The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(14)

“Go fetch your da,” Rob said, giving the boy a halfpenny. They stood in the meager shelter of the doorway while waiting for the boy or his father to return. They were so close together that she had nowhere to look if she didn’t want to look at Rob, his features so near that they could be understood only separately: the straight line of his nose, the perpetually amused curve of his mouth, the freckles that concentrated on the bridge of his nose before scattering everywhere. She closed her eyes.

The sound of heavy footsteps was followed by the appearance of a man who was hastily shoving the tails of his shirt into breeches. He carried a lantern, which he held up to examine Rob’s face. “It’s you,” he said. “Figures. Come on, then.” He led the way to the stableyard. “Been a while.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I had little need for horses this past year?”

The stable keeper snorted. “We all reckoned you were in prison.”

“Come now, that was only for a little while. And it was in France, so it hardly counts.”

“Also heard you were dead.”

“What are things coming to when you can’t even believe gossip.”

“What’ll you need, then? Two horses?”

“Yes, for a week, I’d say. They need to be sturdy.”

The stable keeper opened a stall door, revealing a chestnut gelding. “Bertie’ll do for you,” he told Rob. “And for your friend . . .” He eyed Marian up and down. She knew he was trying to figure out what she weighed, an entirely sensible means of suiting rider to horse, but still her skin crawled. He opened another door, a few stalls down. Inside was a bay mare. “Gwen. Short for Guinevere.” When Rob raised an eyebrow, the man shrugged sheepishly. “I let the girls name her,” he added by way of explanation.

Then the man asked for a sum so princely that Marian decided that in her next life she ought to run a stable. Perhaps that was what she should have done a little over a year ago when faced with the problem of an estate in ruins and a father whose mind seemed to occasionally take its leave. She could have turned Chiltern Hall into a stable and hired out the horses, and thereby avoided marrying and murdering any dukes whatsoever.

Without making any attempt to bargain, Rob withdrew his coin purse and put the requisite number of coins into the stableman’s palm, adding another for good measure—and, Marian supposed, silence.

“Give the girls my love,” Rob said.

“Come back soon and give it to them yourself,” the man grumbled as he returned indoors, but he seemed, if anything, pleased to have seen Rob, pleased to have been dragged from his bed and into what could only be trouble.

The boy who had answered the door returned, carrying a lantern and a parcel. “Da said to give you these,” he said, following his words with a yawn. Rob thanked the lad with a wink and another halfpenny, then took the lantern and parcel.

Marian saddled the mare, aware that Rob’s eyes were on her. Likely he didn’t believe that she knew how to ride and was waiting for her to make a false step. But she had been saddling her own mounts since she could be trusted not to either fall off a horse or get kicked in the head by one, and a year of inactivity was hardly going to rob her of a lifetime’s worth of experience. She adjusted the mare’s bridle and set the stirrups at a length that looked suitable, then swung herself into the saddle.

Meanwhile, Rob began whispering to his own horse. Of course he was one of those people who insisted on talking to animals. Marian preferred to communicate with horses in their own language: she rode them well and not too hard and made sure they were fed and watered. That was what horses cared about; everything else was mere self-indulgence.

She took the opportunity to adjust the folds of her cloak and retrieve her coin purse, removing slightly more than Rob had paid for the horses.

“This is yours,” she said, holding out her hand.

He took the coins and counted them, as if Marian meant to cheat him, the insufferable man.

“This is too much,” he said.

“I didn’t have smaller coins.”

“Christ,” he muttered. “Of course she doesn’t.” He dropped the coins into his own money pouch and mounted the horse. “When we get out of the city, you ride close by me, you hear?”

With that, he rode out of the stableyard and Marian was left to follow behind.





Chapter 6




By the time they reached Dartford, a pitiable distance south of the Thames, Rob decided he’d call this a smashing success if neither of them fell asleep in the saddle. There was a time when he could have stayed awake and alert for two solid days and then been fresh as a daisy after a few hours of sleep. But that was long in the past—before a string of injuries and misadventures, and when he was closer to fifteen than thirty. Now he was increasingly drawn to the charms of a soft mattress and clean sheets, and wasn’t that a depressing thought.

“Where exactly in Kent are you going?” he asked.

“Little Hinton,” Marian said. “It’s near Canterbury.”

Rob sighed and inwardly cursed Kent for being inconveniently large. Of course Marian wouldn’t need to go somewhere easy to reach, like Blackheath or Sevenoaks—nothing about her was ever easy. Canterbury would mean at least two days in the saddle. But it would also mean that she was close enough to the sea to get to France without much fuss, if that was what things came to. He wondered if she had thought of that, and decided that it was highly unlikely that Marian, however addled, hadn’t thought of everything.