But there was no room in her for charity at present, only this flat black expanding anger. Her eyes felt hot and swollen from the pressure of it. She drew a breath. Not your fault, she thought. I should have trusted you. This close, she could smell the scent of him, so much better than ash and soot. No bayberry soap to disguise him now; nothing but musk and sweat, a man who had sweated in pursuit of a villain. He had tried. So had she.
She put her forehead to his shoulder. The train shuddered around them as his hand settled against her hair. His palm was large; she felt cradled by it, oddly protected.
The train whistle screamed. Why did they make the whistle sound so much like a shriek? It was as if the train were crying out in anticipation of agony, dreading the moment it would be forced to scrape its belly down the rails. Perhaps she, too, should be anticipating pain. All it had taken was a liar’s quick words to make her cast off her grief.
A noise broke from her. She pressed her lips shut around it. There were so many horrors in the world, and now this journey might become another one.
He said nothing. His fingers stroked down her hair. He had liked to lecture her in Hong Kong. But he had never lectured her when she was being honest.
She drew a hard breath through her nose. “You’re right,” she muttered. “I have no cause to believe Bonham.”
“But you are right about the ring,” he said. “In such a blaze, it should have melted.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Her hand crept up his torso, slipping under his jacket to fist in his shirtfront. He was warm and alive and his arm came around her, holding her tightly to him. The train lurched forward, groaning, creaking. She had thought this nightmare would be over by now, that she would be waltzing away from Providence with Mama. She was naïve. She opened her mouth to admit it, and her lungs seized so powerfully she choked with the effort to hold in the sob. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.
“Cry,” he murmured. “It’s all right.”
“They—” Her voice broke; she swallowed and tried again. “They’ll hear. And y-you said not to—draw notice.”
“It’s all right.”
“Why?” She choked it out. “There’s—no need to cry. If the ring didn’t melt, he was telling the truth. There’s a chance.”
“Even if he was. There are still reasons.”
She opened her mouth again and the retching sound dimly startled her. She tried to inhale deeply, to calm herself, but she could not breathe without this ugly sound reaching into her lungs and retrieving the breaths she drew. She was capable of ugliness, and he knew it now.
The thought relaxed her. He had heard her; she was not so adept at containing herself at all.
His hands moved to her waist. He pulled her out of her seat and onto his lap, cradling her against his chest. Cry, she told herself, and tears welled from her eyes, hot and as salty as seawater. To see so much water below, as one burned above…it could not be true; Bonham must be right. She wondered if she would faint. She could not draw a breath and the whole world seemed to be shaking around her; only the darkness behind her eyes seemed stable.
His voice came to her dimly as his fingers threaded through her hair, his low, golden murmur like the sun on her temple: In London, all would be well. In London, they would sort this out. Incantations for a child—she knew these words. So many times she had tried to soothe her mother’s tears this way. She had soothed Mama in every way she knew how, but she had not possessed such a voice, or a lap large enough for Mama to curl up on. She had never been enough for Mama, and maybe now she understood what her mother longed for. It was not so bad to be held, to be small enough to be held. His arms closed around her, and something in her, something she had thought unreachable and incurable, began to calm.
I can comfort myself, she’d told Mama. And so she could, if she had to. But why should she have to? He had never made any promises that he did not keep. He had told the truth, that night he’d retrieved her from Whitechapel: he had never promised they would come for Collins by sunset. Perhaps she had resented his hairsplitting because she had so little practice with what the truth sounded like. The truth was not always pleasant; sometimes it made you hate a person, until you learned better and knew to be grateful for it. I wish Mama had someone like you.
Words wanted out, but when she spoke, they were not what she’d anticipated, because the thought that powered them was foreign and startling. I want someone like you. “You didn’t want to touch me,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “I did.”
She swallowed hard. “No. In Hong Kong.”
His lips touched her temple. “Yes,” he murmured. “Mina, I did.”
He was lying. Or he had wanted to entertain himself, but his profession had not allowed it. “You thought I was an idiot.” Her voice jerked with the force of her hitching breath. “You thought I was a trollop. A forward, empty-headed flirt.”
She could feel the hard beat of his heart beneath her hand. When one always felt the need for wariness, it became easy to forget that other people were made of flesh and not stone. Even cruelties were fueled by warm blood—Collins had wept for his brother’s passing, and Bonham had made her laugh, once or twice. Even the greatest villain still sighed in the night, and ached now and then with affection. Mama was right; she’d grown too cold, to have to remind herself of such things.
She pressed harder against the warm, strong frame of his ribs, and felt his pulse quicken in reply. His dark eyes were opaque by habit; when she pulled away now and he let her see everything, his regret and his hesitance to be honest with her, it was because he willed her to see them. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. That’s what I thought.” His hand cupped her cheek; his thumb stroked the corner of her mouth.
Her relief at this candor made her boneless. She felt almost like kissing him. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her free hand groped at his arm, pulling it down so she could feel for the scar at the base of his thumb. “You know that I have scars, too.”
“Yes,” he said simply.
It did not surprise her at all that he had noticed and decided not to remark on them. He had a talent for waiting, and for subtlety of all kinds; he let her go at her own pace. But sometimes she could startle him. “You were so amazed, when I woke you with the coca.”
She reached up to trace the curve of his faint, answering smile. He spoke around her finger. “If I was surprised, it was by your design. You didn’t want me to see you.”
“Yes.” How clever she had felt. She’d thought she was doing Mama a great favor by saving Ashmore, that her daring would mean their escape from Collins. And for a time, it had meant such. Four years. Only four. She put her face back against his chest, the tears starting again. Had it been worth it? She would not know until she knew the truth about her mother.
But had she acted differently, the body that held hers so fiercely now might be dead, rotted, brittle bones. One could never know which small decisions would spin out like webs, creating new worlds, unimagined possibilities.
The lifting sensation inside her didn’t seem right. What if Mama was dead? Then these thoughts, this conversation, would be appallingly self-indulgent. That she should sit here talking of herself and him, of moments long forgotten, as if such trivia even mattered when her mother might be gone—“Perhaps you were right,” she said, and let go of his wrist. “You saw me clearly. I am still a featherbrained trollop. Look what I did with you.”
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 tha
t 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.”
Written on Your Skin Page 24
