Written on Your Skin

by Meredith Duran

  And indeed, he made it easy for her to relax again. He smiled at her as she stumbled into the parlor, and called for her breakfast, and afterward bundled her into a waiting coach with the casual congeniality of a man with no vested interests. He behaved as a friend of a friend, perhaps, someone charged by circumstance to be cordial, but not ambitious for more than a pleasant hour of company.

  They set off for Chippenham, some twenty miles distant, and arrived shortly before noon, in time to catch the line that ran to Penzance via Bristol. During the long train ride that followed, as the broad fields gave way to vast, gorse-covered moors where scrubby trees bent horizontal beneath the harsh hand of the wind, he entertained her very thoroughly. She answered his good cheer warily at first, and then permitted it to infect her, understanding that it was as manufactured as her willingness to be entertained. Anyway, this casual conversation kept her from having to decide how to feel about the more complex looks that she occasionally caught from him. He asked about New York; he had never been, which amazed her. Her amazement, in turn, amused him. “Perhaps I will go one day,” he said. “You understand I was otherwise occupied, this last decade.”

  “Making maps,” she said. “You were originally trained as a cartographer, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Sometime I’ll tell you about that.”

  “Sometime in the next week,” she said.

  His smile made her nervous. She abruptly asked him about London. He claimed still to be discovering it, thanks to the guidance of old friends. Some of the stories he told her about these friends, in particular Viscount Sanburne, surprised her; she would not have imagined him willing to court such wild company. But he seemed tolerant of his friend’s antics, albeit slightly skeptical of a city that would support such shenanigans so easily. “On the contrary,” she said, “I think it speaks very well of London. One should have room to cause trouble in a city so large.”

  “Then you would thrive there,” he said.

  “I considered it. Then Mr. Ridland soured my view.”

  “He has a talent for that,” Ashmore agreed. “I’ve been trying to convince the powers that be to put him into retirement. Perhaps, when all of this is over, we can redeem your opinion of town.”

  Again, he implied a connection that would last considerably longer than a week. She flushed, and made herself think of his pens.

  Just into Cornwall, a vendor came aboard to sell pies, and to congratulate them for their arrival in the safest county in England. “The devil won’t enter Cornwall, miss, for fear of being put into a pie,” he assured her. Mina could have disproved that; the devil had entered with Collins. But she was too hungry for argument. She ate the squab voraciously, bits of crust falling across her lap, ignoring the example of Ashmore’s elegant system, the genteel flick of his fingers after each bite he ripped off. A small, tidy pile of crumbs began to form in a corner on his side of the compartment. Yes, she liked him, but he found a way to discipline even crumbs. She put out a foot and deliberately dragged them across the carpet. He arched a brow. “What?” she asked, and then, when he shrugged, “Must everything always be neat and tidy for you?”

  “An insistence on the opposite is no less orderly,” he said.

  He had a point. Again she felt a flicker of this morning’s strange panic. She changed the subject to cats and their general ingratitude.

  By the time they arrived in Penzance, it was late afternoon. The look of the people was different; they seemed larger and darker, their Celtic origins undiluted by time. It was not difficult to find a coach in Penzance. The place breathed the spirit of commerce, its Market House a grand, domed marble palace that loomed over the railway station like an invitation to profit. Through the rattling windows of the post chaise, she watched the passage of carts clogged with white broccoli and potatoes, trucks stuffed with stinking piles of pilchard, and finally, at the edge of town, invalids partaking of the mellow, salt-sharpened air on an esplanade of granite overlooking the sea. The road wound up over Mounts Bay, along granite promontories polished by roaring wind and surf to a high, gleaming polish. The ocean beyond them was startlingly vivid, a rippling sheet of pewter and lilac and palest green.

  She was about to find Mama. The certainty held her thoughts in a warm grip as they pulled into the small village and entered the little pub, until the very moment they asked after an Irish-American and his blond companion, and the innkeeper paled and told them of a fire.

  The walk then from the inn to the magistrate’s residence felt like walking into a nightmare. The measure of her senses grew disproportionate, touch and sound swamping vision. She was acutely aware of the murmurs from curious residents who came to join their progress, making a straggling parade. The innkeeper whispered explanations; the villagers issued muffled and eager replies. A mystery was being laid to rest. This mystery was not entertainment to her.

  Ashmore had taken her elbow; she did not remember when she had first become aware of it, only that his grip had been tightening. He was not worrying about her comfort, she understood, only keeping her on her feet. She wanted to tell him, as they passed down the lane flanked by a low stone wall, that she was fine, but she could feel the wet drops from the ocean crashing on the other side of the wall, and the dry breath of the road where the wind stirred dust into her face, and it came to her that the beauty of the countryside might become meaningful; she might have to remember this as the place where Mama had died.

  The idea brought with it a premonition of her own grief, how completely it would flatten her. Mama, only Mama, was hers. Mama was the reason for everything she had done. When the magistrate, startled from his afternoon tea, solemnly produced the items recovered from the fire—a mirror, a spoon, and a ring—she could not speak. She recognized the diamond. Diamonds are the hardest stone, Mama had told her once, and she had thought how fitting it was that men gave women diamonds to mark their love. My heart is hard as diamond, it will not bend or flex for you—yes, it made perfect sense. But this made no sense at all, although the man explained very clearly that bones had been found, in a house high on the cliffs that had burned only two nights ago. A man and a woman had been renting it. No cause for the fire that anyone could determine.

  She found her voice when the man would not hand over the diamond. He needed more proof of identity, he claimed, before surrendering such a valuable item. “You are lying,” she said. “You want to keep it.”

  He flushed, fat and ruffled like an overfed rooster in his red coat. She turned on her heel and walked out into the waiting crowd, bodies scattering away from her like ripples on the water. Bodies: she would not bury Collins’s, but Mama’s—Mama would want to be buried in England.

  “Mina.” A hand on her arm: Ashmore again, not attempting to stop her, simply walking with her. “Here,” he said, and lifted her hand, placed something in it. The diamond ring, warm from the press of his flesh. The sight startled her back into the moment. A ruckus was rising behind them in the lane, a hubbub of speculation. It occurred to her that Ashmore had done something dramatic, that maybe the anger she should be feeling had found its home in him instead, in his fist against the magistrate’s nose. But when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the rooster conferring very thoughtfully with someone; he raised his head to look after them, and the other man, too, turned in their direction. She could not make out their expressions from this distance, but the tilt of their heads suggested that they were reevaluating something.

  “What did you give him?” she asked.

  “A good deal of collateral.”

  “It was not a good trade, then.” Her voice sounded alarmingly dreamy. She tried to speak more forcefully. “Collins gave her this ring.” Now she sounded as though she were proud of the fact. Her fingers squeezed the sharp facets of the stone. “She never stopped wearing it.”

  “Then it was hers,” he said. “And it should be with you.”

  He was kind. She registered that factually as she turned her attention to the l
ane ahead. The houses flanking the main street were a dirty white, their roofs perfectly flat, as though a great thumb had descended to press them against the earth. A flock of crows swarmed onto one of the roofs, cawing, oily wings flapping. It was terribly depressing, the best example imaginable of how a landscape might be ruined. She did not see any burned buildings in the lot. “I’d like to see the house before we go.”

  “Mina—”

  “I insist on it.” She wanted to know if Mama had been able to see the sea.

  Ashmore helped her into the coach before going to ask for the direction. She opened her palm and stared at the ring. Like the locket, it had been a gift from Collins. Mama had worn them for very plain reasons. Not to remind herself, as Mina had first supposed. You are too sentimental, Mina. They’re very fine pieces, and they draw admiration. Why should I surrender them?

  Mina had wondered at such cold pragmatism, in the beginning. Only later had she realized it was her mother’s own form of strength.

  She tilted her hand, letting the ring slip to the base of her finger. Mama had died wearing this. Such a weird temptation, to want to try it on. She and Mama had been of a size.

  Nausea flooded her throat. She reached for her reticule, stuffing the ring inside it as the door to the coach swung open. Her fingers brushed over the butt of her pistol as she looked up, into a face that was not Ashmore’s. The features took a moment to evoke a name, but she knew them; a full-bodied shock rocked her. She had not forgotten this smile, how his mouth looked as though it were trying to eat his lips; her fingers recognized it before her brain did. Her old suitor, so unwanted: Bonham.

  As his booted foot thudded into the interior, her hand was clamping around the pistol butt. She lifted the silk purse and aimed the muzzle at Bonham’s head and primed the gun, one sweet, practiced move. He had a gun in his own hand.

  “Wrong,” she told him. Wrong to think she would be so easy, that grief would transform her into a sitting duck.

  He froze in an awkward crouch, half in, half out of the vehicle. “Wait.”

  Her finger itched on the trigger. Bonham, Collins’s particular protégé. Mr. Bonham admires your spirits; let him deal with them. “Throw away the gun,” she said. Her arm did not shake; her hand held steady.

  “You misunderstand,” he said. “I want to make a trade.”

  “I said throw it.”

  He tossed the pistol out of sight. He had gone white.

  He would go whiter. He would learn what it meant to deal with her spirits. “You are the traitor.” Of course he was. “Did you kill her?”

  He shook his head quickly. “She’s not dead.”

  “Liar,” she said flatly. “I have her ring.”

  “He wants you to think she is, maybe.” Spittle flew from the corners of his mouth. “I’ll make you a better trade. You stole the information, didn’t you? Granville never knew a thing; it was you all along. I’ll give you her whereabouts in return for the cipher.”

  His glance flicked to her pistol, and her muscles braced. These men are trained to move quickly. “Step backward. Put your hands over your head.”

  He put a foot down behind him onto the step. She could not risk killing him. What if he was telling the truth about Mama? “What cipher?” she asked, and his hand drew back and she realized he was going to strike and she aimed at his leg and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing. The chamber clicked, an empty sound. His body flinched. A crow called, and the light shifted, sun breaking over his face.

  He lunged at her.

  The impact of his body knocked her back onto the bench. Her head cracked into the wall. His arm came around her waist and he dragged her toward the door. She braced her feet against the wall as his fingers dug into her flesh; the reticule thunked against the floor, and with a grunt she swung it up into his head.

  Now the gun fired, blasted thing. Bits of wood rained onto her face. He jerked away.

  Free. She shoved herself upright. Gravel crunched as he leapt to the ground. “Wait,” she gasped. He sprang away, out of sight; he thought she was going to shoot him. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling out of the vehicle, then throwing herself back as he dove for his gun. “What do you mean? What cipher?”

  A shot rang out, startling him back. She wheeled and spied Ashmore racing down the lane, his pistol lowering from its skyward aim. He had not wanted to risk shooting her, but now Bonham was fleeing; now he would have a clear shot. “No!” she screamed, but it was too late; Bonham was ducking down a side street, and Ashmore sprinted past her in pursuit. “Don’t shoot him!” she screamed, but he was gone.

  She sagged against the side of the coach, panting, dizzy, numb, the stupid gun still in her hand, how useless it was—if she had shot him in the leg, he couldn’t have gotten away. A little crowd flocked in around her, all the vultures who had tagged along earlier hoping for a glimpse of tragedy. Bonham, of course. Take Monroe to the hospital, he’d said, he may be infectious; she’d been right to think he was looking for a bad opportunity.

  You stole the information. Did he mean the bundle of shipping receipts she had taken from Collins’s study in Hong Kong? They had chronicled his traffic in guns, but Bonham’s name had not been mentioned in them; she would have taken note of that. What else could he mean, though?

  Someone touched her arm, making her jump: a woman with kind brown eyes, nervously glancing now at the gun. They wanted to take her somewhere. They thought tea and a blanket would help her. She laughed, and they stepped away from her. Her eyes fixed on the street into which Ashmore had disappeared. Do not kill him, she thought.

  After some amount of time—a day, a half hour, immeasurable—Ashmore reappeared. She saw no blood on his shirt as he jogged toward her. “Caves down by the cove,” he said, sounding winded.

  “Did you shoot him?”

  He set his hands on his knees and breathed deeply. “No.” He made a low, sharp, frustrated sound. “There was a goddamned pack of children on their way home from school. I couldn’t get a clear shot.”

  “Thank God.”

  One of the villagers started to speak to him—more tea maybe, how ridiculous—but his dark, cutting glance silenced the offer. When he straightened, he pinned her with a sharp regard. “Thank God?”

  “He says Mama isn’t dead. He says he knows where she is.”

  “And you believe him.”

  Anger rose out of nowhere. “I’m sure it’s very easy for you to doubt!”

  He shoved a hand through his hair, considering her, obviously making calculations. “He knows the area,” he said finally. “We need to get you away from here.”

  A couple of the onlookers muttered agreement. “We need to find him,” Mina said. “We know he’s here.” More desperately she added, “Whether or not you believe him—he’s the traitor!”

  “So it seems.” A grim smile curved his mouth. “Pretty little Bonham, working for Ridland. Of course.” He looked down the empty road. “He pressed that brandy on me, didn’t he? He must have thought that I’d uncovered his double-dealing.”

  They had no time for nostalgia. “So find him, then! All your worries will be over!”

  As his attention returned to her, his expression flattened. “There’s no need to try to find him. You’re the one he wants, Mina. He will follow us.” He looked back toward their audience, now muttering speculations, and sighed. “Better that he finds us in a place where we have the advantage.”

  The ruined cottage sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Little remained: blackened bits of timber, chunks of melted glass that glittered in the light. But the little white fence that bound the perimeter had survived unscathed, and the fuchsia and myrtle at its borders blew in the breeze, grotesquely picturesque. The ocean wind carried the smell of soot, a dark, sour weight that still sat in her lungs three hours later, as they waited in a private compartment for the train to depart for Plymouth. She could not rid herself of the smell, although she felt more certain now that Bonham hadn’t been lyin
g. “The ring would not have survived that,” she said again.

  Ashmore had purchased their privacy with a few coins to the guard; now he took the seat next to her. “It does seem unlikely.”

  He had said it before, but his delivery still failed to satisfy her. “He has no cause to lie.”

  “He has plenty of cause. Thanks to Ridland, he believes you have proof that he betrayed the service.”

  “And maybe I do,” she said sharply. “We can still make a trade. I can wire New York for the documents. Jane can send a transcription.”

  He did not speak.

  “It’s the only thing he could have meant,” she said.

  His hand touched her cheek, and she blinked at how hot his fingers felt as he turned her face toward his. “We’ll send a telegram,” he said softly. “And we’ll assume he is telling the truth. But don’t fool yourself, Mina. He has cause to lie.”

  She jerked away. “But she was here. That much is true. The magistrate said as much.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And you didn’t believe she would be, did you?”

  A moment of silence. “No,” he said finally. “Otherwise…”

  Otherwise. She drew a shaky breath as she turned to look out the window. It was not a word she ever allowed herself to use. For those who depended on themselves, doubt was the most intimate enemy. She would not doubt herself. Bonham had been telling the truth.

  She slipped a glance toward Ashmore. His face was dark with old possibilities, useless to everyone now. But he was not the only one to blame here. Two nights ago. Two nights ago, that cottage had still been standing. “I should have told you earlier.” Words that burned. “I should have told you in Whitechapel. We could have been here and gone already.”

  He shook his head. “No. I gave you no cause to trust me. Taking you to Ridland’s…you had no cause.”

  It was generous of him. He always seemed generous where his pride was concerned. It made him utterly singular, in her experience of men.

  She wanted to repay him with truth, to confess that it would not have mattered. Had he fallen to his knees that night in Whitechapel and told her he’d been roaming the world in search of her, that every night for the last four years he’d lain awake worrying about what had become of her, she still would have suspected him. The world is not your enemy, Mama always told her, though she never listened.