Читать книгу Darling Jack - Mary McBride - Страница 12

That evening, in Alton, on the high green bluffs above the Mississippi River, Jack Hazard was doing his damnedest to ignore the mouse. Just as he had been ever since that moment in the smoking car, when he’d lifted her face for a casual inspection and felt an immediate and far-from-casual response. His body had tightened like a bowstring.

That hadn’t happened in months. Not since he’d quit drinking. His manhood, it seemed, greatly resented the loss of significant amounts of fuel. Either that, or his dissipations during the previous year had taken a final and rather fatal turn. It hadn’t mattered to him much. It still didn’t, although he had to admit the sensation had come with as much relief as sheer astonishment. And worry. He didn’t want or need this kind of distraction. Not now.

The most astonishing part of it was that it had been Mrs. Matlin—Mrs. Matlin!—who made him hard as a shaft of granite, when, for all her wily and well-practiced endeavors, Ada Campbell had failed. So had the two cool-handed pickpockets earlier on the train.

Jack was at a loss to understand it. All he had done was look at her there in the smoking car. At the blond curls that had escaped her neat chignon and ringed her head like a wild halo. At the flush of color on her cheeks. At her silly spectacles and then—dear Lord!—at her shockingly sensual mouth.

It must have been her mouth, he thought now as he sat safely alone in the dining room of the Riverton Hotel, and warned himself to avoid staring at her lush lips, the mere thought of which was once again having a significant effect upon his body. He shifted in his chair, glancing toward the door that opened onto the lobby. Where the devil was she? He had told her he’d wait for her downstairs while she freshened up. He glared at his watch. That had been nearly an hour ago.

The woman obviously wasn’t accustomed to traveling, Jack thought with some irritation. Earlier, upon disembarking, he had left her with two quarters meant as a tip for the porter, and when he returned from securing them a carriage, Mrs. Matlin had handed him one of the coins.

“What’s that?” he had asked, thoroughly confused.

“Half the gratuity,” she had answered in that small, breathy voice of hers. “I helped with our baggage, Mr. Hazard. I’m sure Mr. Pinkerton will greatly appreciate our keeping an eye on expenses.”

“Bloody hell!”

The mouse had flinched when he bellowed, but he hadn’t been able to contain it. Spending—flagrantly, outrageously, blindly—was part of his damn plan. It was absolutely necessary. And now it seemed he’d picked a bloody accountant—worse, a skinflint—to help him accomplish it.

God Almighty, he hoped the woman wasn’t upstairs pouting. She hadn’t said two words on the carriage ride from the depot to the hotel, and hardly more than that once they’d been shown to their room. Then she’d seemed undisguisedly relieved when he announced he’d wait downstairs. Which he’d been doing now for fifty-eight minutes.

He cast a murderous glance at the water goblet before him, and his fists clenched under the tablecloth. Sweet Lord in heaven, how he needed a drink.

“You need to get downstairs,” Anna urged her own reflection as she stood before the dresser, brushing her hair for the third—and last, she swore!—time. Not only was she famished, but she was also desperate to hear the details of this assignment.

In the mirror, the bed loomed up behind her with its two plump pillows. And though she kept looking—kept hoping, actually—the furniture refused to change, as did the mathematics. Two pillows. One bed.

She heard Mr. Pinkerton’s voice again. “Mr. Hazard needs a wife.” It wasn’t that she had misunderstood him. Rather, it seemed that in ail the excitement about the assignment, Anna hadn’t quite thought through all the ramifications of Mr. Pinkerton’s words.

As soon as they entered this hotel room, however, those ramifications had been obvious. Two pillows. One bed. She had felt the blood draining from her face. She was still a little pale, she thought, leaning closer to the mirror and examining her cheeks. Perhaps if she brushed her hair more vigorously it would bring some blood up to her scalp.

“Mr. Hazard needs a wife.” That was what the man had told her. He hadn’t said partner, although that was what Anna had deemed it. And she’d been so excited by the prospect of working with the legendary, glorious and godlike agent

Now, though, after that brief glimpse of his humanity this morning, Anna realized all too well that Johnathan Hazard was a man. He was flesh and blood and all that those two qualities implied.

She swallowed hard. What in the world was she going to do? She had been so grateful when Hazard offered to wait downstairs, because she had needed time to think. But that had been an hour ago, and thinking about her situation hadn’t improved it. It was tune to take action.

It was also time for supper, her rumbling stomach reminded her. Anna exchanged her hairbrush for her handbag, then gave the bed a last glance before walking out of the room and descending the stairs to the lobby.

Though a small hotel in a small town, the Riverton seemed intent upon rivaling New York or Boston in brocades and crystal and glinting brass. It was quite elegant. Probably the finest hotel Anna would ever see, she thought, so she tried to take in each detail.

There was a uniformed gentleman near the front desk who bowed when she approached. “Allow me to show you to the dining room, Mrs. Hazard.”

Anna nearly looked over her shoulder to see to whom he was speaking before she remembered that she was Mrs Hazard. Oh, Lord.

“I’ll find it myself if you’ll just point the way,” she told him, amazed and rather embarrassed by the attentions of this stranger.

He pointed a white-gloved hand toward a dining room that was far more elegant than any Anna had ever seen. She lingered a moment in the arched doorway, relieved to see that Johnathan Hazard sat alone in the room, and that his back was toward her, allowing her a little time to compose herself before confronting such a glamorous man in a setting that, while intimidating to her, seemed his natural habitat.

She drew in a wavering breath, found it laced with the fragrance from numerous bowls of roses on the candlelit tables, and steeled herself once more to demand to know the particulars of their assignment. Especially, and most critically, one particular room upstairs and one particular bed.

“Mr. Hazard. The particulars. I insist.”

At the sound of that small but determined voice, Jack nearly shot out of his chair. He was not one used to being taken unawares, and now the mouse had crept up behind him and shocked the devil out of him. He wondered vaguely if liquor and opium had combined to strip his senses permanently. Then he decided it was merely the invisible, wraithlike qualities of the mouse. Allan should have made use of her years ago. The woman could come and go like smoke.

He seated her, and beckoned to the waiter who had been casting him anxious glances from the kitchen door for the past fifteen minutes. The fellow fairly flew across the room now, a plate in each hand.

Mrs. Matlin lifted her chin the moment he arrived. “I’d like something simple, but substantial, if you please,” she said. “A chop would be fine.”

The waiter cleared his throat and sent a wide-eyed signal of distress to Jack.

“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering for you, dear,” A chop, for God’s sake. He nodded to the waiter, who slid the plates onto the table and then quickly retreated.

“Oh, my,” the mouse breathed as she gazed down at half a dozen succulent oysters, bedded in their shells upon shaved ice, and garnished with wedges of lemon and sprigs of parsley.

Good Lord, had the woman never seen an oyster, he wondered? She looked as if someone had just presented her with a dead cat for her supper. She nudged her silly spectacles up her nose and compressed her lips into a thin white line, contemplating the mollusks.

Of course, Jack thought suddenly, he wasn’t all that sorry to see that lush mouth pinch into something less desirable and distracting.

“Enjoy,” he told her coolly, proceeding to do just that with his own supper.

For a mouse, Jack thought as the meal progressed, her face had an infinite variety of expressions. First there was the near horror at the oysters, which she chewed doggedly after great deliberation over the trio of forks to the left of her plate. Then there was the consternation at the cream of celery soup, and the little twitch of delight when she picked up the soupspoon without hesitation. Next came what appeared to be relief at the sight of the trout and its accompaniment of spring potatoes. The woman was obviously hungry, and concerned, through the first two courses, that that was all the supper she was going to get.

The salad seemed to confuse her, and when the beef Wellington steamed her glasses, she began to look horror-stricken once again. The creme caramel pushed her over the edge.

“This is too much,” she said.

Jack put on his most benign smile as he signaled the waiter for coffee. “Excess is part of the plan, Mrs. Matlin It’s one of the particulars.” Having uttered the magic word, he watched her lean forward. Her eyes widened behind their perpetual windows of glass.

He kept her in suspense while the waiter poured their coffee. By the time Jack had gone through the ntual of lighting his cigar, she was nearly on the edge of her seat.

He aimed a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “What do you know about the Baroness Von Drosten?”

Anna smiled, more to herself than at her companion. Well, at last! She’d felt like a fool all during supper, maintaining a grim silence while trying to contend with slippery lemon wedges, fish bones, and a whole drawer’s worth of utensils. She might not be an experienced supper companion, she thought now, but she’d been an attentive file clerk for the past six years, and she knew more than a little about the infamous baroness.

“Chloe Von Drosten,” she said with some authority, “is believed to be a jewel thief.”

“She is a damn jewel thief,” Hazard shot back.

“Ah, but no one has proven that yet. Even you, Mr. Hazard, were unsuccessful last year in your attempt to recover Mrs. Herrington Sloan’s missing emerald necklace.”

“It isn’t missing,” he said flatly. “I know exactly where it is.”

Anna shook her head. That couldn’t be right. If the necklace had been found, the case would have been closed and she would have moved the file to the Inactive drawer. She knew for a fact that she hadn’t transferred the file. “The case is still active, Mr. Hazard,” she insisted. “No one has recovered that necklace.”

His fingers tightened on the handle of his cup. “No one ever will.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I didn’t say the necklace had been recovered, Mrs. Mathn. I said I know where it is. And I also know why it will never be recovered now.” His gaze drifted to Anna’s full cup. “Would you care for a brandy with your coffee?”

He was lifting a hand to signal the waiter when Anna snapped, “No. I’d care for an explanation. I know what’s in the files at the Pinkerton Agency. Mrs. Sloan’s necklace is still missing. How can you claim to know its whereabouts?”

“Chloe told me.”

Anna laughed. “Well, she may have confessed and disclosed its location, Mr. Hazard, but the necklace is still missing.”

“Technically,” he said very coolly, “it isn’t even missing. The fact is, Mrs. Matlin, it’s being worn by the queen of England.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “And worn quite frequently, as I understand.”

Now Anna gave her glasses a little nudge up the bridge of her nose, as if that would help her see the situation more clearly. The man had lost her somewhere. If…

“She got away with it, you see.”

Anna blinked. “Victoria?”

“Chloe. She presented the necklace to Her Majesty, not merely as a gift from herself, but as a token of esteem from the American government.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile, and then he added, “Victoria was quite touched, I hear.”

“But…” Suddenly Anna understood how something could be at once lost and found. She pictured the square-cut emeralds circling the little queen’s neck. Her royal neck! “No one would dare demand them back,” she breathed.

Hazard’s smile twisted tighter. “Exactly.” He leaned forward now, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and harsh. “Rather brilliant of the baroness, wouldn’t you say? She earned not only the queen’s favor, but her own guarantee of innocence, as well. Victoria cannot be wearing a stolen necklace, therefore there was no crime.”

“More diabolical than brilliant,” Anna muttered. She was thinking of her orderly files now, and she felt some irritation that one would be erroneously placed. Forever. When crimes were solved, the files moved from Active to Inactive. It was a part of her job that she enjoyed. Moving those files gave her a sense of participating in justice, somehow. But now…

Now she became doubly irritated as she realized that Johnathan Hazard had just spent a good ten or fifteen minutes talking about a past assignment, rather than their current one. Her voice was uncharacteristically brittle when she asked him, “Just what does the baroness have to do with anything?”

“Everything.”

The word was simple enough, yet it had come from Hazard’s lips like a curse. For a second, his face seemed less like an Apollo’s than that of an avenging angel. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the fury vanished. His smile turned affable. One dark eyebrow arched. “What do you know about horse racing, Mrs. Matlin?”

“Other than recognizing a horse when I see one, and knowing what a race is, Mr. Hazard, absolutely nothing,” she snapped. “Does this have anything to do with our assignment?”

He didn’t answer, but picked up his cup and drained it of coffee. Then he signaled the waiter for more. Anna’s cup was still full. If she had even a drop of it, she thought, she’d be awake until dawn, lying in bed, staring at the—Suddenly she pictured that bed again, and her gaze flicked to the man across the table.

His dark hair had an almost sapphire luster now that the candles had burned down some. Their muted light carved the planes of his face with shadows and touched his cheekbones with gold. She allowed herself, for just a moment, to appreciate his legendary handsomeness. She let her heart skip just one beat.

After the waiter had refilled his cup and disappeared, Hazard took a sip and set the cup back with long-fingered grace. “Particulars, Mrs. Matlin,” he said then. “We’ll be posing as man and wife. But you already know that.”

Yes, she did. Anna nodded, while trying to move that infernal bed out of her head. At last her partner had seen fit to apprise her of some facts, and now she could hardly take in his words. Not with that dratted bed taking up so much room in her brain.

“When I said that excess was part of the plan, I meant exactly that,” he continued. “We’re not only posing as a married couple, but as an extremely wealthy and free-spending couple.” A small frown skimmed across his forehead now. “Since Chloe knows me, there’s no reason to use an assumed name. And since she knows I’m not a fabulously wealthy man, the assumption will have to be that I married well.”

Anna couldn’t help it. A small giggle fought its way up her throat. “So I’m the rich one.”

Hazard tilted his head. “Yes. Does that amuse you?”

“Well…yes, I suppose it does. I’ve never been rich. I’ve always been rather poor.”

“Rich is better, Mrs. Matlin. Believe me.”

“It probably is.” She shrugged. “I’ve never given it any consideration.”

“You’ve never dreamed of being rich?” His blue-gray eyes opened wider.

“I’ve never dreamed of anything,” Anna answered, and then felt her cheeks flush because that wasn’t exactly true. She had, in fact, dreamed of the man across the table from her now. And that bed, which was still looming like some square and monolithic granite monument in her head. “Well, nothing much,” she added in a whisper. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin and forced a hopeful smile. “So, we’re in pursuit of the baroness, then? Has she stolen more jewels?”

“Probably.” Jack let out a bitter, almost brutal laugh. Its viciousness surprised even him. He wasn’t used to disclosing his emotions that way. “It doesn’t matter. Not even if she’s made off with the crown jewels. What matters is Chloe’s Gold.”

“She stole gold?”

The mouse’s blue eyes were huge behind her glasses, magnified by candlelight and curiosity. They were an intense blue. For a second, Jack felt as if he were swimming in their depths. Another little jolt of electricity shot through him. He sat up straighter in his chair.

He infused his voice with cool condescension that was in marked contrast with his body. “Chloe’s Gold is the baroness’s Thoroughbred stallion. A racehorse, Mrs. Matlin.”

“Oh. I see.” Her mouth tightened then—thank the Lord!—and she edged backward a bit, as if some of the air had gone out of her, while Jack watched a succession of emotions cross her face like banner headlines. Disappointment Embarrassment. Chagrin at having expressed such unmouselike enthusiasm. Sadness at having that enthusiasm splashed with his curt cold water.

Damn! This wasn’t about the mouse!

Even so, he tried to soften his tone. “They’re opening a new racecourse in St. Louis next month, Mrs. Mathn, and running a race called the Carondelet Stakes, which promises a lucrative purse to the winner. Chloe’s Gold is undefeated.” He paused to let his tongue pass over his dry lips. “Naturally, the baroness will be there. And so, Mrs. Matlin, will we.”

She sat quietly a moment, repositioning her lenses, contemplating the rim of her coffee cup, chewing her lower lip, before asking politely, “To what end, Mr. Hazard? You haven’t explained—”

“To the baroness’s end,” he growled. Then he stood, so abruptly the water goblets sloshed over their rims onto the white linen tablecloth and, behind him, his chair tipped over. “Are you quite through, Mrs. Matlin?”

They were at the door of their room—Hazard having rushed her through the lobby, up the stairs and down the dimly lit corridor—when Anna remembered she hadn’t addressed one extremely important particular.

The bed It loomed up before her when Hazard pushed open the door. Its white linens shimmered in the lamplight.

“After you.” He gestured with a fine, courtly hand.

She simply stood there, her feet numb, her mind a blank, her vision filled with plumped pillows and starched dustruffles and the counterpane that had been invitingly, almost lovingly, turned back.

“What—?” Johnathan Hazard’s voice, so near her ear now, lowered to the depths of the chuckle in his throat. “The bed? Is that what you’re worried about?”

Anna nodded. At least she thought she did. Her neck was stiff with tension. It took a monumental effort to turn and lift her gaze to the man standing so close behind her.

In the dim hallway, it was difficult to read the expression on his face, but her first impression was of sweetness. There was a softness to his features that she’d never seen before. And then he grinned. Not his usual devil-may-care and cavalier grin. But a sweet, almost shy tilt of his lips.

“Don’t worry, little mouse,” he said softly. “The bed’s all yours. The pillows, too. Every fold and feather.”

His hand was warm on her back as he gave her a little nudge across the threshold.

“But where will you—?”

“I don’t sleep much, Mrs. Matlin.” The tender warmth she had only just heard in his voice seemed to have dissipated, replaced by a thin chill as he strode past Anna toward his valise on the opposite side of the room. He opened it and, while Anna watched, lifted out something swaddled in cotton cloth that he proceeded to unwrap with meticulous care.

It was a bottle! A bottle of whiskey! So it was true, she thought suddenly. All the gossip in the hallways, and all those whispered hints about Johnathan Hazard’s drinking, were true. She had worried about that earlier, but then had cast those niggling doubts about him aside. To her knowledge, the man hadn’t had a drop of liquor all day—nothing on the train, and nothing more than coffee with his supper.

“What are you looking at, Mrs. Matlin?”

He was lowering himself into the chair beside the small writing table now, placing the bottle before him, keeping his hand on it, as if he feared she might snatch it away.

“Is that disapproval I read behind those windowpanes you’re always wearing?” he added harshly. “What have you heard, Mrs. Matlin? That I’m a lush? That Jack Hazard prefers looking at the world through the green glass of a whiskey bottle, or perhaps up from the perspective of the gutter?”

Anna bit her lip and shook her head, even though that was precisely what she had heard. “There was gossip,” she said. “I never gave it much credence.”

His hand clenched more tightly around the bottle now. “Well, you should have. It’s all true.”

Her jaw slackened, and Anna could feel her breath passing in and out through her open lips. There were no words, though. She didn’t know what to say. Johnathan Hazard sat there, glaring at her, silently demanding that she be shocked or affronted or even disgusted by his admission, when all she felt was an overwhelming sadness for him and a sudden, nearly desperate urge to help him, which made no sense to her at all, since she was the one—a woman alone in a hotel room with a man—who so obviously needed help.

“It’s nothing you have to worry about,” he said before she could speak. He smiled a little crookedly then, as if he had been imbibing from the bottle, rather than merely clutching it. “My tendency toward dissipation isn’t contagious, Mrs. Matlin, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It isn’t.”

“Good. And, as you’ve no doubt noticed, I am not, at the moment, drinking. I am merely caressing the bottle, which is what I will continue to do until our assignment is finished. After that…” His smile thinned to nothing, and his voice trailed off for a moment.

Still not knowing what to say, Anna perched on a corner of the bed and began to unlace her shoes. She sensed Hazard’s blue-gray eyes on her. Even across the room, she could hear a ragged edge to his breathing. For a moment she thought she could almost feel his pain.

She glanced at him, but he was staring at the bottle in his fist now.

When he spoke, he didn’t look at her, and his voice sounded faraway, almost ancient, infinitely weary. “Please feel comfortable with me, Mrs. Matlin, and feel free to do whatever it is you do when preparing to retire for the night. I’ve already seen everything there is to see, and I’ve done everything there is to do. I want nothing from you, little mouse. Believe me.”

She did, and his words provoked a distinct surge of relief in Anna. But that relief came coupled with a sadness she didn’t quite understand. A sadness she wasn’t altogether certain she ever wanted to comprehend.