The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(15)

He started to flag before the first rays of dawn pinkened the sky. They really had to keep riding until it was full daylight, because by then any inn they stopped at would be busy enough that two strangers would pass unnoticed.

Until they knew whether Marian was suspected of the duke’s murder, they needed to keep their heads down and avoid the more well-traveled roads. Glancing at Marian, he decided that nobody with any brains at all would see the unkempt, disheveled person beside him and think they were looking at the Duchess of Clare. The moon was full and the night was cloudless, so he could see her profile clearly. She sat straight in the saddle, and she plainly hadn’t been lying about knowing how to ride. She didn’t ride like someone who was only used to the manicured paths of Hyde Park: he saw her looking out for rabbit holes and roots, as if it were second nature.

A strange melody drifted to him on the breeze and he frowned. This was maybe the fourth time he had heard it that night, and now he was beyond frustrated that he couldn’t identify it. “What are you humming?” he asked.

She drew herself up straight, and he was surprised to see that her back could go any straighter than it already had been. “I apologize,” she said, managing to make it sound nothing like an apology at all. “I don’t mean to annoy you.”

“It was a question, not a complaint. What is it? I can’t place it.”

“Oh. It’s the song about the churches.”

That didn’t help in the least. “Sing me a line.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” she snapped, as if he had asked her to take all her clothes off. In fact, she had done exactly that a few hours earlier, without so much as asking him to turn his back or look away. He had kept his eyes averted anyway, in a fit of modesty on his own part that he didn’t quite know what to think of.

“We can stop up ahead by that stile and have a bite to eat but only if you’ll sing a line for me.” He had been about to suggest that they rest the horses anyway, but she didn’t need to know that.

She pressed her lips together into what might have been the snootiest expression he had ever seen in twenty-five years on this planet, and then sighed. “Fine,” she said, in a tone that made it clear she was humoring him and was far above things like food and rest and human weakness. “When I am rich, ring the bells of Fleet Ditch,” she sang.

He frowned. She had been humming off key, and her singing voice was even further from the mark, but he’d know that rhyme anywhere. “You mean—” He cleared his throat. “When I am rich, ring the bells of Shoreditch.”

“No, I mean Fleet Ditch.”

“That makes no sense. Fleet Ditch isn’t even a—for Christ’s sake, it’s Shoreditch, because that’s where the rich merchants live.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, dismissing rhyme, merchants, and possibly all of East London.

Of course she hadn’t heard of Shoreditch, though. She was raised in the country—riding horses, by the looks of things. “I’d like to know where an earl’s daughter learned ‘Oranges and Lemons.’”

There came that pinched expression again. “One of the maids in my daughter’s nursery sings it to her. And she says Fleet Ditch.”

Something happened to her voice when she said my daughter, as if a cold wind had just blown in. “Where is she from?”

“I beg your pardon.”

What a trick it was to be able to say I beg your pardon in a way that meant fuck off and die, and to look serene and saintly while saying it. “The maid,” he clarified.

“London.”

“I gathered as much, but where in London?”

She sniffed. “I haven’t the faintest notion.”

They arrived at the stile and dismounted. She was moving stiffly; it had been a while since she had been on horseback, he guessed. Without needing to be told, she led her horse to a stream that ran alongside the road. Definitely country born and bred, then. He took his horse and followed her.

“Fleet Ditch is nothing more than a sewer,” he said. He felt better, as if he had won a very important point.

“I can’t possibly express to you how little I care.”

With a reckless little thrill, he realized that this was the caustic, acerbic woman who had written him all those letters. She had disappeared for a few hours under the weight of shock, but that tart little reply was familiar in a way that plucked at something in his heart.

And, really, his heart needed to shut up about it. There was a time and a place for that silly business and now was not it. He had got a bit carried away with the letters, that was all, and perhaps let himself become overfond of a person he knew only as words on a sheet of costly paper. His hand went automatically to the parcel in his coat.

After the horses had drunk their fill, he tied both bridles to the stile and sat on the wall. After a moment, Marian followed. He unwrapped the bundle of food, revealing a loaf of brown bread and a wedge of cheese. He broke the bread in half and held out both portions for Marian to take her pick.

She reached out with an ungloved hand. Her fingers had to be stiff with cold. Hell, she had to be chilled to the bone, but she wasn’t even shivering. Even Rob was feeling it, and he had more experience and more meat on his bones. He had never seen her up close until tonight, but from across the street, when she was all trussed up in a bodice and skirts, it always looked like there was more of her.