Page 155 of The Boxing Baroness

“Aren’t you going to guess?” Cecile demanded once Neddy had gone.

Marianne opened the first note. “Prinny?” she said, setting aside the cologne-soaked missive from the young Viscount Foley to Cordelia Black, her Harlequin—the third message from the man this week alone.

Cecile made a scandalized squawk. “If you aren’t even going to be serious, then I won’t tell you.”

“This one is for you,” Marianne said, handing her a message that was on expensive paper with a very familiar crest.

As she’d done with the other letters that Guy had sent, Cecile crumpled it up without looking at it and threw it in the rubbish bin. “There is no joy left in you,” she accused.

Marianne sighed and steeled herself for another of Cecile’s rants as she opened the next message.

Five minutes. That is all I request of you. Surely what we had is worth that? Sin

Marianne read it again, and then again.

“Fine,” Cecile said, flinging up her hands. “I’ll tell you who it is—”

“Go fetch Neddy,” Marianne ordered.

Cecile stamped her foot and uttered a few choice words in French that no lady should even know. “Don’t you even—”

“You can tell Neddy to show His Grace of Staunton back here.”

The startled look on the other woman’s face—not to mention the sudden silence—was priceless.

Of course, it couldn’t last.

“You need to go and change into a dress. And your hair—ah! It is a mess and—”

“Cecile. Go. Now.”

Cecile made a noise like a tormented kitten but flounced out of her tiny office.

Marianne couldn’t help smiling—even though her heart was threatening to pound out of her chest. She’d used the tone the duke had employed on more than one occasion. A person could not use it too often, but when wielded judiciously, it was astoundingly successful.

She shut the door Cecile had left open and looked at herself in the small mirror she’d hung by the door after she had once spent half the day walking around with a giant smudge of ink across her face.

No ink now, but she looked the way a person looked after more than twelve hours of work, which was to say frazzled.

Her hair, which she no longer kept short now that she didn’t fight, had grown like a weed. In fact, it looked like a weed. A brown weed.

She put it up in a bun each morning, but it usually came down long before now.

Marianne briefly considered trying to put it back up, but her hands were shaking so badly she decided it would be a disaster. Instead, she removed the few remaining pins and shook her head.

She looked at the result.

“Ugh.” She turned away from the mirror and sat on the chair in front of the desk. But then she moved to one of the three chairs she’d arranged for meetings with her employees.

She was just rearranging the chairs to no purpose when the door flew open. Again without a knock.

Cecile stood in the doorway, blocking Sin’s entrance with her body. “His Grace of Staunton is here to see you. Do you wish to—”

“Cecile.”

Cecile ignored Marianne’s chiding tone. “Shall I bring tea?” she offered brightly.

“Just let him in and shut the door,” Marianne said through clenched teeth.