The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(53)

This trip had been a waste. She reached for the golden dolphin statues but at the last moment stayed her hand. The last thing she wanted was to alert Fanshawe that there were thieves in his midst. He might decide to keep his treasures better hidden in the future. Worse, he might blame some hapless servant for the theft. She knew that Rob thought luring the servants to the kitchen would keep them all out of suspicion, but Marian had spent enough time in large households to know that there were always servants who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave their posts no matter how tempting the distraction—nurses who tended to babies or the elderly, upper servants who always stayed within reach of the lady or gentleman they served. During the last several months of her marriage to the duke, her lady’s maid had followed her like a shadow.

Disappointed, she left the house the same way she had entered it and did exactly as Rob had instructed her earlier that day. When a group of carolers emerged from the house, she stepped in with them, walking with them as far as the lane that would eventually lead to the village.

When they approached the wood that bordered the Fanshawe property, someone fell into step beside her. It was Rob, of course. She looped his arm into hers.

“I don’t see your pockets bulging with golden dolphins,” he murmured. He smelled of mulled wine and plum cake.

“Don’t be cross.”

“I’m not. It was an observation.” He pulled off his wig and handed it to a confused mummer. He handed his remaining pamphlets to a caroler, who stopped singing long enough to spare a few choice profanities for Rob. Then he guided Marian off the lane and into the wood

“The manuscripts weren’t there,” Marian said. “As for the rest, I couldn’t go through with it.”

“Moral crisis?” Rob leaned against a tree.

“Not the sort you’re thinking of. I just can’t stand to think of someone being arrested and punished for my own crimes.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Fair. Well, according to the butler, Fanshawe returned to London late last night. I hoped he might leave your manuscript behind, but it seems he took it with him.”

“Well, where does that leave us?” Marian asked, annoyed.

“I suppose we’ll have to catch up with him in London. How annoying. I wish Kit were here. He was always better than I am at figuring these things out. He’d know at which inn we could intercept Fanshawe and how many of his outriders were likely to be in their cups.”

“Then I suppose we go back to London,” Marian said, trying not to think about how dismal this prospect left her feeling.





Chapter 25




On their way back to Little Hinton, they passed the village church that Marian remembered from her early childhood.

“Do you mind if we go in?” she asked Rob. “It’s Christmas.”

“You don’t need to ask.”

“I will, though.” They looked at one another, the light glinting off Rob’s eyes, the moment stretching out between them until it held more than Marian knew how to say.

They found a pew in the far back of the church, nearly concealed by shadows, which suited Marian fine. She had spent many an hour in this very church. And maybe she had thought that sitting in one of its pews, listening to the familiar canticles in a familiar place, she would feel herself again, in the same way she had the night of the shooting when she first sat in Gwen’s saddle. She had thought that maybe everything would make sense—or failing that, that maybe she would make sense.

Instead she felt alienated not only from her past but from her future. She didn’t know how she was meant to pack up everything that had happened in the past fortnight, store it tidily away, and go back to being the Duchess of Clare. She had made her peace with walking away from that title, that life, and—God forgive her—she didn’t want to go back. She would, though. She’d go back for the same reasons she married the duke in the first place.

There were too many parts of her, and none of them good—daughter to a man who didn’t know her, mother to a child she barely knew, wife to the man she had killed, sister to a man she counted as an enemy. She knew there was more to her than that, that she was more than the sum of those roles, but she couldn’t put a name to any of those other parts, so it was hard to believe that they counted for much.

She gripped the edge of the pew, curling her fingers around the scarred and polished wood, as if maybe if she squeezed hard enough she could drive the confusion out of her body through pain alone. It seemed as good a plan as any.

But then, instead of squeezing the seat, she was grasping a hand. Rob had pried her fingers off the bench and clasped her hand in his, beneath the folds of their cloaks. She tried to listen to the chanting, but it was the Magnificat, which used to be so lovely but now only made her feel uneasy and unwelcome. Her gaze skated around the church, from the wooden cross that hung above the altar, to the painted altarpiece, to the cold stone statues.

“I’d like to leave,” she murmured, and Rob was on his feet in an instant.

It occurred to her for the first time, at the back of a cold church on Christmas Day, exactly what it meant to have a man like Rob jump to his feet the minute she opened her mouth. She had seen him, time and again, reach absently for his coat pocket, ever ready to put his hand on a weapon. Sometimes she forgot that he was a dangerous man, because she knew that not only would he not harm her, but that he would do what it took to protect her.