Page 125 of The Dueling Duchess

“He will go with you,” Cecile said.

“I will?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“Will you come, too, Cecile?” Cat asked, giving Cecile the lethal combination of imploring blue eyes and a trembling lower lip.

“Yes, Cecile, please go with us?” Guy chimed in, attempting to ape Cat’s pleading expression. Judging by Cecile’s disgusted look, he wasn’t nearly so adorable.

“Will it disrupt your teaching plans if we go with you, Helen?” Cecile asked

“Not at all. The more the merrier,” Helen said in her dry way, her eyes twinkling at Guy; obviously she’d guessed that a trip to the Mint was not high on his list of things to do on a Monday. Or any day, for that matter.

“Pleeeeeese, Cecile,” Cat begged.

“Fine, fine. I will go, too,” Cecile said.

Guy winced at Cat’s high-pitched squeal. “Huzzah!”

Helen chuckled. “We were planning to leave after elevenses, if that is all right?”

“We’ll be ready and waiting,” Cecile said.

Helen and Cat left the room and Guy glanced at his watch. “I should have enough time to run the laundry over to Mrs. Bascom before we go on our little jaunt.” He threw back the last of his coffee and was pushing to his feet when Cecile’s voice stopped him.

“Are you going to this ball of Marianne’s?”

“Yes, I’m going,” Guy said. He frowned. “Why? Shouldn’t I be going?”

“I was just wondering. No need to get excitable.”

Guy snorted. That was rich coming from the Queen of Excitable.

“Why would you think I wouldn’t go to my best friend’s first ball as a married man?” he couldn’t help asking.

“It was Blade who thought you’d be too ashamed.”

“Lord. I didn’t suppose she thought so little of me.”

“She doesn’t think little of you. Most people wouldn’t want to consort with their former friends after they lost their status, wealth, property, and were rejected by their betrothed and forced to work in a circus.”

“Thank you for laying out my tragic downward trajectory so articulately.”

“Don’t pout, Guy. It does not become you.”

Guy just stared. Which was why he happened to be looking when a strange expression crossed her face—one he’d not seen on her before: doubt.

Even on their journey through a war-ravaged country and after she’d been forced to fatally shoot a man, she had not looked so doubtful.

“I’ve been invited to the ball. And so has Blade.”

“Yes, I assumed you had.”

“You don’t think it odd that we were invited?”

“It is Marianne’s party. Why wouldn’t she invite her closest friends?”

“I thought you might think it was inappropriate.”