Written on Your Skin (20 page)

Miss Masters gave a shrug that made her breasts bounce in spectacular fashion. He looked quickly away, and found he was not the only one astonished; Mrs. Sheldrake was adjusting her spectacles, her mouth agape.

“You cannot expect me to remember everything you tell me,” Miss Masters said. “So”—this directed, laughingly, at Laura—“Eton, you say? Well, if I haven’t heard of it, you mustn’t blame me. I know very little of England.”

“I thought everyone knew Eton,” Mrs. Sheldrake said in bewilderment. “The school, at least.”

Laura slanted a wry smile at her mother. “Perhaps they do not pay attention to schooling in America.” Taking her mother’s arm, she addressed her next words to a point somewhere over his head. “You will excuse us, sir? We have a very tight schedule, if we wish to see the exhibit before our train departs.”

“Of course.” So much for nurturing old affections. Miss Masters had dropped into the scene like a cannonball, and if the detritus could survive an awkward exchange of letters at the holidays, he would count himself lucky.

He waited until the door had closed behind them, then turned on her.

Her expression was sober now. “Do not lose your temper,” she said. “I wished to speak with you, and your knockabout footman clearly did not deliver my message last night.”

He stared at her, at her swelling breasts and loose hair and big eyes and small, grasping hands, and his irritation twisted into something more athletic. It was as if she were trying to make him misbehave. “Yes, he did,” he said through his teeth. “And I chose to ignore it.” She should be very grateful that he’d chosen to ignore it. The thought of paying her a midnight visit had appealed to him for darker reasons than conversation. “I will tell the footman and the maid to thank you for their sacking.”

She looked unimpressed. “It was not their fault, Ashmore. But”—she shrugged, and by dint of sheer vexation he managed to keep himself from glancing downward like a dog in heat—“if you’re really so unreasonable, I shall hire them. In the meantime, don’t you even wish to know what I have to tell you?”

“No,” he said. “All I wish is that you will stay in your rooms. Is that so difficult?” Christ. He sounded as though he were imploring her. He hardened his voice. “Perhaps I’ll have a hole cut in the door, so your meals can be slipped to you. What say you?”

She fell silent. And then a sarcastic smile bloomed across her lips. “I say, come and give a kiss to your long-lost cousin.”

Chapter Nine

Phin’s gaze narrowed on the quirk of her lips. It was not his lust framing this view; she did, indeed, goad him deliberately. “Are you having fun?”

Her smile did not waver. “At this point, I think I’ll take an opportunity wherever I find it.”

He shook his head in disbelief. After the incident in the study, after she had seen what he was capable of, the fact that she saw an opportunity with him made her foolish beyond measure. But then, the contretemps in the study was only one experience among many, and perhaps the others had misled her. Hurtling across dance floors at him, attacking him in dark hallways, tying him to beds, pushing him out windows—yes, she might have gotten the wrong idea. But all her triumphs over him had owed to favorable circumstances. And circumstances did not favor her now.

He took a step toward her. She cocked her head as if curious. He advanced another step, and her chin rose. At the third, it became clear that she was too rash to be cowed. He took her wrists and pulled them up between them. “Listen to me,” he growled, ignoring the fluttering of her lashes, the pretty, sarcastic O her lips formed. “This is my house. So long as you are under my roof, you will live by my rules. You will behave yourself, or I will not bother to spare you the consequences.”

The pulse beneath his fingertips was hammering, but the brat did a bang-up job of smirking at him. She was so short she had to crane her head back to meet his eyes. Her face was perfectly heart-shaped, and a small mole marked the corner of her right eye, as if the devil had pressed a dark kiss to the tender skin there, giving her his mark before unleashing her on humanity. She depended on this girlish appeal to excuse all manner of nonsense, but the world did not work that way. Her actions bore fruit, and she would eat the results.

“I haven’t broken your rule,” she said.

He applied pressure, forcing her a step backward. Her brief resistance gratified him; the full-bodied flush of pleasure was so intense that it awoke a stray wit, cautioning him to pause, to reconsider his strategy.

But then she smiled and retreated a step on her own, the slant of her lips framing it as a challenge, and by God, he was going to take it. His hands clamped down; they felt capable of doing things to her that his brain could not rationalize. I will lead an honorable life, he told himself every morning. But his body knew that honor was a luxury like any other; it required the right circumstances to flourish, and she seemed determined to deny him the opportunity. So be it. Let her enjoy herself.

He advanced, and she made a sarcastic little game of her retreat, hopping the first step, twisting her hips to sidle the next. She had no more sense than a child; alas, he could not turn her over his knee and spank her like one. The thought distracted him; he was barely aware when her back touched the flowered wallpaper. “Oh, how boring,” she said, and made a face. “I had hoped we might have a go around the room. It’s been so long since I’ve danced.”

Her temerity amazed him. “You are beyond stupid.”

“You said you should know where I am at all times.” She went up on her tiptoes to make a dramatic survey of the room over his shoulder. “I believe,” she said solemnly, going flat-footed again, “that this is the drawing room.”

She had no instinct for self-preservation. Her wrists felt fragile beneath his hands, as easily snapped as twigs.

Christ. What sort of thought was that?

He threw her hands away.

They thunked into the wall on either side of her head, but did not fall. She held them there in a posture of mocking submission, like the bloody devil’s handmaiden.

“Have a goddamned care,” he breathed.

Her lips played with the idea of a smile. “So fearsome,” she murmured. “Don’t hurt me.”

He recoiled physically. Those were words he’d vowed no one would ever say to him again, and she tossed them out like a dare. Did she think he’d been playacting in Hong Kong? Had it somehow escaped her what his role might have necessitated? Had she missed his rough handling the other night? “You bank on a great deal,” he said, and had to clear his throat to speak without hoarseness. “A good many men would wallop you. They would do worse.” He paused. “They would want to do worse,” he said quietly.

Her sea-blue eyes were guileless. “That’s very true, isn’t it? But I have no need to fear that you will.”

“Really?” He did not bother to restrain the mockery that entered his voice. “If you could hear my thoughts, you wouldn’t feel so certain.”

Her brow arched. “What? Do you want to strike me? To ravish me? You may speak them aloud; I won’t faint.”

The words seemed to brush directly against his groin. He dragged a hand over his face. There should be nothing erotic about this; God save him from his perversity. If setting her on him was Ridland’s idea of revenge, the man was even cleverer than he’d imagined. But her aim in this instance baffled Phin utterly. Slapped, killed, or fucked—these were the only ends she seemed to be inviting. She was inviting them. She wanted to hear about it.

The warmth rising from her pale skin briefly invaded his awareness. Flowers, yes, she smelled of lavender. What a ridiculously commonplace perfume for her. She required patchouli, sandalwood, ambergris—something complex and grossly unsuitable, to serve as a warning to hapless men.

But he was not hapless. The very idea that Ridland might have told her to bank on his lust utterly infuriated him. He leaned very close to her, letting her feel how much larger he was, how completely he might dominate her. “I warned you,” he said into her ear. Her hair was soft against his lips; he blew into it lightly to force her scent away from him. “I do not like being manipulated.”

Her cheek turned into his. He pulled away to avoid the contact, just enough to see her glance downward. “Part of you is beginning to like it very well.”

He realized with a shock that his lower body was pressed against hers, his cock as stiff as a poker. Good God. He withdrew a pace, his ears burning. “Are you shameless?”

“Not at present,” she said. “It requires significantly less clothing.”

He raked her with a look. “Judging by your costume, that could be accomplished very swiftly.”

She looked down at herself. “You underestimate the trickery of Liberty gowns. There are quite a lot of strings and things in this getup.”

He blew out a breath. He could handle this far better. Send her to her rooms, for a start. He did not need to tangle with her at all. That he was doing so bespoke a weakness on his part, and he knew well where the weakness resided. As she had pointed out, it was currently thriving.

Adopting a thoroughly, admirably, goddamned heroically reasonable tone, he said, “Miss Masters, I am going to take you upstairs. And you are going to stay there, if I have to tie you to a chair.”

She blinked. “I think Ridland might be working for Collins.”

It took him a beat to work out the meaning of this absurd string of words. And then he burst into a laugh. She created her own entertainment, all right. “Ridland.” He snorted. That power-hungry bastard could barely bring himself to answer to the government, much less to a two-bit piece of American scum. “If I’d known you had a talent for fiction, I would have supplied you with a pen and paper. Or was that what you were looking for in my study? You should have told me. I would have taken dictation for you.”

She lowered her hands to her sides. “Mock me if you like,” she said, her manner jarringly sober. “There was another agent from your government in Hong Kong.”

“Of course,” he said. “More than one, probably. It was a large operation.”

“Well, one of them was conspiring with Collins.” She spoke as though this news were momentous.

“Yes, Ridland mentioned that. What of it?”

For the first time in perhaps the entirety of their cursed acquaintance, she seemed thrown off guard. She wiggled her torso as if trying to cuddle into the wall, then put a knuckle into her mouth. What an abominable habit; he actually had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from telling her to stop sucking on it. The sound would drive him mad. He needed to adjust his trousers, but he would not do it in front of her; she would enjoy it too much. “But I don’t understand this,” she said, and her hand, thank God for small mercies, fell to her side. “Ridland knew about it? I didn’t mention a thing to him.”

He almost dismissed her remark. Of course Ridland knew there was a traitor; any thinking man would have assumed the existence of a turncoat the moment Collins slipped from prison without the aid of dynamite.

But as he started to speak, her denial abruptly reminded him of something: his own surprise at Ridland’s carelessness. I believe Miss Masters has some cause to fear a traitor among us, Ridland had told him. She will not be frank with me. I wonder if she hopes to trade her knowledge for her mother’s safe return. And Phin had thought, You’re growing sloppy to tell me that; it isn’t information I need to have. “You told him you had proof,” he said slowly.

“No, I didn’t.” Her blue eyes were watching him steadily. “Of course I didn’t. I thought he might be the traitor. It seemed wise not to mention it at all.”

Her words plucked at his intuition, sounding a low, ominous note. If she was truthful, there was only one reason for Ridland to advertise her supposed knowledge: to draw the traitor to her.

Phin ran a hand over his face. Brilliant. Trust the bastard to have a card hidden up his sleeve. He was using her as bait, but in a very different fashion from what he’d given everyone to believe.

And me, he realized belatedly. This was a brutally efficient way of gauging his loyalty: If she remained alive, it proved his innocence. If she died, it damned him as Collins’s man.

Phin eyed her. Rather crucial that she stay alive, then. “Have you a reason to suspect Ridland?”

If she noted the shift in tone, she showed no sign of it. “Only that he was also in Hong Kong. I met him at the club once.”

He hadn’t known this. It did not bode well. “When?”

“Just before you arrived.”

He nodded. There was a deeper game in play here than he’d realized. “And how do you know of a traitor?”

She pressed her lips together as though to hold in the answer. But he had practice in waiting. It was a truth of human nature that nothing could prove as cruel as one’s own fears; in an interrogation, a stony silence and the wild imaginings it allowed to proliferate often achieved more than a knife under the nails.

Wherever her imagination led her, it was not sunlit. Her expression darkened; she blew out a breath as though to push away her thoughts. “After you escaped, I had occasion to learn a good deal. Collins was…indiscreet in his anger.” Her mouth twisted, and in the second she hesitated, he felt a dark curiosity bloom, taking root too rapidly for him to crush. Now it was in him; now it would only grow; now he wanted to know what had happened to her.

He felt a flicker of sourceless rage, with himself more than with her; this would only lead him further into it.