Written on Your Skin (11 page)

What on earth had Ridland told him of her? It seemed she would need to disarm him, in every way, if their time together was to be comfortable.

She reached up, realizing too late that she’d bound her hair very tightly, and not a single strand was available for twirling. “Perhaps…” She licked her lips. “Is it…oh, could you be…Mr. Monroe?”

“I could be,” he said, and the faint trace of sarcasm in his voice struck her like a slap. She should have known better than to expect gratitude from him. Businessman or spy, no matter; he’d fitted in very well with her stepfather’s friends.

In lieu of a lock of hair, she wound her fingers together at her waist. It was not difficult to make her voice tremble; she did not enjoy being knocked onto dirty floors. “Mr. Monroe. Thank goodness. You will help me!” And then, on a manufactured sob, she threw herself into his arms.

He caught her by reflex, and thank God the gun had a trustworthy trigger, or there’d have been blood all over.

As her small, warm body burrowed into his, a curious feeling broke over him, more complex than déjà vu. For a moment he thought another attack was descending on him, and then he realized the sensation was purely interior, a sense of things opening that he’d tried to seal off. Some things the body could not forget—the fit of her breasts against his abdomen, the way a gun balanced so comfortably in his palm. Touching her felt like brushing up against a dark part of himself, a place where his regrets had gone to die from studious disregard. I was done with this, he thought. God above, he should be done.

He wanted to reach up and scrub away the sensation prickling at his nape, but her arms wound around him and his own tightened without consultation of his brain. She was still toxic to him, then. “I’m so glad you came,” she whispered.

As her head fitted beneath his chin, the subtle scent of her hair, like the first strain of long-forgotten music, touched off a whole symphony in his brain: his grim irritation with her, that kiss, Dance with me, Mr. Monroe. He had seen her as an obstacle, a temptation that laid bare all his inherited weakness, a needless weight trying to thrust itself onto his conscience. There had seemed no other way to view her, not until that moment when he’d fallen from the window. Rude shock: running down the lawn, the turf exploding from the bullets’ impact, he had wondered, only once and without understanding his own feeling of loss, exactly what he was leaving behind. And then he had never allowed himself to think of her again.

He detached himself from her arms, a breath shuddering from his throat. For the first time in months, he felt fleshly, grounded, steady on his feet. He knew better than to like the sensation.

A delicate flush was spreading across her face, bespeaking, perhaps, embarrassment. “Are you all right?” he asked. He hadn’t wanted to tackle her, but the gun in her hand had limited his options; had he attempted gentler measures, she might have shot him from sheer surprise.

She knuckled her nose like a little girl after a tantrum. “Yes. Forgive me, I’m…you gave me a scare, that’s all.”

He studied her clinically, trying to diagnose the accuracy of his memory. He recalled her being quite freakishly beautiful, but the reality was less unsettling. Her each feature seemed, in fact, too perfect to combine with the others into a harmonious whole; the eye, not knowing where to fix, grew frustrated in its search for peaceful lodging. “I’ve spent six days looking for you.” She’d been damned hard to find, and at one point it had occurred to him that he might be the butt of some obscure joke of Ridland’s. But, no, here she was, in all her soft, flower-scented flesh, and he should be relieved to know he’d not made himself a fool. “I feared you might vanish again,” he said, and paused, recalling the question that had seemed uppermost to him before her appearance. “Where were you hiding?”

Her blue eyes swam like the sea off Amalfi, crystalline and dizzying in her heart-shaped face. “Six days, you say? Poor Mr. Ridland! He must be frantic. I didn’t mean to worry him.”

Those eyes did not distract him from the fact that she hadn’t answered his question. “Didn’t you? You disappeared from your rooms without a trace.” From the looks of it, she had smashed the window and clambered down a wall—not an achievement he could match with the petite body before him, those wrists as slim as flower stems. Even if she’d had the help of her manservant, that climb would have taken a nerve of steel, and a temperament unlikely to be trembling after being knocked to the floor. Either there was more to her escape than he knew, or less fear in her than she wanted him to realize. “Surely,” he said more slowly, “you expected someone to worry.”

Her little shrug could have meant anything. She glanced past him to where Cronin sat on a stool, his boot heel scuffing the floor. The man had sold his loyalty quite cheaply, and for the past hour, at a guess, he’d been entertaining regrets about his price. “Is my man all right?” she asked. That she did not address this question to Phin seemed telling. Her apparent relief at his appearance did not extend to trusting him.

“Reckon so,” Cronin muttered. “This one tied him up and had him carted off, but he was well enough, last I saw him.”

Her large eyes returned to Phin. “Where is he, then? Does Ridland have him?”

Not Mr. Ridland. Simply Ridland. It seemed a peculiarly masculine form of address for a sheltered girl to use. I drink nothing but champagne. Had her tastes changed in the intervening years? “I have him,” Phin said. “And it seems I have you, as well. Perhaps it would serve you better to wonder what I mean to do with you.”

“Why, you will protect me, I hope. That’s why Ridland sent you, isn’t it?”

He smiled, and perhaps she saw the grimness in it, for her eyes dropped. Ridland did not send him anywhere these days. He’d made that clear enough. I am not going to help you, he’d told the man.

Then why are you here? Anxiety had etched sweet shadows beneath Ridland’s reddened eyes. To gloat? I heard of your meetings at Westminster.

Good, Phin had thought. Let him stew. I came to tell you that she is no longer your concern.

Ridland’s laughter had grated. Good luck to you, then. She is a hard woman to hold.

The words had struck a chord. Someone had told him something similar once. Someone wiser than he, perhaps. He recalled her as buffleheaded, and her quivering manner supported the recollection. But for all that her hands fluttered from her nape to her waist, tangling there helplessly, her eyes held his too steadily to silence his mounting caution.

There was always the possibility, however peculiar, that Ridland had facilitated her escape. Phin could think of no reason for it; but then, he’d been trying very hard not to think of Ridland at all. And certainly, the man had shown uncharacteristic restraint in his treatment of her, for Miss Masters’s pearly nails appeared wholly intact. Indeed, the whole of her appeared too damned pristine for an innocent American girl who’d spent a week wandering the London slums.

Like a compass being turned, he felt his expectations realigning themselves. If she was more than she seemed—if she was working with Ridland to entangle him in some bad business—then she was bound for disappointment. As of now, he had no intention of underestimating her.

His close study was making her frown. “I have no need to worry, do I?”

“Oh, there’s always cause for worry,” he said mildly. It was easier like this, anyway. He felt curiously relieved. This role fitted him far better and more familiarly than that of the savior. “But I assume you did not mean to be philosophical. Do you realize where you are, Miss Masters?”

She looked around. “In a cellar?”

“In an area of London to which even I don’t travel unarmed.”

She blinked. “But I was armed, sir.”

Yes, this pretty pearl-encrusted pistol might have terrorized a dollhouse or two. He flipped it again, wondering if it was loaded. The heft suggested so. “Let’s go, then.” When she looked nervously to the door but did not move, he said more sharply, “You told Ridland to fetch me, didn’t you?” Fetch was a telling verb. Ridland had an interest in her, but she supposedly had no interest in Ridland. In one possible view of this situation, Phin himself was no more than a bone caught in the tug-of-war between a mastiff and a tiny, perfumed poodle. Which meant he’d stumbled right back into hell, of his own accord.

“But where do we go?” she asked.

Why did the answer concern her so much? “Do you have somewhere else to be?”

She blinked. “No. Only—somewhere safe. But I should like to see Mr. Tarbury, at least.” She was twisting her hands so hard that he half expected to be picking up fingers in a moment. “To assure myself that he’s well.”

He remembered this, too—the way she put her sapphire eyes to use in making these girlish, pouting appeals. Even now, when she was attired more plainly than a scullery maid, she managed to come off the coquette. He gave a frown to her outfit, really noticing it for the first time. Apart from the locket at her throat, she wore no jewelry, and her threadbare dress seemed unlikely for a woman who was, Ridland claimed, doing well for herself. Some nonsense about a company in America that catered to female vanities by way of expensive hair tonics—Phin had not listened very closely; it was not relevant to the task of finding her. “Tarbury is fine,” he told her. Tarbury was stubborn as a mule—three hours of grilling, and he’d yielded not so much as a hint to his mistress’s whereabouts.

“You’re taking me to him, then?”

“No.”

“But Mr. Tarbury will worry about me!”

He had forgotten her arrogance also. Had it not occurred to her that she involved her manservant in dangerous matters? Or did she expect men to imperil themselves for the sheer pleasure of being allowed to serve her?

His own temper startled him. He drew a breath of the musty air, schooling himself. Whatever her motives, she hadn’t forced his hand. He’d come of his own volition, God help him. He was going to get to the bottom of this and get her the hell out of his house as soon as possible.

A noise came from behind him. His body replied before his brain, pivoting, lifting the gun. Cronin’s right eye lay in his aim. “Back,” he said.

Cronin froze. His arms shook beneath the weight of the stool he held aloft.

“Don’t shoot him,” cried Miss Masters. “He is only protecting me!”

Even Cronin looked astonished by this idiocy. He retreated, dropping his weapon; as the stool crashed against the baseboards, it raised a cloud of dust that made Phin’s nose tickle. He reached backward and caught hold of the girl’s arm, hauling her toward the steps as he kept the pistol level on Cronin.

She called down to the man, “If you see Mr. Tarbury, tell him what has happened!”

Her tone struck Phin as inappropriately desperate for a woman who had deliberately enlisted his aid. But Cronin, uncovering a rusty streak of chivalry, straightened like he had a plan in mind.

Phin adjusted his aim to a spot directly between Cronin’s legs and pulled the trigger.

Ah, yes: loaded. The report was deafening. Cronin dove into the shadows. Miss Masters made not a sound. When Phin glanced over, he found her face pale but composed, as though gunfire were a regular event for her. His mood turned grimmer yet. He knocked the doors apart with an elbow and pulled her up the last step, into the night air.

Chapter Six

Ridland must have shared her letter with Monroe, for he did not protest when she gave him to understand that she must stop by the boardinghouse. What he thought she was collecting, she had no idea. Secret documents, maybe. A bag of gunpowder, some terrible secret related to Collins. At any rate, he seemed unduly concerned. He followed her up to her room and watched from the doorway as she knelt to grope beneath the bed. Her gun still rested in his hand. Since there was no one here to shoot but her, she could not find it comforting.

At least she would have the small satisfaction of disappointing him, for all she wanted to collect was the gown she’d worn while escaping Ridland’s. That, and the cat. Tarbury had taken a liking to the beast, and the scrawny thing seemed to reciprocate, although he did not show similar favor to Mina. It took her ten long minutes to lure him from under the bed.

When she finally straightened, the beast hissing in her arms, Monroe gave a cool nod, as if a cat were exactly what he’d expected her to fetch. He was in the middle of his own routine, she realized, playacting very convincingly. She wished she knew the point of it. With her free hand, she plucked her Liberty tunic off a hook and tossed it toward him.

Impassively, he looped it over his forearm. “Come,” he said, and stepped back to allow her passage down the stairs.

As she passed him, it came to her again that he was much, much taller than she’d remembered. Descending the stairs, her feet made the rickety steps groan, but behind her he moved like a thief. Had his shadow not fallen down the steps before her, surpassing her own by a foot at least, she would never have known he was there. She tightened her hold on the cat and wished, for the hundredth time, that she and Mama had never come to England.

The landlady stood holding open the front door. She appeared in a fine humor, Monroe having settled with her at some extortionate rate for the use of the rooms and her silence. As Mina passed, she tossed off an arch “Well done, dearie.”

The remark jolted Mina’s intuition. As she stepped onto the pavement and Monroe went to speak to the coachman, she gave his figure a concentrated survey. He did, in fact, look like a rich man. His suit was first-rate, tailored closely to his broad shoulders, the stitching exquisite and nearly invisible. Those cuff links he wore made an excellent imitation of gold. Where did he get the tin for such clothes? Wealthy men didn’t gamble their lives in pursuit of criminals. Perhaps spycraft paid better than she’d imagined.