Alex blinked, sitting back in his seat.
What was this man’s game? What was he about?
Why go to so much effort to askAlex, of all people, these questions?
Alex drummed his fingers on the table. “I repeat, without seeing the patient, I can say nothing definitively. Hypothetically, the end results of what you describe could be unpredictable. Monsieur Sauvages classifies many types of amnesia, but generally, once a memory is lost, it is considered lost for good. The mindcanheal over time, but a complete recovery of erased memories almost never occurs. Any restoration is fragmentary, at best.”
“Ah.” Reverend Smith leaned back in his own chair.
That was all the man said.
Simply,ah.
Maddening.
Alex fixed the reverend with a stern look.
“Ye said this matter related toThe Minervain some way,” Alex said, the bite in his voice more pronounced. “I would like tae know how.”
He followed this by pointedly checking his watch, making it clear that the reverend was running out of time.
Reverend Smith smiled, as if he found Alex’s frustration . . . amusing.
“I have received funding from a generous benefactor to undertake a mission to preach Christianity to the heathen tribes of the South Pacific,” the man said, patting his stomach. “That was my business in Plymouth. I was finalizing details for our journey to Sydney, Australia.”
Alex let out a slow breath, hunting through the reverend’s words, deciding which thread he wished to tug first.
“Ourjourney?” he asked.
“Myself and my wife. Four other couples from my congregation. And possibly this family friend.”
“And ye wish tae ask about my own journey there?” Alex glanced at the clock on the mantel. The man’s stagecoach departed in less than fifteen minutes. “I would need hours to recount it all.”
Reverend Smith stared at him for a long moment, that samecalculatinglook on his face.
“Ye seem tae be dancing around the issue, sir,” Alex said. “Perhaps ye could spare my guesses and get to the point.”
The reverend laced his fingers together. “It has come to my attention that there was a woman aboardThe Minerva.”
The words were an ambush.
Alex hissed in a breath, his jolting reaction nearly visceral.
Reverend Smith’s impassive face said he hadexpectedas much.
Alex’s heart leapt into his throat, his mind racing.
How could this man know about Jamie Fyffe? It seemed almost impossible—
“Your silence, Doctor, is telling,” the reverend continued, his expression hardening into firm resolve. “You sit here in your finery and gentility and pretend to be a man of honor. But I know that you sanctioned men keeping a helpless woman aboardthatship. You aided them in using that poor creature for their . . . theirbasepleasures.”
Alex’s mouth, quite literally, dropped.
His jaw flapped open, words unequal to the sheer depravity of this accusation.
“Pardon?!” he gasped. “What in damnation—”
“Though not a lady by birth, Miss Eilidh Fyffe”—the reverend stretched out her first name,AY-lee—“most certainly did not deserve to spend her days forced to act as aharlot.”
