The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(77)

“All right. Fine,” agreed Marian. “Do as you please.”

Rob grinned at her.





Chapter 36




The following night, Marian and Rob met in the lane behind Fanshawe’s house. Darkness had long since fallen and the air was heavy with cold.

“What in hell are you wearing?” Rob asked, unable to pry his eyes from what appeared for all the world like a pair of leather breeches.

“Percy insists that this is the proper attire for crime,” Marian said primly.

Rob found that he wholeheartedly agreed. Marian snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“All right,” he said. “Two footmen have the night out. The butler will be asleep by the fire and the cook will have finished with dinner and gone to bed. There will be a handful of maids about the place but all you have to do is keep to the shadows and leave them to me.”

“I remember,” said Marian. “You don’t need to go over it a hundred more times. I enter the servants’ stairs on my right, go up two stories, turn left, and enter the second door to my right. That will be Sir John’s study. I have a quarter of an hour and then I’ll be waiting for you at the back door, where you’ll make sure I get out unobserved.”

“If anyone sees you, what will you do?”

“If I’m at the back of the house, I’ll go out the window and make my way to the neighbor’s roof. If I’m at the front of the house, I’ll signal to Kit, who’s waiting across the street.”

“Excellent.”

Rob proceeded to work open a narrow, high window leading to a small stillroom that ought to be empty at this hour of night. Once it was open, he gave Marian a boost, and she disappeared inside.

A quarter of an hour. All he had to do was remain reasonably calm for a quarter of an hour and not think about how the woman he loved was risking her neck for a couple of moldy old maps. It would be fine. Marian was clever. Marian was also armed to the teeth—he had supplied her with a pistol and a pair of knives.

Once he had given Marian enough time to make it up the stairs, he rapped on the kitchen door and played his part, introducing himself to the maid as the country cousin of John the footman, who, as Rob knew, was at the tavern he customarily visited on his nights out.

“Ah, a pity I missed him, and after I came all this way,” Rob lamented, and in short order was supplied with a cup of ale and a heel of bread.

A quarter of an hour later he thanked the kitchen maid for her troubles and insisted that he could show himself out. Instead he went directly to the stillroom, where Marian would be waiting for him. He would take the manuscripts so she could escape without any risk of ruining them, help her out the window, and then return to the kitchen, apologizing on his way for having taken a wrong turn.

Marian wasn’t in the stillroom. He looked at the window, wondering if she had managed to reach it without help. But it was seven feet off the ground, and no furniture was beneath it to provide a convenient foothold. Which meant that Marian was still upstairs, involved in God only knew what kind of mischief.

While he was deciding what to do, he heard the pistol shot.



Later, he wouldn’t remember running up the stairs, or turning down the corridor, or entering the study, or any of the other steps that led up to him finding Marian, the pistol in her hand pointed at a man sitting behind a large desk.

For the span of a single breath, he was relieved—Marian was fine. It was odd that she was still aiming the pistol after having fired it, but that hardly mattered. Then he saw the tear in her left sleeve, the blood trickling onto the floor.

“You’ve got that out of your system, have you?” Marian asked the man who had to be Fanshawe. Her voice was perfectly steady. “Excellent. Now, do you want to give me the manuscripts or would you like to see what I can do with my pistol?”

“This is lunacy,” Fanshawe said. Rob was inclined to agree.

“Marian,” Rob said, attempting to cross the room to go to her, but halting when she held up her hand. Instead he shut the door, thinking that the fewer people who witnessed whatever was happening here, the better.

“Leave me to it,” Marian said to him. “I’m having a little talk with Sir John about what will happen to him if I ever hear the faintest whisper of his raising the rent on any of his tenants. First, Sir John, tell whoever’s knocking at the door that you had a mishap while cleaning your pistol but that all is well.”

Rob could not hear anything but the acid calm of Marian’s voice and the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears. He wanted nothing more than to cross the room and shield her with his body. He couldn’t bear the thought that she had put herself in harm’s way, when he could have done it for her while she was safe at home in bed. After all, he had spent years being injured, arrested, imprisoned, and otherwise harmed. He was used to it.

And she was in plain view of Fanshawe, the light from the oil lamp shining full on her face. She hadn’t even made an effort to conceal herself or keep to the shadows. Even Rob, who had dashed up here without a second thought, had kept his hat angled over his face.

Then he noticed something about her expression. Her jaw was set with what he recognized as determination, not clenched with pain. She was . . . perhaps enjoying herself was an exaggeration, but satisfied was not. She was doing what she believed was right and necessary. Not only was she doing it, but she was able to do it—she was able to right wrongs and protect people who needed help. She looked, he realized, powerful.