Page 35 of His Sinful Touch

“If only I could! No, I didn’t know where it was located or even what role it played in your life. When I held the pocket watch, I saw that house. So I drew it and gave the drawing to Tom to find.”

Sabrina’s eyes widened. “No wonder it took days.”

“Well, from the look of it, I had some idea the areas where he might find it, but yes, it was quite an undertaking for poor Tom.”

“Is that man in the picture the owner of the watch?”

“I don’t know, but it seems likely. I couldn’t tell much about him from the watch. I could sense love and pride. It’s hard to explain, but there was a certain sense of him, his being. And in the study there, I felt traces of that same presence. I think he must have lived there.”

Sabrina nodded, sorrow settling in her chest. “He must be dead, I think. Don’t you? Why else would I be in possession of his watch? And you told me the neighbors said he’d been gone from there for years.”

“I rather think he is, yes.” Alex’s gaze was kind. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” She half smiled. “It’s odd. I didn’t recognize him—I have no feelings for him. But it makes me sad. Perhaps he was my father. But whatever he was to me, I’ll never know him now.” After a moment, she added, “If he is dead, that means he couldn’t have been the one who hit me, so I’m glad for that.”

“We will find out who he is and what happened to him,” Alex said firmly. “I promise you. Soon you’ll know everything about yourself.”

Knowing how badly Alex wanted to reassure her, Sabrina smiled at him. But it had been so long...in her heart she was beginning to wonder if she would ever know herself.

The next morning, Alex and Sabrina went to Uncle Bellard’s room as soon as breakfast was over. He hadn’t come down to eat, so Alex grabbed a plate of food and Sabrina a cup of tea for Alex’s uncle, and they carried them up to him. Sabrina was worried that perhaps the fragile-looking man was ill, but Alex assured her that despite his appearance, his great-uncle was as strong as an ox and had no doubt merely lost track of the time.

When they opened his door, she saw that Alex was right. Bellard was sitting at one of the tables, hunched over an open book on the only surface not covered with models of battles. He was dressed in the evening clothes he had worn the night before at supper, indicating that he had never gone to bed, and his wispy white hair stuck out all over his head in all directions, as if he had been tugging it with his fingers. This surmise was strengthened by the fact that his hands were plunged into his hair right now, holding his head, as he read.

He did not look up at the sound of their entrance, and Alex had to call his name twice before the old man glanced up. “Oh, Alex, dear boy. I thought you were out on one of your adventures.”

“We were...last night. It’s past breakfast now.”

“Is it?” Bellard looked toward the windows, where light shone from beneath the edges of the drapes. “Excellent. I thought I was getting rather peckish.”

“That’s good, because we brought you up some food.”

“I was reading about the Battle of Thermopylae. I’m not as much a scholar of ancient Greece and Rome as your father, of course, but I found it fascinating. Hopelessly outnumbered, standing firm at the pass—it’s the perfect example of courage, but also a textbook use of the terrain to counter one’s lack of numbers.”

“Indeed,” Alex agreed. Sabrina wondered if he knew what Uncle Bellard was talking about; she certainly didn’t. However, she had found that ignorance was no obstacle to a conversation with the historian. Alex set the plate down on the table beside his uncle’s book. “Here you are. May I move your book?”

“Oh, yes.” The old man glanced around at the jumble of soldiers emptied out on one end of the table and the floor beside him already stacked with books. Finally he carried the large book to his chair by the fire, laying it out open on the seat. “There now. This looks delicious. And tea! Thank you, dear girl.”

Bellard set aside his reading glasses and tucked into his food. Dispelling all notion of the lack of mental acuity his vague manner implied, he said, “Did you find anything at the house you visited last night?”

“We did, indeed.” Alex pulled up a stool for Sabrina to sit on, then perched on the edge of the table, bracing himself with one leg on the floor. “We found a photograph of a family—we think the child in the picture was Sabrina.”

“Really?” He looked at her with bright interest. “But you did not, I take it, find any indication of a name.”

“No. Only the furniture and wall decorations were left there. All personal items had been cleaned out. It’s obviously been occupied only by tenants.”

“I wonder why they left the paintings,” Bellard mused.

“Gave it a homier look, I imagine. People living there just for the Season wouldn’t want to be hauling all their paintings about, but bare walls make it so obviously leased. Tom will look into the records today, but there was one other thing we discovered that might help. We’re assuming that all the paintings were left there by Sabrina’s family—certainly the photograph and a large portrait were. There was another pen-and-ink drawing in the study. Sabrina recognized the subject as Wells Cathedral.”

“Wells, eh?” Bellard was quick to catch the significance. “So you think that perhaps you are familiar with Wells. That you perhaps lived there at some point. Or at least visited often.”

“Exactly,” Alex agreed.

“Of course, I’m not sure I was correct,” Sabrina added. “It might not have been Wells.”

“That’s easy enough to check,” Uncle Bellard told her cheerfully, setting aside his half-finished plate and popping up to go to his book cabinets. He slid his fingers along the spines of one shelf, pulled one out and flipped through it, then did the same for another. “Ha! I knew there was a drawing in one of these books, just couldn’t remember which.” He brought it back to the table and laid it down, open to a drawing of a cathedral.

“That’s it,” Alex said. “It’s from a different angle, but that’s the same cathedral.”