Free Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran

old fellow! Couldn’t let you sleep through it. Carriage is waiting at the curb. Look lively,” he added, with a jerk of his chin in the direction over Phin’s shoulder.
    Fretgoose, the absurdly named valet—his valet now (“If you wish it, sir”), a rotund, graying inheritance from his cousin, and his uncle before him—crept forward to proffer a robe. Phin stood and stuck out his arms, feeling, as always, faintly ridiculous to be dressed like a child’s doll. “Who’s aboard?”
    Sanburne reached into his jacket, producing a flask. “The usuals. Dalton, Tilney, Muir. Elizabeth threatens to join, no doubt with Nello in tow, so we’re working on a plan of concealment. I said your counsel would come in handy.”
    This was Sanburne’s new tactic: to allude, regularly, to whatever he imagined Phin’s expertise to be, no doubt by way of inviting a conversation on the matter. It would be a simple thing to put his curiosity to rest. I stole things. I killed people. And I drew a few maps. But it had occurred to Phin that the viscount was too bored to receive these tidings with the proper revulsion. He might see them as novel options for keeping himself occupied. “I thank you for your faith,” Phin said.
    Sanburne smiled back, all cheerful transparency. “You’ll come, then.”
    He shrugged. “I had a meeting scheduled with someone at Stanfords. Great batch of maps coming up for sale in Rome.”
    “Good God, don’t you own enough of them already? It’s the Derby, Phin! If the whole city does not exit to Epsom Downs by noon, a calamity befalls the town. I believe Nostradamus wrote of it once.”
    Phin sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d finally gotten a handle on the business of holding a title—of managing estates and finances, and of occupying a chair in a thoroughly useless section of Parliament, where fat-cheeked men debated the occupation of countries they would never visit and proposed wars so readily it seemed the blood of strangers flowed more cheaply than water.
    The social program still eluded him, though. He was expected to make appearances, he understood that much. To find a wife, to lend his name to a few charitable committees. It seemed easy enough. All the rules had been laid out plainly; he need only follow them. But he hesitated. Why, he could not say. He wasn’t going to make a mess of it; he was nothing like his father. And if he were, why then, he would only be like Sanburne, whom London society seemed to adore.
    The thought struck a nerve. He dropped his hand to consider the man. They had been very close as schoolboys, bound by that peculiar camaraderie only possible between opposites. Sanburne had enjoyed getting into scrapes; Phin found a strange satisfaction in fixing them. Sanburne spent money like water, and watching him waste it on empty pleasures made Phin feel better about not having any to spend. It had been Sanburne’s family with whom he holidayed during university. We are brothers in every way that matters, Sanburne used to say. The rings beneath his eyes spoke of dissipation, but to liken him to Stephen Granville felt…disloyal. Dishonorable.
    Sanburne, slouching loose-limbed against the wall, mistook his examination for hesitance. “It’s all in good fun,” he said.
    “All right.” He wanted an opportunity, perhaps, to disprove the aptness of the comparison before it could take root in his brain.
    “Brilliant.” The viscount pocketed his flask. “I predict a reprise of the Cremorne glory. You made a tidy sum that year.”
    On money Sanburne had lent him. He’d been three sheets to the wind, to decide to gamble. But back then he’d fancied himself in training for the army, where real men drank just as hard as his father, yet still managed to wake up at dawn to pursue noble ends. It seemed very distant now. If Sanburne expected a reprise, he was bound for disappointment. “Give me a quarter hour.”
    Sanburne sketched a mocking bow. “I’ll wait