The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(6)

“It was the same amount you gave me to take after Eliza was born.” Marian had measured it out very carefully, making sure not to include a drop more or a drop less. The goal, after all, was only to knock the man out long enough to bind him. Marian did not fancy herself a murderer.

Dinah frowned skeptically and nudged the man with the toe of her boot.

Marian finished tying the knot and got to her feet. “Come, you can kick him all you like later on, but first let’s get him into bed.”

“Why?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why don’t we just leave him there?”

They both looked at the recumbent form of the blackmailer. His wrists were secured, and he looked comfortable enough, not that Marian particularly cared about whether the swine was comfortable, even if he was bound to wake up mightily sore after spending the night on the cold, bare floor.

“He needs to be in the bed so I can tie him to the bedposts,” Marian decided.

Dinah shrugged a sort of pro forma acquiescence. Marian supposed that she was not paying Dinah nearly enough to pretend that anything happening in this room made sense or was a good idea. Marian had parted company with good ideas some while ago. The very next day Percy was going to hold up his father’s carriage in order to steal a book the duke—which was to say Percy’s father, of course—would pay handsomely to have returned to him. This, they hoped, would give Percy, Marian, and Marian’s daughter enough to live on. A year ago, Marian would have been appalled by the recklessness of this scheme, but a year ago Marian hadn’t been worn down by a run of catastrophes. A year ago Marian hadn’t known what it meant to be desperate.

Right now, her principal concern was making sure that Rob was hors de combat during tomorrow’s hold up. Percy’s highwayman friend trusted Rob, but probably a lot of people who ought to know better trusted Rob.

With his wrists bound together, it was impossible to get a purchase on his arms. He kept flopping about like a rag doll—except a rag doll who was considerably larger than either of the women.

“You need to untie the knot,” Dinah said.

“I don’t want to. If he wakes up, he’ll kill us.”

“He’s not going to kill us. You’re worth five hundred pounds to him.”

That was about as comforting a thought as she was likely to have in these circumstances. “All right,” Marian said, and knelt to untie the knot. “Quick, now.” They each grabbed an arm and hauled him across the room, the heels of his boots dragging on the bare wood floor. As soon as he was on the bed, Marian tied one of his wrists to the bedpost and breathed a sigh of relief. She took another cord from her pocket—she had come prepared with enough cords to tie up a squid—and set to work on the other arm.

Only when he was secured did she let herself look at him. The scant light in the shabby room came from a branch of candles that sat on the card table beside two abandoned hands of Mariage and a pair of pewter tankards containing ale laced with laudanum. She retrieved the candle branch and held it over the man’s unconscious form. She had seen him before, of course, but only from a distance and under cover of night, and she had been more concerned with following his movements than in studying his features.

He had reddish hair, which he wore unpowdered and in a queue. He was about her own age, give or take a year or two. There was a scar bisecting one eyebrow, and another on his cheek. Stubble grew in faint and ruddy along his jaw.

Disconcertingly, a bridge of freckles crossed his nose and then scattered all over the rest of his face. She felt certain that blackmailers shouldn’t have freckles. It seemed a decidedly unvillainous characteristic. Then again, she supposed she didn’t much look like a kidnapper or poisoner; she had always thought her profile sadly lacking in panache.

She moved to put the candles back on the table, but Dinah stayed her, clamping a hand on Marian’s wrist. Marian watched in some chagrin as Dinah cast what appeared to be an appreciative eye over the blackmailer.

Marian snatched her hand away, plunging the recumbent figure into shadows. “You’ll have plenty of time to admire him when you check on him throughout the day.”

“Unless there’s a baby,” Dinah said, because she had a life outside aiding and abetting felonies, alas.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can.” With any luck, by then she and Percy would have what they needed from the duke and wouldn’t need to worry about the blackmailer anymore. All she needed to do was ensure that when Percy held up the duke’s carriage, this man was far away and therefore couldn’t interfere. He was precisely the sort of man who did interfere, who made an absolute sacrament of sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, and she couldn’t afford any of that. Tomorrow night she would let him go and never have to think about him again.

She didn’t know why, after a year of relentlessly dismal luck, she thought things could possibly start to go her way now.





Chapter 2




Rob knew he had been drugged before he was quite conscious. He was hardly inexperienced with opium; God knew he had had enough of it poured down his throat before having bones shoved back into place or wounds sewn shut to know how it made his mouth dry, his thoughts clouded.

Then he remembered who had drugged him, and his eyes flew open. Only then did he realize that his wrists were tied and that he was alone.