A deafening explosion, a whining shiver past her ear. She threw herself aside as the wall behind her burst, disgorging chunks of plaster onto her head. Her eyes locked on Phin’s taller form, her breath, her mind suspended. No question of helping. The other man was pinned beneath him, out of her reach.
Phin made a sudden sharp move, and the other man seemed to lunge away from the wall, only to stagger suddenly back. Phin whipped him around so his back slammed into the wall. The gun clattered to the floor.
She realized how foolish she was. There was no need for her help.
Still, the gun lured her. She inched forward as Phin lifted his elbow and smashed the man across the face. The nauseating crack did not satisfy him; he brought up his knee, and the man curled over it like a rag doll.
Her palm closed over the butt of the pistol. “I have it,” she gasped.
Phin gave no sign of hearing her. He snapped the man’s body flush against his, into a mockery of a lover’s embrace. A wheezing noise filled the air. He was crushing the man’s throat.
“I have it!” Why was she speaking? Her voice sounded grotesque, too clumsy and jagged for the delicacy of this operation. Killing a man without a word.
He grabbed hold of the man’s hair and, with one sharp move, snapped his neck.
Her fingers around the gun hilt went abruptly slack.
Silence.
Her knees gave way. She sank into the plush silk of the carpet.
He must have looked at her, for she caught the glint of his eyes in the darkness. He still held the body clutched to him. Not even his breath made noise.
Her own rasped heavily in her ears. “I have it,” she whispered.
He relinquished the body, his hands subsiding somehow elegantly, like a gesture to accentuate some ongoing conversation. The corpse folded to the floor.
“Are you hurt?”
His voice sounded strange. Colorless.
“Mina.” His voice sharpened to a command. “Speak. Are you hurt?”
“No.” But her joints seemed to have dissolved. Ice was sprouting in her stomach. The cold bloomed outward; it was going to make her shake.
He stepped over the body, toward her. It was not in her to flinch from him, but she would not have blamed some other woman for doing so. The hands that now reached for her shoulders had killed two men with soundless efficiency. The men had cursed and cried out, and he had never made a noise. Their silent, faceless executioner, this man who had touched her so gently.
He pulled her up, guiding her face into his chest. She was indeed trembling, and he gripped her harder and harder yet, as though to hold her together. “It’s all right,” he murmured.
She wasn’t going to lapse into hysterics. It occurred to her to tell him so, but her mind was skipping between other curiosities: that she could feel so safe in his arms, even now. Safer, even. It seemed strange, unhealthy, that he did not shake as well. Every muscle pressed against her was hard, braced for more. I have some practice with such things.
A deep unease awakened in her. She put her arms around him, the butt of the gun lodging by his spine. Her intuition was stirring, suggesting the cost that such practice might exact from a man. He did not shake, but that seemed a worse thing to her by far than trembling. “You’re all right,” she said into his shirt. He was solid, large, whole, and hale. His heart beat steadily beneath her cheek; it actually seemed to be picking up speed now, as though safety were more alarming to him than the threat of death.
The acrid bite of gunpowder scorched the air. Down the corridor, doors were slamming, voices lifting. The servants would be upon them soon.
He pulled away. “Come,” he said quietly. He took her wrists in one hand and bent to retrieve the other pistol.
“Your man is hurt,” she said, remembering.
He stepped inside and hit the button to call the electricity. Gompers’s eyelashes fluttered in the glare. His face looked pale against the dark corona of blood soaking the carpet. She thought Phin would go to him, but he pulled her onward, keeping her directly behind him as he surveyed the corners and alcoves in the room.
“There’s no one else,” she murmured.
His grip tightened until it was a hair short of painful. The open window had caught his attention. When he turned to face her, his tanned skin looked abnormally pale and his expression was flat and lifeless, clay yet to be animated by the breath of life. “You see the use of windows,” he said.
She opened her mouth, but found no reply at the ready.
His glance switched to the doorway. The footman was now awake and groaning, struggling to push himself upright. “I need to deal with this.” When he looked back at her, there was nothing in his face that she felt able to speak to. “You will not argue,” he said. “Come with me.”
He deposited her in his inner sanctum, a dark, sparsely furnished room that indeed had no windows. She might have found it intolerable, had every appointment not spoken so intimately of him. The maps, the opened books on the table, the carefully sketched drawings of mountains and deep valleys, they were his, and she felt enfolded by him.
All the same, she would have preferred his embrace.
Curled up on a sofa, she listened to the dim, distant sounds that managed to penetrate the walls. Doors opening, closing. The comings and goings of men, debating on matters, drawing up plans. The sun must have risen, but she would not have known it save for the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
As the shock wore off, she found herself wondering at her compliance. Waiting never worked. Tonight had proved it. If Bonham wanted her so badly, he would come for her anywhere.
And if Phin needed her, she half thought that he would never come. The shadows in his face tonight were not all owed to rage. Some of them had looked like resignation.
She stepped out through the antechamber, into the hall. Two new guards stood there, men she thought she recognized from her brief time at Ridland’s. “Take me to Ashmore,” she said.
“He is not to be disturbed.” This from a young blonde with a lantern jaw and something of Ridland’s cold humor in his eyes.
She still had the purloined pistol. She lifted it and watched him recoil. “Take me to him,” she repeated.
On the threshold of the study, she stopped. Phin sat in an armchair, staring into a fire that smoked low in the hearth. The disarranged chairs, the uncapped decanter and emptied glasses testified to a meeting recently adjourned. But it was not the uncharacteristic disorder, or even the darkness of his expression, that gave her pause.
A long pipe sat in front of him.
Of course it did. How had it escaped her? That night when he had caught her in here, the air had been dirtied with it. She had spent too much time in Hong Kong not to recognize the odor. But its apparent mismatch to the circumstances—and to the man himself—had blinded her.
“Opium,” she said on a breath. “How intriguing.”
His eyes remained on the fire. “Only for a woman raised among wolves.”
The air smelled pure. He had not smoked it yet. “True enough.” She stepped inside, pulling the door shut. “I wasn’t raised in the woods to be scared by an owl.”
Now his head turned. His lashes were not thick enough to veil the unnatural flatness of his regard. “Your woods were not dark enough,” he said. “You have no idea what I am.”
She hesitated, her fingers moving nervously over the pistol in her palm. She weighed her next words carefully. “I saw you earlier. It was not so dark that I couldn’t see you, Phin.”
His laughter was short and dull. “Yes, that’s right. Were you impressed?”
She considered him, her eyes lingering on his languid posture in the chair, the loose drape of his legs stretched out before him. “Yes,” she said, and was only a little surprised to realize that she meant it. “I’ve told you before, if I could master such skills, I would. There’s no virtue in becoming a victim.”
For a long moment, it seemed he would not respond. Then a bitter s
mile curved his lips. “How generously you render it. A funny thing, Mina. I have never been glad of my skill at killing. I told myself I had no choice. But tonight…perhaps it would disarrange your admiration if you knew that I almost enjoyed it.”
“I would not believe that,” she said softly.
He shrugged. “Believe as you like. But getting that bastard’s throat between my hands—that had nothing to do with clear thinking. It was…” He shook his head. His hands lay open on his lap; he spread his fingers to look into his palms, his long fingers flexing once. “I would do it again,” he said softly. “Gladly.”
She snorted. “Yes, I should hope so. You were saving my life. I should hope you took some satisfaction in that.”
He looked at her, his expression inscrutable. “True. I think I would kill anyone who touched you with violent intent. That shouldn’t comfort you, you know.” His glance brushed briefly over the pipe. “My judgment stands in question. 1 cannot afford to lose control.”
“I have no fear you will,” she said. “Not unless the circumstances require it.”
“Oh?” Black humor moved across his face. He reached out to flick a finger against the pipe in one of his curiously elegant, almost feminine gestures. “I used this last night.” His self-contempt sounded detached, analytical. “Since I returned, 1 am a goddamned lunatic whose brain cannot be trusted. My thoughts go awry.” He paused. “You’ve seen it. On the train.”
She frowned. Coming into London, he had seemed near to losing his composure. But it would not have been the first time she’d overset a man. Evidently, he believed there was more to it.
Well, perhaps there was. She would be the last person to scoff at the complexities of the mind—she, who had unlearned the art of sleeping peacefully alone; she, whose mother had startled from unseen terrors for a year or more after their return to New York. “The trials you’ve undergone…” She could only begin to guess at them all. “They warrant disquiet, Phin.” He would share them with her, and thereby halve his burden: she silently made the vow. “If they didn’t trouble you, then I should worry about your judgment. But as it is—time is what you require. It gets better; slowly, it does. I promise you that.”
He sat back. “Comforting,” he said dismissively, and she felt her heart fall. “In the meantime, while I wait, I smoke poison to calm myself. As a result, I almost slept through your murder.” He paused, his stare challenging. “You see in whose judgment you place your trust.”
Impatience burned away her sympathy. “Trust is always a risk,” she said flatly. “One you refuse to take, on either yourself or me. Self-pity, though—I see that is a choice you’ll gladly make.”
“That again?” He sprang from the chair with violent force. “I grow sick of this goddamned debate. I will not take it on my head to risk you simply so you can say you had a part in it!”
She scoffed. “A part in it? You think I want the right to brag?”
“What the hell else can it be? Unless you think me utterly incompetent?”
“That’s the last thing I think you,” she said bitterly. “Alas, you don’t feel the same for me. You would have me wait with my hands tucked beneath my skirts so you can fix the matter for me, because God forbid I should have any say in it whatsoever! Yes, you can fix my messes—but can’t I do the same? Certainly I did not require your guidance when I saved your life four years ago!”
“And what a trouble it would be to you,” he said scathingly, “to be given an option for safety—”
She gave a wild laugh. “To be kept like a stuffed bird of paradise. Do you think that’s how I want to live? In a very pretty cage? Do you think I want to live, if that’s the cost? My mother made that trade, and you see how it worked out for her. Thank you very much, but I will not do it, even for you!”
After a long moment, he exhaled. “So. You would play bait in a trap of our making. What difference? It would still come down to depending on me for your safety.”
She slammed the gun onto the table and spread her empty hands. Defenseless. “Yes,” she said. “And here we get to the heart of the matter. I am very willing to depend on you. Of all people, it is you I would depend on. But you refuse to understand that. It’s not enough for you. You say you care for me, but—”
“Mina.” His eyes met hers, dark and unblinking. “Care is not the right word.”
She caught her breath. “Don’t tell me you love me,” she whispered. “Not like this.”
He ran a hand over his mouth. When it fell, a sneer curved his lips. “By some sick and twisted joke of the universe—”
“We’ve found each other like this,” she snapped. “Yes, and love isn’t always a blessing. You want to make this love convenient. And so you will make decisions for me at my expense, knowing that you tread on my nightmares. How comfortable for you.”
“Goddamn it! Can you not be bloody reasonable for once?”
“Reason? What would a madman know of it? My God, I must be mad, too, to think that I love such a mule-headed fool! You think your thoughts are disordered? For God’s sake, Phin, you’re a man who orders his dratted pens! And that’s your problem! If you’d cast off your goat-hair shirt, you would realize there’s no need to be orderly all of the time! But if you insist on it—of course you will drive yourself mad. And me too, if you have your way!”
Turning on her heel, she stalked out, past the guard. She would not go back to his rooms. The hallway passed in a blur; no matter how fast she walked, the blonde was always at her heels. She threw the door to her apartment shut on his nose.
“Miss!” Sally, caught scrubbing blood from the carpet, clamped a hand onto her mobcap. “Oh, miss, it’s glad I am to see you! Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m brilliant.” She fell into the chair by the window, glowering out at the blasted garden. The morning sunlight was spilling over the boxed-in flowers. Someone should set fire to it. Someone should turn the soil up and plant nothing but weeds.
“Miss?” Sally spoke hesitantly. “I thought you should know, a piece is missing from the jewelry box.”
She spoke absently, unable to pull her eyes from the garden. “The jewelry box?”
“Yes, miss, they upended it, but all the pieces are accounted for save your locket.”
“I have that,” she said. She had fallen asleep wearing it, but it had scratched her in the night, and she had taken it off and cast it under the bed.
Her thoughts sharpened. Surely they hadn’t been looking for it?
A warm weight landed in her lap. By instinct, she gasped and threw her hands up to shield her face. But it was only the cat. It took a moment to comprehend this. The cat had jumped into her lap.
“Perverse,” she muttered. He butted his head into her torso. Of course, after hiding like a coward last night, he would want attention now, when she had all but given up on him. He hit his head harder against her and then rubbed himself along her rib cage. She sighed and scratched him behind the ears. Such stubbornness had to be rewarded, she supposed.
The door smacked open, frightening Washington to the floor. She came to her feet. Phin paused on the threshold, his face black with fury. “Not even bothering to knock,” she said sarcastically. “Yes, you’re getting the way of it now, aren’t you?”
He strode toward her, his hand reaching into his jacket. “Here,” he said, and pulled out the pistol she’d abandoned.
Sally gave a strangled squeak. Mina did not take her eyes from his face. “Go,” she said to the maid.
His nostrils were flaring with the force of his breath. Even had he sprinted across the house, it should not have winded him so. The latch clicked shut behind Sally. He extended the pistol, the muzzle pointed toward the floor. “Take it,” he said harshly. “You want to kill yourself to make a point about the tragedies of womanhood? Do it here. Now. Make me watch.”
Her pulse was thudding in her throat. “Don’t be stupid.”
He snatched her hand and forced it to the butt of the
gun, lifting it so the barrel settled against his chest. “Or maybe you want to shoot me? I’m the villain here, after all. I’m the one who’s driving you mad. The trigger is yours, Mina.”
She forced herself not to recoil. She had never seen him in such a state. His eyes were bloodshot, wild, and his fingers trembled over hers, for all that they gripped her more unbreakably than iron. If she yanked back, he would not let her go. She knew, had learned last night, not to trust guns in such a tussle. “Stop it,” she whispered.
He spoke slowly, each word distinct and cutting. “What do you want, then?”
“Your trust,” she said.
“Christ. Take it,” he said curtly, and she caught the gun as he pulled his hand free. Shoving a hand through his hair, he turned a tight circle. When his eyes met hers again, he looked no calmer, but his exhaustion seemed more marked, the lines around his eyes deeper. “This is not a matter of trust,” he said. “I did not think you so goddamned stupid.”
Her hand tightened around the revolver’s grip. What a terrible weight it exerted on her hand, as cold as the feeling in her chest, pulling her down. “I want to know that you believe me capable. That now and—and in the future, you will let me take risks, not simply try to…protect me.”
He shook his head slightly, whether in disbelief or denial, she could not tell. “All I want to do is protect you,” he said, but there was something resigned in his voice, as if he loathed himself for it or thought she would mock him for the sentiment. “It’s not weakness that makes me worry about you, Mina. It’s love, and you bloody well know it. I love you.”
She drew a hard breath through her nose. “Yes,” she said. “I know. And—I love you as well.” As his frown faded and he stepped toward her, she retreated a pace.
“But…” Love does fizzle, with time. Her mother had said that once. And if it did, what would remain but this? Obligation, worry, concern, if she was lucky. Otherwise—only his power over her, to keep her in this house when she might want to leave.
“You are testing me,” he said flatly. “You don’t even realize it. You want to prove something. How do you not see that it will come at your own expense?”
Written on Your Skin Page 27
