The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(11)
He tried a different tack, because he felt it was his duty to discourage this harebrained scheme. “Haven’t you got a daughter? She’s nothing but a baby. Who’s looking after her while you gallivant up and down the London road?”
If the look she gave him a moment earlier was cold, the one she gave him now was outright pestilential. It took some doing to summon up that level of sneery contempt while wearing shabby breeches and an untucked shirt, but Marian managed it. “I hardly need you to remind me of my responsibilities.” She unpinned her hair and shook it out, then set about plaiting it. It fell like black silk over her shoulder. Rob looked away. “I’ll need to take you with me, of course,” she went on.
He raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“I can’t just leave you here, free to stir up whatever trouble strikes your fancy.”
“Now, what trouble could I possibly stir up?” he asked, mainly to see if her glare could get even more severe.
“You’ve been blackmailing me,” she said with exaggerated patience. “Now you have even more to blackmail me about. Not to mention, this would be an extremely inconvenient time for the invalidity of my marriage to become public knowledge.”
He considered pointing out that this made no sense. It was hardly worth his trouble to blackmail her if she were on the gallows. Surely she was clever enough to have figured that out.
But if she wanted to take him with her, he hardly objected—he had no intention of letting her out of his sight until he had satisfied himself that she wasn’t going to do anything to bring Kit’s name into this disaster. Going along with her to Kent would be much easier than attempting to follow her. And besides, she needed someone with an intact set of wits to accompany her because hers were plainly in shambles.
There was also the fact that he longed to follow her about like a dog on a lead, just for the pleasure of finally being near her after months of thinking about her, but this was a trifling matter.
“What’s in it for me?” he asked, because not to ask would be suspicious.
“I have little to offer.”
“Now, that’s a lie. I daresay your father’s house is filled to the rafters with things you could offer me. But that’s not what I want from you.” As he watched, her back stiffened and he realized his error. “No, not that, for Christ’s sake. What a very boring thing to negotiate for.” Now she looked offended and he almost laughed. “What I want is for the duke’s legitimate heir not to inherit.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You know him?”
“He isn’t the sort of man who ought to be a duke.” That wasn’t even a lie: Rob was indeed not the sort of man who ought to be a duke, primarily because he didn’t think dukes ought to exist.
“I’ll forbear from pointing out that if you were so worried about this man inheriting, you could have left well enough alone and simply not blackmailed me. You could have kept the duke’s bigamy to yourself.”
He ground his teeth. “It was complicated.”
“As far as my ability to ensure that Percy inherits, don’t you think I would have done so already if that were in my power? Do you think I’d have resorted to highway robbery and poisoning and kidnapping, not to mention a fair bit of larceny, if I had any other recourse?”
“You have been busy,” he murmured, thinking of what a waste it was that in all the thousands of love poems written across the ages, nobody had ever thought to catalogue their beloved’s proficiency in crime. “In any event, I don’t care in the least whether Lord Holland inherits. I don’t care who inherits, in fact, as long as it isn’t the duke’s heir by his legal wife.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “I could try.”
He held out his hand and she stared at it for the space of a few heartbeats before reaching out. He expected her hand to be cool, but it was almost hot to the touch. He shook it as he would the hand of anyone with whom he had made a bargain, then let it drop.
“It’ll be too late to get a stagecoach,” Rob observed, stretching his legs out. She looked sharply at him. So, she had thought he’d demand more from her. “Don’t act so surprised,” he said. “You’ve already killed one man today. I don’t wish to be the second.”
He heard her suck in a breath. “He was alive when I left him at Clare House.”
“Well, you’d better hope he dies before he can tell anyone who shot him. That, in case you hadn’t noticed, would be a good reason for you to stay in London.”
She looked aghast. “Are you suggesting I—”
“I’m suggesting that it would be prudent to finish what you started.” He felt honor bound to at least point this out. “Barring that, either we wait until dawn for a coach, or we hire horses and leave now. Can you ride?”
Another icy look came his way. “Yes, I can ride.”
“Can you ride fast? Not sidesaddle.”
“I can ride fast astride and sidesaddle.”
The next time he found himself inside a church, he would light a candle for the patron saint of thieves and vagabonds, whoever that busy fellow might be, because he had not been looking forward to spending any time at all in a cramped coach. “And you have the money to hire horses, I hope. I’m not particularly keen on funding my own abduction.”