The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(64)

“I could fall asleep like this,” he said dreamily afterward, his head pillowed on her thigh, when she was trying to catch her breath. “And then I could wake up and do it again.”

And, good God, he sounded like he meant it. She didn’t think that she could take it—the raw affection in his voice, the way his hand rested on her hip, not any of it. She swallowed. “You have to go back to your room,” she snapped. “You can’t be discovered here.”

He pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh and got to his feet, as if she hadn’t just been rude and cruel.

“I can’t let you go in that state,” she said, no less rude, and with a vague gesture in the vicinity of his obvious erection. “What will people think? You should probably let me do something about it.”

“Whatever you say,” he said, sliding back into bed and forbearing from pointing out that there wouldn’t be anyone awake at this hour to think anything at all about any part of his body.

“My hand is all you’re getting,” she said, aiming for aloofness but instead sounding regrettably eager.

“Oh no,” he said dryly. “That’ll be terrible. If you really want to make me suffer, you could use your mouth.”

She went momentarily still, imagining it. “Not, I think, this time,” she said, but she couldn’t help but lick her lips.

And then he lay beside her in bed and showed her exactly what he liked, coaxing her in precisely the same voice he used on horses, except now it was somehow arousing, and it all ought to have been sadly lowering but instead when he finished, he slid his hand between her legs and she managed to climax again. It was terrible. How was she supposed to think reasonably about any of this when he persisted in kissing her shoulder like that?

The next morning she made a valiant effort to be cool and rational, and she sat with especially rigid posture and spoke in single syllables. This resolve lasted about four miles, at which point the cat woke up from a doze and Rob began teasing him with a bit of string. She didn’t know how anyone could be cross with him.

“Marian,” Rob said when the carriage pulled to a stop before Clare House, and she avoided his eyes because she knew he was going to ask her something she didn’t have an answer to. But then he let out a confused laugh. “I’ll write to you, all right? By now, my mother ought to have more information about Fanshawe, and Kit will likely have some ideas about how to get into his house.”

And that wasn’t quite what she wanted, but she didn’t know what it was she did actually want, other than some improbable way for two lives that didn’t seem to have any smooth edges to somehow fit side by side. But it was something. She was still furious that Sir John Fanshawe thought he could take advantage of a sick old man, and part of her would not rest until she had got some kind of revenge. She liked knowing that Rob would help and that she had another letter from him in her future.

She nodded at him. “Thank you,” she said as she descended from the carriage, knowing it wasn’t enough, but hoping she’d find time and a way to say something better.





Chapter 30




By this point in his life, Rob was used to how his friends reacted to one of his cock-ups. He had, after all, plenty of experience observing how they responded to his impulses and his schemes and his brushes with death. Kit was always exasperated but fond, like a tired parent. Betty liked to yell a lot and see if he’d let her get in a couple of punches. His mother sighed in disappointment and barred his access to the brothel’s kitchens. It was all comfortingly predictable.

“It’s really anybody’s guess what’s wrong with you,” Betty said conversationally when Rob got back to their table with three pints. She had been going on in this style all afternoon. “Could be that your brain never worked right. Could be that you just enjoy scaring the piss out of your friends every couple of weeks. Me, I can’t be bothered to worry about it anymore.”

“That’s the spirit,” Rob said, lowering himself into the chair that Kit had kicked out for him. This was their second round and he still hadn’t explained anything—not why he had disappeared a year ago, not why he had run off earlier that month, not the blackmailing, nothing.

“God forbid you leave a note before you decide to fuck off for a fortnight,” Betty went on.

“I think you both ought to finish your beer, because I have news that you aren’t going to like one bit,” Rob said. “It might go easier if you’re sozzled. Honestly you both usually drink faster than this, so get to it. Act lively.”

Betty eyed him suspiciously but drained her tankard. Kit pushed his untouched cup across the table to her.

“Out with it,” Kit advised Rob, not unkindly.

“Twenty-six years ago, my mother was the Duke of Clare’s mistress.” Rob forced himself to look his friends in the eye. “He brought her to France on some jaunt he was taking with his friends. For reasons I can’t even begin to comprehend, she married him. It was never annulled. I was born some nine months later.”

Rob watched Kit closely, but his friend only nodded. Betty made a strangled sound and drank Kit’s beer.

“When my mother told me, I . . . did not take it well,” Rob went on. “It was right after I was shot and I thought you were dead,” he said, directing these last words at Kit.