Written on Your Skin (2 page)

The dancers were parting ways. The next set was soon to begin. She turned to him expectantly. When he did not immediately extend his hand, she reached for it. He realized something was wrong when he couldn’t feel her fingers.

He drew a breath, and the floor rocked beneath his feet.

He staggered backward, dimly registering a collision. A cry. The world disassembled, then swam back together. Miss Masters was mouthing something. It felt like twin screws were being forced into his temples. God in heaven. Was this some new variation on malaria?

The girl’s face grew very large. Leaning toward him, that was all. He struggled to focus. Her visage faded in and out. God, he was cold. “Are you all right?” That was what she was asking.

As darkness washed over him again, he realized that malaria did not strike so suddenly. The image of the brandy flashed through his mind, the glass gliding away from him, its contents sloshing. Half full. Only half. “No,” he managed. He was not all right.

He’d been poisoned.

He fell forward, straight into Mina’s arms. His chin slammed into her nose,
pain,
good Lord, she actually saw stars, and then his chin was settling onto her shoulder. It took a moment, through the shock, to work out what was happening: she’d caught him beneath the arms, quite by accident. He was too tall and too heavy; his knees were buckling. He was going to pull them both to the ground.

She leapt away. He plummeted, face-first. His head bounced against the floor with an awful
crack
that promised blood. She stared down at him. A few feet away, someone screamed. Silken trains hissed across the floor, ladies whirling to gawk. For three weeks, she had been waiting for Phineas Monroe to fall at her feet. But he had proved to be unnaturally graceful, immune to gravity and flirtation both. Naturally, when he finally succumbed, he did it in the most vexing fashion imaginable. For all his charms, he was, after all, a man.

Dimly, she registered the faltering of the orchestra. That was fine with her. Their Beethoven had sounded a bit tart; only the cellist really deserved a hearing, his bow flowing down the strings like honey off a spoon. She sank to her knees as people began to crowd in around her. “Drunk,” someone guessed, but Monroe had seemed sober enough to her, although he was out cold now; a pat to the face could not rouse him.

Her hand lingered on his jaw a bit longer than necessary. She was tempted to touch the cleft in his chin. His lashes lay against his cheeks, unusually long, all the more striking given that his face was so starkly masculine. Her attraction to him, at least, was not feigned. But she liked him better with his eyes open. They stayed on hers when she spoke, which was a novelty.

She rose and stepped back. That her concern felt genuine made her a little anxious. More and more, she was confusing her hopes for him. He did not snap at servants, and he had saved her once from a very unpleasant interlude with Bonham, but that might mean nothing; she hadn’t been able to tell whether his well-timed entrance was by accident or design. And in the past week, he’d seemed increasingly aloof, distant and curt with her.

She should not allow herself to care. It was asking for trouble.

“My goodness!” A hand crept around her elbow. Jane’s face was pale beneath her crown of chestnut ringlets. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

She sighed. Collins had hired Jane for Mina’s sixteenth birthday.
A young lady needs a traveling companion,
he’d said. The friendship that had grown between them in these last four years was her most treasured possession, and also, occasionally, her greatest inconvenience. Jane never failed to see through her like a window, and she had cautioned Mina, more than once, against Monroe’s charms.
You don’t know the man. Don’t be indiscreet.
“He fell onto my nose,” Mina said. “It hurts.”

Jane’s hazel eyes narrowed. “Let me see.” She took Mina by the chin, turning her face. People were crushing in around them now; elbows knocked into Mina’s side, passing feet pulled at her skirts. It was rather novel, to be pushed past without a second glance. She let herself be rocked by the crowd; keeping her balance was like a game. “It looks intact,” Jane decided. “A bit pink. What ails him? Is he dead?”

Mina shook her head. She had felt his breath, hot against her neck, as she clutched him. It had sent a lovely sensation down her spine—perhaps that was why she hadn’t reacted immediately. He kissed splendidly, even better than she’d hoped. But his vocabulary was filthy. Why had he talked to her that way? What had she done to alter his attitude? It irritated her that he had the power to make her worry over it. He was only a friend of her stepfather’s.

Dr. Sullivan’s son shoved past them, jostling them into each other. They turned to follow his progress. He crouched beside Monroe, his fingers reaching for the man’s pulse.

“I should go find Mr. Collins,” Jane murmured.

“Try the card room.” After he’d terrorized Mina’s mother into retiring, he’d ensconced himself at the poker table, where admirers queued to greet him like peons before a king. Every time she passed the card room’s open doors, he winked at her and blew a smoke ring, as if inviting her to congratulate him for his popularity. The effort to laugh for him was scraping her throat raw.

“All right. I’ll just be a moment.” Jane looped her skirts over one wrist and glided away. Mina now found herself the lone spot of color in a sea of broad, dark backs. The gentlemen had closed ranks around Monroe, and the hubbub was taking on a strident tone, each man deploying his loudest, most authoritative, most positively
manly
voice.

“Move back—”

“Loosen his tie—”

“Is he breathing?”

“Collins’s guest, ain’t he?”

“Hot to the touch—”

Mr. Bonham shouldered through the crowd. When he saw her, he gave her one of his peculiar smiles. She had never seen him smile at anyone else that way. Did he think it attractive? It looked as if he were trying to suck his lips down his throat. She could not smile back. If Mr. Monroe was seriously ill, everything would be ruined.

Dr. Sullivan’s son rose, his bright red hair catching her attention. “Breathing,” he announced, and the gathering sighed.

She went up on tiptoe for a better view. Ten years of her life for two more inches: this was the trade she’d offered God at thirteen, but he had ignored her completely.

Through the forest of shoulders, she saw Mr. Bonham kneel. He lifted Monroe’s head by his dark brown hair and took a sniff. “Too much to drink,” he drawled. “Or perhaps…” He looked up, finding her. His leering grew so tedious. “Perhaps he was simply overwhelmed by Miss Masters’s beauty.”

A laugh swept the crowd. Eyes turned toward her from all directions. Several gentlemen who’d been crowding her now found their discourtesy made conspicuous; they took quick steps away and a circle of space opened around her, the better for the crowd’s examination. Inspected like a prize pig on fair day. She felt the urge to cross her eyes and screw up her face.

But at the center of so much attention, she had no choice but to smile. Mr. Bonham took this as a good sign for himself; his own smile widened, baring teeth. He was ambitious and moneyed, a self-made man; in the colonies, this was not a mark against him, and society beauties were expected to flutter in his presence. Had Mina known nothing more of him, she might have done so authentically. He was slim and elegant, with the long white fingers of an artist and hair of deepest black.
A banker’s talents, and the face of a poet
; his sea-green eyes set the ladies to whispering such nonsense when he passed.

But she had cause to know other things about his nature. His hands ranged more freely than an octopus’s arms. His lips tasted like gutter water. He had a soft heart for the street dogs that gathered outside his gates every evening, but he slapped his servants with the same smile he wore when he fed the strays. He had partnered with her stepfather in a coca plantation in Ceylon, and now he wanted to marry her to boot. She had no opinion on the former, but the latter made her light-headed with panic.

She did not allow herself to dwell on it. She was not Mama; she would not sit around weeping and wringing her hands. Action was the answer, and the man currently napping on the ground was meant to help. Mr. Monroe also wanted to do business with Collins. He was American by birth and wholly Irish by blood, an advantage that Bonham—born to an English father in Singapore—could not rival. Moreover, if he won Collins’s favor, or was caught kissing Mina in dark hallways, she rather thought Bonham would lose interest in her. His pride would demand it.

She took advantage of all the eyes on her. “It might be typhoid. Or cholera? What do you think?”

At the mere suggestion of contagion, the gathering began to disperse. Bonham did not move, but his regard narrowed on her. Like Collins, he had a talent for recognizing the subtler forms of insubordination.

A hand closed over her arm. Collins pulled her around with the same carelessness he would use to turn a puppy by its scruff. “What happened?” he asked as his bloodshot eyes slid to the spot where Monroe’s long body lay.

She thought it was rather evident what had happened, but Collins often asked questions merely for the pleasure of being answered. “He collapsed, sir,” she said.

“Collapsed? Without warning?”

It was rare to hear the brogue in his voice; he must have been drinking quite heavily in the card room. Usually he sounded more American than she, whose diction had been addled by a childhood spent traveling the world and a parade of English governesses handpicked by her mother.

She spoke very carefully. “He did look a bit flushed.” Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Jane approaching, two burly servants in tow. “If you like, I’ll see that he’s settled into his room.”

Bonham rose. “Perhaps it would be wiser to take him to the infirmary in Aberdeen. Miss Masters is right, after all; he may be infectious.”

Mina traded a glance with Jane, who shook her head the barest fraction. Not difficult to guess what would happen to Monroe in the hospital. Bonham did not like competition for her stepfather’s favors; he would make sure one of the nurses confused her medicines.

With a light touch to Collins’s arm, she said, “I would be glad to attend to him, Father.”

He generally liked it when she called him that, but tonight, in the wake of his fight with her mother, he could not be pleased. He shook off her hand. “Can’t understand what happened to him,” he growled. “Seemed fine earlier, eh?”

“Take him to his quarters,” Jane said to the servants.

“Hold,” said Bonham, and gave Jane a sharp look. “With such a sudden attack, the hospital will be better for him. If he’s contagious—”

Mina pitched her voice louder. “Why, Mr. Bonham, I am shocked! Mr. Monroe is our guest.
Surely
you’ll agree that it’s our Christian duty to care for him.”

Her strategy worked brilliantly: Collins swelled up like an affronted rooster. He swept the gathering with a fierce glare, daring anyone to challenge his hospitality. “Mina is right,” he said. “My household doesn’t turn away a guest in need. Bonham, if you want to be of use, fetch Dr. Sullivan.”

“Of course,” Bonham murmured, and sketched a shallow bow.

“He’s down in Little Hong Kong,” Dr. Sullivan’s son said. “Called to Mrs. Harlock’s childbed.”

“Well, send a boy, then. And someone strike up the music.” Collins turned away, finished with the matter of Monroe. So long as there was liquor available, and cards to be played, he would postpone his sympathy.

As the servants gathered up Monroe’s limp body, Jane took Mina’s elbow. “Mr. Bonham will not like this,” she murmured. “Are you certain you wish to risk offending him?”

Mina nodded, although the question was misjudged. It was not a risk, not when there was no other choice.

Chapter Two

Only the faintest light shone from beneath her mother’s door, but Mina knew better than to knock. The handle moved soundlessly beneath her palm. Harriet Collins was curled up in the window seat, her legs tucked beneath her, her face turned toward the night sky. Her blond hair fell loose over one shoulder, exposing the slim line of her throat and the softness of her jaw. She looked very young, sitting there in her nightgown. She looked very nearly like the reflection Mina saw in the mirror every morning.

She crossed her fingers in reflex. Never. She would never look so crushed, and all for the sake of pleasing a man. Such love interested her not at all.

Some small noise must have betrayed her entrance, for Mama spoke. “Have the guests gone, then?”

The question made her frown. It was not even midnight. She glanced at the mantel, and found a bare space where the clock had been. A quick search discovered it facedown by the wardrobe, shattered glass all around.

She looked quickly back to Mama’s face, but it appeared unmarked. “No, not yet.” She pulled the door closed. The latch was well oiled and made no sound. Everything in this house was well tended, expensive, and ornate, the better to illustrate Collins’s standing. In that regard, she and Mama were no different from the silk rug that cushioned her feet. “Not for a few hours yet.”