The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(50)

“Don’t stop,” she said, trying to make sure it sounded like a command and not like begging. “I’m going to—” And she fell apart under his touch, one hand fisted in his hair.

As she got her breath back, he lay with his forehead against her stomach.

“You’ve been so good—”

“Oh Christ,” he said, covering his eyes with his hand.

“—so good that you probably deserve better than my hand. But my hand is what you’re getting.”

“God, Marian—”

She sat up and pushed him onto his back, then set about unfastening his breeches. “There, hush, I’ve got you,” she said as she wrapped her hand around him. His jaw was clenched and his length so hard that she almost felt bad for him. “You did so well to wait,” she said, because she liked seeing that conflict between embarrassment and pleasure play out on his face. She liked the way the muscles in his neck and shoulders tensed when he was momentarily embarrassed, then relaxed with the praise.

She bent down to kiss him, stretching her body alongside his, so she could feel his arm wrap around her as if it belonged there, heavy and sure. She had always enjoyed bringing pleasure to her bedmates—of course she had, it was only fair. But with Rob, she felt nearly possessive of his pleasure, proprietary, as if she somehow owned it. Feeling his muscles tense against her, hearing the soft sounds he made, she felt like she was almost about to come again herself. He muttered something garbled and nonsensical, which she took as a warning. So she bit down on his shoulder and snaked an arm around his neck to pull at his hair again, and felt his body go rigid beside her before he came, biting back any sound he might have made behind clenched teeth.





Chapter 23




The next morning, they had a robbery to plan.

“It’s not a robbery,” Marian protested. “I only mean to talk to the man.”

Rob held his best knife up to the light, inspecting its blade before returning it to its sheath and handing it to Marian.

“I’m giving him a chance to be reasonable,” she said, sliding the knife into the bodice of her gown.

Marian wasn’t dressed for robbery. She wore a costume of a gray so dark it was nearly black, and which seemed to absorb all the light in the room until Marian was wrapped in her own private shadow. Tucked into her neckline was a white neckerchief, and beneath the hem of her skirts he could see white petticoats. Her sleeves tied up somehow at the cuffs, exposing maybe an inch of the sleeves of her chemise. And then there was the black of her hair, the white of her skin. The ultimate effect was that she cut a swath of unyielding black and white across the gently muted and faded kitchen furnishings. Everything about her was crisp and uncompromising, from the straightness of her back to the tilt of her chin. He thought he could stare at her all day and never tire of it.

“I found it in the attic,” she said when she caught him looking. “It must have been my mother’s and somehow was never remade into something more fashionable.”

Rob could see that there was something faintly old-fashioned about the ensemble. There was also something else. “It’s mourning attire.” The idea that she was planning to go into mourning for a man she had killed with her own hands, while—regardless of what she said—robbing, extorting, or otherwise dealing feloniously with another man, made Rob feel faintly dizzy.

“I could hardly wear anything else, could I?”

“Do widows typically call on gentlemen in the first week of mourning?”

“Gentlemen typically don’t extort money from their tenants,” Marian retorted.

“That is precisely what gentlemen do,” he pointed out, exasperated. “It is practically the entire point of gentlemen.”

She opened her mouth as if to protest, then frowned. “Fair.”

She had left him alone in bed last night. Not that he had expected her to spend the night with him. It was just that he didn’t quite like that he could miss someone who was across the hall. And now he felt like he missed her even though she was two feet away from him at the kitchen table. He didn’t know how that was possible.

The snow hadn’t melted, but it was packed into something navigable, so Rob had no trouble getting to the village and hiring a pair of horses to pull the earl’s ancient carriage and bring Marian to the home of this blackguard. Because even though the two houses were a scant mile apart, Marian naturally couldn’t go on foot—she was making this visit as the Duchess of Clare. The notion set Rob’s teeth on edge.

While Marian went inside, Rob took himself to the kitchens, where he found Fanshawe’s servants preparing for the following day’s festivities. Somehow, what with all the running back and forth between London and Canterbury, Rob had lost track of the calendar. He was vaguely aware that the moon had been full when he and Marian set out from London, and that now the moon was nothing but the thinnest sliver of a waning crescent. But it seemed that the following day was Christmas. Nearly a fortnight had slipped away from him, two weeks during which he had thought of little other than Marian. Two weeks during which he had, unaccountably, been something like happy.

It wasn’t that unaccountable, he supposed.

Rob accepted a cup of ale from Fanshawe’s cook and listened as the staff discussed their plans for the following day. Aside from servants, the house would be largely empty. Even if Marian didn’t plan any burglaries, Rob had half a mind to do so himself, just on principle.