prize rabbit, Henry, and shooting accusing glares at Jo. Or at Angus, rather, who was sitting on Jo’s shoulder. “I know he took it.”

The it in question was Henry’s toy, a crudely wrought wooden carrot that one of the stagehands had whittled. Until meeting Francine and Henry, Marianne hadn’t even known a rabbit would want a toy. But she had to admit that she’d seen Henry chewing on the carrot more than once.

And now it was gone.

Jo, who was dressed to go on stage after Francine’s interlude—if there was an interlude, which wasn’t certain just then—pulled a knife from one of the many reinforced pockets sewn into the black leather breeches she wore. She spun the knife with a bored expression on her face, and Angus looked like butter wouldn’t melt in his beak.

Marianne sighed. She’d believed when she’d begun this job that it would be so much easier than taking punches to the face. She now had infinitely more respect for Barnabas, and more than once she’d asked forgiveness of the man, wherever he happened to be spending eternity.

“Jo.” Marianne spoke sharply, as one needed to do when Jo had slipped into one of her dreamy fugues.

Her eyes slid slowly from whatever she’d been staring at to Marianne. “Hmm?”

“Does Angus have Henry’s carrot?”