The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(27)
“Philosophy,” he said promptly. “I can’t abide it. I read one sentence of Locke or Hobbes and by the end I can’t remember where it started. I like novels.”
“You would like novels.”
“I do. Even the bad ones. Even the ones that trade in the most mawkish sentiment.” He paused. “Especially those, even. Why, what book would you have?”
She couldn’t remember the last time she had read anything for pleasure, but that was too pitiful to admit. “If you want a book so badly, why not steal one?”
“If you find me a villainous bookseller, I’ll rob them blind.”
“Yes, of course, how silly of me to forget that you’re the arbiter of who gets to keep their property and who doesn’t, and of who gets punished and who doesn’t.”
“Do you know anybody better suited?” he asked. “If you say anything about the law, I’ll cry from frustration, I really will. Even though I’m bored senseless by Locke and Hobbes, I do know the principles. We were all living in horrible caves and hitting one another with sticks and then we stopped because we agreed to have laws instead. I just don’t particularly care.”
She opened her mouth to protest but found that she couldn’t.
“I think we’re still in the cave, hitting one another with sticks,” Rob went on. “I know that I broke the law when I stole from those arseholes at the tavern this afternoon. But how is what I did any different from putting poor men into debtors’ prison? What I did is comparatively gentle. A targeted tax on rich men who behave badly. It’s very civilized, actually.”
She remembered all the odds and ends she had pilfered that autumn from houses where she had been an invited guest. Those people hadn’t done anything to warrant having their belongings taken, but she had become increasingly fearful of the duke, and the duke had become increasingly suspicious of her and tight with his purse strings. She wanted to give the nursery maid a sum to take Eliza away to a place of safety, if it came to that. Stealing had been wrong, but Marian had done it anyway because it needed to be done, just as she had shot the duke because there had been no court she could have appealed to, no law she could have relied on.
“Have I shocked you?” Rob asked from behind the screen.
“You’ll have to try harder than that if you want to shock me,” Marian said, glad to have her thoughts dragged back to the present, even if the present consisted of Rob emerging from behind the screen with a linen sheet wrapped around his waist.
He gave her an odd look and then rummaged through his satchel for a shirt. “I don’t want to shock you in the least bit, Marian.”
She didn’t like his tone of voice. It was soft and patient, and he spoke as if Marian ought to be aware of things of which she decidedly was not. “I’ll leave you to get dressed. Our supper is probably waiting for us downstairs.”
She had to wait only a few minutes in the parlor before Rob joined her, smelling of soap, his hair curling damply around his collar. They ate mutton stew and potatoes while Rob kept up a steady stream of inconsequential chatter, which was typical. What wasn’t typical, though, was that he spoke solely with her—not with the people at the neighboring table and only as much as politeness dictated to the girl who brought their supper. She didn’t know if he was doing this to make a point, or even if she wanted him to be doing so.
“Do you want more?”
She looked up from where she had been using the tines of her fork to trace patterns in the gravy that was left at the bottom of her bowl. She had eaten all her stew and potatoes, and then one of Rob’s potatoes that he slid onto her plate. She had also had two pints of beer. “I’m not hungry.”
“I think you’re always hungry,” he observed casually. “You eat so quickly it hardly hits the sides.”
She felt her cheeks heat. “How uncouth of me.”
“Far from it. I’m only asking because I’m wondering when the last time was that you ate your fill.”
“This afternoon. You were there.”
He frowned. “Before leaving London, I meant.”
She hadn’t the slightest idea. She had been rather preoccupied, as Rob well knew. “I had things on my mind.”
“Was he not feeding you?” He said this while bringing his cup of beer to his mouth, so casually that she had to repeat his words in her mind.
She put her fork down. “You’re asking whether he starved me. No, he didn’t. He never harmed me in any of the ways you’re likely thinking of.”
“Marian,” he said, sad and reproachful, and she wanted to slap him.
“I can’t have you thinking that the duke behaved like the villain in one of those novels you like so much. He didn’t starve me or beat me or chain me up.”
“Because those are the only ways a person can be harmed, of course.”
Marian knew perfectly well that she had been harmed and she didn’t need Rob to agree. Except—she didn’t want Rob to think that her killing the duke was justified for reasons that existed only in Rob’s head. But she couldn’t tell him the real reasons, not without telling him far, far too much. Marian was used to her morals not matching those of everyone around her, but she didn’t want Rob to discover the truth and then decide that Marian had done something awful. She didn’t think she could stand that.