The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(83)

“Why are we really here?” she asked when she and Rob had plates of roast pheasant before them.

“Betty and I are buying the place.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you had money saved.” She assumed large coaching inns didn’t come cheap.

“Well, I didn’t. Not exactly. A few years ago Kit and I held up a carriage and there were too many jewels.”

“Too many jewels,” Marian repeated.

“Betty said it was too risky to fence so many rubies all at once. So she took half, and we put the rest behind a brick in one of the chimneys upstairs at Kit’s, where they remained until two days ago.”

“And you used the proceeds to buy something for yourself?” Marian asked, astonished. This was the same man who felt guilty about buying a new coat.

“Ah, well, you know me. I like ale. I like horses. I like having something to do when I’m not helping you commit felonies. And the stables are large enough so that if someone wanted to use them to hire out horses, they could do that,” he said so casually, as if he weren’t offering her the one thing she had been able to name when he asked what she wanted.

“I’d like that,” Marian said. “I’d like it very much.”





Epilogue





One Month Later



“Clients,” Marian repeated in exasperation. “I insist that we take clients. We cannot be a freewheeling band of felons.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Rob said.

“We cannot roam about indiscriminately punishing evildoers.”

All four of the other people who sat around their table at the Royal Oak—Rob, Percy, Kit, and Betty—looked at her with undisguised enthusiasm.

“She just makes it sound so fun,” Betty observed to the table at large.

“And so noble,” Rob agreed.

Marian put her face in her hands.

“Marian’s right,” Kit said. It was his turn to hold Eliza, and Rob probably thought nobody saw him sneak the watch from Percy’s pocket to see when Kit’s quarter of an hour was up and his own began. Marian had given up worrying that the baby was going to be spoiled; it was a foregone conclusion, and there were worse things than being spoiled. “It’s one thing if we occasionally get a tip from Scarlett,” Kit went on, “or if we ourselves know that there’s someone who needs to, ah . . .”

“To receive the sort of justice we plan on dispensing,” Percy supplied.

“Exactly,” Kit said. “But it’s better if our purpose is helping people who come to us with problems. If someone has been harmed, we can redress that harm in a fitting manner.”

“Precisely,” agreed Marian.

The idea had started with Kit, who evidently had a fundamental inability to stay on the right side of the law. Rob, who jumped at any chance to take money from those who had too much, did not need to be persuaded. Neither did Betty.

Percy’s enthusiasm had surprised Marian at first. He had never been particularly interested in danger and adventure—of the two of them, she had always been the instigator. But he was still being invited to the dinners and balls of precisely the people that Kit and Rob wanted to go after. “I’ve always wanted to be a spy,” he had said, preening a little. But Marian suspected that he would do anything to please Kit.

And Marian, well. Marian fully planned on exacting her unique brand of justice anyway. Now she was doing it with friends—with family. And while she didn’t regret what she had done to the duke, it was much easier to live with that memory if she knew she was putting some good into the world. If that good took the form of helping people who weren’t able to save themselves and the people they loved in the way that Marian had, then all the better.

“In addition to the burglary, I want to look after the money,” Marian said. “It’s all well and good to give the money away, distributing it among the needy like pepper from a pepper mill, but it’s February. On the way here I lost count of the number of people I saw huddled in doorways and—if they were lucky—warming their hands over braziers. What we need is a house, or a couple of houses. Firewood. Food.” Rob looked skeptical, and Marian took his hand. “Look, I don’t know if it will work, but I’d like to try. Maybe twenty percent of the takings could go into a foundation of sorts for me to put toward larger projects.”

Marian was coming to realize that she liked looking after money. It had been satisfying, arranging her father’s affairs so his money stayed not only out of his reach but was put to use in a way that was unlikely to vanish in a bubble. He was not likely to become rich through the breweries Marian had bought or the horses she had brought to Chiltern Hall as breeding stock, but people were unlikely to stop spending their money on beer or horses.

She looked around the table. With the possible exception of Betty, none of them could be trusted to save money. Rob gave all his away as a matter of principle, and even now that he had the inn, he managed to hire so many people that he was unlikely to ever turn anything close to a profit; Kit seemed to have put a bit aside but, as far as Marian could tell, this was mainly a coincidence; Percy was a lost cause. But Marian could do this for them: she could make sure that whatever happened, there was enough put aside so they’d always be safe. They might not like it, but they could take their lumps.