The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(26)

Chapter 11




“This is rank duplicity,” Rob announced when he walked into the room and saw that the bath was set up and that Marian had already used it. He sat on the edge of the bed and began to tug off his boots. “You lured me away with kittens and then took advantage of my absence to get the first bath.”

She was now fully dressed and wrapped in the bed quilt while she combed her hair out. “That’s about the lay of the land, yes. There’s another kettle boiling on the fire, so you’ll have no cause to complain about cold water.” It was the best bath she had ever taken. She would probably die from whatever chill she caught from going to bed with wet hair, but it would be worth it. “How were your kittens? Were they good?”

“Have there ever been bad kittens?” He dropped his coat onto the back of the chair and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “No, there have not.”

“I don’t know how you harden your heart enough to do crimes, Rob.”

“Darling, when I steal from someone, it’s my good deed for the day.”

The endearment felt different coming from him when he was in the process of pulling his shirt over his head. She probably ought to look away, but she didn’t. And now she knew that his chest was covered in hair a shade darker than the hair on his head. Worse, she imagined what it would feel like to touch. He had one large scar on his shoulder, and she wondered if he had smaller scars on his arms and chest as he did his face and hands. He was too far away to tell.

There had been a time when Marian hadn’t been quite so indifferent to the charms of men; there had been a time when she and Percy had waxed rhapsodic about things like forearms and chins and chest hair. A year of marriage to the duke had diminished any enthusiasm she might once have had for a handsome man.

Rob cleared his throat and looked at her pointedly. She hastily averted her eyes. “Don’t look away on my account, pet.”

Her mouth was dry. “Pet? I think not.”

“Have it your way, darling.” He hooked his thumbs into the top of his buckskins, as if contemplating whether to take them off.

“If you didn’t flirt with everyone and everything, I might take you seriously, and then where would you be? You ought to watch your mouth.”

“I flirt with you incessantly. I’ve been flirting with you for months. I think I’ve moved past flirting and onto something else altogether, and if you haven’t noticed, then you haven’t been paying any attention at all.”

Her heart sped up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He looked at her intently for a long moment. “It means just say the word, love.”

For a minute she felt like she was balanced on the edge of a precipice. All she had to do, he said, was say the word. And then what?

She was free to say yes; her marriage to the duke had left her with no vows worth honoring, not only because of the duke’s bigamy, but because of his unapologetic indifference to her life. He had insisted on attempting to get her with child, even after the physicians told him what that might mean for her; Marian could not consider that she was bound to any such man.

In a youth that seemed to have ended an eternity ago, Marian wouldn’t have hesitated. She had been surrounded by people who didn’t hesitate over such matters, namely Percy and Marcus, who had spent their school holidays bedding one another in addition to every other like-minded gentleman in Oxfordshire. Marian refused to accept that a different rule applied to herself, and so there had been an instructive but underwhelming afternoon with her dancing master and a much less underwhelming summer with the solicitor’s sister.

Her life might have been easier if she had followed everybody else’s rules instead of the rules that felt just and right in her own mind. But if she had been that sort of person, she would have balked at pulling the trigger, and she didn’t know what would have become of Eliza, of Percy, of herself, if she hadn’t done so.

No, Marian could guess what her own fate would have been. Dinah’s herbs weren’t perfect—she had said so herself. Eventually Marian would again fall pregnant, and this time the incessant sickness that had nearly starved her during her past confinement might take her life. Dinah had been uncharacteristically grave about the likelihood of her illness recurring; even the duke’s physicians had agreed.

She realized that Rob was still looking at her.

“Bathe, Mr. Brooks. Behind the screen, thank you.” She resumed combing her hair but saw out of the corner of her eye that Rob had ducked behind the screen. A moment later she heard the sound of water being poured into the tub.

“Earlier, you called me Rob.”

“Nonsense.” She probably had, though. She had been thinking of him as Rob for days, now.

She heard small splashing sounds as he, presumably, lowered himself into the tub. A hazy and incomplete picture of Rob bathing formed in her mind. She was very annoyed with herself, both for having thought of such a thing and also for not having enough information to present a complete image.

“Do you know what I wish we had?” Rob asked.

“I feel certain that I’m about to find out.” She braced herself for something lewd.

“A book. Any book. Even a bad book would do. I like to read before I fall asleep.”

“What do you consider a bad book?” she asked before she could think about whether she was relieved or disappointed that he had not, after all, suggested something lewd.