Written on Your Skin Read online

  He forced himself to smile.

  A maid came trotting by with a basket on her arm. As she passed, she craned to peer into his window. Well. A large, glossy coach bearing a coat of arms did tend to draw attention. He should have taken a brougham. But he was going to pay his respects to Sheldrake. If he had to do it as the man he’d become, then he would present himself in every aspect. Would it have mattered to Sheldrake that he’d come into the title? He doubted it. But it would have been a far more cheering piece of news than all the others Phin might have shared.

  He stepped out of the coach and waved off the footman who had been riding on the box seat and now wanted so very desperately to open the gate for him. God forbid a nob should break a fingernail working a latch. There was a trick to unfastening it so as not to make any noise; his fingers remembered it before his mind did, and the gate swung open soundlessly before him. He saw his feet moving along the path. The number of steps to the door, the door itself, the whole house seemed so small. A surreal feeling took hold of him. He’d been at his full height during his last visit, hadn’t he? It made no sense that everything should look so much smaller.

  The door opened almost instantly at his knock. Expecting to see the maid, Alys, Phin instead found himself staring into the face of Laura Sheldrake. Gone, the rounded cheeks of girlhood; in the scrappy tomboy’s place stood a pretty woman in her mid-twenties, her auburn hair rosy in the light. He had dreamed, once upon a time, of marrying her.

  For a moment she smiled at him blankly. Her eyes moved beyond him to the coach. And then she looked back to him, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Phin!”

  “Miss Sheldrake.” She wore no wedding ring, so he knew to say that much. From there, he was flying on nothing.

  She did not wait for formalities. Taking his arm, she drew him inside. The hall smelled of freshly baked bread and rosemary. He had never determined Laura’s stance on the curtains; in the spirit of diplomacy, she had maintained a neutral façade. Perhaps it was she who’d opened them today, in honor of her father. “Phin, I can’t believe it’s you! But—” The joy faded from her face. “Oh. Oh, dear. You have heard, haven’t you?”

  He removed his hat. He did not have to look for the peg. This was the one house in the world where he could reach out blindfolded to deposit his hat, and know that it would not fall. Curious thought. “Yes,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I read of it only yesterday. Otherwise, I would have come sooner.” And what good that reassurance was, he had no idea. I would not have come if he were alive, but I would have come at the very moment of his death, had I known of it. Yes, that must be very comforting to her.

  But she did not seem troubled by the remark. “It was sudden,” she said softly. “Apoplexy, they said. But in his sleep. I comfort myself by thinking it never woke him.”

  “Yes. Of course.” In his experience, it always woke them.

  The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. He knew a moment of startling fury at his rebellious brain, at the habits it had acquired so easily that they now seemed ingrained. His body woke him to attack his friends, and his mind derided a girl’s hopeful narrative by supplying the nasty truth. He would not think such things here. It would be profanation.

  She was looking at him expectantly, her brown eyes alight with an interest that he had no idea how to satisfy. Had he stayed, had he chosen some other path, they might have had children together by now. He did not flatter himself with the thought; she’d nursed a terrible tendresse for him, and he would have liked, very much, to make her happy, only in part because it would have made her father into his own. He should feel something more than this numbness. He should have something meaningful to say.

  But small talk was often beyond him these days. He had yet to accumulate acceptable anecdotes. Clearing his throat, he fell back on etiquette. “I’m so deeply sorry for your loss, Miss Sheldrake. I came to pay my condolences to you and your—” It struck him suddenly that he had no idea whether Mrs. Sheldrake was still alive.

  The realization took something from him. He had no idea of anything about them. In light of that, did it matter a bloody bit that he knew where to hang his hat?

  “And to Mama,” Laura finished for him, and smiled, as if she saw his fear and was shyly pleased to relieve it. She’d always been a kindhearted girl. But naïve. She shouldn’t open the door to strangers. Someone could so easily wrap his hand around her throat and push her inside, out of view of the street. Nothing in this hallway would lend itself to her defense. She would be killed right here, where she stood, in a matter of moments.

  Good God. He was unfit for decent company.

  She was still chattering. “She will be so pleased to see you, Phin. She has gone on a walk to the market…”

  He ran a hand across his eyes, up through his hair; her glance followed the gesture, and he realized it was very unmannerly.

  “…but she’ll be back very soon,” she finished, as he dropped his hand and squeezed his fingers together at his back. “You will stay, of course—won’t you?”

  The front hall seemed to be closing in on him. He never broke things, he could walk a tightrope if he had to; but he felt too large, unbalanced, jumpy. His elbow was touching the banister, and the hem of his coat brushed a vase filled with umbrellas; these ordinary domestic touches penned him in. “I’d like that,” he said. She smiled again; she had no idea he was lying.

  But he knew. He saw now, very clearly, how deep all of this went in him. If one didn’t know whether a woman was alive or dead, it was good to find out that she was well. It did not solve the basic problem, though. He should have known already. He simply hadn’t cared to find out.

  “Such a long time,” Laura murmured, and shook herself, as if to wake. “Come along,” she said, and reached for his hand.

  She acted as though they were old friends, smiling so kindly, but she no longer knew him at all; out of nowhere, a paranoid conviction flooded him that if he took her fingers, some dark urge would compel him to crush them, simply to find out how much force it took to make her cry out. Don’t smile, he would say. See what I am.

  He stepped backward, away from her, into the umbrellas. They clattered in the pot, and her hand hesitated; she reached past him to adjust one of the handles, as if this had always been her intention. But it was not a clever recovery, and she knew it; she ducked her head, blushing, as she turned away. “This way, please.” With an awkward laugh, she added, “But you know that, of course.”

  He followed her in silence past the stairs to the parlor. Every inch of his skin prickled with self-contempt. What the hell was wrong with him? Would a country cottage destroy his composure, where bullets never had? Six hours’ uninterrupted sleep each night, correspondence answered promptly, tenants provided for, base temptations avoided, swearing curtailed, regular visits to church—this righteous routine kept him on track, but he began to think it could not transform him.

  She paused at the parlor door. “Unless…” She turned back. “Would you like to see his study?”

  His study. No, Phin thought. He would not like to see the study.

  She colored and continued hesitantly, “Or we can sit down and wait for Mama, of course. I just thought, since you spent so much time there with him…”

  He mustered a smile. She did not deserve to be addled by his sick head. He could walk through a goddamned study. “It’s a fine idea, Miss Sheldrake. Thank you for suggesting it. I would like that very much indeed.”

  “Are you certain?” She looked anxious now. “If it will be too difficult for you, I understand. I certainly don’t wish to—”

  “No, not difficult,” he interrupted. “It would be—lovely.” Christ, this was awkward.

  “All right, then.” She turned toward the back of the house. And then she stopped. “No,” she said. “You go on alone. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  He could not tell whether her reluctance was born of concern for him or from a well-founded care for herself. It occurred to him that
it was not appropriate for them to be alone together, period. Alys was nowhere in evidence. And Laura had said that her mother was fetching groceries. Had Sheldrake made no provision for them? He would have Gorman make inquiries into their situation. Helping the women was the least he could do.

  He bowed and set off down the hall. Framed prints on the walls flickered past the corners of his vision. The watercolors of Brighton Beach and the cliffs at Dover were souvenirs of the family’s rare holidays. Sheldrake had apologized to him for going away. Missed you, lad. Sorry for leaving you in the lurch. The cross-stitch of the Queen Victoria roses that Mrs. Sheldrake had finished on Easter fifteen years ago. Sheldrake had declared it a work of high art. Phin had hidden his puzzlement (roses? three months spent on a picture of flowers?) and gamely agreed. He would have agreed to anything, then, that Sheldrake said.

  The door to the study swung open with a squeak. No avoiding that. He’d never managed to enter this room a minute late without being caught out.

  Inside, it was all the same. The shelves were laden with Sheldrake’s equipment—the sextants and compasses and telescopes and Marquois scales, the mercurial horizon with which he’d tasked Phin to determine the pitch of the house’s warped floors. At the center of the room, the two desks sat face to face, one of them covered in stacks of neatly folded maps and books, Peirce’s Elementary Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry prominently showcased. The old globe sat on its brass pedestal, Russia spotlighted by the sunbeam slanting through the window.

  He walked forward. The surface of the globe felt thick with wax beneath his palm. His finger fell on the Indian Ocean. This antiquated shading spoke of an older time, when Britons had known nothing of the Transvaal or Baluchistan, the Suez or Upper Burma. When he’d last looked at this globe, he’d known nothing of them either. Hot, humid, the river yellow with mud, moving so slowly it seemed to creak; it still amazed him that he had not died on that last expedition. The bounty on British heads would have bought the locals a decade worth of meals.

  He tapped the ocean once, and looked up. On the un-crowded desk, a pen lay discarded across a sheet of foolscap. He picked it up. Brandauer’s Oriental. Naturally. Steel-crow quills, Phineas; that’s the real secret to a drawing. Got nothing to do with your hand.

  As he set it down again, an uncanny feeling prickled over him. It looked as though Sheldrake had just left off drawing. As if he would return in a few minutes.

  He exhaled and stepped backward, his throat tightening. In his father’s generation, they had counted nostalgia a disease. The mind was believed to rot on impossible longings; it fixated on a time that would never come again, and cannibalized itself by embroidering memory until it collapsed into fantasy. He could see the logic in it. This library felt like a sickness. The scents of paint and paper and polish and ink filled his chest and turned to stone. More wholesome than the odor of baking bread in the hall outside, they conjured safety, peace, knowledge, everything he had once taken for granted. Such sweet and easy lies.

  “We haven’t sold anything yet. Mama couldn’t bear to.”

  Laura had come up very quietly. Perhaps she’d meant to startle him, but he’d felt the disturbance of the air as she widened the opening of the door.

  No. Don’t think that way. Not here.

  “He would want you to have some of his things,” she said. “The globe, perhaps? Pick whatever you like. He spoke of you so often, Phin. He was certain that you were doing great things for our country.” Her footsteps on the carpet were soft. Pale, sturdy fingers reached out to give the globe a spin. It made him dizzy. “We knew that you couldn’t write us about it, of course. Secrecy in these matters is standard, I expect. But every time Stanfords announced the release of a new map from the subcontinent, oh, how he would pore over it!” Her laughter was husky, as though her throat were clogged. “Comparing it to the previous versions, pointing out the changes he felt sure you’d been responsible for making. He was terribly proud of you.”

  Her words were poison. The interior of the room felt thick, smothering; he wanted to crank open the window for a breath of cool air.

  Sheldrake might have been right, once or twice. He had contributed a few maps. But he had not been allowed to stay with the Indian Survey for long. Two years he’d been given to wander the mountains in the service of the Royal Engineers. Then Ridland had found other uses for him.

  The globe was still spinning; he reached out, his forefinger halting the world. Sheldrake had advised him to study it closely. Sheldrake had believed that there were correct answers waiting to be found by those who looked closely enough; that countries had proper shapes; that borders were more than lines drawn in ink, washed away so easily by blood. Sheldrake had taught him that mistakes were wrong because of some error intrinsic to them, not simply because someone had decided that it would be more convenient to have certain facts counted erroneous.

  Laura was right. Her father had died in his sleep and never woken. Otherwise, he might have realized that earth was only dumb matter, incapable of flaws or excellence. Sheldrake’s boyhood friend could have taught him better. Ridland had known that the real challenge lay in charting the topographies of the soul. With a glance, Ridland had charted Phin’s character, and found the fault line fracturing his nature from his idealistic intentions. You’ve a talent, he’d said; with those three words the fault line had widened, so that now, a decade later, when Phin crossed paths with his own ghost in this room, he felt no recognition as he looked across the chasm separating them, only a chill that lifted the hairs at his nape.

  His heart had started to drum. A drop of sweat fell onto the globe, and he realized it had slipped from his temple.

  It was happening again.

  What would Laura think? She must notice the color flooding his face, but she would not dare remark on it. Focus on the globe. It will pass.

  “Shall we take tea?”

  His sick ears mistranslated her tone so that it sounded taunting, aggressive. Can’t you even manage to take tea?

  He had to get out of here. He knew what he was in for; another minute, and he’d be in the grip of a full-fledged fit. The panics came unpredictably, without warning, ever since he’d returned to England. The globe now felt like rubber beneath his fingertips; his heart was breaking free from his chest; he was going to vomit or die. No, you aren’t. It always feels so. He could not meet Mrs. Sheldrake in this state.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed, hearing his voice as if from a great distance. The doctor had been unable to find any medical cause for these episodes; he had looked at Phin as though he wanted to say something, but feared the consequences. I’m not a lunatic, am I? Phin had smiled as he asked it, but the doctor had taken a long moment to issue a denial. “I have a pressing engagement in town.”

  He would never forgive himself for the way Laura looked at him then. It would have been better, perhaps, to tell her that he was a lunatic. Better than placing new pain on the face of the woman he’d once hoped to love, who as a girl had turned her face into his sleeve so easily when she needed to cry. I am not fit for your company, he wanted to tell her. But she would wonder, then, whose company he was fit for, and he would not be responsible for leading her innocent thoughts anywhere so dark.

  As they walked toward the front door, she startled him by turning back and smiling. “I understand,” she said. “It’s very difficult, isn’t it? But I’m so glad you’ve come back, Phin.”

  He wanted to tell her he had not come back. But when she reached again for his hand, his addled reflexes failed him; she had his fingers in hers before he knew it. He breathed out through his nose and found he was willing, in this state at least, to be led; and at any rate, he was glad to realize that he wouldn’t hurt her after all.

  He sent the driver and footman home with the carriage and took the train. At first his thoughts were black and twisted, making as little sense to him as the malfunctioning of his body. Gradually, however, they settled. Laura was unwed still. Why? Sh
e was lovely and sincere, earnest in her ideals. She would not tolerate a disorderly home; she would make certain it ran properly, and that everyone in it behaved just as they should. If he so deeply regretted his decisions and the consequences they had produced, then here was a chance to remedy one of his mistakes.

  The thought of touching her made him feel vaguely ill. He thought of the way she had led him down the hall, the dignified set of her shoulders and the graceful slope of her neck, how pure her skin was, the innocence of her blushes. Embalmed dreams, rotted from the inside; he could not recover them.

  Or maybe this darkness in him was simply blinding him to their appeal.

  He stared out the window and contemplated exorcisms, ancient rituals designed to purge the soul. Chain mail that scrubbed crusaders’ flesh of their sins. The cloistered booths where Catholics went to confess. London came rushing toward him, sprawling like a slut across the land, loose and dark and dirty, unconcerned with opportunities for absolution.

  He saw no hope for himself in mundane routines, but there had to be hope somewhere. The world, the way one was properly meant to live in it, seemed so inarguably clear to people like Laura. If a man behaved rudely, baffled kindness was the only reply they considered.

  His butler greeted him in the lobby to hand over a letter. Phin stuffed it into his pocket as he strode up the stairs. He was calmer now, clearer in his head if not cleaner, so there was no excuse for what he was about to do. Fretgoose was fussing about the anteroom; Phin sent him scurrying and locked the door.