The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(4)

I will explain this to you as if you were an infant or a small dog, and I will only do so once, so please dedicate all your powers of comprehension to attending to my words. You seem to be under the impression that by keeping what you persist in calling my secret, my life will return to its previous state. However, you have exposed the father of my child as a liar and a cheat. You cannot possibly expect me to return to a parody of matrimony with a man who is not my husband. Do you imagine that I will bear him more children? I am three and twenty. What am I to do for the remainder of my life?

When I agreed to marry the duke, I made a bargain, which he did not uphold. He’s thrown my life and that of my dearest friend into utter disarray and confusion, and even if you kept your secret, it would only push that confusion onto future generations. Furthermore, you are not the only person in possession of the information that you hold over my head. What you’re asking me to do is to pay five hundred pounds for scant peace of mind and the dubious privilege of living as the wife of a man who has done wrong to me and to all the people I care for in this world.

MH



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Dear Marian,

When you put it that way, it makes this project of mine seem almost tawdry. My feelings might get hurt. In all sincerity, here is the problem: I will not keep the Duke of Clare’s secret for free.

Regarding your first paragraph, you will perhaps not be surprised to learn that I managed to bollocks up all my friendships due to the small matter of having let them all believe I died a year ago. In my defense, it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do at the time. Now, however, I’m rather at a loss for how to explain my continued existence without incurring their wrath.

Your obedient servant,

X

P.S. Aphra Behn, The Dolphin, near the Temple Stairs





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You utter madman,

What is wrong with you? I mean that sincerely. Tell them you’re alive, you lunatic. Of course they will be cross with you, but what kind of coward must you be to fear their anger when the alternative is their grief, not to mention your own? Do you realize how very spoiled you sound, speaking of friends, in the plural, no less, and wondering whether you can cast them aside because their entirely justified anger would inconvenience you?

Regarding your unwillingness to keep the Duke of Clare’s secret for free, permit me to point out that you expect Lord Holland and I to pay for the privilege of keeping that same secret. I have neither any enthusiasm for a lifetime of deception, nor the temperament to sustain hope that the truth of our situation will remain concealed. And for this you ask five hundred pounds? You cannot possibly have thought this through.

M

P.S. This makes two letters in a row that I’m to leave for dead poets and playwrights. Have you run out of silly names to make me say aloud to unsuspecting publicans?



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Dear Marian,

I hardly know where to begin with my worries.

First, are you delivering these letters yourself? If so, stop at once. Send a boy. Good Lord. The idea of you traipsing about in some of the quarters where I’ve been receiving my mail is giving me palpitations.

Second, you mention my aliases, which makes me wonder if you’re saving these letters. Again, stop at once. Burn them.

Yours in utter horror,

R

P.S. Araminta Cleghorn, The Swan, near St. James’s, a very respectable and safe part of town





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Dear R,

Naturally I save your letters. I press them with posies between the pages of my favorite volume of poetry. Or perhaps I sleep with them beneath my pillow.

Of course I burn them, you thoroughgoing halfwit. What kind of fool do you take me for?

As for the rest, don’t worry about my safety. Trust that I have the matter well in hand. I’ve become quite adept at climbing down the trellis and distracting the guard dogs. It’s been years since I turned my hand at learning something new, and this business at least has the advantage of occupying my full faculties.

M



*

Dear Marian, I’m choosing to believe that you aren’t serious about climbing out of windows. Perhaps you mean to give me a heart attack and thus rid yourself of me. If so, excellent work; I’ll certainly have expired by dawn.

Now I need to know in what volume of poetry you would save my letters, if you had a mind to do such a harebrained thing. A week ago I would have guessed Pope, based on the sheer orderliness of his verse. But now that I know about your penchant for danger, I hardly know what to think.

Yours,

R

P.S. Christopher Marlowe, The Star, Westminster





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Dear R,

I’m in some difficulties imagining what it must be like to be the sort of person who receives, much less saves, love letters. Ill-tempered women of middling looks seldom are the recipients of tender feelings; this is not a complaint, as my experience with men is such that I’d be perfectly happy to live out the rest of my days inspiring no feelings whatsoever, tender or otherwise, in any member of that sex.

At one point I might have said Donne, but I find the Aeneid more suitable to my present state.

M



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Dear Marian,

Dryden’s translation? And is this an indication that your present state is violent and harassed by the gods?

I regret to inform you that ill-tempered women, regardless of looks, are as catnip to some men. The fact that you do not know this alarms me.