Page 8 of The Boxing Baroness

“You have my word as a gentleman that I have no designs on your person.” His gaze raked over her as brutally as a knife scraping the bristles off a hog. His lips thinned with disgust. “I am willing to speak to you at your place of business—hence my presence at your uncle’s theater—or anywhere else you deem appropriate, just so long as we are not in the middle of a public thoroughfare.” The determined, dogged set to his face told her that he would not be denied.

“Fine. I will call on you. Where and when?”

He did not appear startled by her sudden capitulation, as if her submission had never been in any doubt. “I am at number five, Grosvenor Square. It is not far. Why not now?”

“I am hardly dressed to pay morning calls.”

He shrugged, the gesture drawing her attention to his powerful shoulders, which were sheathed in an exquisitely tailored black overcoat. “There is nothing unusual in a gentleman calling on another gentleman wearing his leathers after a morning ride.”

She studied his haughty, beautiful face. What could such a man want with her? And want it badly enough that he should persist so? Well, whatever he wanted, she admitted it didn’t appear sexual. After all, he would hardly invite her to his home at seven in the morning—in broad daylight—for an amorous tryst.

Marianne nodded. “Very well. Lead on, Your Grace.”

Chapter 3

St. John Powell, the seventh Duke of Staunton, seethed silently, not bothering to make pleasant conversation with the hostile female pugilist riding beside him.

He kept reliving their brief conversation, snatching glances at her person, and trying to reconcile his idea of her with the reality of her.

The woman was nothing like he had expected.

Her directness—no, her combativeness—had left him raw and off-center. Not since he’d been a boy had he bickered so childishly with another person—nor tolerated such impudence. In the five minutes he’d spent with Miss Simpson, he had suffered more insults—and behaved more rudely, himself—than in all the rest of his years combined.

The worst part was that he was largely to blame.

St. John had gone to the park that morning furious that this—this circus-performing harlot, a woman who had brazenly shared Strickland’s bed—had repeatedly refused to speak to him as if he were some sort of encroaching cit.

He desperately wanted to tell her to go to the devil, but—and this ate at him worst of all—he was reliant on Dominic Strickland’s ex-whore if he wanted a chance to rescue his brother.

And so, because of that resentment, St. John had made almost no effort to mask his dislike and disgust of Marianne Simpson. She—being no fool—had seen through the tissue-thin veneer of civility immediately.

He was angrier with himself than he was with her. It was not like him to behave discourteously to anyone—no matter their station—or to display his feelings so openly. It was crass, mortifying behavior. He had behaved like a cad, and she had taken him to task for it.

He could not blame her, but that did not mean he had to like her rude reaction—or her. This was no game to him; his brother’s life hung in the balance, and this woman was somehow the key to bringing Benjamin home.

St. John glanced at her as they joined the flow of traffic outside the park. She looked remarkably like a man in her coat and breeches and hat, and it wasn’t just because of her exceptionally short hair.

She also sat her horse like a man—a very skilled equestrian—and the black-leather-clad hand that loosely held the reins was broader across the back than any lady’s hand.

Her shoulders, although fine-boned, were surprisingly broad and her tailored coat displayed noticeable biceps before tapering to a narrow waist and trim hips. Her muscular thighs flexed beneath tight buckskins and her top boots were snug over well-formed calves.

She was the very image of a wasp-waisted young buck, a shape that so many dandies padded and cinched their bodies to achieve. Her figure, he guessed, was not the product of corsets or buckram wadding, but the result of demanding physical exertion.

She held herself with a coiled awareness and emanated an almost masculine vitality. He supposed her physicality should not have surprised him. She was, after all, a boxer. He had assumed the fights her uncle arranged were more in the nature of an acrobatic display than real pugilism, but she obviously kept her body trim and fit to play the part convincingly.

When they turned onto his street the sun struck her face, illuminating her features more clearly beneath the brim of her hat. An ugly bruise discolored her jaw and a faint, inch-long scar ran from her lower lip down her chin.

So, perhaps her fights were more than just theatrical presentations, after all.

Her jaw was well-formed and firm, and her oval face surprisingly soft and feminine. Traces of dimples marked her cheeks and smile lines bracketed her mouth. He placed her in her early twenties, although her confident bearing was that of a more mature woman.

Her heavy-lidded eyes were an unremarkable hazel, her nose slender with a slight hook, the bridge bearing a bump that told him it had been broken at least once.

The only feature that was in any way unusual was her mouth. Not only was her top lip a perfect Cupid’s bow, but the bottom had a distinct divot, as well. The effect was piquant and made her resting expression appear as if she were pouting.

Her only true claim to beauty was her pale-as-porcelain skin, which glowed with the luster of a pearl—at least the part that wasn’t swollen and bruised.

She exuded a quiet dignity and reserve that he never would have expected from a circus performer, nor from the ex-mistress of Dominic Strickland, an unrepentant hedonist who was infamous for depravity and sensual excess.