The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(75)

“I’d do just about anything for you.”

“I can’t believe you think I’d let you!”

“I don’t! But I had to ask. I didn’t think you wanted the title and the money. I do know you, Marian. But I want to spend my life with you, and I thought I ought to at least ask if you had a preference as to how we go about doing that.”

“You didn’t think that maybe you ought to start by asking me whether I want to spend my life with you in the first place?”

“Christ, no. You’d have given me some tedious answer that would’ve bored both of us. Instead, my plan is just to do the thing, and then if you want to tell me to go away, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

She looked like she was trying to muster up a glare but her face wasn’t cooperating. “This is entirely backward.”

“Backward suits us.” He grinned. “I want to show you that we can do it. Let me prove it to you.”





Chapter 35




“I don’t care,” Marian told Percy yet again. “I won’t take so much as a splinter from Clare House. You can do as you please but nothing there is mine and I won’t have it.” She stepped over Percy, who lay on the bare floor of the bedchamber that was to be Marian’s at the new house.

“Perhaps a mattress?” His words resounded in the empty room. “At least let me bring some things for Eliza.”

“That’s entirely different. I’m bringing the contents of the nursery as well as whatever furnishings Alice desires for her quarters.”

“Oh, so you’re the only one who isn’t worthy of furniture. I see.” He dragged himself up to a sitting position. She forbore from pointing out that he was sadly dusty and disheveled. She was feeling gracious this evening.

“Worth has nothing to do with it.” Marian smoothed the fabric of her own pristine skirt.

“I wish this room were furnished so I could pick up a vase and throw it at you.”

“Should we check on Eliza?” Marian asked. It was Alice’s day out, and Mr. Webb had offered to look after the baby while Percy and Marian quarreled next door.

“Let Kit have her for another half hour. As a treat.”

Marian leaned against a wall and slid down so she was sitting. Now they would both be dusty and disheveled and Percy would be less embarrassed when he realized what a state he was in. “It’s been years since we’ve been able to do this.”

“Quarrel in an empty room?”

“Be together without worrying that we’re being spied on or plotted against.”

Percy crawled over and sat beside her. “I missed you.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. “Me too.”

“Sometimes I worried that you wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of me.”

She turned to stare at him. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Because I look like him.”

“Oh no, Percy. You look like Eliza.”

“That’s just another way of saying that I look like him.”

“Pfft. You’ll allow me to decide who my daughter looks like. And I’ve already determined that the duke is not worth another moment’s thought.”

The weather was damp and drizzly, so when they decided it was time to relieve Mr. Webb of the baby, they went via a covered passage in the back that Percy claimed to have discovered but which smelled of sawdust and whitewash and had probably been completed that very day. So it was that when they entered the coffeehouse, it was from the back, rather than from the street, and their arrival went unnoticed.

The shop was closed for the night, but cups and dishes were still scattered on every table and the fire was bright in the hearth. Mr. Webb leaned against a closed door while Rob held Eliza. He was in his shirtsleeves and held Eliza up over his head. As they watched, he brought the baby down fast, ending with her against his chest.

Eliza screamed with laughter. When Rob started laughing, she only laughed harder.

“You’re going to make her sick,” Mr. Webb cautioned.

“I don’t care. I’m already drenched and covered in half the mud from Piccadilly. Baby sick can only be an improvement.” He poked Eliza’s belly and she laughed again.

Try as she might to cultivate more suitable maternal feelings, Marian’s foremost emotion regarding Eliza was an acute sense of relief that no harm had yet befallen her. From shortly after the child was born, Marian had known a rush of relief every time she saw Eliza and was reassured anew that the baby was well. She experienced it as a temporary interruption in the worry that simmered all the time at the back of her mind and which she suspected would never go away. After all, it seemed unlikely that something so infinitely precious would not eventually come to grief.

She was certain that most women felt something warmer for their children, something less sharp and jagged. Marian wasn’t much given to warmth, but whatever she felt now—a champagne lightness mixed with the usual knife-sharp protectiveness—felt like enough.

Eliza beat her fists into Rob’s chest, apparently demanding another toss. Mr. Webb spotted Percy, but Percy put a finger to his lips, and Mr. Webb nodded. But Rob must have caught the movement, because he turned to face Marian and Percy, Eliza clutched safely to his chest.