Page 34 of The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind
“I’ve bedded everyone before,” Sandy said impatiently. “But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to marry someone so I can have help answering letters.”
Juliana seemed to think about that, the silk of her mantua hissing on the ballroom floor and mingling with the sound of the rain as they walked. “It’s about him, isn’t it?” she asked. “The highwayman?”
Sandy had told Juliana everything once the dust had settled after Reginald and Judith’s deaths, and so she knew exactly how much it had gutted Sandy when Peregrine had ridden off into the night.
How much more it had gutted him when Peregrine never came back.
“I’m a goddamn fool,” Sandy said bitterly. “I’m here with a broken heart, pathetic and moping, and he’s probably off kidnapping some other future duke and tying him to a bed.”
“Didn’t you tell me that he’d been living like a monk before you?” Juliana asked. “And at any rate, he’s not kidnapping anyone, or even robbing travelers anymore. He’s disappeared.”
“He’s what?” asked Sandy.
“I’m shocked you haven’t heard. I thought you’d searched for him?”
“I went to the priory two months or so after Reginald died, but it had been abandoned. I’d thought they must have moved their hideout because of me . . . I hadn’t realized they’d stopped altogether.”
Maybe Lyd had listened to his advice after he’d given her the rights to her property back. Maybe she’d settled down with her house and her money and taken up a nice, quiet hobby that didn’t involve pistols.
“Peregrine Hind hasn’t been seen on the road,” Juliana said. “But his former band has. Led by a woman, they say.”
Ah. Well, that was Lyd for you.
“Sandy,” Juliana said in the careful voice of a friend about to point out the obvious. “Have you given any thought as to why he’d stay away?”
“Of course I have,” snapped Sandy. “Because I’m a Dartham, and I’m everything he hates and because I complained too much about the wine when I was his captive.”
Juliana stopped walking, turning to face Sandy with a look that was both impatient and pitying. “No, you fopdoodle. He’s staying away because he thinks there’s no place in your life for him.”
Sandy nearly sputtered. “That’s ridiculous. I told him all about the Second Kingdom. He should know that in our world?—”
Juliana waved a hand. “You don’t live your entire life in the Second Kingdom, Sandy. He would know that you’d be expected to marry and that you’d have duties in London to fulfill. And he would know even inside the Second Kingdom that there’d be plenty of people whom he’d robbed and who wouldn’t exactly be happy to see him at your right hand. If I were him, I would assume that staying in your life would not only compromise you as the duke, but as the leader of Second Kingdom as well, and that he could love you best by giving you the very thing you wanted most when you were his captive: freedom from him.”
Alexander frowned. “But then why not just say all that to me? I could have told him immediately how wrong he was!”
“Is he wrong?” Juliana asked quietly. “Would it not make your life harder and his less safe to have him at your side?”
Alexander hated that she was right, but he couldn’t deny it. “A wanted criminal does have some inconveniences as a lover,” he finally admitted. “But I?—”
He stopped, clarity coming like the rain outside, cold and drenching.
“I am a duke now,” he said, realizing slowly. “I could fix this.”
“You could,” Juliana agreed.
“A pardon,” said Alexander, getting excited. “James Clavell was issued one, wasn’t he? And so many others too! If Peregrine’s issued a pardon, then even if a disgruntled member of the Second Kingdom wanted to turn him in, it wouldn’t matter.”
He paced once and then stopped. “But if I do this, how will I find him to tell him?”
Juliana shrugged. “Think like a highwayman. Where would a highwayman go to hide?”
Thirteen
Peregrine
A full moon hung over the moors as Peregrine walked along the road. He’d gone up to Lyd’s new hideout near her old family home to see how the band was getting on, but they’d been out riding, it seemed, because their new lair was empty. Strange, because it had been Lyd herself to invite him to visit, but Peregrine was made of time now, so what was one wasted day? It wasn’t as if he had anything to occupy him other than scratching out a garden in the tiny plots that had been left adjacent to the houses in his village when the fields had been enclosed. It hadn’t been enough for the hamlet or even for a family, but for a single person who had the money to buy his own grain rather than grow it, it was serviceable.
He couldn’t live like this forever, he knew. Rattling around like a ghost in his childhood home, eating beets and drinking wine while he brooded at the fire. But he also didn’t know what else to do. His career as a thief had been so bundled up in the idea of revenge that once he let the revenge go, the idea of stealing no longer held much appeal. He had more than enough to live on, and he’d given so much away to those who needed it most that it no longer felt necessary or interesting to punish the fine people in their fine coaches.
