His Sinful Touch Read online

  “Cunning, isn’t it?” Con handed the weapon to his brother. “And though you wouldn’t think so, it provides a good grip. I found it in the attic a couple of months ago.”

  “At Broughton House?” Alex turned it over in his hand, examining it.

  “Yes, I was up there with the Littles.”

  Alex knew he referred to their sister Kyria’s twins, Allison and Jason, who, since Constantine and Alexander had been given the nickname the Greats, were often referred to as the Littles.

  “It was Jason who found it, but Allie discovered the secret to opening it—she’s a bloodthirsty little thing, have you noticed? I had a devil of a time persuading her she couldn’t keep it.”

  “Well, you know her father.” Alex shrugged. “Next she’ll be brandishing a pistol.”

  “Terrifying thought.”

  “Do you expect trouble at this place you’re going? Will you need a dagger?”

  “Not really.” Con sighed. “I’m relatively sure he’s swindling his believers—easy to persuade someone to hand over all their worldly goods when they think they’ll be transported up to heaven in a few months. But I haven’t seen any sign that he’s gotten physical. Still, I like to be prepared.”

  Alex grinned as he handed back the knife. “Especially if it involves a clever trick.”

  “Of course.” Con fitted the weapon back into its slot. “Care to come with me?”

  Alex felt a twinge of longing. He and Con had shared many an adventure. It was only the past few years, when Alex had been studying at the Architectural Association and then practicing in his field, that Alex had stayed behind more and more, helping out only now and then with Con’s investigations.

  “No,” he said reluctantly. “Better not. I have work to do on the plans for Blackburn’s country house. And I have... I don’t know, I just have a feeling I should be here.”

  “What do you mean?” Con set aside the cane and fixed his searching gaze on his twin. “Is something wrong?”

  “No... Maybe. I don’t know.” Alex grimaced.

  “You had a premonition?”

  “Not exactly. I’m not like Anna. I don’t see what’s going to happen.” Alex folded his arms. He never liked talking about his “gift,” as Con saw it—or his “curse,” as Alex was more likely to consider it. “I’ve been very out of sorts since I woke up. Restless. It’s probably nothing, just some residue from a dream.”

  “You had another nightmare.” Con was the only one whom Alex had ever told about his bad dreams.

  “I suppose. I don’t really remember it. I just woke up feeling...” He shrugged. Even with his twin, Alex hated to reveal the bone-deep fear that invaded him in these dreams, the paralyzing sensation of powerlessness. It was a form of weakness he hated in himself. “The thing was...it was something like the way you and I feel when the other is in trouble. But different somehow. I’m positive it wasn’t about you. But I’ve never had that feeling about any of our other siblings.”

  “Do you think your ability is growing? Improving?” Con asked almost eagerly.

  “I sincerely hope not,” Alex retorted. “I’ll go mad if I receive signals every time a Moreland gets into trouble.”

  “True. Theo’s girls alone would be enough to keep you busy night and day.”

  Alex grinned but quickly turned serious again. “I wanted to ask if you had ever felt that way. If you sensed things about the others.”

  “No.” Con looked vaguely wistful. “You know me—I haven’t a smidgen of talent. I mean, other than twin speak.” He looked thoughtful. “If you think something’s wrong, perhaps I should postpone my trip.”

  “No. Don’t be absurd.” Alex shook his head. “I’m sure I’m jumping at shadows.”

  “But these dreams...”

  “You put more credence in my dreams than I do.”

  “We all know Morelands have significant dreams...except for me, of course. Think of Reed dreaming Anna was in danger, or the things Kyria saw in her dreams.”

  “I’ve never had a significant dream in my life. They’re just nightmares. I’ve had them since we were thirteen.”

  “Yes, but those stopped years ago. It’s only been recently that you’ve been dreaming about being locked up again. There must be a reason.”

  “Probably the squab I had for supper last night,” Alex said lightly.

  Con snorted, but he dropped the subject. That was one of the best things about being a twin—one didn’t have to pretend, and the other knew without having to ask.

  “I’d better be on my way,” Con said, picking up his cane and the small traveling case on the floor beside the desk. “My train leaves at two, and I don’t want to miss it.”

  With a grin and a twirl of his bowler, he popped the hat onto his head and left. Alex, a smile lingering on his lips, perched on the edge of Con’s desk, long legs stretched out in front of him, and thought about his dreams.

  He didn’t recall the one last night, but he’d had enough of them the past few weeks to know what transpired in it. He was always lying on a narrow bed in a dark, cramped room, alone and not knowing where he was, and gripped by a cold, numbing fear.

  The nightmares had started after the time he and Con had visited Winterset, their brother Reed’s home in the country, when the two of them, out walking with Reed’s future wife, Anna, had come across a farmer who had been killed. Both he and Con had been shaken by the sight, but Alex was the one who had lost his breakfast. Alex had returned to the house to bring Reed’s help, while Con had stayed with Anna by the body. He had never admitted to anyone, even Con, how relieved he’d been to get away from the bloody remains.

  Oddly, though, the nightmares that had disturbed him in the weeks afterward had not been of the dead farmer, but of the time almost two years earlier when Alex had been kidnapped and held prisoner in a small, dark room.

  He had been scared at the time, of course, but he was used enough to getting in and out of scrapes—though it was more frightening, admittedly, when Con wasn’t there to share the experience. Alex had kept his wits and managed to escape, and in the end, Kyria and Rafe and the others had come to his rescue. It had been an exciting story to tell and he’d basked in Con’s envy of his adventure, but then, after his experience at Winterset, he had begun to dream about it again.

  It had passed, of course. Indeed, it seemed to have marked the beginning of his odd ability. The Morelands were given to such oddities—significant dreams and strange connections to an unseen world, their habit of falling fiercely, immediately in love.

  So it had not been a complete surprise when Alex started to experience flashes of emotions and actions when he gripped an object—though it had seemed most unfair that Con had not been burdened with a similar peculiarity. Con, naturally, would have been thrilled to have it.

  Alex had learned to hide his ability from everyone outside his family, and he had also learned to control it so that he wasn’t overwhelmed by, say, witnessing a murder that had happened years earlier when he happened to lean against a wall. As his control over the ability increased, the nightmares had lessened and finally ceased.

  Until recently. The ones he had now were not exactly the same, for in the recent ones he was a man, not a half-grown lad, and the room where he lay in darkness seemed different—darker and colder and smaller. But the fear was the same. No, it was worse, for woven through it now was a soul-deep dread, an icy terror.

  Impatiently Alex pushed himself up from the desk. What was he doing lounging about here? Over the years he had used his ability to help Con with some inquiries. It was one of the reasons that the agency had acquired an impressive reputation, particularly in finding missing persons. But his assistance was a carefully guarded secret. It was difficult enough making a reputation for oneself as an architect, given his aristocratic background and his family’s eccentric reputation, without addin
g something as unusual as working for an agency that often dabbled in occult matters.

  But with Con gone, there was no reason for him to be here now. He should go to his own office and work on his own business, as he had told Con he was about to do. Sitting here was not going to solve the mystery of his uneasy feelings or his disturbing dreams.

  Alex had reached the open door when his lungs tightened in his chest. He was flooded with anxiety, even fear, but he knew it was not his own; he was feeling the backwash of someone else’s emotions. He felt, moreover, a...presence. There was no other way to describe it. The sensation was so strong that he actually glanced around the empty office, as if he would find someone standing there. Of course, there was no one.

  What if he turned out to be like his grandmother and started talking to ghosts? He tried to separate this sudden burst of emotion from his own, to analyze this new awareness. It was similar to the “twinness” he shared with Con—a knowledge that someone was nearby, an understanding that the person was in trouble. But he had never felt such a thing before, except with Con. And he was certain that this was not coming from his twin. It was...different.

  He stepped out into the hall and looked over the railing to the lobby of the floor below. As he watched, the door opened and a short man entered. The newcomer crossed the entryway and climbed the stairs. And as he moved, the sensation moved with him. This man—or perhaps he was only a boy, for he was rather small—was the presence Alex felt.

  The visitor reached the top of the stairs and started down the corridor toward him. The small man was dressed oddly—well, not oddly, really, for his suit was unremarkable. But he wore a workingman’s cap with a gentleman’s suit, and nothing seemed to fit him. His feet galumphed along, seeming too big for his body. His jacket was outsize, hanging loosely on him, the sleeves obscuring his hands, and his trousers were rolled up at the hem but still pooled around his ankles. He wore the cap pulled down almost to his eyes, hiding his forehead and shadowing the bottom part of his face.

  He hesitated when he saw Alex, then started forward again determinedly. Alex watched him walk, and as he drew nearer, the whole sense of the man’s wrongness coalesced into a thought.

  “You’re a girl!” Alex blurted out. He knew at once that he had made a misstep, for his visitor let out a little squeak and took a step backward. “No. No, wait, please don’t go. May I help you?”

  She pulled off the concealing cap, revealing a cloud of black curls that fell just below her ears. Without the cap, he could clearly see the delicate chin, the heart-shaped face, the big, deep blue eyes. And his entire insides dropped straight to the floor.

  “I’m looking for the Moreland Investigative Agency.”

  “That’s me. I mean, I’m Mr. Moreland. Alex, Alexander Moreland.” He realized that he was babbling and he forced himself to stop before he started explaining about his brother and the agency and Olivia, who had started it, and everything else that came into his head.

  The woman was beautiful. More than that, his feeling of connection and his uneasiness were both centered on her. How could he be so tied to a stranger, to someone not even in his own family? Oh, Lord, she wasn’t a relative, surely?

  He was certain of one thing—he could not let her slip away. So he pulled together the remnants of his aplomb and inclined his head, sweeping his arm out toward the open doorway in a courtly gesture as he said, “Please, won’t you come in?”

  Her smile was shy, and a faint flush rose in her cheeks; both things, he realized, were charming. She walked before him into the office and sat down in the chair facing Con’s desk. Alex was careful to leave the door open, not wanting to alarm her, and took a seat behind Con’s desk as if he belonged there.

  He wasn’t really lying to her, he told himself. He was Mr. Moreland, even if not the one she sought. “Now, please tell me how I may help you, Miss—?”

  “I—I came here because...well, I asked the driver at the station where I should go. He said the Moreland Agency was the best in the city at finding someone,” she said, twisting her cap in her hands and ignoring his implied question about her name.

  “We will certainly do our utmost to help you.” He opened the top drawer of the desk and was relieved to spot pencils and even a pad of paper. He set them on the desk and prepared to take notes, hoping that he looked like he knew what he was doing. “Now, who is it that you wish to find?”

  She gazed back at him gravely and said, “Me.”

  Chapter Two

  “I BEG YOUR PARDON?” Surely he could not have heard her correctly.

  “It’s me I need you to find—not the location because obviously I’m here, but who I am.” She sighed. “I don’t know who I am.”

  Alex blinked. It occurred to him that perhaps this was an elaborate joke. This lovely girl was an actress, perhaps, and Con had... No, not Con. If Con had played a prank on him, he wouldn’t have left. He’d still be here, laughing his head off. Alex glanced out the door. He had no feeling of Con’s nearness. But who else would arrange a mad jest like this?

  “I see,” he said carefully and cleared his throat.

  The girl jumped up. “I know. I know I sound as if I’ve escaped from Bedlam, but I promise you, I haven’t. I mean, well, I don’t feel insane...though I suppose I cannot really know, can I?”

  She paused, looking so lost that Alex instinctively went around the desk to her, taking her arm and steering her back to the chair. He propped himself on the edge of the desk. “No, no, I’m sure you’re not insane. It’s just... I, um... Perhaps you could explain the situation further.”

  She drew a breath and folded her hands in her lap, looking every inch a proper English gentlewoman—except, of course, that she was wearing an ill-fitting man’s suit. “I don’t know who I am. I cannot tell you my name because I have no idea what it is. I think...” Her fingers went up to her throat, touching something beneath her shirt. “I think it may be Sabrina because that is what is engraved on the locket I’m wearing.”

  “Sabrina it is, then.” He liked the sound of it, the intimacy of calling her by her given name, as if he had known her for years. “If you will excuse the, um, the informality.”

  “Of course.” Her cheeks colored again in that delightful way. “It’s only reasonable, since I have no idea what my last name is.” She added with a sigh, “Or where I’m from. Or why I’m dressed in this mad fashion.”

  “You know nothing about yourself?”

  “No, nothing at all. It’s the most awful sensation.” Sabrina reached up a hand to push her luxuriant hair out of the way, and for the first time he saw a purple bruise on the side of her face. Two of them, in fact, one on her forehead and one on the cheekbone below, both at the edge of her hairline. He noted, too, that the hand she lifted was scraped.

  “You’ve been hurt!” Anger rose in him so fiercely that he jumped to his feet again. “Who did this to you?”

  He bent down to examine her bruises, gently lifting the curls aside. The soft hairs clung to his skin, sending a frisson of pleasure straight up his nerves. His gesture was far too intimate to be appropriate, he realized, and he pulled his hand back, forcing himself to return to his seat against the desk.

  “I don’t know who did it,” she told him. “If anyone. Perhaps I fell. There’s more.”

  “More?”

  “Yes. There are bruises on my arm.” She shrugged out of her coat and pushed up one sleeve almost to her elbow to expose her arm to him. There on the pale skin were small faint smudges of blue.

  “Fingertips.” Something clenched, cold and hard, in his chest. “Someone squeezed your arm tightly.”

  “I rather thought so. And look.” She undid the top button of her shirt and pushed it down, revealing another long red scratch low on her throat. “And I think...” She frowned, reaching up toward the back of her head. “I think maybe I hit my head. There’s a spot that�
�s tender.”

  Quickly he rounded her chair and bent down to look where she pointed. Carefully he parted her hair, trying to ignore the way it felt beneath his fingers, the ribbons of excitement that stirred deep within him. He drew in a quick, hissing breath. “You’re bleeding. I should have seen...”

  He crossed the room to the washstand in the corner and wet a rag, returning to dab carefully at the wound. When she drew in a sharp breath, he said, “I’m sorry. I know this hurts, but I must clean it.”

  “I know. It was just that one spot that hurt. You’re quite good at this.”

  Alex chuckled. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s cleaning cuts and scrapes.”

  “Your business is dangerous?”

  “My childhood was.” He smiled to show he didn’t mean it. “My brother and I were constantly falling out of trees or rolling down the hillside or running into things.” He paused, considering. “Come to think of it, we must have been clumsy little brutes.”

  When he finished cleaning the wound, he set the rag aside and took up his former seat on the edge of the desk. “Now, you remember nothing of your past?”

  “No. Not who I am or what happened to cause these bruises or where I live. Nothing!” Tears glittered in her eyes.

  “Very well.” Alex pushed aside the thought of how much he would like to take the woman in his arms and hold her, comfort her. Crossing his arms across his chest, he said, “What is the first thing you do remember?”

  “Waking up on a train. The conductor shook my shoulder and woke me up, said we had reached Paddington Station. I was quite groggy. I got off the train and started walking through the station. There were so many people, and it was terribly noisy. I was so confused and...and scared. My head ached. I was trying to remember where I was and why I was dressed this way. And I thought whoever was meeting me wouldn’t recognize me. Then I realized that not only did I not know who I was meeting, I didn’t even know who I was. It scared me, so I sat down on a bench for a while and tried to think.” She shrugged. “It was useless.”