His Sinful Touch

by Candace Camp

  “Oh. It’s named after some princess that spent the night here a long time ago.”

  Some princess, Sabrina thought with an inward smile. That was typical of the Morelands, she was beginning to realize. They were obviously a family of great station and wealth, but they seemed oblivious to it.

  “Do you like it? I’m sure Phipps could move you to a different one.” He glanced around the room, as if trying to judge whether it would do.

  “Of course. It’s very nice.” It was, in fact, a little oppressive, with its heavy dark furniture and the looming tester of the bed, but there were two windows that opened on a large garden in the back—imagine that, a garden backed by an expanse of green grass and trees behind a house in London—and the bed looked wonderfully high and soft, as if one would sink into it like a cloud.

  “And in a different wing from my chamber. Phipps does his best to keep us respectable despite ourselves.”

  “Really? You’re a long way away?” That thought brought a little knot of nerves to her stomach.

  “Not that far, really, just turn left down that hallway. But the ‘bachelor wing,’ as Phipps terms it, is suitably separate from the family and guest rooms. Mother never believed in shutting children away in a nursery, but neither did anyone want to have Con and me living too close by.”

  Sabrina laughed. “You make it sound as if you two were terrors.”

  “Well, we were also known as the Terrible Two, I’m afraid. Mother will tell you we were simply bright and inquisitive. But we did tend to be a little noisy. However, I think what made them want us at a distance was our boa.”

  “Boa? As in constrictor?” Sabrina’s eyes widened, and she could not keep from casting a quick glance around the room.

  “Yes. But don’t worry. Augustus isn’t here. After he got out and caused something of a riot in the streets, Mother made us leave him at the house in the country permanently. And we haven’t any of the rabbits or guinea pigs or rats anymore. It’s just Rufus and Wellie now.”

  “Wellie? Another dog?”

  “No, not a dog.” He shook his head, grinning. “I’ll introduce you.”

  Sabrina began to smile. “You’re a very odd man, Alex.”

  “Ah, but how do you know? Perhaps I’m quite usual, and you simply don’t remember.”

  Her smile turned into a laugh.

  At that moment, Megan swept into the room, carrying a stack of clothes, followed by a maid with an even larger armful of dresses, which she laid across the bed before leaving the room.

  “Look,” Megan said cheerfully. “Prudence found some things in Olivia’s room as well as Anna’s. They’re not as simple as many I wear.”

  “I like your dress,” Sabrina told the woman, meaning it. The lack of ruffles and bows let the elegant lines of the bodice and skirt shine.

  “It’s useful. People tend not to take a woman in lace seriously.” Megan turned to Alex. “Time for you to leave, my boy.”

  “Oh.” He looked startled, then embarrassed, his eyes flickering to the pile of white chemises and petticoats in his sister-in-law’s hands. He cleared his throat. “Yes, of course.” He started toward the door, then turned back. “Sabrina...I’d like to look at some of those items in your pockets again if I may.”

  “Of course.” Sabrina slipped off the jacket and held it out to him. It was a relief to get rid of the encumbrance, but it felt somehow even odder to be standing here clad in trousers and a shirt, with only the vest over it. Her womanly figure was much more obvious without the concealing jacket.

  Alex’s eyes swept down her in a swift, encompassing look, confirming her opinion and making her flush with a heat that was only partially from embarrassment. She turned aside and found Megan watching her speculatively.

  As soon as Alex closed the door behind him, Sabrina said, “You distrust me.”

  Megan laid the clothes in her arms out on the bed and turned to her. “The Morelands are a very friendly and open family. They believe in the basic goodness of people.”

  “But you don’t,” Sabrina ventured.

  “I wasn’t born a Moreland. I’m a hardheaded Irish girl from the Bronx.” She came closer, and her brown eyes were no longer warm. “I won’t let you hurt them. If you try to, I will make you pay. Ask anyone—Megan Mulcahey never gives up ’til she finds out the truth.”

  “I hope you do find the truth about me,” Sabrina told her evenly, looking the other woman in the eyes. “My story sounds mad, I know. I probably wouldn’t believe it, either, if it hadn’t happened to me. But it’s the truth. I have no idea who I am or why I came to London or where I belong. It scares me to death. I want to know who I am. Almost anything would be better than living in this void, even if it means finding out I’m a terrible person.”

  “Do you think you are? A terrible person, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel as if I am, but I suppose one wouldn’t. People usually think they’re right, don’t they?”

  “Generally, in my experience.” Megan gave a little half smile and stepped back, her manner, if not warm, at least open-minded. “Come on, I’ll help you try on these clothes while you tell me all this again. First, why do you think you might be a terrible person?”

  “Look at my face. Something dreadful happened.”

  “You could have been the victim.”

  “Or someone could have been angry at me for a very good reason. Or I could have attacked someone and they fought me off. Any number of things, and they’re all just speculation. But it doesn’t denote a peaceful, ordinary life, does it?” Sabrina had shed her waistcoat as she talked and now started on the buttons of her shirt. “Why do men button their shirts up on the wrong side?”

  “It’s a wonder, isn’t it?” Megan sat down on the stool in front of the vanity table.

  “And then there are these clothes. Dressing up as a man isn’t one’s first thought, is it? If I was merely traveling, I would go as myself, surely. And why do I not have luggage?”

  “To me, it speaks of a hasty flight from someplace or someone—in all probability, whatever caused the damage to your face,” Megan agreed.

  “Exactly. What ordinary young lady would do that?”

  “One who was frightened. And clever.”

  “I’m certainly frightened. Not as much now. Alex—Mr. Moreland, I mean, or I guess it’s Lord Alexander Moreland—he’s very...calming, isn’t he?”

  “That’s not the adjective usually used for one of the twins, but yes, I would say he’s steady. It would take a good deal to alarm him.”

  “I think it would take a good deal to alarm any of you. His mother didn’t turn a hair at my showing up like this—although she did take me for a loose woman!”

  Megan chuckled. “That sounds like the duchess. She hired me even though she suspected I wasn’t really a tutor. The Morelands are warmhearted, but it would be a mistake to think they aren’t smart, as well.”

  “You mean you worked for them...under false pretenses?”

  She nodded. “I passed myself off as a tutor for the twins. I had to get in, you see, because I was investigating my brother’s death. I thought Theo had killed him.”

  “Your husband?” Sabrina stopped in the middle of stepping into a dress and stared at her.

  “Well, he wasn’t my husband at the time. And it didn’t take me long to realize that he couldn’t have done it.”

  “I must say, it seems to me you’ve little room to talk about deceiving the Morelands,” Sabrina said with some heat.

  “But you can see why I’m suspicious. Here, let me help you with the buttons.” Megan came over and fastened the dress up the back. “This is one of Anna’s. It’s a lovely color on you.” She looked into the mirror over Sabrina’s shoulder. “I’ve nothing against you, Sabrina. In fact, I like you. You’re forthright. And, heaven help me, I’m inclined to th
ink you’re telling the truth. But that won’t stop me from digging for information, and what I discover may not please you.”

  “I know. But I don’t want to live in this limbo forever.” Sabrina thought of the wedding ring, and something cold coiled inside her. “I must find out.”

  Chapter Four

  SABRINA’S JACKET OVER his arm, Alex left the house, walking through the gardens and back into the almost sylvan piece of land beyond. A high stone wall blocked off the noise of the city streets, rendering it peaceful and quiet. Alex had discovered long ago that his “reading” of an object was far easier outside, away from the clutter that filled most buildings.

  He sat down on a stone bench and took out Sabrina’s possessions, laying them on the bench beside him. Closing his eyes, he held the cloth in both hands, trying to empty his mind of everything but the rustle of the leaves in the trees around him, the chirps of birds.

  There was very little of Sabrina in this jacket. Very little of anything really, other than a vague masculinity and perhaps a sense of anger? No, too mild for that, more resentment perhaps. That told him nothing. He folded the jacket and laid it aside, then picked up the objects one by one.

  The money pouch, like the jacket, held only a trace of Sabrina. There was that same masculine feel, along with a mingling of different feelings. That would be common for money, passing through the hands of many people, as it did. But what was interesting was the strong sense of another male presence besides the one from the jacket.

  He had never really noticed this ability to pinpoint the presence of one person or another, just as he had not realized he could separate a feminine presence from a male one. Was it something new or had it always been there beneath the surface, something he’d ignored? He was inclined to think it was the latter.

  What had always jumped out to him was the stark emotion attached to a piece, and he had not examined the subtleties. He had generally thought of the person who had held it as a man or woman, but that had been because he knew for whom he searched. Today when he met Sabrina had been the first time that he had sensed the identifiable presence of a certain person—apart from his twin.

  That had made it easy to feel the same sensation in the objects. Her necklace, for instance, had been swimming with it. Picking up that thread had made it clearer that one of the other strands was also a lingering remnant of a different entity.

  Suddenly he was discovering a whole new way to look at his ability—as a multitude of strands, some vivid, some dull, each one carrying its own distinct quality of emotion or place or person. The difficulty was in pulling out a particular thread from the tangled knot. It was an intriguing thing to explore. Unfortunately, it was of little use here as he could not form an image or identity for the person from the strands.

  The one thing he had learned was that the money had probably been in the possession of the second man, the one who did not possess the jacket, for a longer time. Somehow this man’s presence felt heavier—or perhaps fuller was the better word. More developed—that was it. He suspected the other man was older. It was speculation, of course, but then everything about his ability was merely his interpretation of a message.

  There was little to be gained from the train ticket, which had been handled by many people and in Sabrina’s possession for only a short time. The handkerchief, too, had been handled by others, a servant who had washed it in all likelihood. There was a flicker of something when he touched the stitched monogram, and he held that tightly between his fingers for a moment. Not Sabrina, but a woman—the person who had embroidered it, perhaps? But again, that could have been anyone from a seamstress to a servant to a relative.

  Finally, he picked up the thing he held the most hope for—the man’s pocket watch. He had gotten a definite flash of a place from it. With some concentration, it might become clearer. He folded his hand around the watch and focused.

  A man, and again he had that sense of weight, gravity, that made him think he was older. But he was not one of the other two men he had sensed on the jacket and money. There was a sense of satisfaction. A strong element of love. Alex concentrated on separating that particular strand.

  And there it was: a pleasant house, clearly the property of someone of wealth, but not ostentatious. Queen Anne style, white, with crisp black trim, carriage lamps on either side of the entry and a gold knocker on the door—again, not grand or attention-grabbing, just a plain gold knocker and plate.

  It sat in a row of elegant town houses, and he was almost certain it was located here in the city. He was even more certain that whoever the man who had carried this watch was, this house had been his home. Pride, love and security permeated Alex’s sense of him.

  Excitement rose in him. Now this, at last, was useful. Alex knew houses. He began to dig through his pockets. He had never quite given up his childhood habit of picking up odds and ends and stuffing them in one pocket or another; as a result, he always had a pencil or two and some scrap of paper.

  He found a rolled-up flyer someone on the street had handed him the other day. Flattening it out on the bench beside him, he began to sketch the house on the blank back of a testament to the wonders of “Dr. Hinkley’s Miracle Tonic—guaranteed to eradicate all one’s aches and pains.”

  Alex worked as he always did, absorbed in the task, fingers moving quickly and surely over the page. He paused, studying it, then added a few more details. He spent another few minutes holding the watch and trying to summon up a fuller picture of the house, then added a bit of decoration at the corners and over the door. He would give the drawing to Tom Quick and set him looking for the place. Alex could make a pretty good guess as to what areas in the city it was most likely to be located.

  He tucked away both drawing and pencil and turned to the final object. He had been curiously reluctant to examine it again. Foolish, of course. The small gold band set with diamonds wasn’t necessarily a wedding ring. Even if it was, it wasn’t necessarily Sabrina’s. It didn’t mean she was married.

  Moreover, there was really no reason to be downcast at the idea. He barely knew the woman. He was not the romantic soul Con was, believing that all Morelands fell in love on sight. None of his sisters had; indeed, Olivia had had such an argument with her future husband when she first met him that both of them had been tossed out of the séance they were attending. And while Rafe had rescued Kyria from that tree, as Alex recalled she had been more irritated than bedazzled—of course, that could have had something to do with the fact that she had been trying to pull Alex and Con out of trouble. Thisbe had had a normal sort of courtship, if studying chemical concoctions could be considered a courtship.

  No surprise that his vague, bookish father would have been smitten the moment he met the fiery-haired, forceful reformer who would become his wife. The duchess was, after all, something of a force of nature. Reed had pined for Anna for years, but Alex found it hard to believe that Reed, the most sensible of the Morelands, had really fallen head over heels the moment he saw her. And the whole account of Theo’s seeing his wife in a dream as he lay dying was too bizarre to count as falling in love on sight.

  What they had felt was attraction, just as he was attracted to Sabrina. It made sense. No Moreland could resist the lure of the unusual, and when it was accompanied by big blue eyes and a cloud of black curls and a mouth that invited kisses, of course he would be interested in her, even attracted. The connection between them was odd; he’d never felt it with any woman before, but that didn’t mean it was love. He didn’t know what it meant, but love had to be something more than sensing her presence.

  It also had to be more than wanting to help her and protect her. Anyone would have felt a rush of sympathy at her plight, anger at the sign of bruises on her creamy skin. It wasn’t the first time he had tried to help someone.

  Which was exactly what he ought to be doing, instead of sitting here uselessly ruminating on his motives. Alex p
icked up the ring and closed his fist around it. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the circle in his hand.

  The aura it gave off was muddled, as if it had been handled by many people. There was less trace of Sabrina on it than on the handkerchief. If it was, indeed, a marriage ring, surely that meant it was not Sabrina’s. Women rarely took off their wedding bands. Perhaps it was an heirloom, passed down through generations.

  He had a suspicion that this line of reasoning was more wishful thinking than logic. The feeling of it was not murky and heavy, as old things often were, with generations of emotions darkening them, layer on layer. It was more...empty, almost, barely brushed with emotion.

  That quality made it seem more likely that the ring was new, that it had sat in a jewelry store, looked at and held by many, but worn and cherished by no one. It made it seem likely that it was a recent acquisition, perhaps a present. Perhaps a wedding ring placed on Sabrina’s finger only days ago.

  Was she a newlywed? Had she run away from her husband? The bruises on her face would certainly indicate that she had good reason for leaving him—a frightening brute of a husband who sent her fleeing into the night. Alex realized his fist had tightened around the ring, and he forcibly relaxed it.

  He surged to his feet. It was useless to sit here, trying to conjure up any more information from the objects Sabrina had with her. He had learned all he could from them, and he should get to tracking down the one lead he had obtained, the house. He would find Tom Quick while Sabrina was occupied trying on clothes.

  That thought brought up a whole new set of images of Sabrina in frilly underthings, slipping dresses on and off, buttoning and unbuttoning. Better not to think about that, either. She was a guest in his home. Under his mother’s roof. He knew nothing about her. He intended to help her, not seduce her.

  Alex started to put the ring back in the outer pocket, but he decided it would be more secure in an inner pocket. He reached inside the jacket, finding the slit pocket in the silk lining. Shoving the ring down into the corner, his finger touched a piece of paper. Digging deeper, he caught the bit between two of his fingers and pulled it out.