The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(25)

Rob truly did not know what to say to any of this. The daughter of an earl had no expectations? A woman who thought herself the wife of a duke had lost nothing? “You spent a year living as the wife of a man who cannot have been a good husband.”

“There is that,” she said, as if he had pointed out that there were clouds in the sky or that her horse had thrown a shoe. “But it doesn’t affect my future.”

“He took you to bed on false pretenses,” Rob said, his face suddenly hot. He thought of his mother, and he thought of the things his mother had told him about the duke. “And got you with child on false pretenses. That’s . . .” He fumbled for a word, but there wasn’t one quite equal to the task. “Not right,” he finally settled on.

“It’s in the past,” she said, her tone a little hard around the edges, “and now I’m rid of him.” She was silent for a moment, presumably recalling the exact manner in which she had rid herself of him.

For a few minutes, the only sound was the horses’ hooves on the dirt path and the wind rustling through a nearby stand of trees.

“What will you do with your takings?” Marian eventually asked. “One pound, eight shillings, and thruppence.”

“A bath and a fire at tonight’s inn,” Rob said promptly, because the colder it got, the more he thought about that fire, “and then, if we’re being honest, the rest will go to the first beggar with a sad story I encounter on the way back to London. Kit used to have to take charge of my coin purse.”

“Well, I’ll do no such thing. You and your largesse are entirely on your own. I will beg use of your bathwater, though.”

They were making their way along the Kentish downs, now, and the wind that whipped through the hills was as harsh and cold as if it came straight off the sea beyond.

She stopped walking. “Come here,” she said, and took his hands, rubbing them between her own. Then, still holding his hands, she bent her head and breathed on them. “Why on earth don’t you have gloves on,” she muttered. He stayed perfectly still, afraid that if he moved she’d notice that she was holding his hands. “Do you want my cloak? It’s very warm.”

He looked at her to see if she was teasing him, but her expression was serious. She was—Christ, she was worried for him. The notion made his cheeks heat, made him want to look away. “No thank you,” he said, because the idea of her cloak around his shoulders made him feel both pleased and ashamed in a way he didn’t quite know what to make of. He extracted his hands from her grip as gently as possible, but she immediately stepped back as if rebuked.

“It’s too cold to linger,” she said. “Besides, your horse has a stone in his hoof and the sooner we get it out, the better. Haven’t you noticed?”

Before he could say that he had not noticed, and how on earth had she when the horse was behaving perfectly normally, she had already remounted her horse and was racing ahead of him, her cloak whipping behind her.

They rode until they reached a small whitewashed inn, the sun already sinking beneath the horizon behind them.

“Is this all right?” she asked, out of breath.

“Perfect.”

As they handed the horses off to the ostlers, Rob took a look around the innyard. It was busier than he thought a rural inn ought to be on a winter’s night. This was no coaching inn. And, indeed, there were no coaches in the stableyard and hardly any horses. Instead, most of the activity seemed to come from half a dozen children running between the stables and the kitchens.

“You’ll catch your death!” cried an aproned woman from the door. “Get back in here!” The children paid this no heed.

“Confounded kittens,” grumbled the ostler.

“Heaven help me,” said Marian under her breath.

“What?”

“Your eyes literally lit up. I’ve only read about that in books. I’ve never seen it happen.”

“They did not,” he protested, but they probably had. He was actually pretty excited about the prospect of seeing kittens.

She shook her head but smiled at him. It was a real smile, one that showed her teeth. He was very much afraid that his face was doing all kinds of obvious and horrible things right now, even worse than when he heard about the kittens.

“Give me the satchel and I’ll get a room and order a hot meal,” she said.

This was the first time she had offered to do this, instead preferring to linger discreetly in the background while Rob made arrangements. Her disguise wasn’t foolproof, but she was covered in a layer of dust from the road and he didn’t think anyone catching a glimpse of her in the firelight would jump to the conclusion that she was any woman, let alone the Duchess of Clare. “Thank you.”

“Enjoy your kittens,” she called over her shoulder as she strode across the innyard. “And make sure that hoof is tended to.”

She spoke both parts of that sentence with an equal degree of brisk authority, as if everything from Rob’s amusements to the horse’s welfare fell under the shelter of her command. He watched her hold the door open for a pair of girls who scurried toward the stables and for a moment wanted to call her back in order to—well, he wasn’t quite sure what, except that he wasn’t ready to see her go. He doubted that he’d ever be ready to see her go, not when they reached her father’s house, nor after whatever came next.