The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(38)

“Bring who?”

“Your daughter.” Rob tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. Marian thought his cheeks might be a bit red. “Do you want me to bring her back here? With her wet nurse and Fleet Ditch and whoever else she requires.”

Marian stared at him. “You would do that?”

“Well, yes.” Now his cheeks were decidedly red, as if he were embarrassed to be making the offer.

“It would mean days in a carriage with a fractious infant. She’s exceptionally fussy and belligerent,” Marian said, a little proudly.

“I’m accustomed to traveling with fussy and belligerent companions,” he said softly, too affectionately for Marian to take offense.

It was too cold for a child to make an unnecessary journey, and this house was too small to add a child and a pair of servants for no reason but her own contentment. But the fact that Rob had offered to undertake a journey that would mean at least a week of additional travel, and offered it as if he were tossing a farthing to a crossing sweep, made her feel as if all her clothing were too tight.

“Thank you,” she said, “but Eliza ought to stay at Clare House. Percy is forever popping in and out of the nursery. Far more often than I do, in fact. They would miss one another.” She looked at him and tried to find any sign of judgment in his face. She almost wished she could find some.

Hester returned to the kitchen. “Mr. Brooks. His lordship asked whether you were staying for supper.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I was under the impression that he thought me a coachman.”

“It’s hard to say what he’s thinking, sir.”

“He noticed that you’re a gentleman,” Marian said absently, only realizing what she had said when she saw Rob stiffen across the table. “The way you speak, the way you carry yourself. He’d pay more attention to those things than he would your coat or your boots. Not that there’s anything wrong with your coat or boots,” she admitted, letting her gaze travel up his body.

“The way I carry myself,” Rob repeated, as if she had accused him of untold depravity. “What does that even mean?”

“I’m probably being very snooty. Perhaps everyone in the middle class speaks the way you do. I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid.”

“Middle class?” he sputtered, fully outraged. “Middle class? I—you infernal—you make me sound like a banker.” He shot her an offended look and stalked away to join the earl in the dining room.

Marian hung back behind the door, surreptitiously watching her father and Rob share a meal of baked ham and discuss some sentimental novel Marian had never heard of but which Hester had apparently read aloud to the earl.

Surely the stab of envy she felt did her no credit, but she wished she were at the table as well. It was over a year since she had shared a meal with her father, and if she had known on the eve of her wedding that it would be the last time he would know her, then she might have tried harder to make it matter, or at least tried to sear it into her memory. It wouldn’t do her any good to dwell on that, though; she should consign that last dinner to her list of regrets, where it would have abundant company.

Well, she could set things right for him now, somehow. She could at least make sure that he lived in comfort. She didn’t know what would become of her in the future, but now she could act. She could—she wasn’t quite certain what she could do, but Rob didn’t seem to have any doubt that she could do it, and he was the expert in criminal enterprises, so she was inclined to trust his judgment.

The fires, however insufficient she had at first deemed them, warmed the kitchen to the point that she longed for the cold, so she took one last look at the men at the dinner table and then grabbed her cloak off a peg by the door, stepped into her boots, and walked outside into the dusk. The rain had dwindled enough that she was able to run across the garden to the stable without soaking her cloak.

Marian did not think that she imagined the alarmed look with which Gwen greeted her. “Don’t worry. You’ll have all night to rest before you need to leave this nice, warm stall.” Netley had covered the horses in blankets, but the stable was warm in the way stables often were when filled with large animals. She checked that they had clean straw to bed down in and more than enough hay and water.

She wasn’t surprised when she heard the stable door open and then snick shut. “How was dinner?” she asked without turning away from Gwen.

“Your father told me all about those circles of hell you once mentioned to me.” This was Rob pretending to be ignorant, as if upon receiving that letter he hadn’t immediately hunted down a copy of the Inferno and then beguiled an Italian into translating it aloud for him. “He also told me that you translated it when you were—”

Marian’s hand stilled on Gwen’s forehead. “He mentioned me?”

“Bragged about you, actually.” Rob came up behind her. “You’re proficient in five languages.”

Surely, the fact that her father remembered her, at least as a person who might exist somewhere in the world, shouldn’t make her chest feel so tight. “He’s told me many times that my Greek is simply execrable, so that’s a lie.” She gripped the top of Gwen’s stall door. “Where does he think I am?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he knows, either. But he sang your praises until the bottle of wine was empty. He’s a lovely man and he adores you.”