Brazen Bride by Stephanie Laurens

dirk.”
    He glanced sharply at her and reached for the saber.
    Unperturbed, she responded, “As I believe I mentioned, we’ve”—with her head she indicated Muriel, watching from the table’s foot—“had significant experience with temporary loss of memory. It never pays to push, to try to recall too much at once.” She watched curiously as he withdrew the saber and examined the blade. “Regardless, I was going to give you the saber yesterday, after the dirk had been so helpful in bringing so much back to you, but, if you recall, you were tired after that, so pushing again then didn’t seem wise.”
    He glanced at her, grimaced, then looked back at the saber. “Despite your solicitousness, this isn’t having the same effect as the dirk.”
    “Perhaps it isn’t yours,” Muriel said.
    Logan slid his hand into the saber’s guard, grasped the hilt. Hefted it, rolled his wrist a little, gauging the weight. “No—I think it is mine. It feels . . . familiar. But . . .” Frustrated, he shook his head. “I just can’t remember what it means, what it tells me.”
    Setting it back on the table, he picked up the wooden cylinder. Examining the strips of wood that formed it, held together by brass clasps, he frowned. “This tells me even less. I’m fairly certain it’s not mine.” He tried to open what appeared to be the top, secured by a combination of brass levers, but nothing he did seemed to release the lid.
    “It has to be important to you,” Linnet said. “You were carrying it, wrapped in oilskins, in a specially designed leather sling—the cylinder rested along your spine, secured by a belt loop and two other straps that went over your shoulders. We had to cut the sling off you to tend to your wound.”
    “I can’t open it—I’m not sure I ever could.” Setting it down, he stared at it. “I must have been a courier—presumably taking that to someone, somewhere. But why? And to whom? And where was I heading?”
    No answers came.
    After a moment, Linnet rose. “Never mind that now—my advice is to leave it and it’ll come to you. However, as you’re clearly going to puzzle over it anyway, come and let me take a look at your head while you think. That bandage needs retying.”
    As the loosened bandage had developed a tendency to slip down over one of his eyebrows, Logan grunted and rose. Muriel rose, too, and headed for the kitchen. Logan followed Linnet into the corridor leading to the back door, then she turned off it, down a narrower corridor. Stopping outside a door, she opened it and went through, into a small bathing chamber.
    “Sit there.” She pointed to a bench beside a sink.
    Noting that her voice of authority had returned in full measure, Logan somewhat grumpily sat.
    Linnet ignored his frowning, undid the sloppily tied knot—one he had clearly fashioned—and carefully unwound the bandage, removing the various lumps of padding they’d included to protect the wound.
    “It’s stuck,” Logan informed her, just as she reached that point. “That’s why I couldn’t take it off myself.”
    “You shouldn’t have tried.” She looked, then humphed. “I’ll need to moisten it, dampen it to remove it. Wait here while I fetch some warm water.”
    She went out and to the kitchen. When she returned minutes later carrying a basin with warm water, Logan was sitting exactly as he had been, hands braced on his knees, his gaze fixed in the distance, his brows drawn down in a distinctly black frown.
    “If you keep on like that, you’ll give yourself a brain fever.” Setting down the basin, she squeezed out the cloth she’d dropped in the water, then drew his head forward, and gently, carefully, wet the patch where the bandage had stuck.
    He shifted, but she kept hold of his head. “Does that hurt?”
    “Not of itself—only when you press.”
    “Good.” The bandage finally came free. She lifted it away. “Lean further forward so I can check the wound—you might not need