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  She stepped back, her hand at the neck of her gown. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

  “Your house?” the man asked. “I think the landlord would disagree with that.” Turning, he lifted his arm and the light illuminated some stairs. Amy glanced over the railing and below she saw what looked like a tavern resembling the ones they’d seen in Williamsburg.

  Amy took a step back from the man. He was as tall as Stephen but he looked bigger, broader, and he didn’t have Stephen’s sweetness of expression. “I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but if you don’t get out of my house this minute, I’m going to scream for my husband to call the police.”

  The man stepped farther away from her. “Please do call your, uh, what is it? Your husband, wench. I will see to him.” He flipped back his heavy black cloak to show the long, silver sword in a scabbard at his waist.

  Every newspaper account of every horror Amy had ever read about came to her mind. “Please don’t hurt my children,” she whispered while thinking that he’d already harmed them.

  Her eyes wide with terror and her heart pounding, she put her hand behind her to open the door to her son’s room. In one swift movement, she opened the door, ran into the bedroom, then shut the door and leaned against it. She didn’t know what she was going to do if the man pushed against the door; she’d never be able to hold it against him. But when the door stayed still, her only concern was to find her son and get him out of the house. They’d practiced fire drills and Amy kept rope ladders rolled up in the cabinet under the window seat.

  She ran to the bed. “Davy?” she whispered urgently. “Get up. Get up now. You have to get out of the house. There’s an emergency.” When the boy didn’t move, she threw back the covers and put out her hands to wake him.

  “Oh, this is a nice surprise. Come here, honey,” said a man’s voice, and the next second Amy was being pulled into the bed by a pair of strong arms. The man smelled as if he hadn’t had a bath in a year, and in addition to being frightened, Amy felt nauseous.

  “Let me go!” she said, kicking out at him, which, unfortunately, made her nightgown go up above her knees.

  “Just like I like ’em,” the man said, his hand on her knee and moving upward. His mouth was near her face and he had breath like a cesspool.

  “Stop it!” she said as loudly as she could, but her voice was muffled by his hand, his face, and his body that was moving on top of her.

  In the next second, someone lifted the man from her and she heard him hit the wall.

  “Stephen!” Amy said, her arms going up to him. “It was horrible! He tried to—The boys! Our sons! We have to get them.”

  “I do not know who Stephen is,” the man said, “and I do not know of your sons. I was not aware that you had a husband.”

  It was the dark man. She could see his face outlined by the moonlight coming in through the window. “You!” she said. “What have you done with my husband and children?”

  The man stood up straight as the other man groaned in the corner. “Unless you want him to be your companion for the night, I would suggest that you go back to your own bed. Perhaps on the morrow you will be less insane.”

  Amy just sat on the bed and looked up at him in confusion. The bed was so soft that the mattress nearly surrounded her. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about. This is my home and I live here with my husband and two sons. What have you done with them?”

  Even in the darkness of the room, she could see the man shake his head, then roll his eyes. In the next second, he bent and lifted her into his arms.

  Amy struggled to get away from him.

  “If you do not be still I will drop you and I can attest that this floor is very hard.” When she quit struggling, he carried her down the hall and through the doorway of the room she’d awakened in, and dropped her onto the bed.

  When Amy landed, there was a high-pitched scream and a woman stuck her head out from under the covers.

  “What by God’s teeth is this?” the woman said, sputtering and fighting her way out from under the covers. She looked at the man. “Oh, it’s you, my lord. Do you need something?” As she said this, she was kicking at Amy and trying to get her off her legs.

  The man used flint and a striker to light a candle by the bedside. “Aye, I do,” he said. “Keep your sister in bed unless it is your plan to hire her out to the men in your keeping.”

  “Why not?” the woman said. “She’s of little other use to us. She is weak and slow-witted. My father despairs of her.”

  Amy stopped struggling against the legs kicking at her and looked at the woman. She was pretty, but in a slovenly way. Her dark hair looked as though it hadn’t been washed in a while and there was dirt on her neck. The worst thing was the way she was looking at the man looming over them. Pure, undiluted lust.

  “Might there be something I can do for you,” the woman said, her tone suggestive.

  “Nay, not tonight. Just keep your sister in the room. Tie her to the bed if need be.”

  “Ah,” the woman said, her voice low and purring. “I might like to be tied to the bed.”

  Amy grimaced at the forward manner of the woman and looked up at the man, but his dark face gave no hint of what he was thinking. She’d thought he was Stephen but he wasn’t. He looked a bit like him, but—

  “You look like Zoë’s drawing,” Amy said. “You’re Stephen, but distorted.”

  “I am not your husband,” the man said, but his tone was more amused than angry.

  “Of a certain you are not,” the dark woman said as she swung out with her fist and hit Amy on the arm.

  Amy fell back into the heavy covers and grabbed her arm. “That hurt!”

  “It was meant to,” the woman said, never taking her eyes off the man. When she started to get out of bed, the man stepped back, obviously wanting to get out of the room.

  “I will leave you to it, then,” the man said as he opened the door, then he was gone.

  Amy sat where she was, still too stunned by the last few minutes to understand what had happened. She turned to the woman in the bed beside her. “My name is Amy Hanford and I seem to have…Actually, I don’t know what’s happened to me, but I need to find my husband and children. If you could—”

  She didn’t say another word because the woman hit her in the face with her fist. Amy went sailing back into the bedcovers, and when she put her hand up, her nose was bleeding.

  “You’re my stupid sister!” the woman yelled into her face. “You have no husband and no children. You have no men! You understand me? The men belong to me. And especially Lord Hawthorne. He’s mine and not yours, so don’t go followin’ after him to try to get him in bed with you. You understand me?”

  “Perfectly,” Amy said. She was looking for a box of tissues, but saw none. As blood ran down her arm, she grabbed a gray piece of cloth and held it to her nose.

  “You’re washin’ that, not me,” the woman said.

  Amy realized she was holding a corner of the sheet. “I’m sure I’ll be the first,” she said, but was glad that her stuffed nose kept her from being understood. She didn’t want to be hit again.

  The woman blew out the candle. “Now let me get some sleep.”

  “Happily,” Amy muttered, then lay down in the bed beside the woman. By now she’d decided that she was at home and dreaming and the faster she went back to sleep, the sooner she’d wake up and laugh with Stephen over her ridiculous dream.

  Or would she wake up in Maine and share the dream with…? She smiled. With her new friends. It was a nice thought in the midst of a truly awful dream, and Amy believed in nice thoughts.

  She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the memory of the day she and Stephen and the boys had gone to the zoo. That had been a lovely day. After a while, her nose stopped bleeding and she went to sleep.

  Eight

  “What happened to you?” Zoë asked when Amy walked into the kitchen the next morning.