Читать книгу Darling Jack - Mary McBride - Страница 11

Anna was late getting to the train depot the next morning, first because she’d taken too much time brushing her hair and subduing it into a sleek bun at the nape of her neck, and second because the Misses Richmond had been intent upon giving her the benefit of some crucial, lengthy last-minute advice. In her efforts to disengage herself from her landladies and to escape from the house, Anna had nearly forgotten her spectacles and had to rush back up to her room on the third floor to retrieve them.

Up there, she had looked around the little room almost wistfully. “Don’t be silly,” she’d said to herself. “You’ll be back in a few weeks, with memories. Memories galore.”

The omnibus had gotten her to the depot with only a minute or two to spare. Then, after seeing that her borrowed trunk was properly stowed—“Keep a sharp eye on your luggage, dear,” the Misses Richmond had cautioned—Anna herself had had a mere second to clamber aboard through a billowing cloud of cinders and steam. By the time she located a forward-facing seat—“Never ride backwards. It’s bad for the digestion.”—and settled into it, Anna’s carefully tamed hair was wildly corkscrewed and her glasses were steamed up and sliding down her nose.

She extracted a hankie from her reticule, and was wiping the wet lenses when the train gave a long hoot and then, with a lurch, moved away from the depot. Anna planted her glasses back on and gazed over the rims in search of a familiar face among the passengers.

He wasn’t there. Johnathan Hazard wasn’t there!

Turning toward the window now, she scanned the wooden platform as the train moved slowly past it. She half expected to see the famed Pinkerton agent vaulting over a baggage cart, then sprinting alongside the train. A little smile touched Anna’s lips as the image flourished in her brain.

Hazard would toss a valise through an open window, then time the rhythm of his stride perfectly as he reached for a metal handrail and levered his long, supple body onto the moving vehicle. He would stand in the doorway then, casually brushing the sleeves of his fine-fitting frock coat and straightening his waistcoat with a subtle tug. All the while, without even appearing to move those gray-blue eyes, he would be gathering information, and by the time the last car passed the depot, Johnathan Hazard would know just how many passengers were on board and their disposition in the various seats—and specifically, he would have found hers.

Easily, then, as if the train were standing still, he would move along the aisle to arrive at the vacant seat beside her. His breathing would be even, despite his race against the mighty locomotive. And, when he sat, there would be the faint aroma of bay rum and hearty exercise. He would cock his head in her direction, take her measure in a glance, and say…

“Ticket, madam?”

Anna’s gaze jerked to the patent brim of the conductor’s cap and then to the empty seat beside her.

“Conductor, you must stop this train. Immediately.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am?”

“I said…” Anna was rummaging through her handbag now for the official pass Mr. Pinkerton had given her the day before. She hadn’t lost it, had she? Or left it behind? Where the devil—? Her fingers gripped the cardboard pass, and she flashed it at the conductor. “I order you to stop this train.”

The man smiled. “Ah. A Pinkerton, are you?” He looked at her more closely now. “I never would have guessed.”

“My partner hasn’t arrived,” Anna told him, trying to subdue the plaintive note in her voice and the flutter of panic in her chest, attempting to sound more Pinkerton than pitiful. She was a representative of the world’s foremost detective agency, after all. She had credentials.

“A lady, is she?” The conductor had to widen his stance as the train picked up speed. His gaze wandered around the car.

“No. A gentleman. A man by the name of Johnathan Hazard. He’s…”

“Well, now, why didn’t you say so before? Mad Jack’s back in the smoking car.” He angled his head toward the rear of the tram. “Been there at least a couple of hours.”

“Oh.” The word broke from Anna’s throat with pitiful relief. She smoothed her skirt then, adding a calmer, more authoritative, “Indeed.”

“We’ll be stopping in Coal City in about an hour to take on more fuel. I expect you can connect with him then.”

“Yes. Thank you. I will.”

“Have a pleasant trip, ma’am. My regards to Mr. Pinkerton.” The man touched the brim of his cap and proceeded to make his way along the aisle.

Anna turned back to the window. The buildings dwindled in size as the train approached the city limits; the crowds of people thinned and eventually disappeared. She lowered her chin to consult the watch pinned to her bodice. It was 8:48. It occurred to her that she was eighteen minutes late for work. And then a wild little giggle roiled in her throat when she realized she was at work, right here, speeding south-southwest at thirty miles an hour.

Toward what? she wondered bleakly now. Anna sighed so hard, her breath clouded the window.

“Hazard will fill you in on the particulars,” Mr. Pinkerton had told her. Suddenly, to Anna, those particulars loomed hugely, even vitally important.

In the smoking car, Jack bit off the tip of a thin cigar, lit it, and leaned back in his seat, smiling. He wondered now exactly what he would have done if he hadn’t seen the little mouse scurrying toward the train at the very last moment. Stalked off, no doubt, and stormed into Allan’s office, demanding a replacement for the missing Mrs. Matlin, giving his old friend another opportunity to call him obsessed, and possibly even to deny him not only a partner, but the assignment, as well.

Mrs. Matlin was on board, though, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief at the same time he cursed himself for needing her at all. He hadn’t needed anyone in years. Not after Scully Not professionally, anyway. As for needing anyone personally…well, there was his sister, Madelaine, of course. And then there had been Chloe, hadn’t there? If one could call that sick and soulless dissipation need.

He blew a hard, thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. Allan had been right, of course. He was obsessed. There was no other word for it. But he planned to use that obsession well—as the light at the end of his long, dark tunnel, as the fuel that would burn and sustain him until he did what he had to do.

Had Allan refused him, Jack thought now, he would have gone ahead anyway, merely paring down his plan to fit his own bankroll. It still would have worked. He wouldn’t fail. Not at this. But with Pinkerton money behind him, his plan was a guaranteed success. It had “legs,” as they said at the track. Especially now that the mouse was on board. “Bless you, Allan,” Jack murmured under his breath.

He let his gaze travel aimlessly through the haze of smoke. Two women—one in acid-green satin, her cohort in royal blue—caught his attention. They sat flanking a scrawny, bald-pated fellow in a triple row of seats, leaning toward him and pouring their attention, as well as their sultry shapes, all over him. The little bald man was lapping it up. Poor sap had probably never been the focus of one female’s ardent attention, let alone two, and Jack had been a Pinkerton agent too long not to recognize a bit of larceny in progress.

It was almost second nature for him to rise, clench his cigar in his teeth and move in on the bustling, hustling dollies.

When Anna got off the train in Coal City, a second blast of steam curled whatever hairs the first one had missed, in addition to nearly scalding the skin from her face. Good Lord, she’d be lucky to get to St. Louis alive. Right now, however, her immediate destination was elsewhere.

She approached the conductor, who was stretching his legs on the platform while winding his watch. Anna cleared her throat. “Excuse me, sir. Would you please direct me to the smoking car?”

The man dropped his watch. It draped over his belly by its thick gold chain as he peered down at Anna. “Sorry, madam. You startled me. I didn’t notice you standing there.”

“The smoking car,” Anna repeated as her chin came up a determined notch. “Which one is it, if you please?”

“Oh, the Pinkerton lady. Looking for Mad Jack, are you?” He grasped her elbow firmly. “You just come along with me.”

She hadn’t really wanted an escort, Anna thought, or needed one. She had to trot to keep up with him, and when they reached the second-to-last car of the train, the conductor gave her a boost, which Anna wasn’t quite prepared for. She stumbled headlong into the acrid, smoke-filled coach, stopping at a pair of high-glossed boots that shone even through the murk. Anna’s eyes jerked up.

“Mr. Hazard?”

He sat, or rather reclined, with a female on each knee. He appeared to be wearing them, actually. Like trousers, one leg blue and the other a garish green. And he was also wearing a wide white grin that, under the circumstances, struck Anna as altogether brazen and shocking and, well…beautiful.

“Mr. Hazard,” she said again, this time a little more breathlessly than before, and then she simply stood there, mute. What the devil did one say to a man with two women on his lap?

Suddenly the conductor was standing at her shoulder. “Well, I see you’ve found him. This little lady has been looking for you, Jack.”

“And I’ve been looking for you,” Hazard said to the conductor, ignoring Anna as he stood abruptly and the females went tumbling to the floor. “These women are pickpockets, Dooley.” He bent and slid a lithe, long-fingered hand into a green bodice, coming up with an elaborately engraved pocket watch. “This is mine. There’s more, if you’d care to search them. After that, I expect you’ll want to turn them over to the local constable.”

The women were struggling up from the floor now. “Bastard,” the green one hissed at Jack, while the blue one gave out a blistering string of curses meant for anyone and everyone within hearing distance.

“Here, now.” The conductor grabbed the women by their arms and hauled them to their feet. “You two have met your match with the Pinkertons, I’d say. With Mad Jack and his partner here.”

Jack lifted an eyebrow. “Partner?”

The conductor blinked, then glanced from Jack to Anna and back again. “That’s what she told me. She said she was your partner.”

“More like my life partner, wouldn’t you say, darling?” Jack purred as his arm reached out and reeled the unsuspecting Anna in. He grinned down at her—it was the same grin that only moments earlier had stolen her breath away—then angled his head toward the conductor. “She’s my wife, Dooley. Although the knot’s only been tied for…what, darling? Fifteen or sixteen hours?” He lowered his voice and closed one eye in a slow wink. “Haven’t yet had an opportunity to make her truly mine, Dooley, if you take my meaning.”

Anna caught it, and blushed. So did the woman in the green dress, who didn’t blush at all, but rather shook her fist at Jack and bellowed, “Yeah, and here’s hoping you never do, buddy! Her or anybody else, ever again.”

“That will be enough out of you, ladies.” The conductor tugged the two pickpockets toward the door. “Thanks, Jack,” he called. “And my best wishes. To you and the little missus.”

A moment passed—or crawled, it seemed to Anna—during which she cleaned her spectacles and stared at the floor while trying to recover enough breath and enough sense to speak coherently.

“Mrs. Matlin?”

His voice seemed to drift down and curl around her like warm woodsmoke. Anna didn’t dare look up. Her face was on fire as she stood in the crook of Johnathan Hazard’s arm, her hip quite plastered against his and the heat from his body seeping into her own. She couldn’t breathe, and she feared it had nothing to do with the stagnant air in the smoking car. It was him. How in blazes was she going to work with this man if she went to pieces each time she looked at him? Glue yourself together, girl.

“Yes?” she managed to squeak, putting her glasses back on and raising her eyes as far as the middle button on his perfectly pressed white shirt.

“How do you do?” he said softly. His faint accent greeted her ears like elegant music. “I’m Jack Hazard.”

“Yes. Yes, I know.”

He chuckled now, a rich bass rumbling deep in his throat. “How can you be so certain, Mrs. Mathn, unless you look at me?” Warm, gentle fingertips found her chin then, and coaxed it upward. “There. Now that’s better.”

His eyes took her in then—fairly consumed her before coming to rest on her mouth. He made a tiny clucking sound with his tongue. What that meant, Anna didn’t know. Nor could she fathom the meaning of his huskily breathed “Well, now.”

She did know what “All aboard” meant, though, and when the cry suddenly sounded, Anna stiffened and stepped back.

“I ought to be returning to my seat.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Oh, don’t. Anna was thinking that if she could just get away from him for a moment or two, she would be able to pull herself together. But as she cast about in her brain for an excuse to go alone, Johnathan Hazard’s warm hand folded over her elbow and he moved determinedly toward the door, and then, a moment later, those long, lithe fingers of his were fitting themselves to her rib cage as he lifted her down to the platform.

He held her then, just a fraction of a second too long, but long enough for Anna to recall how good it felt to be touched, to be in a man’s possessive grasp. It had been years. Since Billy had left her, the most Anna had done was shaken hands. And now she was shaken to the very marrow of her bones.

She was hardly aware that she was being propelled along the platform now, her feet somehow managing two steps for each of Hazard’s strides. Ahead, the big locomotive was building up a towering pillar of steam. On her right, the coaches were trembling and grinding at their couplings. Anna quickened her steps.

Nearly rushing now, she wasn’t sure whether her haste was to get on board the departing train or to escape this unsettling, disconcerting man. Both perhaps.

“Where the devil are you going?” Hazard stopped, bringing her to halt.

“To my seat.” Her words came out in a mortifying little wail.

“Up there?” He angled his head toward the second-class coach in which she had been riding earlier. The train gave a lurch as the wheels began turning. The couplings squealed, and the cars inched forward along the platform. Hazard’s grip tightened on her arm.

“Yes! Of course!” Anna shrieked over the long blast of the whistle.

“I think not, Mrs. Mathn.” He swung her around then, as if she were no more than a yarn doll, and propelled her toward the door she had just rushed past.

“But…but this is…this is first class, Mr. Hazard,” she stammered

“Indeed it is, Mrs. Mathn,” he said as he lifted her up onto the moving train, then followed her in one long and graceful leap. “Indeed it is.”

Anna immediately appreciated the additional padding in the seats in the first-class coach, though she wasn’t one who required such luxury, and she meant to let her partner know that as soon as she found her voice.

Johnathan Hazard had deposited her in the luxurious chair, then settled in quietly beside her while Anna occupied herself in arranging and rearranging her skirts and experimenting with her handbag in various locations on her lap. Anything not to look at him. She adjusted the seams on her gloves. They wavered in a film of tears.

You shouldn’t have come. You aren’t up to this. When Mr. Pinkerton singled you out, you should have run like the wind in the opposite direction. You aren’t special, Anna Matlin. You ’re just a silly fool.

“Comfortable?” That voice skimmed over her flesh like breeze-blown silk.

Anna glanced at Hazard’s kneecap, not daring to look higher. “Quite.” No. I want to go home.

A moment passed, and then that zephyr of a voice caressed her senses again. “Look at me, Mrs. Matlin.”

She thought she might die if she did, or at the very least explode or self-combust, but Anna forced herself to raise her eyes to his. And then something quite inexplicable happened. It was as if she were seeing him for the very first time.

The eyes into which she was gazing were the same mixture of blue and gray she recalled, but rather than metallic, the hue was closer to that of a November sky on a day that wants to rain. Faint shadows lodged beneath his dark lower lashes, like remnants of nightmares and too little sleep. The creases at the corners were more plentiful, and far deeper, than she had realized.

The mouth that she had forever pictured in a dazzling grin seemed different now. Its natural bent, Anna noticed suddenly was downward, and its foremost expression seemed to be one of sadness rather than mirth. And the complexion she had always thought so dark and dashing was merely the result of whiskers, beneath which his skin was actually quite pale and somehow tender. Scarred, too, she saw quite clearly now, perhaps by hands that trembled when he shaved.

Johnathan Hazard was a human being! He wasn’t a god, after all!

The notion struck her like a physical blow, a whack between the shoulder blades that put all her systems back into proper working order. The rough beating of her heart smoothed out. The pinch in her vocal cords let go, and her lungs expanded, filling with sweet air.

Johnathan Hazard was mortal! How incredible that she had never noticed that before!

“You look…” she whispered, barely aware that her thoughts had moved to her lips, “weary.” Worn out, she might have said. Used up.

And then, as suddenly as she had glimpsed it, that vulnerability disappeared. It was as if she had never witnessed it at all, and once more Anna found herself gazing at Adonis, at the handsome Hazard mask.

“I am, Mrs. Matlin,” he said as he snapped open the watch he had recovered from the pickpocket. “It’s seven or eight hours to Alton, and I intend to sleep for the major part of them.”

Anna blinked. He was going to sleep? Now? “But Mr. Pinkerton said you would inform me of the particulars in this case.”

By now he was already settled deep in his seat, with his long legs stretched out, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed. He opened one to a mere slit as he said, “You’ll know everything you need to know.”

“When will that be, Mr. Hazard?”

“When you need to know it, Mrs. Matlin.”

“But…”

“Good night.”

Anna bit down on her lower lip. She was tempted to tell Johnathan Hazard that she wasn’t accustomed to being so curtly dismissed, but the truth was that she was accustomed to it. To being dismissed, if not outright ignored.

Funny, she thought as she turned her gaze toward the window. It had never bothered her before.