Written on Your Skin (23 page)

Out the window, the dirty houses had given way to sunlit fields, a patchwork blanket sewn by a drunken hand, irregular plots of green and brown and yellow stitched together by zigzagging hedges. Mama’s voice murmured through her mind: When the horns sounded, nothing could stop us; I jumped every hedgerow without fear.

It was easier to think of Mama now that the distance between them was closing; her throat no longer ached at every recollection. She felt certain they would not arrive too late. Mama’s courage was subtle, but Hong Kong had proved her powers of endurance. And Ashmore had said that they would reach Plymouth before seven o’clock this evening, and by noon tomorrow they would be in Providence. She’d felt such gratitude to him when he told her that. He might not trust her, but he was taking her seriously. Why, he’d compared her to a knife. Even in the carriage coming from Whitechapel, he had been wary of her. His insight had seemed an inconvenience then, but now it made her feel almost warm toward him. He was right—she was not inconsequential, and he was smart to be cautious with her.

She was going to bite him again, very hard.

An instinct made her look away from the window. The young man on the opposite bench quickly dropped his eyes. His dull blond hair was greased so thickly that it was a wonder it hadn’t slid off his scalp, and the creases in his trousers were sharp enough to cut glass. Did boys of sixteen not roughhouse here? Were all youthful spirits trammeled by this stultifying society? When he peeked up again, she gave him an encouraging smile. It misfired. He flushed and swallowed and directed a mortified glower at his knees.

Oh, this was silly; she would not sit three feet away from these people and pretend they were not there. She held up the magazine. “I never thought I would say it, but I much prefer Godey’s Lady’s Book.”

Phin sighed into the newspaper. He’d been braced for some mischief for the last half hour, and he could not blame the boy for inciting it with sultry stares. Miss Masters had promised to dress inconspicuously for the journey, but she had failed. Her dress was high-necked, long-sleeved, and, thank God, corseted, but its red and white pinstripes also charted with dizzying precision the pronounced peak of her bust. It still might have served, had she managed to occupy her seat unnoticeably. But in spite of her petite size, Miss Masters overflowed. First her skirts encroached over his shoe. Then her elbow came up against his along the armrest separating their seats. Her every fidget gave him a sweet little nuzzle, and God almighty, did she fidget.

At least she was wearing petticoats today. He knew this because they rustled constantly, the noise evoking scarlet taffeta, black ribbons, garters and silk stockings, smooth white thighs, and everything between them. Also nipples. Pink nipples. What demon had bid him request that information, he would never know, but in the many long hours since he’d acquired it, his brain had been reminding him of it regularly. Pink, fragrant, busty, rustling—the wriggling Miss Masters was the stuff of adolescent fantasy, and the more she squirmed, the younger and more scatterbrained Phin felt. Later, he felt sure, all this would amuse him, but he had no desire to embarrass himself in a train. Meanwhile, with every brush of her elbow against his, his mind insisted more strongly that the contact was deliberate. She kissed like the devil’s minion; torture would naturally find a place in her repertoire. And if she was driving a grown man mad, what chance had a boy?

The boy had his mother, that was what. The matron gave a loud sniff, and redirected Miss Masters’s remark to herself. “I do not know the magazine.”

With the easy cheer of the tone-deaf, Miss Masters mistook this rebuff for interest. “Oh, it’s American,” she said. “I am American, you see.”

The boy bounced in his seat. “I knew it from the get-go!”

Silence, and a dark look from his mother, put a stark period to his triumph. Slowly he subsided into the upholstery.

But Miss Masters could not let the mute remonstrance stand. She had a very bad habit of speaking to people who didn’t concern her; for instance, chambermaids. This morning, when Phin had passed the scrawny blond maid in the hall, he had asked her, with some puzzlement, if she smelled gardenias. The girl’s blanch had told him everything. Miss Masters was not content with threatening to hire away his staff, oh, no. First, she would perfume it. He had surprised himself by wanting to laugh.

Miss Masters’s voice broke into his thoughts. “I must say, it’s quite instructive to compare our respective railroad systems.” It was unclear for whom, among her involuntary audience, she intended this observation. “For example, why can’t you check your baggage before you travel here? In America, after you book your ticket, a baggage wagon comes to your home, and they take all your luggage in exchange for a little brass tag—”

Phin cut in. “Yes. You mentioned this at the station.” In great detail. He’d suspected that she was trying to test his patience, although her motive seemed obscure.

She gave him a wounded look. Whether it was genuine, or whether she defaulted to featherbrain when in public, was something else he hadn’t figured out yet. “Well, I am telling these people. Perhaps they don’t know of American improvements. And if you don’t know that a better system exists, how on earth can you agitate for it?”

Her endorsement of agitation appeared to alarm two-thirds of the opposite bench. The ginger-haired man craned fully from the waist toward the window, taking great interest in a passing cornfield. The matron glowered. The lad, meanwhile, gazed at her in a steamy, openmouthed trance.

Phin refolded his newspaper and rose to replace it in the satchel on the rack above his seat. “Miss Masters. Will you step outside for a moment? I wish to show you a most interesting feature, thoroughly unique to the English railway.”

They emerged into the narrow aisle that ran alongside the compartments; she clutched at the wall for balance and said something about superior American railway tracks. “This line is a twelve-gauge,” Phin said with a frown. “Matches anything in the States.” And then, catching himself, waved away her reply. “What I meant to say is that this journey will go better if you refrain from drawing attention to us.”

The train was passing through a wooded area, and the dappled light danced over her throat, the shadows of leaves slipping suggestively downward toward her décolletage. “Ah, let me guess,” she said, as his eyes followed the shadows, whose indecorous progress he fully envied. “The unique feature of your railroad is boredom. I see no harm in conversation with our fellow passengers. Do you really not converse on trains here? I expect it’s because you sit in these stuffy little compartments. In America, the carriages are open, and everyone—”

“In America, gold rains from the sky, no doubt.” She seemed damned determined to convince herself of English failures; he wondered what that was about. “But you’re in England now, and not for a pleasure tour.”

She hesitated. “You worry that Collins’s men are after us.”

In fact, it wasn’t Collins’s men he worried about so much as Ridland’s. But it made no difference. “A talkative American will be remembered.” He paused. “Don’t you think?”

His solicitation of her opinion appeared to gratify her. “Perhaps,” she allowed, making a regal nod. A brief pause opened, and he became aware suddenly that the steady thump of the wheels over the ties in the line registered in her flesh. Thump went the wheels, and her body gave a perceptible jolt. Her flesh quaked at regular intervals. It had never occurred to him that the smaller and lighter a body, the more tiring life must be.

She was studying him, a little frown on her face. She’d been frowning at him a great deal in the last day; clearly, she was more comfortable with antagonism. Or maybe nature endowed small creatures with special instincts for self-preservation, alerting them to suspect intentions even when their larger counterparts had yet to show their hand. His weight lent him a balance that made the train’s passage unremarkable, but she clutched the wall for a reason, to hold herself on her feet. He planned on knocking her off them at the next opportunity. It had been a long time coming, four years and five months, to be exact. His cheerful anticipation was difficult to hide. “You have an objection?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Only, if there are men after us, we wouldn’t be able to spot them at sight, would we? Drawing a man out is a good way to take his measure.”

“Dear God.” He swallowed a laugh. “Never say you’re claiming that Godey’s Lady’s Book is part of your strategy to safeguard us?”

As she smiled, it struck him that there was no need to hide his humor from her; even when wary, she seemed willing to encourage good fun. “You won’t believe me if I do,” she said. “And that is precisely why it’s such an effective tactic. No one ever suspects it!”

His hypothesis intrigued him. One more crack in her mask, perhaps. He decided to test it. “Oh, certainly,” he said. “Because conversations about fashion magazines so often segue into confessions of villainous intent.”

Sure enough, she overlooked his sarcasm and laughed back. “You must admit, it’s a much subtler method than pulling out a gun.”

What a bizarre and charming tic. She encouraged his amusement, even if it came at her own expense. “Perhaps you should just skip right to the heart of the matter, then. Leave the magazines and bring along a dress. Whip it out and canvass for opinions.”

Her face lit like a chandelier; the effect was so pronounced that he actually felt his heart skip. “Yes,” she said. “The uglier the better. Something puce, or…magenta and orange.”

Over her head, he noticed the guard lurking a few meters away. Wonderful; he told her not to draw attention, and then he lingered in the corridor with her to trade jests. He could not feel optimistic about how effortlessly she addled his wits; it had tripped him up in Hong Kong, and it could well do so now. The stakes were no lower for either of them. “All right, enough fun. My request is very simple. Go back inside, sit down, and keep silent. I, and the rest of the compartment, I daresay, will thank you.”

He felt a stir of regret as her face went blank. “Of course you will,” she muttered.

He pulled open the door to the compartment. The ginger-haired man who’d been sitting opposite Miss Masters now stood at the entrance, rooting through a bag placed on the luggage rack overhead. Coincidentally, this position put his ear very near the door. The matron, who did not strike Phin as amenable by nature, had taken the man’s former seat by the window. Phin eyed the fellow as he stepped aside to permit Miss Masters’s passage. The man’s jacket pulled beneath the arms; the bearer of a first-class ticket should be able to afford better tailoring. The shoes were a fine make, but they were worn thin at the soles.

Sloppy not to have noticed these things before. Phin would have blamed his distraction on the lure of flirtatious elbows, but the prospect was so absurd that he felt his self-regard slip several notches merely in the contemplation of it.

Miss Masters had also remarked the possible significance of the man’s actions. As she resumed her seat, she gave Phin a charged look, then glanced onward to the man. No, Phin urged her silently. Don’t look, don’t remark—

“Oh,” she said brightly to the matron, “did you decide to sit across from me? What fun. Did you want to see my magazine?”

“No,” the woman said curtly. “It was not my idea to switch seats.”

All right, that was cleverly done. Alas, Miss Masters felt the urge to advertise her triumph, humming a pointed bar of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as she settled back with her fashion magazine.

Phin took his satchel and newspaper from the rack and sat down, snapping the paper back open with a pointedness that he hoped Miss Masters noticed. Their valises were in the luggage compartment and would have to be sacrificed, but that was all right; his gun was in the satchel.

“Such a fine day out,” Miss Masters said. “Isn’t it a shame we’re cooped up inside?”

She simply couldn’t let him take the lead. No doubt her successes in New York gave her cause to trust her own initiative. He remembered her mother, who had seemed to limp so obediently in Collins’s shadow, and wondered whether she was even aware that between these two extremes, other options existed, such as, perhaps, cooperation. “Travel can be tedious,” he said mildly, and scanned the columns for likely words. When he had found what he needed, he said, “Are you bored? Allow me to amuse you; have a look at this.”

She craned over as he pointed slowly to various words:…depart…without…announcement…

“Oh, that is very interesting,” she agreed. “When do you think it will happen?”

“Very soon, if the prime minister has his way.” The train began to shudder; they were braking in preparation for the next station. “At any moment, really.”

She smiled. “Well, I can’t claim to acknowledge a foreign power. But in this case, I wouldn’t argue with him. His judgment seems sound.”

She was bloody clever. He wanted to pinch her cheek, an urge that startled him. “Glad to hear it,” he said, and started to fold up the paper. But she caught his wrist.

“This story looks very interesting.” Her gloved finger landed on how. “Have you heard anything about it?”

“It’s one of those classic criminal scams,” he improvised. “Very basic, really. The one man created the diversion, while the others ran off with the jewels. I expect the police will never find them.”

The matron gave a loud sniff to communicate her distaste at such discussion.

“But how did the man who created the diversion escape? Or is he in custody?”