Page 19 of The Dueling Duchess

Cecile’s life had changed, too.

Even though she’d done everything possible to avoid the marquess, she’d not been able to banish him from her thoughts or her dreams.

Even now, as she stood looking right at him, she couldn’t believe he was the Darling—who’d been mentioned in The Daily Examiner as riding in Hyde Park yesterday afternoon with some Prussian princess—and also the same man who was going to allow her to shoot at him while blindfolded.

“Well?” Guy asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Do we have a bargain?”

She blinked, momentarily confused. “What bargain?”

“I’ll allow you to shoot at me wearing a blindfold and you answer some questions.”

Questions? What in the world could he want to ask her?

“Is aught amiss?” he asked, his warm eyes glinting with amusement, almost as if he could look into her head and knew about the dream that had woken her up that morning, her body taut and sheened with sweat, her hand between her thighs—

Cecile recoiled from the intoxicating image and hastily banished it from her mind.

“Fine,” she snapped rudely. “But I shoot first and then you get your question.”

“That’s hardly fair—if you shoot me in the head, I’ll never get my questions. How about this—I ask one question before and one question after.”

“Why do you get two questions and I only get one shot?”

“I’d say two questions are a fair price for getting shot at by a blindfolded marksman. Er, marksperson,” he corrected with the faint smirk that made her heart pound.

Ugh. Everything about the wretched man affected her body in one way or another.

She heaved an exasperated sigh, hoping to conceal her pleasure that the Darling wanted to ask her—plain Manon Cecile Tremblay Blanchet—a question.

“Well,” she said gruffly. “Get on with your question.”

“Why do you do this sort of work?”

She snorted, both relieved and disappointed by his rather pedestrian question, one she’d been asked times beyond counting.

“I do it because it is easy and pays well.”

“Yes, but—”

“Sorry,” she said, not feeling in the least bit sorry, “but that was your one question.”

He frowned, for once looking distinctly unamused. In fact, it was the first time she’d seen any hint of aristocratic hauteur in his demeanor. He looked positively . . . lordly. And thwarted.

Good.

“That’s—” He broke off and bit his sinfully lush lower lip with white, even teeth.

It was Cecile’s turn to laugh. “Were you about to say that it was not fair, Mr. Darling?”

Judging by the faint flush over cheekbones that would make an artist weep, that was exactly what he’d been about to say.

“Go stand in front of the bale and put on the hat,” she ordered, pointing to the hat the costumer had created, an extra high-crowned top hat that was made of plain black fabric instead of expensive beaver pelt. It had a little surprise inside and she had to suppress a smirk at the thought of what his lordship would make of it.

She quickly tied on the blindfold, careful to position it in such a way that it didn’t need tweaking—because an adjustment of that sort would surely alert the audience members that there was trickery afoot, no matter how raucous and intoxicated the men usually were.

Cecile took her mark and lifted the pistol, able to see Guy distinctly, if not clearly, which was all she needed before she pulled the trigger.

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