Not, of course, that it was in any way your fault,” he added hastily. “It was entirely me.”
“Not entirely.” Her voice was soft but droll, as well.
Alex looked at her sharply and saw that her eyes were twinkling. She giggled, and he relaxed and sat back. “At any rate, it was wrong of me, and I do apologize. Now, as I should have asked you to begin with, what frightened you? A nightmare?”
“Yes.” All amusement fled her face. “It was dreadful. I dreamed that I was falling.”
“Falling?” he repeated, startled.
She nodded. “I know that doesn’t sound so awful, but I was terrified. I was trying to get away from something, someone, I’m not sure what. It was all rather fuzzy. I climbed out a window, I think—it’s already fading away. Someone was reaching for me, and I tumbled out into the darkness. I was falling. I couldn’t breathe. I—” Sabrina stopped and drew a breath, her voice calmer but still shaky as she went on. “Then I woke up.”
Alex stared at her, too astonished to speak. They had both just dreamed of falling? Yes, the Morelands tended to have strange dreams, but how could this happen? Had she somehow entered his dream, experiencing his climbing out the window and racing across the roof?
“Do you think that’s what happened to me?” Sabrina lifted her hand up to the bruise on her forehead. “I fell out of a window and hit my head?”
It seemed logical. It occurred to him that perhaps his dream hadn’t been about his escape years ago at all. Maybe he had just assumed it was, his mind making the logical connection to the time he had escaped as a child and that frightening leap between rooftops. Could he have somehow experienced Sabrina’s dream? That must be utter nonsense. Yet...
“Alex?” Sabrina said tentatively.
“What? Oh.” He realized that he had been so engrossed in his thoughts that he hadn’t answered her. “Sorry. Just trying to reason all this out.” He could hardly tell her his thoughts; she would be certain he was utterly mad. “Yes, to answer your question. It does seem possible, even likely, that you fell yesterday and hit your head. I would think one very well might dream about a frightening experience. I have done so myself.”
“Really?”
He nodded, his thoughts once again going to his dream. He had sensed Sabrina’s presence this morning, but more than that, even before he saw her, he had felt her distress and confusion. If he could sense that something was wrong with her, as he was able to with his twin, perhaps tonight the terror of her dream had touched him, even in his sleep, causing him to dream something similar. Following that line of reasoning, his nightmare the night before might have been caused by Sabrina’s actual fall. It made sense—in a very peculiar way.
“The thing is,” Alex mused, “if you fell from a window and knocked yourself out, why didn’t someone find you? If you were being chased, wouldn’t the people chasing you take the opportunity to seize you? And if you were running away from your home and fell trying to climb down from your window, surely whoever was waiting for you would have seen it and come to your aid.”
“Waiting for me? What do you... Oh, I see, you mean if I were eloping, then he would have been outside.” She paused, thinking. “If that was the reason I left, it would explain that ring and why it was in my pocket instead of on my hand. I was secretly engaged, intending to get married. Maybe he wasn’t there. I was going to meet him somewhere. Only, I fell, hit my head and lost my memory. Still, as you said, whoever was reaching for me would have seen it and taken the opportunity to catch me.”
“True.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe that person wasn’t real but something your brain conjured up, a symbol of the pursuit you feared would follow.”
“So perhaps everyone was still asleep, and I came to before anyone was out of bed. Is that when I forgot who I was?”
“I don’t know. All we’re sure of is that you’d lost your memory by the time you reached London. But, whether you awoke from the fall not knowing who you were or it came to you later, when you awakened, you were aware that you must run. You sensed that someone was after you, so you took off. The same reasoning would apply whether you were eloping or a rebellious miss running off to visit her friend in London, or a schoolgirl escaping from some young ladies’ academy.” Another possibility, that she was a mistreated wife looking to escape her brute of a husband. He didn’t want to think about that.
“True.” Sabrina looked relieved. “It doesn’t have to have been that I was eloping. But why didn’t someone come after me? Wouldn’t they have searched for me?”
“We don’t know that they didn’t.” Alex wished he could call back the words when a new worry bloomed in Sabrina’s eyes.
“Of course. You’re right. They could have followed my trail. They could be here in London searching for me.”
“No need to worry about that,” he said hastily. “Even if they assumed you fled to London, how would they know where you went once you got here?”
“The driver?”
“Let’s say they questioned the driver of every hack at Paddington, the most they could possibly learn is that you’d gone to the agency. Tom Quick won’t reveal where you are, and Con isn’t even here. No, if they think you’ve gone to London, then they’re most likely to go to your friend who wrote the letter in your pocket. She will know nothing about you. Or if you come to London frequently, they’ll go to the places you normally go.”
“And I won’t be there.”
“Exactly.”
She smiled and reached out to squeeze his hand. “Thank you.”
His pulse leaped at her touch. It was mad that even so small a thing could stir him. He wanted to turn his hand over and clasp hers. Well, frankly, what he wanted to do was to pull her over into his lap and kiss her again.
“It’s, uh...” he began before realizing he had no idea what he was going to say. “Very late. We should probably go to bed.” His face warmed. “That is to say, we should sleep. I’m sure you’re tired.”
Sabrina was just looking at him, her eyes huge and serious. She was so lovely it took his breath away. And she was still wearing only a nightgown. He could see the soft rise of her breasts beneath the thin material, even the hint of the darker circle of her nipples. She had curled her legs up onto the chair, and the nightgown had fallen away a little, revealing her ankles. He could not keep from thinking about reaching out and sliding his hand up, pushing the material higher, her skin smooth beneath his fingertips.
Alex jumped to his feet. “There’s no reason to be afraid.”
“I’m not.”
“It was just a dream—nothing will hurt you here. And I’ll be right down the hall. You can call if you need me.” Why couldn’t he stop babbling?
He swung away and found himself facing her bed. The covers were tossed aside invitingly, the sheets rumpled where she had lain. His mouth went dry as dust. He couldn’t move, couldn’t look away. He wanted to touch her so much the very skin of his palms tingled.
Sabrina rose to her feet, and Alex turned back to her. She was close to him; it would be only a matter of reaching
