LITMIR.BIZ

       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

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