LITMIR.BIZ

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That, too, threatened to make her stomach revolt, and again she waited it out.

      Afterward, she felt faintly more alert and aware. She slid one hand into the pocket of her skirt and touched a folded piece of paper. She knew where to go.

      She had spotted her small traveling case standing against the wall beside a masculine-looking piece of luggage. Grabbing her case, she hurried to the door. It wouldn’t open. Numbly she rattled the handle and pulled in vain. She was locked in.

      He had locked her in! She was swept by a sense of betrayal. How could he do this to her? She had trusted him. Panic swelled, threatening to overwhelm her. She was alone. All those she relied on had turned on her. Flight was impossible. She was trapped.

      Fighting back the panic, she checked the chest and the small table beside the bed, but there was no sign of a key. Her steps wobbled as she went to the window and shoved it open. The room was on the second floor.

      She steeled herself against despair. There was a drainpipe within arm’s reach of the window...if she leaned very far out. But she had always been good at climbing and, better than that, there was a small roof below. If she fell, it wouldn’t be nearly as far. The roof sloped slightly, so at the far end, it wouldn’t be as long a drop, and there must be a supporting post to the ground that she could use. It wasn’t impossible. All it took was courage.

      She stood, leaning against the window frame, struggling to think. He would follow her. She had to be clever. A disguise! Opening the larger valise, she pulled out a set of clothes. There wasn’t time to change—he might return at any moment—so she stuffed the clothes in her case. Shoes. She frowned down at her embroidered slippers, then grabbed the pair of shoes in his valise and added them, as well. Now it was too full to close, so she jerked out a dress in her case and rolled it up, stuffing it in the bottom drawer of the small chest.

      As she started to close his valise, she spied a pouch tucked in the corner and pulled it out. It was filled with banknotes and coins. It would be wrong to steal it, of course. But how else was she to escape? She hadn’t a farthing with her. In any case, it was her money really, wasn’t it? She thrust the pouch into the pocket of her skirt and refastened the valise. Closing and picking up her own travel case, she hurried to the window.

      The soft-sided carrying case went out first. It landed on the small roof below, rolled and slid off the sloping roof to the ground. She froze, her heart slamming in her chest. Suddenly a key rattled in the lock, spurring her into motion. She leaned out, stretching to reach the drainpipe. It was too far; she must crouch on the sill to extend far enough. She twisted, trying to pull her feet up under her, just as the door swung open and a man stepped in.

      “No!” He slammed the door behind him and ran to grab her and yank her back inside.

      She struggled wildly, kicking and clawing. “You monster! Traitor!”

      “Ow!” He dropped her and stepped back, raising his hand to a long scratch blooming on his face.

      She flew at him, shoving him back. He staggered, his face flaming with anger, and he slapped her. She reeled backward into the washstand, rattling the washbowl and pitcher. Her shock was almost as great as the pain in her cheek. No one had ever hit her. Bitter anger flooded her, overcoming all else, and she reached behind her, her hand closing around the handle of the pitcher. She threw herself at him, swinging the earthenware pitcher with all her might.

      He managed to twist so that it didn’t land full on his head as she’d intended, but the pitcher clipped the side of his jaw as it crashed into his shoulder, spilling water over him. He stumbled back, catching his foot on the rag rug, and fell.

      Running to the window, feeling more clearheaded than she had since she awakened, she climbed up onto the sill. Crouching there and holding on to the window frame with one hand, she stretched out and wrapped the other around the drainpipe. She froze, her heart in her throat, but then the sound of him clambering to his feet gave her impetus to move.

      Swinging out, she put her toe on the iron bracket securing the drainpipe to the wall and let go of the window, hastily grabbing the drainpipe just below her other hand. She clung there, shivering, feeling for a toehold beneath her. Blast these entangling skirts! She wished she’d had time to change.

      The man shoved his head out the window and lunged for her, hooking his hand in the sash of her dress. She scrambled downward, her shoulders aching with the strain. He cursed, sliding farther out, and she jerked away with all her strength.

      Suddenly he was tumbling out the window. His weight tore her from her desperate hold on the drainpipe even as it ripped the sash from her dress. She fell with him, one breathless flash of panic followed by slamming onto the roof below. Her breath left her and a sharp pain lanced through her head. Helplessly she rolled, her momentum carrying her down the slight slope of the roof. Then, once again, she was falling into emptiness.

      After that, there was only darkness.

       Chapter One

      ALEX TROTTED DOWN the steps, business finished, but feeling vaguely dissatisfied. It wasn’t only because he suspected that the man he had just left had chosen him to design his summer house less for his talent than for the opportunity to boast that the son of the Duke of Broughton had visited him this morning. The fact was, Alex had felt odd and uneasy from the moment he awakened this morning.

      He glanced at his watch and decided to catch a hack to his office rather than walking. Con was leaving on one of his adventures this afternoon, and he wanted to be sure to catch him. Even though they had acquired other friends as they grew older, Con was, as always, his closest confidant.

      His uneasiness wasn’t worry over Con. He would know instantly if Con was in trouble, just as he had known his brother wasn’t in the house when he awoke. Neither of them could explain their twin sense—it simply was—but likewise, they never doubted its accuracy.

      Alex supposed that the odd wisp of alarm that had taken up residence in his chest was merely the residue from his nightmare. He didn’t remember dreaming it, but he’d done so often enough lately to presume it had visited him again. The thing was...usually the nightmare awakened him, leaving him cold and sweating, but it had not caused him to feel this way the next day.

      He stepped out of the carriage in front of the office building he and Con owned. It was a narrow stone structure, four floors high and sturdy. Alex might wish for a more attractive design, but it suited their purposes. The bottom floor housed a bookstore, and the floor above held his and Con’s offices, with the upper two floors being the flat he and Con had established as their bachelors’ quarters when they left school.

      Even though they had moved back into the family home a year ago, they hadn’t rented out the flat. One or the other of them sometimes bedded down there. Con used it more often, staying there sometimes when he was working on a case or had remained out on the town late.

      Alex met Con’s employee, Tom Quick, coming down the stairs. Tom, a few years older than Alex, had been plucked from the streets by their older brother, Reed, whose pocket he had unsuccessfully tried to pick. Instead of prosecuting the lad, Reed had clothed and fed him and sent him to school. Quick hadn’t taken much to schooling, but he had been a loyal worker for the Moreland family ever since, at first running errands for Reed and then, ultimately, becoming the mainstay of their older sister Olivia’s investigative agency. Con had acquired his services, along with the business, from Olivia a few years ago.

      The blond man grinned in his cocky way, a distinct warning that something was up. Alex eyed him warily. “Is Con upstairs?”

      “Oh, indeed,” Tom answered with a chuckle. “He’s there.”

      “What has he done?” Alex asked with some foreboding. Perhaps it was Con, after all, that had given him this feeling.

      “You’ll see,” the other man said airily and trotted past him.

      Alex took the stairs two at a time and walked past the closed door of his own office

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