Written on Your Skin (32 page)

His reply was barely audible, but she felt the vibration of it in his chest where her cheek pressed against it. “Don’t,” he said. And then, more clearly, “You don’t need to do this. The ring should have melted.”

That was true. The fire had destroyed the whole building. “I should not do this,” she corrected, more for herself than him. One could grow accustomed to being held so.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Though he did not mean this remark in reply to her thoughts, she wondered if he was right. Mama had always let men choose her. Maybe it was the woman who should do the choosing. She could choose him.

A shiver touched her at the idea, so strange and rare. She tightened her arms around him to steady herself against the unbalancing thought, and his own arms tightened in response. She liked that. As if he needed her as much as she did him. I don’t need him, she thought. I want him. And if she did? Did it require surrender? Ashmore had chosen to hold her, but with her arms wrapped around him now, no passerby would know who had initiated this embrace.

They sat entwined for long minutes as the train rumbled onward. “I always said I would not punish myself,” she said. “So I think I will choose to believe him. I will wire Jane. But if I find out later he was lying—”

“Don’t think on it right now.”

“But—”

“Quiet,” he murmured.

How easy it was to take his order and let herself slump against him. She was sick of fear. It was coming to her now that she’d never been as brave as she thought. Why else would lying in this man’s arms feel so novel? Fear had been guiding her for years now. She’d felt so afraid of being trapped that she’d never let anyone hold her close. But was that freedom? Or was it simply one long, endless act of fleeing? In those moments when she had believed with her full heart that Mama was dead, she had realized that she had no destination for her flight. New York was not enough for her.

“You’re still thinking,” he said into her ear.

She let her eyes close. Suddenly, she felt exhausted. “Are you really a cynic, Ashmore?”

His lips against her ear turned up in a smile. “I think,” he said, “you should call me Phin.”

They stopped for the night at Bristol, visiting the telegraph office before finding an inn. Over dinner, she said little; now that the wire was sent, they must wait, and the task weighed heavily on her. But when they climbed the stairs to their quarters and the innkeeper’s idle conversation as he unlocked a door made it clear that Ashmore had secured separate rooms, her fatigue shifted and changed. It gathered in her chest, a full and swelling pressure, and then migrated into her throat, clogging her windpipe. “No,” she said to Ashmore. “You’re sleeping with me.”

The innkeeper was a wizened man in his seventies, but he lifted his lamp spryly enough, inspecting with bristling brows this newly interesting tableau: she staring so adamantly at Ashmore, and Ashmore with his shoulder propped against the wall, giving her an amused survey. “Flattering,” Ashmore said. “But I think we both need our sleep.”

The innkeeper muttered something and thrust the other key at Ashmore before clomping away, his footsteps heavy with the weight of sins witnessed. She put her hand on the knob of the open door. “Sleep next to me, then.”

He ran a hand over his face. “Not tonight,” he said. “The day we’ve had—”

She made an impatient noise. “Oh, yes, no doubt you’re about to tell me I don’t know my own mind, that the shock has overset my female sensibilities, Bonham and the fire and whatnot. I won’t bother to argue, simply to point out that my faculties feel sharp, and if they aren’t, then you may take advantage of me with my full permission.”

His lips twitched; the speech seemed to have taken his fancy. But he made no move. “Tell me why,” he said.

She glanced past him down the darkened hallway, the wooden paneling glowing a rich red in the gaslight. But if someone overheard, who cared? Such things had never concerned her. “For distraction.” When he looked unimpressed, she unearthed a little more courage. “For the…comfort of your touch.” Quickly she added, “Only that, if you insist. You told me you were not a boy—that you were able to master yourself.”

His head tipped. “I also told you my interest wasn’t idle. I recall you dismissing the idea as naïve.”

The statement touched a newly exposed nerve. “I was lying,” she said. Tears wanted to come to her eyes, and she swallowed and breathed very deeply to repress them; she did not want to give him fodder to dismiss her desires as ill reasoned. “Even to myself. You see…I always understood the view from the window.” She had understood it in Hong Kong, as Mama cried in her arms. She had understood it at Ridland’s, as she looked for Tarbury and found only empty rooftops. She did not want to be alone. She was sick of loneliness. “I see something better when you look at me. And I understand…” She took a great breath. “I understand you have seen things in me worth acquiring. If you want them, you’ll come lie with me.”

“Oh, I think you are trickier than that,” he said softly. “Did Hans acquire anything of you?”

It took her a moment to place the name. She had thrown it at him during their sparring in his drawing room. “I don’t know anyone named Hans,” she said with an uneasy laugh. “It was meant to irritate you.”

He pushed off the wall, coming close enough that she hoped for victory. His knuckles brushed lightly down her cheek. “I gathered that,” he said gently. “Someone else, then. It doesn’t matter who.”

She inhaled the scent of him, this man who could blush, and who let her put his back to the wall. Who did not scruple to admit his faults, even at the cost of his pride. He had held her down without conscience in his study, but once she had been honest with him, he’d grown honest as well. He had held her today as though she was precious, and Henry seemed so completely irrelevant to this conversation. “He didn’t linger long,” she said. “I will warn you, the whole package rarely pleases. I…” She felt herself color. “I am not always so entertaining. I am stubborn to a fault.”

One brow lifted. “Oh? How good to hear you admit it.”

His open humor encouraged her. “It’s true; I’m rather proud of it. And that’s not all.” She took a breath. “I am reckless. Shameless and intemperate. Especially with champagne,” she added, and gave him a flirtatious look. His mouth quirked. “Also, overly demanding of my bodyguard, so deceitful that gentlemen occasionally mistake me for obtuse…is that all?” She looked up to the rafters. “Shrill,” she remembered, and looked back to him. “Only when I wish to be, but occasionally I do wish to scream. Prideful, yes. Cunning, no doubt. A little bit manipulative. And on top of it all”—she laughed—“I’m disliked by my cat.”

His smile grew lopsided. “Do you think I need this warning? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’re only quoting me.”

“Maybe.” But she felt uncertain, suddenly. “If your interest is…not idle, then you should know I value my stubbornness. In fact, that’s my main fault: I’m terribly proud of my faults. I don’t mean to change.”

“It sounds to me as if you’re trying to warn yourself.”

“Maybe,” she whispered, and pushed the door open wider. “Come inside.”

He sighed. “I think you should go back to New York.”

She wasn’t sure, at first, that she’d heard him right. “What? Bonham—”

“I can handle this,” he said. “Bonham’s actions today—he’s at the end of his rope.”

“But if I have the records—”

“Someone else can deliver them. I want you as far away as possible. You have resources in New York, and I can also arrange for your protection there.”

“So your interest is idle.”

“What? No.” His voice softened. “Give me your trust, Mina. For a few weeks only. After four years, surely that isn’t so long.”

She felt a wild urge to laugh. If he thought to persuade her with tenderness, he took the wrong approach entirely, and her hopes were thoroughly baseless. “Trust you by hiding myself away? Like some fragile flower, leaving you and my mother to deal with it?”

“Trusting me,” he said more sharply, “not hiding. You understand, I have some practice with such things—a great deal more than you do. Let me fix this without having to worry about you.”

“I don’t want your worry. It doesn’t flatter me. I want you.”

He took her by the arm and pulled her inside. She had no interest in the room—bare floorboards, a sagging mattress, an overstuffed chair that looked dirty in the dim light, its seat shiny with wear; she stood near the bed, watching only him, bracing for a fight she was determined now to win. He stripped off his jacket with brute economy, then unwound the old-fashioned stock cloth at his neck in quick, angry jerks. “Oh,” she said, not bothering to keep the jibe from her voice, “have you decided that we’re getting undressed after all?”

He tossed away the cravat; it streamed out, and she plucked it from the air, wrapping it around her hands to give an outlet to her nerves. He turned on her in his shirtsleeves, tall and dark and scowling. “If you stay in London,” he said, “you go back to those rooms.”

“No.”

“I won’t bother to argue it,” he said grimly.

“It won’t work. It won’t work if you’re going to be this way.” It seemed her tears had not evaporated but had migrated instead from her eyes to her throat, clogging it. “And before you answer, you should know that my interest in you isn’t idle either.”

His face changed; the anger melted away, and he looked as if he would reach for her. She blushed and stepped back, promptly hating herself for it, for the embarrassment she felt at his expression.

She did not want his pity. She did not want to be ashamed of looking blotchy and sounding like a frog; she was sick of feeling she must be pretty all the time. The bed frame hit her calves; she sank onto the mattress and stared at the cloth in her hand. It no doubt smelled of him, and she wanted to press her nose into it. “This is absurd,” she muttered.

A brief silence. “What do you mean?”

She managed a little laugh as she cast aside the cravat. But she could not look up at him. “What is my interest but idle? We’re strangers, aren’t we? Strangers with an interesting history.”

The bed sank beneath his weight. His trousers were dusty at the knees. “You’re a brilliant woman, but you’ve been wrong in every way tonight.” He laughed huskily. “Your cat doesn’t hate you, you know.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. “You know nothing about cats. You said it yourself.”

“I was lying. The Sheldrakes had several, and they all adored me.”

“They would,” she muttered. “Perverse creatures.”

His hand settled on her thigh, palm up. After a moment, she put her fingers into it. As his hand closed, the connection of their flesh made something in her relax. “We can’t trust this,” she whispered.

“If we were strangers, I would not want you to go to New York.”

She frowned. “Of course you would. You wouldn’t care.”

“On the contrary, it would be very convenient to have you here. I want Bonham. Bonham wants you. Voilà: you are bait. It speaks ill of me, Mina, but if I didn’t care about you, I would not hesitate to use you in that way. I tell you this because maybe we should discuss my faults as well. I’m not the best of men by any measure. My conscience has decayed over the years. I’m trying to reform myself, but…”

She snorted. “You think you need to tell me? I’d already noticed you don’t concern yourself overmuch with honoring your obligations. At least, not in any mannerly fashion.”

His soft laugh was accompanied by a squeeze of her hand. “Then you should believe me, shouldn’t you? You have firsthand experience. If I worry about you, it means something.”

She scuffed her heel against the floor. “As compliments go, that leaves much to be desired.”

He cleared his throat. “Do you want compliments?”

“No.”

“I thought not. You don’t trust flattery, do you?” When she only shrugged, he said gently, “No, I’m right about that. Because, you see, we’re not strangers.” He paused, so long that she finally lifted her eyes to his. His expression was grave. “Perhaps it’s easier said this way,” he murmured. “Can you learn to hate in a day?”

She heard the implication in his question. What a mad idea. Almost, she withdrew her hand. But there was courage in how frankly his dark eyes held hers. She would not prove less brave than he. “I suppose,” she said, and shrugged. Still a cowardly response, then, but it was the best she could manage.

“I know it,” he replied steadily. “And I promise you, I have learned to hate in a day, and that hate will last my whole life long. Do you want to hear, then, how a mapmaker became a spy?”

She knew what he was asking. Four years ago, her life had also acquired a central narrative. These were not tales to be told lightly; they were keys to the soul. “Yes,” she whispered.

His fingers played lightly over hers. “I was an officer with the Survey, mapping the Himalayas. I got to places most men don’t go. One of my superiors took a particular interest in my achievements. I thought nothing of it, really; we had an old friend in common, a retired mapmaker and astronomer who had mentored me during my years at Eton. If I did have a moment or two of doubt about this officer, an uneasiness I couldn’t explain, then our mutual friend’s recommendation silenced it.

“One day, this new mentor summoned me to Simla. He claimed to have lost a confederate who’d strayed over the westernmost border of the North-West Frontier Province, into Afghan territory. It was bad news. Disraeli had been pressuring Northbrook, the viceroy, to take a harder line with Sher Ali against the Russians, and Northbrook was fighting it. There was no reason an Englishman should be wandering into that mess without official instruction; it was like tossing a match onto tinder. But my new mentor was persuasive. He said my skills were the best chance for tracking down this man and getting him out without detection. If I failed, we’d have an international incident on our hands.”