The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(58)

She gave him a very skeptical and long-suffering roll of the eyes. “I do know how men lie together. Percy told me.” She said this with such an air of expertise that he had to bite his lip to keep from smiling.

“I didn’t realize I was dealing with a regular expert in buggery. In that case I’ll point out that while, yes, I sometimes stuck my prick in the men I lay with, sometimes it was the other way around. Usually, in fact.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Christ, I cannot believe I’m talking about this with you.”

She looked over at him with an indecipherable expression. “I see.”

“And now I’ve shocked you.”

“No,” she said slowly, licking her lips. “I would not say that I’m shocked.”

It was true that she didn’t look shocked so much as intrigued. In fact, she looked like a person who was getting ideas, and Rob very much wanted to be there when those ideas came to fruition.

“But that’s not the point,” he said. “The point is that I wish you believed that I won’t hurt you.”

She gave him a faintly pitying look. “You want me to trust you.”

“Yes. I don’t expect you to, though. What happened to you—”

“Rob, I’ve never been a trusting and open-hearted person. I’ve never been affectionate and loving. I’ve been cold and prickly my entire life. The past year forced me to make use of those traits, but they’ve always been part of who I am.”

“I understand that.”

“I don’t think you do. You want to be with someone who loves you the way you love, without any reservations, without holding anything back. And that can’t be me. That’s never been me. Maybe you think that beneath all this is someone sweet and—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Marian. If you acted sweet, I’d think you were a changeling. I’d call for the doctor. I love every prickly, sour, difficult inch of you.” He could see, though, that she had been telling the truth—she didn’t love him the way he loved her. He supposed he had known that already. Not that any of this mattered, since in less than a week they’d be in London, in their separate worlds.

“Do you want to go to bed?” he asked. “Just to sleep, I think.”

She glanced at the bed and he could have sworn that she looked tempted, as if seeing a cake or—he didn’t know—a mean cat or an old map that she had her heart set on. But she shook her head. “I think not. Good night, Rob.” She kissed him on the cheek and he accepted his dismissal, leaving the warmth of her room.





Chapter 27




“Are you quite certain we can’t take the stagecoach?” Marian asked Rob for the dozenth time as they piled their meager baggage in the kitchen.

“I’m quite certain that people will not know what to think if the Duchess of Clare is seen in a stagecoach.”

Marian increasingly did not give a fig what people thought about the Duchess of Clare. “People are already going to be dismayed by the Duchess of Clare not traveling with a lady companion and a full retinue. What if I dressed as a man again?”

“That disguise isn’t going to work if you’re crammed into close quarters with eight other people.” He tapped his fingers on his thigh. “If it’s money you’re worried about, I’ll stand the expense.”

“How?”

“I have a bit of money put aside.” He seemed awfully shifty about this, and Marian assumed he had acquired this money in some disreputable fashion. “Not a lot. Certainly not enough to gallivant about in post chaises whenever the mood strikes me, but it occurs to me that this trip will be vastly more pleasant for myself—and also for the cat—if we use a private post chaise.”

She recalled that night he had spent in the kitchen after being unable to sleep in the cramped room. Perhaps the stagecoach was unpleasant for him for similar reasons. “I’d hate to inconvenience the cat,” she conceded.

And then she set about saying goodbye to her father without crying, as he would surely be distressed and confused by a weeping stranger. She thanked Hester, Netley, and Nurse, scooped up the cat, and let Rob hand her into the carriage that was to bring them to the posting inn.

“I’ll be glad to see Eliza and Percy,” she said, as if saying it aloud would make her less distressed about leaving her father, or less guilty about having left Eliza and Percy in the first place, or even less miserable about the prospect of returning to Clare House. “I suppose you’ll be glad to get back to your usual life.”

He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher. “I’m not sure I have one of those anymore.” He reached out and poked the nose of the cat, who had stuck his head out from the folds of Marian’s cloak as if eager to participate in the conversation. “Before I ran off to France last year, Kit and I were holding up carriages and that sort of thing, and then we’d come back to London, where he’d run the shop and I’d dispose of our takings. But now he’s not doing that anymore and I won’t work with anyone else. So I’m rather at a loose end.”

“Last night you asked me what I’d do if I had nobody to consider but myself. Now I’ll ask you the same.”

“Marian. Do you really have to ask?”