Written on Your Skin (16 page)

He sighed as if she had disappointed him. But then he rubbed his eyes, and she wondered if he wasn’t simply tired. “Would that were the case, Miss Masters.” He ran his hand through his hair, setting it into furrows; if he’d had a gold ring in his ear, he might have played the pirate right now, with his wild mane and billowing shirtsleeves and suntanned skin. He had not looked nearly so handsome in Hong Kong. “I will ask you one more time,” he said as he dropped his hand. “How long have you worked for Ridland?”

She was stubborn and refused to admit anything. But why the hell else would a pampered American girl know how—or care—to pick a lock and go rifling through his private documents? Phin set a footman outside her door that night, a brawny, weathered fellow he’d found at one of the pubs Sanburne liked to frequent for boxing. Gompers, his name was, and he showed no sign of curiosity or concern when Phin informed him that Miss Masters was not to be let out of her rooms, making him just the man for the job.

The next morning, Phin had the locks replaced on her apartments. Unless she had the hands of a virtuoso, she’d be going nowhere now unless he willed it. And the hell of it was, he could permit her to go nowhere, not even back to Ridland’s, until he knew her aim, and his own role in it. Ridland’s rot had invaded his own home; he was helpless to expunge it. And thus, he thought, I add jailkeeper to my long list of accomplishments.

He should not be so angry. He told himself this over breakfast, and again during a very unrewarding meeting with the Oxford trustees. At first, they balked at the proposal to name the chair in cartography for Sheldrake, and to his own surprise, he lifted his voice. It worked to alter their attitude, though; they left amidst a shower of gratitude and apologies, no doubt fearing that otherwise he might revoke his endowment. His father had often gotten his way by yelling, but Phin had never needed to stoop to it. Thus did one day of Miss Masters’s company erode his control.

He could not say for whom his frustration was larger, himself or her. He had been an idiot, all right, believing that the repayment of his debt would be simple. An unexpected epilogue to an already-closed book, he’d told himself, as if anything were simple where Ridland was involved. But there was the rub: Some part of him had known this. Some part of him had craved it. He felt more clearheaded than he had in weeks. Scaling the cliffs at Dover, stroking an eight across the Channel, rubbing shoulders with the royal family—realizing these boyhood dreams, nursed for so long in a heart made ambitious by disappointment, had left him strangely numb. But a letter from Ridland set his heart drumming. A trollop sent to raid his study, who spoke lies more easily than a false oracle—she could made his skin flush.

He put it down to the fact that he hadn’t touched a woman in months. He had no taste for the sorts of arrangements, or the diseases, that his father had contracted with whores, and mastering his new responsibilities had left him little time to find and woo some agreeable widow. With Mina Masters laid out like a feast on his desk, her eyes flashing defiance, he had simply discovered the cost of his abstinence.

But the explanation did not quell his disquiet. Her lips against his had conjured dark possibilities, all the various fleshly punishments a beautiful woman could expect for poking her nose into other people’s business. His imagination proved fecund and disturbingly depraved. She roused in him capacities that he had tried to forget he possessed; she reminded him that, for a decade, he’d done very well as a villain.

Worse, she had kissed him back as though she had a taste for depravity. The flavor of her mouth still lingered on his tongue.

He did not want her in his house.

After the trustees’ departure, a note arrived from the Sheldrakes, stiffly worded and ingratiating. They asked permission to call tomorrow to deliver their thanks in person. He almost wrote them to stay away. My house is unfit for you; keep clear of this tangle. But of course he could not refuse them; they would take it as an insult, and reinterpret his generosity as condescension.

A note came from Sanburne in the early afternoon, inviting him to the club for what he assumed would be lunch. But when he arrived, the majordomo escorted him past the dining room, down the hall into the shooting gallery. Sanburne was lounging on a bench, a bottle and a pair of protective earpieces by his boots. He was watching a slim blond man take aim at the painted figure on the wall. A shot rang out. The resulting hole, a good foot from the figure, suggested that the man was nearsighted or nervous.

“Deuced bad luck,” the gunman said as he turned around. Neither nervous nor nearsighted, then, but a waste of breath all the same. Phin had known Tilney since Eton, and time had not improved him; he was still prettier than a girl, and as bad with wagers and wine as he was with a gun. Sanburne was keeping bad company these days.

The man broke into a grin as he spotted Phin. “What ho, Granville! You’ve cost me five quid.”

“Ah,” said Sanburne, turning and lifting his chin in welcome. “That’s right, he told me you’d never be pried from your maps.”

“Glad to enrich you,” Phin said.

Tilney lifted the pistol. “Newest model from Webley. Have a go?”

Phin glanced to Sanburne, who shrugged. “Just had my turn.”

That accounted for the hole in the figure’s arm. Not the place to shoot a man if you meant to stop him from coming at you; Phin had seen rage that numbed a man’s pain more effectively than morphine. But such skill would prove sufficient for a society darling whose main concern was making a good show at the summer hunting balls. I’ve grown into a mean bastard, he thought as he walked forward.

“Oh, cheers,” said Tilney as he held out the pistol. His grip was three-fingered, a damned foolish way to hold a loaded gun. “Say, you didn’t stop by after the Derby. We had a nice little rout.”

The revolver nestled in his palm. Nice balance, good proportion, enough weight to focus the mind. “I was busy.”

Tilney’s smile now looked strained. “Yes, well, it got me thinking. I do hope you’re not still grudged about the piss on the pillowcases. Told the lads you weren’t Irish, but you know how boys can be.”

“Oh, third form,” said Sanburne easily. “Decades ago.”

Phin shifted his grip. “Old hat,” he agreed with a smile. “So long as you’re not still sulking over being dumped into the latrine. And thrashed,” he added thoughtfully. With a glance toward the painted figure, he arched one brow. “I hope your vision recovered? I never did remember to ask.”

Tilney looked a little more uneasily now at the gun. “Brilliantly, thanks.” He cleared his throat. “Quite a growth spurt you had there, Granville.”

“It’s Ashmore now.” Phin lifted the gun and took aim. The sound of the shot exploded through the room. They were doing themselves no favors by forgoing the earpieces. “And, yes,” he said as he lowered his arm. “I quite enjoyed it.”

Sanburne was applauding. “Straight through the eyes. This calls for celebration.”

He felt an increasing sense of unreality. “Celebration, yes. Good to know I could kill you both quite easily.”

“I’ve got to beg off,” Tilney said. “Prior engagement, what?”

In the dining room, Sanburne was full of light, amusing news. An artifact he’d bought had been denounced as a fake last week at some public event, and he seemed delighted by the sympathy flowing to him from all corners of society. “I’ve dined out on it for five nights,” he said. “I may arrange to buy another forgery tomorrow.”

The Cornish hen was tough, the wine sour. Phin attended to the conversation with half a mind; the other half wondered what the hell was wrong with him. This was his life now. Sanburne was genuinely witty. Phin should not be laughing mechanically at these jokes.

He realized silence had fallen when Sanburne broke it with a poke at his arm. “Are you in love, then?”

“Good God, no.” He was in something, all right, but it was the furthest thing from love. In fact, he rather suspected it to be a great pile of shit. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve got that dreamy, idiotic look about you.”

He considered this for a moment. “Perhaps I’ve formed an interest,” he said. “Sheldrake’s daughter is coming to town tomorrow. She’s turned out quite well.”

Sanburne’s brows lifted to his hairline. “Sheldrake’s daughter! Bit long in the tooth by now, surely.” He paused, a smile creeping over his mouth. “Not that there’s a thing wrong with a spinster. They accrue a bit of flavor on the shelf. Well, well. Phin and old Sheldrake’s daughter. I think this calls for a real drink.” He lifted three fingers to the bearer, who showed no sign of surprise at this stiff order. “For you?” he asked.

Phin shook his head. “Coffee.” He’d halt the deterioration where he could; liquor had smoothed his parents’ road to hell, but he would feel every bump, if he had to.

“Ah? Gone the glory years, then? I remember when no resident of Oxford could count on a night’s sleep without being regaled by your fine, drunken baritone.”

He laughed. “Oh, I’ll sing for you. Like a canary in a goddamned mine shaft. But best you keep drinking; you won’t like it so much if you’re sober.”

“Hmm.” Sanburne gave him an irritatingly thoughtful inspection. “I expect your sleepier toxins don’t inspire much song,” he said. “Thanks to you, I spent a good deal of my own party last week talking to the bloody flagstones.”

Phin sat back as his coffee was delivered. “Yes, the ether was a bad choice.” He’d heard it lauded for its sedative properties, but it had been the furthest thing from soothing. Perhaps he would try chloral next. He needed something to alternate with the opium, lest he end up enslaved to the substance.

“No harm done.” Sanburne took up his drink, tossing back nearly half at one go. “It called my attention to a pressing philosophical riddle. A man comes to a crossroads. Down one road lies everything loathsome and dutiful—”

“Are they one and the same?”

“—obligations he never asked for, a life of comfort and empty honors. Yes, I think they are one and the same. They both lead to the same end, anyway: a slow suffocation by way of doing the done thing.”

Suffocation was an apt word. Phin thought of his fit in Sheldrake’s study. A touch of that feeling had come upon him in the shooting gallery, which worried him. Generally, these fits came farther apart. Well, it had ebbed fast enough when Tilney departed. “Better a slow suffocation than a quick beheading,” he said. He was not sure he privately agreed, but for Sanburne, at least, the wisdom was sound.

“Indeed, no. A quick and glorious end is always preferable to a slow and painful one. And it makes a hell of a show for those left behind.” Sanburne’s smile looked calculated. “Even those who don’t wish to watch.”

Phin repressed a stir of impatience. This crusade Sanburne had launched against his father kept London entertained, but it seemed the height of childishness to him. Sanburne’s sister Stella was no victim; she’d put a knife through her husband’s throat. If their father thought her better kept in an asylum, the men of London certainly breathed more easily for it. “And what lies down the other road?”

Sanburne took another swig from his glass. “The man has no idea. He can’t see that far. But it promises to be more interesting by half.”

“You should have been a mapmaker.”

“Christ, no. The point isn’t to chart one’s course. Simply to stumble along, enjoying the pratfalls as one goes.”

The coffee was dark and bitter, done in the Turkish style. Phin crunched down on the thick dregs; they suited his mood. “How does the man know he’ll enjoy these pratfalls, if he can’t see down the road?”

“He can guess.”

“But blind guesses often miss their mark.”

Sanburne swished the contents of his glass, contemplative. “Marks are overrated. Guidelines only serve the uncreative. Hew closely enough to duty, and one day you’ll look into the mirror and see a stranger.”

In fact, Phin thought, that sounded like a damned good goal. “But duty isn’t meant to provide pleasure.” Stella’s tragedy, it seemed to him, had only given Sanburne the excuse he’d always looked for. He had never been reconciled to his own privilege, not when it required him to fall in step with his father’s wishes. There were worse fates than conventional luxury, of course, but Sanburne was fortunate enough never to have learned of them. “Duty is meant to keep one from going astray,” Phin concluded.

The sharpness of Sanburne’s glance put him on alert. This conversation was not as idle as he’d imagined. “And what if one already has gone astray?”

“Walk very carefully, then. Some roads keep you safer than others.” It took an effort to restrain himself from looking pointedly at the glass in Sanburne’s hand. The man had no cause to swallow his sorrows; his problems were borrowed from his sister, even if he’d managed to blame himself for them. “Some keep you safe from yourself.”

Briefly, some dark emotion worked its way across Sanburne’s face, and Phin thought, for a puzzled second, that he was going to have to catch a fist.

But then Sanburne laughed. “Rubbish. I see no reason not to go astray. In fact, I go astray quite regularly, and I always manage to have a jolly good time at it. Besides, that’s the whole point, no? By the time lunch is over, I won’t be able to walk a straight line if my life depended on it.”

The tight feeling was back in Phin’s throat. “Then I can tell your life never has depended on it.” Fed up with this nonsense, he stood. “I’ll be going.”