Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran Page B

him from the fact that she hadn’t answered his question. “Didn’t you? You disappeared from your rooms without a trace.” From the looks of it, she had smashed the window and clambered down a wall—not an achievement he could match with the petite body before him, those wrists as slim as flower stems. Even if she’d had the help of her manservant, that climb would have taken a nerve of steel, and a temperament unlikely to be trembling after being knocked to the floor. Either there was more to her escape than he knew, or less fear in her than she wanted him to realize. “Surely,” he said more slowly, “you expected someone to worry.”
    Her little shrug could have meant anything. She glanced past him to where Cronin sat on a stool, his boot heel scuffing the floor. The man had sold his loyalty quite cheaply, and for the past hour, at a guess, he’d been entertaining regrets about his price. “Is my man all right?” she asked. That she did not address this question to Phin seemed telling. Her apparent relief at his appearance did not extend to trusting him.
    “Reckon so,” Cronin muttered. “This one tied him up and had him carted off, but he was well enough, last I saw him.”
    Her large eyes returned to Phin. “Where is he, then? Does Ridland have him?”
    Not Mr. Ridland. Simply Ridland. It seemed a peculiarly masculine form of address for a sheltered girl to use. I drink nothing but champagne. Had her tastes changed in the intervening years? “I have him,” Phin said. “And it seems I have you, as well. Perhaps it would serve you better to wonder what I mean to do with you.”
    “Why, you will protect me, I hope. That’s why Ridland sent you, isn’t it?”
    He smiled, and perhaps she saw the grimness in it, for her eyes dropped. Ridland did not send him anywhere these days. He’d made that clear enough. I am not going to help you, he’d told the man.
    Then why are you here? Anxiety had etched sweet shadows beneath Ridland’s reddened eyes. To gloat? I heard of your meetings at Westminster.
    Good, Phin had thought. Let him stew. I came to tell you that she is no longer your concern.
    Ridland’s laughter had grated. Good luck to you, then. She is a hard woman to hold.
    The words had struck a chord. Someone had told him something similar once. Someone wiser than he, perhaps. He recalled her as buffleheaded, and her quivering manner supported the recollection. But for all that her hands fluttered from her nape to her waist, tangling there helplessly, her eyes held his too steadily to silence his mounting caution.
    There was always the possibility, however peculiar, that Ridland had facilitated her escape. Phin could think of no reason for it; but then, he’d been trying very hard not to think of Ridland at all. And certainly, the man had shown uncharacteristic restraint in his treatment of her, for Miss Masters’s pearly nails appeared wholly intact. Indeed, the whole of her appeared too damned pristine for an innocent American girl who’d spent a week wandering the London slums.
    Like a compass being turned, he felt his expectations realigning themselves. If she was more than she seemed—if she was working with Ridland to entangle him in some bad business—then she was bound for disappointment. As of now, he had no intention of underestimating her.
    His close study was making her frown. “I have no need to worry, do I?”
    “Oh, there’s always cause for worry,” he said mildly. It was easier like this, anyway. He felt curiously relieved. This role fitted him far better and more familiarly than that of the savior. “But I assume you did not mean to be philosophical. Do you realize where you are, Miss Masters?”
    She looked around. “In a cellar?”
    “In an area of London to which even I don’t travel unarmed.”
    She blinked. “But I was armed, sir.”
    Yes, this pretty pearl-encrusted pistol might have terrorized a dollhouse or two. He flipped it again, wondering if it was loaded.