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.”
“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?”
