Written on Your Skin

by Meredith Duran

  At best, he should be amused by her. This admiration was entirely unwelcome.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, Mina was wakened by a sound in her sitting room. She rushed to the doorway quickly enough to see the maid slip a key into her pocket as she stepped inside. Sally, her name was. She was Mina’s new friend, even if she didn’t realize it yet. “Good morning,” Mina said brightly.

  The maid gasped and nearly dropped the tray she held. She was a skinny thing, bred on thin gruel and a weak English climate, and her mobcap wanted to escape. She set the food on a sideboard and clutched at her cap, white-faced, as she sank into a curtsey. Trust the English to demand groveling where a simple Good morning would serve.

  “None of that,” Mina reminded her. “As I said yesterday, a nod will do.”

  After a moment, the girl nodded, slowly and deliberately. “I’ve brought your breakfast.” The door behind her began to open, and she slapped a palm against it. “Hold!” she called, surprisingly authoritative. “Mum—I mean, miss—that’s the footmen. They’ll be fetching in the rest of your luggage.”

  “Oh, excellent.” She was worried about her oils. She’d packed them very carefully, but she did not put it beyond Ridland to smash them for spite. She waited expectantly, but Sally remained frozen in her guardian posture. As the moment lengthened, the maid’s expression took on an anguished cast. “Won’t you let them in?” Mina asked, puzzled.

  “Um—” The maid cleared her throat. “I expect you wouldn’t want them to see your…your nightclothes, miss.”

  “Oh.” Mina glanced down at herself. The robe Sally had provided more than covered her. But for the sake of the maid’s nerves, she retreated into the bedchamber and closed the door.

  The room seemed to shrink around her. Waiting was her particular strength, but she had felt it faltering last night in this pretty, perfumed prison. She had to get out of here. Today, somehow, she would.

  She crossed to the window. She had not lied to Ashmore; the view fascinated and depressed her. The little garden below was walled in by oak trees. A gridded path segmented it into perfect squares. Severely trimmed shrubbery emphasized the linear dominion, marching in rows around boxed-in plots of flowers that hunkered obediently beneath the strengthening sun. It was no garden for dreaming or romance; rather, it offered a study in the taming of wayward whims.

  She almost preferred the view from Ridland’s. Almost, but not quite. For a full day now, she had puzzled over Ashmore’s behavior in his study. It seemed to her more and more likely that he was no friend to Ridland. That letter she’d found had not been written in support of the man. And when she had asked him whether he still worked for Ridland, his phrasing had suggested hostility.

  She was going to trust him, she decided. If the decision did not feel wholly right, then the sight of the rising sun reminded her that she had no choice. Another day begun, and soon to pass. When there was no choice, one could not properly think of risks, only necessities. Some stupid part of her had wanted to trust him from the moment she’d first laid eyes on him. Necessity would compel her to indulge her stupidity.

  A knock came at the bedroom door, and Sally’s voice announced the departure of the footmen. Mina emerged to discover that her trunks were bound in cord differently colored from that which Tarbury had used. Ridland had gone through her things, and he wanted her to know it.

  He’d found nothing of interest. All the same, the sight made her queasy. One step forward, two steps back. She’d felt very clever, getting away from him. But with a simple switch of cord, he had sent her a message: she was still under his watchful eye.

  “I’ll get to the luggage next, miss.” Sally was uncovering dishes; the smell of fried eggs and butter wafted over, rich and stomach-turning. Mina had no appetite. If Ashmore did not require money and would not listen to reason, then there was only one thing she could trade him. Was she willing? Her body’s answer was immaterial. Her brain recognized that only a most rigid and tyrannical person would trim his hedges into the shape of cubes.

  On the ottoman beside her trunks sat a small enamel case, familiar and heartening. She sank to the carpet to open it. A muffled noise came from above; when she looked up, she had the impression that Sally had just turned away from gawking.

  Ah. She was still in her nightclothes.

  Or perhaps it was because she was sitting on the floor.

  She returned her eyes to the latch. It was tricky, requiring a patient hand. “I had a very unusual childhood, you know. My father was a banker, but when I was six, he decided that he should start his own trading company.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “We traveled a great many places when I was growing up, looking for things he might buy and then sell at a profit back in the United States.” She opened the lid carefully. The padded compartments held the vials of essential oils that she’d carted from New York to tempt investors. “India, Ceylon, even Africa—we went everywhere.” She liked to think that she’d inherited Papa’s daring. Better yet, she’d made good on ambitions that had disappointed him. She was no fragile piece of porcelain any longer; if someone tossed her out of the china cabinet, she had more than a meager inheritance to bank on. In New York, she thought blackly. Here, she might as well be flotsam, for how easily these men were tossing her around. She drew a breath and schooled her thoughts. “I suppose I picked up all manner of strange habits,” she finished casually. A glance showed Sally was watching her. She clambered back to her feet and carried the case to the center table. The sight of her oils made her feel much better. She could easily tolerate the smell of breakfast now.

  The maid stepped back as she arranged the vials on the table. “This is jasmine,” Mina said, lifting a bottle of violet glass. “Do you like that scent?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “You don’t sound certain. Here—smell it.” She popped out the stopper and held it toward the maid.

  Sally’s gaze switched suspiciously between Mina and the vial. Finally, her shoulders slumping, she leaned forward. Perhaps she had decided that mad American whims must be tolerated as part of her duty. “It’s very nice, miss,” she said obediently.

  Mina reached for another. “And this one.” She unstoppered the vial and held it out. “What do you think?”

  Sally pushed up her mobcap with a rough and reddened hand. “That one’s just lovely,” she said with real enthusiasm. “What’ll that be? Something with roses?”

  “No, it’s gardenia.” Mina held up the glass, admiring the clarity of the oil in the electric light. Something brushed past her ankles; Washington had come out from his lair beneath the bed. She bent to pet him but he sidestepped, darting forward to snake around Sally’s feet. The perverse creature! He deliberately ignored her. “I hate you,” she said.

  Sally jumped. “Pardon, miss?”

  “The cat.” Mina felt her own cheeks warm. “I do not like my cat.”

  “Oh!” Sally looked down, as if only now taking note of her new admirer. She reached down to scratch the cat, and he stretched and preened beneath her hand. Traitor, Mina thought. She would change his name to Benedict immediately.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ve agreed to supply some of my oils to Whyllson’s in exchange for their English lavender. Lavender is all the rage in America at present, but we don’t have any reliable production yet. I did try some from California, but the quality was shoddy. That’s what distinguishes Masters hair tonic, you know—the quality of our ingredients.” She caught herself; this was perilously close to a lecture. Sally, bless her heart, was nodding along as though it interested her.

  “What terrible trouble for you, miss. Traveling all the way to England for lavender! Why, I can get that for a few pence at the apothecary down the lane!” She looked over the bottles on the table, then glanced anxiously toward the door. “Shall I leave you in peace, miss?”

  “No,” Mina said quickly. The last thing she wanted was to be alone and locked in. The passage of time woul
d scrape on her nerves. She cast about for some reason to detain the girl. “Would you like to keep this one?” She pressed the vial into the maid’s hand. When Sally looked hesitant, she added, “Lord Ashmore need not know, of course.”

  The girl was torn; her teeth worried her lip, but her fingers closed over the bottle. “His lordship is very kind,” she said softly.

  “Oh, yes,” Mina agreed. “And so imaginative.” Sally looked uncertain whether she should agree to this; how fortunate for her that she’d had no cause to experience that aspect of Ashmore’s personality. “Perhaps you should smell all the bottles,” Mina suggested. “Pick the one you like best. It would be very useful to know what appeals to English ladies.”

  The maid blushed, then ducked her head and nodded.

  “Excellent. And I shall continue unpacking my things.” She dismissed the maid’s protests with a shrug. “Foreign ways, as I said. I’d like to do it myself. Some of the contents are breakable.”

  Foreign ways made Sally shake her head in astonishment. But as Mina knelt by a trunk, she heard the telltale sound of a stopper clicking in the neck of a bottle. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. Sally was brushing wistful fingertips across the bottles arranged on the table, her lips moving soundlessly as she read each label. Every few seconds, though, she interrupted her inspection to dart a nervous glance at the closed door. Perhaps she’d heard tell of Ashmore’s irritation the night before last, when he’d escorted her back from his study.

  From now on, Miss Masters, locked doors stay locked.

  But Sally had the key.

  On a deep breath, she lifted the lid of one trunk. What on earth? She lifted out a globe, frowning at it for a moment before she replaced it and searched for the luggage tag.

  MISS L. SHELDRAKE, it read. “This is not my trunk.”

  “What?” Sally hastily replaced a vial. “What’s that?”

  She tilted the tag for the maid’s inspection. “It belongs to a Miss Sheldrake.”

  “Oh, Lord! That’ll be his lordship’s guest. What a mix-up!”

  “Guest?” Here was news. “An unmarried guest?”

  “Oh, no, miss, nothing like that,” Sally assured her. “It’s very respectable. She’s paying a call with her mother. They…” Turning a dull red, she shut her mouth—perhaps recalling too late that she spoke to Miss Masters, who had not arrived accompanied by a chaperone.

  Mina almost reassured her. But perhaps the maid would be more shocked if she learned her temporary mistress had no interest in respectability. A pristine reputation was an asset only for women who desired husbands. For those who cherished their freedom, it could prove a liability beyond measure. “Foreign ways,” she said gently.

  “Foreign ways, miss.” Sally sounded mournful.

  Respectability did have its vicarious uses, though. In this case, upstanding houseguests would serve her well. Such women tended to frown on living down the hall from a prisoner. She would have to meet these new arrivals and make them very aware of her presence. If the encounter occurred in Lord Ashmore’s company, he could not even accuse her of breaking his edict.

  To sum it up, Miss Masters, the guiding philosophy is this: I will know your location at all times.

  “What a masterful example of chiaroscuro,” Miss Sheldrake said, gesturing toward the painting over the mantel. “His face emerges from the shadows like truth itself. And note how his hand rests on the scales of justice.”

  “Yes, quite,” Mrs. Sheldrake said. “See how his horse’s girth is loosened? It denotes compassion, I expect.”

  The smiles they directed toward Phin looked as thin as the script in a book of etiquette. He wanted to tell them to sit down. They had called to thank him for his great gift, and seemed intent on repaying it by complimenting his drawing room; this painting was the last in a long list of items to elicit their admiration. It was only common courtesy, but it was making him damned uncomfortable. They would be welcome here even if the rug beneath their feet was not, in fact, the most beautiful piece of art they’d ever had the pleasure to step on. “It is a fine painting,” he said, and called up a smile of his own. He felt resolved today, firm in his determination to behave appropriately; Miss Sheldrake would not be subjected to more nonsense.

  “Was your cousin a great horseman, sir?” This from Mrs. Sheldrake, who spoke stiffly. At first, he’d assumed that Laura’s recounting of his odd behavior had put her on guard. But now he wondered if it wasn’t this damned Versailles of a drawing room. Each time she attempted to meet his eyes, her gaze broke away to wander in a skeptical fashion over his shoulder. No doubt the cream and gold paneling, the gilded cornices and pilasters must seem very garish to her, compared to the cottage in Eton. She couldn’t match him with it, probably. The Phin she’d known was all gangling limbs and empty pockets and bottomless stomach. Apart from his friendship with a young viscount, that boy would never have been welcome amid such gilt, much less have had the blunt to purchase the Sheldrakes’ house for them.

  Or, hell, perhaps what constrained her was the very fact that he’d purchased their house for them. But what else had he been meant to do? When he’d found out that they could no longer make payments on the lease, he’d acted without considering the more subtle repercussions. That house had been open to him when he’d had no other home to go to. He would not let them be expelled from it.

  They were waiting for his response. He cleared his throat and set down his teacup. “I suppose he was a great horseman. But that isn’t my cousin.”

  Pin-drop silence. A flush mounted Miss Sheldrake’s cheeks. “Who is it, then?”

  “I am abashed to admit I have no idea. I had the place furnished before I assumed occupancy.”

  “But why?” Her face disguised nothing of her thoughts; she found his actions bewildering. “Did the late earl leave you no furnishings?”

  He hesitated. They clearly did not subscribe to any of the society dailies, or they would have known of his decision to let out his cousin’s house to a family of foreigners. He’d borne William no ill will; it was Will’s father who had ruined that house for him. The seventh Earl of Ashmore had provided him with an education, for which he was grateful, but the man had exacted a price for it. Phin had never been welcome there, and on the few occasions he’d visited, he’d been made to listen to lengthy sermons on his father’s faults, when in fact he could have written a book on them with no help at all.

  The Sheldrakes knew something of this strained relationship. When he’d been sent down from Eton for brawling with Tilney, it was to them he’d gone, for his uncle had refused to take him. Thus, to explain his decision regarding the family house would mean introducing a host of uncomfortable memories. His drawing-room manners were rusty, but he did not think that the echoes of that pungent antagonism would complement their biscuits and tea. “I wanted a fresh start,” he said.

  The absurdity of that statement dawned on him as soon as he’d spoken it. But the ladies nodded, as if a fresh start were not a very ironic policy with which to assume an earldom stretching back some three hundred years.

  “A fresh start is always lovely,” Miss Sheldrake said.

  “Oh, yes,” agreed her mother, “perfectly smart.”

  With the way things were going, if he told them that he’d used the earl’s furniture for kindling, they would promptly express admiration for his thrift with firewood.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He’d slept poorly again, and his thoughts were straying with irksome frequency to the small, scented catastrophe sealed in a room upstairs. She was locked in; he’d checked the door thrice before receiving the Sheldrakes. But her very presence in the house scraped his nerves like a blade. He felt not at all prepared for this visit, and certainly ill equipped to play the suitor.

  He schooled himself to the task as the ladies returned to their chairs, focusing on the simple economy of Laura’s movements as she took her seat. Here was what he should dwell on. What a difference her manner posed to Miss Ma
sters’s artful flourishes. Laura had no need for artifice; she presented herself frankly, in a quiet green gown that neither accentuated her curves nor sought to disguise them. And the man who married her would not be purchasing entertainment, but comfort and stability. She would never throw him out of line. Rather, she would keep him within it.

  They were making appreciative note of the fine brocade upholstery. He fought to keep his mounting frustration from coloring his tone. “I’m so glad of your visit,” he said, because he was damned if he would thank them for admiring his brocade.

  “Of course we had to thank you in person,” Mrs. Sheldrake said. You left us no choice, her tone suggested, with that outlandish thing you did. “And I do hope you will enjoy the globe. Mr. Sheldrake would have wanted you to have it, although I fear it is small thanks for the great service you’ve done us.”

  “Thanks are unnecessary,” he said. “But I greatly appreciate the gift.” He was going to lock that globe away in the darkest, most distant corner he could find. He would have smashed it, had his conscience not forbidden him.

  Miss Sheldrake’s green eyes rounded earnestly. There was a soothing simplicity to her wide face; he felt he could chart entire countries in the blank expanses of her cheeks. “Oh, but we had to give it to you!”

  “Of course we did.” Mrs. Sheldrake did not sound happy about it.

  An awkward silence fell. “Well,” he said. “I very much hope that you’ll be able to stay for a few days.” Pray God they did not. Not until Miss Masters was gone.

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Sheldrake, sounding startled by the very idea. Laura was blushing. Had he committed some breach of etiquette, then? Perhaps it was only in the colonies that people paid house visits without warning.

  Yes, of course, that was right. Damn it. He shifted uneasily in his chair. These small, crucial tidbits were coming back to him more slowly than he’d counted on. “Some other time, then,” he said.

  The women exchanged an opaque look. “We don’t wish to impose upon your hospitality,” said Mrs. Sheldrake.