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“You don’t know what did that to you?” His gaze caught on her eyes for a long breath before it dropped to her arm. “It looks like fire. Like your arm was burned to an extreme. It is what flesh looks like as it heals from a burn. You have no recollection?”
She shook her head, words unable to form as her gaze went down to her arm.
Fire? Burn?
How could she have suffered this and not remember?
He sighed, his left hand lifting to rub his eyes. “You are either the most skilled actress I have ever come across or it appears as though that lump on your head has knocked time and sense out of you.” His fingers dropped from his eyes and his gaze skewered her. “Which is it?”
Sloane attempted to read his face, but there was nothing to discern. Just cold countenance.
She wasn’t sure if he meant to attack her in the next breath or leave the room. And she wasn’t sure which answer she spoke would produce which result.
Avoiding his hawk eyes, she looked down and flipped her left leg out from under her skirts. “I’m to be your captive?”
“Until you tell me who you work for and what you hoped to do—or steal—in my chambers, you are.”
“And if I cannot remember?”
“I think you will. Whatever drove you here will not wait forever and I think you will break.”
Averting her look as much as she could from her left arm, she loosened the laces on her left boot and pulled her toes free. She set the boot down with a clunk. “Then I may as well get comfortable in here since I don’t have the answers you’re seeking.” She went to work on her right boot.
Both her feet free after tugging off her stockings, she wiggled her toes. Heaven. How long had she been wearing those? A day? Two?
Reiner gained his feet and stepped closer to her, his bare feet almost touching her skirt.
She dared a glance upward.
His face seethed with skepticism. “You’ll find my patience will outweigh any game you are about to play here, Sloane.”
“And I think you will find that I cannot confess to anything I cannot remember, Reiner.” She set a sweet smile on her face. “Do you feed your captives, or do they wither away till death takes them?”
“It’s the middle of the night. So they wither away until morning and a proper breakfast time has come.” He turned from her, walking to the door.
Without another word, he exited the chamber.
The click of the lock echoed into the room.
Her chest fell, the air rushing out of her.
If she was going to be freed of this room, she would have to do much better than that.
{ Chapter 4 }
Two days.
Two days she’d been stuck in this stuffy, wretched room.
The insufferable man had delivered food—terribly delicious food, at that. Had a maid come in to empty the chamber pot. Made sure she had enough wood for the fireplace, not that the room needed any more heat stuffed into it. With the shutters locked against the windows, she hadn’t had the slightest whiff of fresh air in days.
But beyond that, she hadn’t caught the tiniest glimpse of this place she was captive in, save for the four walls surrounding her.
Her attention dropping from the shutters that were the current bane of her existence, Sloane looked down at her fingernails. The white slivers of her nails had been worn down to the skin, and now shocks of pain ran up her fingers every time the tips of them touched something.
She’d tried everything she could think of to unlock one of the shutters from its window. A splinter of wood that she’d whittled against the fireplace grate to gain a sharp point. It broke in the lock. Her own fingernails scraping along the wood holding the hinges. She’d barely made a scratch in the hard wood. The bottom of one of the side table’s legs that she’d smashed apart and then tried to wedge for leverage along the lower edge of the shutter. That shaft of wood had splintered apart in her hands.
There was little to work with in the room. The drawers in the chest were empty except for linens for the bed and two washcloths. A silver-handled hair brush that did her no good. If only she’d had pins in her hair instead of a braid tied off with a ribbon. A pin would have at least allowed her the possibility of picking one of the locks on the shutters.
