Written on Your Skin Page 11

  “What is between you and Ridland?”

  The question confused her. “What do you mean? There’s nothing between us.”

  “Then you should have no objection to staying with him, should you?”

  The door swung open and a servant raised a lamp to light the footman’s arrangement of the coach step. She thought of the plush rooms waiting for her above, and the roof that would remain empty now whenever she parted the curtains. Her thumb moved nervously across the edges of her nails. “Please,” she whispered. Trapped like a lamb awaiting slaughter, not even a chance of escape—her throat was closing. “Don’t send me back to him. I…” God above, it sounded as if she were begging. She could loathe him for this alone—for reducing her to groveling like a spineless child.

  But it had an effect. Of course it did. Arrogant men liked it when one flattered their authority. With a terse motion, Ashmore waved off the footman and pulled shut the door. For a long, silent moment, they stared at each other.

  And then he smiled. “You are a great deal cleverer than you let on, aren’t you?” When she rolled her eyes, he laughed. “No, really. What a fantastic little act you’ve worked out for yourself. How many men walk away thinking you can’t add two and two?”

  Her temper snapped. This episode had not been at all amusing to her. “It’s no fault of mine if men don’t bother to look past a pretty face.”

  “And you are very pretty,” he said solemnly. “But I see you need no reminder of that.”

  He was mocking her, even now. “Do you know, I find myself wondering why I bothered to save you.”

  “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve wondered the same. Certainly your decision has borne some damned inconvenient fruit for me now.”

  Exhaling in a rush, she glanced pointedly toward the door. “Open it, then.” At least she would not give him the pleasure of forcing her out of the vehicle. “I grow tired of your company.” But he made no move. Perhaps it had sounded too much like an order to him. She shifted impatiently; if he did not let her out immediately, she would crumple and do something utterly beneath her dignity. “I said, open it!”

  “Perhaps…” He rubbed his mouth. “Perhaps, if you are willing to abide by my rules, you may stay with me until your mother is recovered.”

  Relief swept through her. “Yes.” This gave her an opportunity. Anything but Ridland’s death trap. “What rules?”

  Again his eyes flicked over her. “Any rules.” The smile he gave her blotted out her relief; it started out dark, and only grew blacker. “Any, Miss Masters, that I choose.”

  Chapter Seven

  Mina’s eyes opened on darkness. It took her a moment to realize where she was. Ashmore’s.

  Slowly she sat up. The thick rose-patterned carpet swallowed noise; the double-paned windows shut out the sounds of the world. In such silence, she might well be the last person alive, some catastrophe having taken place outside without her knowledge. Locked up here, she would languish until her flesh rotted.

  She drew a hitching breath. It was only the dark making her think these things. Some nights she could not sleep for it. She would lie awake remembering the time when Jane had slept on a cot at her bedside, and the memories would stir something in her that felt strangely like grief. Those nights had been so peaceful, so deeply restful, despite all her worries and frustrations. In comparison, the days and years since seemed like one long stretch of exhaustion. She had managed to do so much, but she’d never reacquired the art of sleeping alone. It was always a battle now.

  She fumbled for the candle and matchbox at her bedside. There was a button around here to call the electricity; the shy blond maid had showed her this evening. But it would be difficult to find in the blackness.

  As the wick caught, the shadows contracted. She sat studying them for a frozen minute. That one was from the little table. That one came from the pitcher atop the washstand.

  An oblong patch of darkness spilled from behind the curtains. She squinted. There seemed to be no source for it. And it looked to be the shape of a man, standing very quietly, watching her.

  Her heart thudded painfully in her throat. Waiting and wondering is always harder than knowing.

  She lunged off the bed. Her fist swung into the curtain, and her knuckles cracked against the wall.

  She shook her hand, trying to laugh at herself. But the sound emerged in a whisper, not reassuring at all. As she turned full circle, the candle summoned strange shapes to dance across the peach silk walls; the rosy blossoms on the brocade upholstery seemed to shiver. The room felt like the interior of a jewelry box, thick and smothering, designed to coddle her into immobility.

  She went out into the sitting room, but pacing it afforded no pleasure; the thick nap of the carpet felt like quicksand, trying to suck her down. Ashmore said she was safe here. But how could he know to defend her against his own government? She would warn him, but she had no idea if he was trustworthy himself. Damn her instincts; he himself had cautioned her against trusting him. Although, in her experience, true villains did not advertise themselves.

  In the corridor, the clock began to chime. The sound drew her to a stop. Somewhere, her mother also might be listening to a clock strike the hour. She closed her eyes and felt for the locket at her throat. It seemed as though her concentrated thoughts should be able to fly, out through the glass panes, across the darkened streets of Mayfair, over the emptied parkland, past all the dying lamps and the sluggish rivers, to her mother’s location. It seemed as if she should be able to sense Mama, and that Mama should be able to feel her concern as well. Hold on. I am coming for you. But what she sensed instead was the vastness of the world, and how distant was the sun, shining down on the other side of the globe.

  Her eyes opened. In New York, it was also time to sleep, for children at any rate. Jane would be putting her daughter to bed, the lamplight filling that small bedroom with a cozy glow. Henry would be at the Tuxedo Club or Delmonico’s, dining on lobster and crab cakes. Mina was done with him; he had grown too demanding, constantly disappointed by her. But tonight, had she been in New York, she might have invited him to her bed anyway. Sleeping next to him, she did not feel afraid of the dark, only of herself.

  The thought opened a weird sadness that made her feet itch. But there was nowhere to walk in these rooms. She held up her candle near the outer door. The keyhole looked to be a familiar type. In New York, she had hired a man to teach her to pick locks. It had been necessary to her peace of mind, after Hong Kong.

  She carried the candle back to the dresser in her bedchamber, fumbling through the drawers until she found the hairpins she’d removed before bed. Taking up two, she returned to the anteroom, kneeling on the soft carpet. The lock’s interior mechanism was stiff and hardened with age, but Mr. Goodger had taught her well. She fancied the last chime was still echoing through the hallway when the latch clicked.

  Slowly, her fingers crept up to the knob. The door swung open.

  She laughed softly, pleased with herself. Of course, until she knew where Ashmore had stashed Tarbury, it would not profit her to escape. But what if Tarbury was somewhere down the hall? Unlike her, he would not have been wearing hairpins when caught.

  If she found him, they could be gone from here within the hour. No need to deliberate about Ashmore’s character at all. They could amass their own force of men and rescue Mama themselves.

  The thought electrified her. She blew out the candle.

  Outside, the corridor was dark and cold, the hall rug chill beneath her bare feet. She found herself holding her breath as she sidled along the wall, testing knobs, discounting any rooms that were not secured.

  The hall opened onto a broad balcony that followed the curve of the staircase down to the lobby. The space was flooded with moonlight from a glass dome two floors above, casting the statuary and walls in a cool, pale glow. She put her back to the wall and slid into the next wing, where the first doorknob rewarded her with a promising refusal to budge.
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  The tumbrels on this latch were better oiled. It took less than a minute to coax the lock open.

  As she slipped inside, a strange scent overwhelmed her, sweet and cloying. The room looked to be an ordinary study, lined with books and framed maps, furnished with a few easy chairs, a couch, and a desk. That it had been locked made her curious enough to investigate the desk. A wedge of light fell through a slit in the curtains, illuminating the pens neatly arranged atop a blotter.

  Slowly, she sank into the leather chair. The pens were ordered by size and thickness, longest to shortest, thickest to thinnest. A man who valued such trivial disciplines would certainly embrace the larger ones. Any rules that I choose. Such a man, she thought, would also take great care with his correspondence.

  The uppermost drawer held nothing of interest: some strange metal instruments she did not recognize; a few scraps of paper, covered with mathematical equations; a heavy seal resembling the marking on Ashmore’s ring; and a newspaper clipping of an obituary for Mr. David Sheldrake, geographer.

  In the deeper drawers, she found letters. She flipped through the first bundle quickly. Most were fawning solicitations of Ashmore’s time, with notations inked in the corners regarding the dates and substance of his replies. The second bunch held drafts of his own letters, and she paused when Ridland’s name popped out from one.

  After twelve years of service under his direct supervision, I feel well qualified to caution you regarding his fitness for any position that necessitates adjudications of an ethical nature.

  “Find anything interesting?” He spoke quietly from the opposite side of the room.

  She dropped the letter. The moonlight coming in behind her blinded her to the subtleties of the darkness ahead; all she could see, when she squinted, were the outlines of the furniture.

  “I asked you a question.”

  She rubbed her chest, trying to soothe her pulse. Brazen it out. “Yes, I suppose so. I found out that you work directly for Joseph Ridland.”

  A beat. “And that’s a concern for you, is it?”

  She wished she could see him. Some peculiarity of his pronunciation—the laziness of his vowels, perhaps—suggested he was less than sober. “No.”

  “Are you certain? Think carefully before you reply.”

  She frowned into the darkness. He would not hurt her; he couldn’t afford to. There were people who knew she was with him, and they had charged him to care for her. But his voice unnerved her. Floating disembodied from the darkness, it had a presence of its own, dark and soft, like black velvet wrapped around a rough stone that could easily bash her skull in.

  It comforted her to realize that the lighting would also render him blind to her expression. She only need worry about the composure of her voice. It sounded strong as she asked, “Should it concern me?”

  A faint rustle came to her ears. His eyes appeared first, catching the moonlight, and then his square jaw, rendered in dramatic shades of charcoal and ivory. He had discarded his jacket and rolled his white shirtsleeves to the elbows; his waistcoat hung open, revealing his suspenders and the muscular breadth of his chest. He had changed his clothes since capturing her in Whitechapel. He had gone out after he locked her up, perhaps to a party, for his waistcoat and tie were white, in the formal style. He had caged her and abandoned her as though she were of no larger consequence than a bird.

  “Then why,” he asked softly, “do I find you in my desk?”

  Because I was stupid enough to get caught, she was tempted to say. But the rapid beat of her heart warned her that she should not answer flippantly. “I want to know where Tarbury is. You wouldn’t tell me.”

  He prowled around the desk toward her. One hand landed on the desktop, positioned in precise alignment with hers, ring glittering in the moonlight. Her fingers curled into her palms as his other arm came around behind her shoulders, his right hand bracing beside hers on the opposite side of the blotter. He had caged her in truth now. How charming for him. “This is not necessary,” she said.

  “I didn’t think it was. But apparently I was wrong.” He leaned over her head, inspecting what lay on the desktop.

  “I was worried for Tarbury,” she said stubbornly.

  His breath touched her neck, causing goose bumps to rise along the backs of her arms. “I don’t believe you.”

  Out of nowhere, she remembered the caution that had touched her in Hong Kong. Spies were dangerous, and she was small; in his shirtsleeves, the breadth of his shoulders had not escaped her. Maybe her confidence in her own safety was misplaced. While his body touched her nowhere, she could sense the mass and energy of him all along her back, like a storm cloud threatening to unleash lightning. One did not linger in a storm that threatened violence. “I was worried,” she whispered. “He’s my responsibility.”

  “And you are a responsible girl.” He spoke slowly, as though he enjoyed the feel of the words rolling over his tongue. “You take great care with the tasks you’re given.”

  The phrasing confused her. It seemed to hint at something beyond her knowledge. She trained her eyes on the pens, and their ordered arrangement took on a bleaker significance. Collins had relied on others to maintain an orderly household. Even his anger had been sloppy. Until the end, she had always been able to find loopholes in it. But this man would not provide her with such easy escapes. “Surely…” She cleared her throat. “Surely, with such a great household at your disposal, you can understand an employer’s concern for her staff.”

  His soft laughter ghosted over her ear, heating her temple. “Flattery?” It took a trick for him to press so closely, yet not touch her at all. Forget the pens; his own body was subject to a discipline of exacting precision. “I think you overestimate me,” he murmured. “It’s becoming more obvious by the hour that there are a great many things I don’t understand. You, for instance. How did you get out?”

  His tone was casual, almost playful. But her survival instincts were well honed; she knew better than to doubt them when they told her he was furious. “Someone left the door unlocked.”

  Hot, dry fingers threaded under her unbound hair, taking her neck in a gentle grip. They tightened slightly, giving her brief insight into what it would be like to be strangled. And then they slid around to her chin, yanking it up to an awkward angle that directed her face toward the ceiling. “Look at me,” he said curtly.

  She drew a hard breath through her nose to channel her sudden anger. He manipulated her with the same rude economy that a farmer used when trussing an animal for slaughter. Was this her repayment for saving him?

  “Look at me.”

  She slid her eyes to his. The angle at which he stood required her to glare from the very corner of her vision, and the muscles in her temples stabbed protest. His pil-lowy lips looked hard in the moonlight, chiseled from marble. “How,” they said. “Did you. Get out.”

  “Very easily.” Her voice emerged hoarsely, by virtue of the awkward bent of her neck. “I picked the lock.”

  His face revealed no opinion of these tidings, but his thumb skated down her cheek, pulling a shiver from her. Loathing, fear, she could not name it. “I see.” The pad of his finger was rough and warm; it stroked her skin like the touch of a lover, as though to suggest that he saw a great many possibilities and was considering each of them. “Is this a skill particular to American girls? Or are you…unique?”

  She thought it a rhetorical question, but as the silence lengthened, his fingers firmed: he would require an answer. Collins, too, had liked to demand answers to questions that did not puzzle him at all. “No. It’s not a common skill.”

  Now his thumb fitted into the corner of her mouth. She tasted the salt of his skin. He was wrong to tempt her. If she bit it off, he’d have a harder time holding her gun. “And where did you learn it?”

  She inched her head away, freeing herself of his taste. “My neck is starting to cramp.”

  “Then you had better reply,” he said coolly.

  “I hir
ed someone to teach me.” She ripped out of his grip and slammed back her elbow, aiming for his gut.

  He caught it and snapped her around. Her face smashed into his chest; she jerked back, and his hands caught hold of her wrists, pinning them at the small of her back. “Disappointing,” he remarked, as she gave a furious pull. “All the lessons went to locks, hmm?”

  “Let go of me!”

  “What were you looking for?”

  Kick him. But he must have felt her muscles tense; his lower body twisted away and his hands yanked her into a backward arch, forcing her to bend at the waist. Her shoulder blades banged into the desktop. His grip on her wrists changed, transferring them to a single hand; his forearm, freed, settled lightly over her throat.

  She froze, her breath scraping loudly against her ears. He loomed over her, a dark silhouette, his wild hair haloed by the light coming in through the window behind him. “Answer me,” he said very softly, and all at once, she felt herself blush. There was a terrible intimacy in the way his lower body pressed against hers, and his whisper seemed better suited to hot, hushed secrets, the sort she had once wanted to extract from him. “What did he set you to find?”

  She realized suddenly that there was far more to this interrogation than she understood. “Who? Who do you mean?”

  His forearm slipped away; for a miraculous second she thought he had come to his senses. Then he set a finger to the underside of her chin, rubbing teasingly. “Last chance,” he said. “Then I find some other more entertaining way to amuse myself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “No?” He sighed. “What a pity they know I have you.”

  “And to think I actually liked you,” she muttered.

  “Seeing me clearly now, are you?”

  “Maybe I am.”