Page 163 of The Boxing Baroness

He winced. “I was hoping you hadn’t noticed. Lowe whispered to me that we should leave soon after dinner. It appears the evening entertainment is to gather the servants and dogs in the dining room after the dishes have been cleared and hunt for vermin.”

They’d reached the bench and she turned to stare, wide-eyed. “You are jesting, surely!”

“Unfortunately, I am not. That is why they give him back his gun in the evenings.”

“Good Lord!”

“I noticed that more than a few of the servants had visible bite marks on their hands.”

Marianne shivered. She wasn’t a coward when it came to mice, but rats . . . well, she had no desire to shut herself in a room and engage in mortal combat with vermin.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

“Is he what you thought he’d be?”

She snorted softly. “He has been larger than life for decades. Nobody could live up to that reputation.”

Sin looked relieved.

“Did you think I would be disappointed?” she asked.

“I worried you might be. Are you?”

She inhaled deeply and then sighed. “I don’t know. I suspect it will take years before I can sort through this day.” She cut him an amused look. “You have to admit the two of them—my mother and father—make quite a pair.”

His lips curved into that almost smile that never failed to cause a flutter in her belly. “Yes, they are certainly unusual.”

She chuckled at his understatement.

Sin kissed her lightly, lingeringly. “But the one thing they did right was produce a delightful daughter.”

After spending a month with her mother the previous summer, she had realized the woman was only loosely tethered to reality. She loved her mother, but she couldn’t help being grateful that it was practical, caring Sandrine Simpson who’d raised her those first years.

“Perhaps being raised in a circus, by Barnabas, was more of a blessing than I thought.”

He laughed, the rich sound warming her. “Perhaps.” He slid his arm around her. “Well, are you ready to go back?”

She took his face in her hands. “I’m ready to go anywhere with you.” She kissed him.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Even if there are rats?”

They laughed and then stood and went to face dinner with her father together.

But perhaps not the rats . . .