The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(22)

At midday, they stopped at an inn. Within five minutes of their entering the taproom, Rob was telling the innkeeper’s wife that some woman named Nellie from Wrotham Heath sent her love and that the baby was growing fat and healthy.

“I haven’t seen her in a twelvemonth,” said the woman, who was plump and quite pretty. She had a dimple in her cheek and Rob smiled at her like she was a butter pudding just for him. Marian disliked her on principle.

“She’s been busy with the baby and the farm,” Rob said, as if he were this Nellie’s oldest confidante.

It was absurd. And Marian couldn’t figure out why he did it, other than being an unrepentant flirt, of course. She might have thought he was angling to get a free supper, but instead he overpaid at every opportunity. She was left to conclude that he simply liked talking to people. She was exhausted just watching him. She was exhausted just thinking about it.

But she had talked to Rob for at least an hour straight that morning and at no point had it been tedious. Whenever she thought the conversation was about to careen into one of the many prickly briar patches that littered her mind, it instead changed course. And that, she was forced to acknowledge, was because Rob made it change course. This meant that he was likely learning the entire landscape of her being, just by feeling out the brambles and thorns. She did not enjoy the realization that her boundaries were being tested, as if she were an old fence. Soon enough he’d know where all the weak and dangerous bits were.

“Is your beer sour?” Rob asked, looking at her from across the table. “Mine’s all right. Better than all right, even.”

“It’s perfectly fine.”

“You were frowning.”

“No I wasn’t,” she lied. “My face is just like this.”

“I’ve seen you smile.”

“An oversight on my part. It won’t happen again.”

He grinned at that, and she quickly brought the tankard to her lips to hide any smile of her own that might want to force its way out.

“How old is your daughter?” he asked, and Marian froze with her tankard halfway to her mouth.

“Four months,” Marian said. This wasn’t the first time Rob had asked about Eliza, but until now she had deflected, and each time he backed off. He was being so cautious with her, and it made her feel exposed. But it also made her feel—well, it had been a long time since anyone had been careful with her, and she didn’t know exactly how it made her feel. “She’ll be five months on the Epiphany,” she added.

“Where is she?” Rob’s voice was balanced between casual and cautious.

“She’s in London. I couldn’t very well take her with me on horseback in the dead of winter.” I didn’t abandon her, she wanted to protest. “If anything happens to me, or if I need to leave the country, Percy will look after her. He adores her.” Marian often wished she could be half as natural and affectionate around the baby as Percy was. “And I gave the nursery maid five pounds to take Eliza to my brother Marcus if there’s any trouble from the duke.” And some doing it had taken to get her hands on that much money when the duke refused to give her any pin money. There had been weeks of sneaking teaspoons and other bits and bobs from every house she set foot in.

“Fleet Ditch?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The nursery maid who for some perverse reason sees fit to sing the rhyme with Fleet Ditch in place of Shoreditch.”

“Precisely.”

He leaned close. “Where did you shoot him?”

This seemed like an abrupt change of topic, but Marian put two fingers to the center of her chest and tapped.

Rob nodded. “If he survived, he won’t be in any shape to harm the child.”

Marian had been telling herself as much, but it was reassuring to hear it from someone with more experience of wounds. She gave him a tight nod of acknowledgment.

“Does she look like you?”

What an odd question. “She looks like Percy, but as bald as an egg.”

He smiled at that.

Marian realized she had eaten all her stew while hardly tasting it. It had been like this at all her meals since leaving London. The last time she had this kind of appetite she had been thirteen and letting her hems down what seemed like every fortnight.

Rob absently slid a slice of bread onto her plate while looking at something over her shoulder, frowning intently.

“Those men,” he said, in something very close to a growl. “They’re bothering Mrs. Denny.”

“Mrs. Denny?”

“The innkeeper’s wife. No, don’t turn around. One of them pinched her and the other made a rude comment. Mr. Denny is in the stables because one of the ostlers has mumps.”

“Men,” Marian said. She knew which group of men Rob was referring to, because they were speaking twice as loud as anyone else.

“Precisely,” Rob agreed grimly, and got to his feet. “Don’t move.”

Marian disregarded this order, of course, immediately moving into the seat that Rob had vacated, which gave her a clear view. At a table in the center of the room sat a group of men about her own age or a bit older. They were dressed as gentlemen might in order to ride to hounds, but instead of making themselves useful outside, they were sitting in a warm inn drinking themselves silly. Their boots and coats were all new, London made, and costly.