Page 73 of His Sinful Touch

“Ease up. Don’t try to pull out the memory by force. Just tell me what you do recall.”

She nodded and took a breath. “Um, I got up—well, I rolled off the bed, actually. I was wobbly and...curiously remote, almost as if I were watching someone else. Nothing seemed quite real.” She glanced at him.

Alex nodded grimly. “I think you’d been drugged.”

“Yes, I suppose I had, looking back on it. When I got to the door, I found that he’d locked me in.” Alex let out an oath, but she ignored it. “Our cases were over here, and I grabbed mine. I was going to climb out the window, but somewhere in there I thought about a disguise. I hadn’t time to change—and frankly, I’m not sure I was clearheaded enough to have done so right then. So I opened his case and took some of his clothes. And there was that bag of money. I stole it—I was thinking clearly enough to know I’d need money—and put it with my things. I had to take my dress from my bag to fit in his clothes. I even took his shoes. Not the cap, though, I took that from a hook in the stables. I really was quite larcenous.”

“I think you can be excused for it. What did you do then?”

“I heard Peter at the door and I tried to climb out the window, but he grabbed my arm, and we struggled. I was hitting and kicking him, and he slapped me.” She glanced at Alex and said lightly, “Don’t look so murderous. I don’t think that caused all my bruises—a lot of it was the fall.”

“Which was his fault, too. I intend to have a talk with Peter Dearborn when we get back.”

“A talk?”

“Something more than a talk,” he admitted. “But go on. How did you get away?”

“I think he was surprised, actually, by slapping me. I grabbed the water pitcher and bashed him with it. I climbed out the window. I was going to climb down the drainpipe, you see. But he leaned out the window and grabbed me, and I couldn’t get away from him. I kept tugging and...he fell. He’d leaned too far out. But he still had a grip on me, so he pulled me down with him.” Sabrina went to the window and stood gazing down at the roof below them. “I must have hit the roof and rolled off it. I don’t remember any of that.”

“Let’s go downstairs,” Alex suggested, taking Sabrina’s elbow and turning her toward the door. “You should sit down and rest, have something to drink, take a few moments to adjust to all this.”

Sabrina nodded. The nausea and headache were receding, but she still felt jittery and tumbled up inside. They went downstairs, where Alex quickly arranged for a private parlor and a pitcher of cider. Sabrina was soon ensconced in a comfortable chair by a window, Alex pulling another chair close to her and taking her hand. She looked at him and smiled faintly, squeezing his hand. “I’m all right. Really.”

“You looked terribly pale for a moment there.”

“I’m not going to faint, I promise. But it’s so strange.” She frowned, reaching up to rub her temples. “I can hardly remember anything right before I woke up in that room. What I can remember is like my dream, but no more solid than the dream was—just a vague sense of being woozy, almost asleep as I stood there with Peter...wherever it was. And that man talking at me. I was so hot. I felt as if I could hardly breathe.”

“He had to have drugged you. I can’t wait to get my hands on him.”

“Well, I hope never to see him again,” Sabrina said flatly.

“Before that, what’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being in my room at home.”

“Home? You remember where you lived?” Alex’s face brightened.

“Yes. Well, it isn’t really my home. It’s the Dearborns’ estate in Wiltshire.”

“That’s excellent. We’ll get a map, locate the place, and then we can plot the likeliest course you took from there to here. It will give us some reasonable limits to where this ‘wedding’ might have taken place.”

“Mrs. Jones!” boomed a cheerful voice from the doorway. “Mrs. Jones, how good to see you again.” The voice belonged to a man as large as the voice implied—he had a rounded, wide body topped by a rounded, wide face.

“Good heavens. Another name,” Sabrina said under her breath. “Little wonder I couldn’t remember my own.”

Alex turned and stood up, and the other man stopped abruptly. “I—I beg your pardon, sir. I thought...” His gaze went back to Sabrina, and his voiced faltered again, his face growing even more puzzled.

“I am the lady’s brother,” Alex said quickly. “Mr. Moore.”

“Ah, I see, sir,” the other man replied, though his face clearly said he did not. He bowed to Alex. “My name is Hudspeth. I am the proprietor here at The Blind Ox. We were honored by Mr. and Mrs. Jones’s company a few weeks ago.” Turning once again to Sabrina, he went on, “I am pleased to see you have returned, ma’am. Especially after you had to depart so quickly. I was alarmed to hear that you were so ill.”

“It was rather touch and go,” Alex agreed blandly.

“I knew it must be something dire,” the innkeeper said, unable to quell the spark of curiosity in his tone. “When they came in, I told my wife, ‘Mrs. Hudspeth,’ I said, ‘that poor little lass is dead on her feet.’” Looking suddenly alarmed, he added, “Not really dead, you understand. Just pale, you know, and drooping. Mr. Jones had to half carry you up the stairs. So it wasn’t a surprise when his father told me Mr. Jones had had to take you to a doctor.”

“I’m sorry about, um, taking your horse,” Sabrina said.

“Ah.” He made a dismissive noise. “It was no matter. An emergency like that—a single horse is faster than a carriage. And, of course, the elder Mr. Jones was kind enough to compensate me and send the animal back when he joined you.”