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

by Cat Sebastian

P.S. I refuse to believe that you are a woman. There is something inexpressibly masculine about expecting to be believed.

There was also the fact that he longed to follow her about like a dog on a lead, just for the pleasure of finally being near her after months of thinking about her, but this was a trifling matter.

“You have been busy,” he murmured, thinking of what a waste it was that in all the thousands of love poems written across the ages, nobody had ever thought to catalogue their beloved’s proficiency in crime.

What a trick it was to be able to say I beg your pardon in a way that meant fuck off and die, and to look serene and saintly while saying it.

It had been a long year, during which one of the few lessons she had learned was never to let anyone know that you needed anything. Need was only weakness by another name. And if someone could give you what you needed, they could just as easily take it away.

She was left to conclude that he simply liked talking to people. She was exhausted just watching him. She was exhausted just thinking about it.

He trusted her. He was probably a fool but, God help him, he was Marian’s fool.

“Do widows typically call on gentlemen in the first week of mourning?” “Gentlemen typically don’t extort money from their tenants,” Marian retorted. “That is precisely what gentlemen do,” he pointed out, exasperated. “It is practically the entire point of gentlemen.”

“Just because a decision makes you miserable doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.” “I beg your pardon.” God help him, he loved that she could say the most innocuous phrase in a way that sounded like the type of insult that usually preceded street brawls. “Are you accusing me of being a martyr?” “I damned well am not. Martyrs seem to enjoy suffering. In all the paintings they seem to positively get off on it. But you certainly don’t. When you can’t make up your mind what to do, you choose the option that results in the least happiness and pleasure for yourself. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He didn’t like spending money to indulge himself, and she didn’t like indulging herself full stop.

She was out of the habit of wanting things. What was the point of wanting anything—anything that actually mattered, that was—if one wasn’t going to get it?