Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Copyright

This was no way for a Pinkerton agent to behave,

Anna reminded herself as she rushed along.

It was no way for a self-respecting woman to behave, either. To be so flummoxed by a kiss. To have her legitimate and quite serious concerns turned into frilly bows and butterflies by a man’s mouth on hers. And it wouldn’t happen again.

Jack Hazard came to a halt. His dark face glowered down on her. “I apologize,” he snarled. “It won’t happen again, Mrs. Matlin. Mrs. Hazard. Whoever the hell you are.” He let go of her arm to drag his fingers through his hair.

Had the kiss affected him, too? There was a definite flush to his face that Anna had never seen, and his fingers trembled as they threaded through that shiny black hair. Jack Hazard, master spy, seemed nearly as unsettled as she…!

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Harlequin Historicals. Whether you’re a longtime fan of Mary McBride or have just discovered her, we know you’ll be delighted by her new book, Darling Jack, the touching tale of a handsome Pinkerton detective, driven by revenge, and the steady, unassuming file clerk who poses as his wife for an assignment Don’t let this terrific story slip by you.

Dulcie’s Gift, from Ruth Langan, is the prequel to the contemporary stories in the Harlequin cross-line continuity series, BRIDE’S BAY. When a boatful of women and children seek refuge on his island, Cal Jermain isn’t pleased with the added responsibility, especially when he finds himself falling for their secretive leader, Dulcie Trenton.

This month’s books also include a new medieval novel from Claire Delacroix, My Lady’s Champion, the story of a woman who must marry in order to protect her holdings, and a Western from newcomer Carolyn Davidson, Loving Katherine, about a lonely woman who has struggled to keep the family horse farm, and a drifter who teaches her that there’s more to life.

We hope you’ll keep a lookout for all four titles.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to: Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3

Darling Jack
Mary McBride

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARY McBRIDE

is a former special education teacher who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and two young sons. She loves to correspond with readers and invites them to write to her at:

P.O. Box 411202

St Louis, MO 63141

With deep affection to my friends in The Lounge

Prologue

Anna Matlin was invisible.

As a child in the grim coal-mining hills of southern Illinois, she had learned her lessons well. In a family of thirteen, the squeaking wheel got backhanded and burdened with extra chores. In any forest, it was the tallest tree that suffered the lightning.

So Anna, early on, had decided to be a shrub.

She had blossomed once—and briefly—at the age of sixteen, when she eloped to Chicago with Billy Matlin. But Billy had soon looked beyond her, to Colorado and the promise of gold.

“I’ll send for you,” he’d said. But Billy never had. He’d died instead, leaving his young widow pale and even more invisible.

Under bleak winter skies, in her somber wools and black galoshes, Anna Matlin was barely distinguishable from the soot-laden banks of snow along Washington Street as she made her way to number 89, the offices of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, where she had been employed for six years, filing papers and transcribing notes and more or less blending into the wainscoting.

In summer, in her drab poplins and sensible shoes, she seemed to disappear against brick walls and dull paving stones.

Whatever the season or setting, Anna Matlin was—by her own volition—invisible.

But every once in a while, particularly in summer, when the sun managed to slice through the smokedense Chicago sky, it would cast a rare and peculiar glint from Anna’s spectacles, a flash that for an instant made her seem exceptional and altogether visible.

As it did on the morning of May 3,1869…

Chapter One

ChicagoMay 3, 1869

“I need a wife.”

“That’s impossible, Jack. Entirely out of the question.” Allan Pinkerton leaned back in his chair. He raised both hands to knead his throbbing temples, then closed his eyes a moment, wishing—praying, actually—that when he opened them again both the headache and Mad Jack Hazard would be gone.

But—damn it—they weren’t. The nagging pain was still there, and so was his best and bravest operative. The man was a headache in human form, slanted back now with his arms crossed and his brazen boots up on the boss’s desk.

“I need a wife, Allan,” Hazard said again, in that voice that still had a touch of English mist, even after all these years.

The founder of the world’s largest, most successful detective agency sighed as he continued to massage his forehead. “You work alone. Damn it. You’ve worked alone since the war. It’s the way you’ve wanted it.”

“Not this time.”

Something in the man’s tone made Pinkerton lean forward. Jack Hazard made demands. He didn’t plead. But now there seemed to be a tentative note playing just beneath the usual bravado.

“If it were possible,” Pinkerton said. “But it’s not. Right now all of my female operatives are assigned. There’s no one—”

Hazard cut him off, jerking his thumb toward the closed office door. “There’s a roomful of females out there, and you bloody well know it.”

“Secretaries.” Pinkerton dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “They always gather when you come. You know that. They flock like silly pigeons at a popcorn festival.”

“Surely one of them—”

“No.” Pinkerton banged a fist on his desk. “Absolutely not. They’re clerks, not operatives. None of them has been trained or is qualified.”

“They’re women, for God’s sake. That qualifies any one of them to play the part of my wife. It’s not as if you’re asking them to use a gun, or to wrench a confession out of a counterfeiter.”

“I understand that, but…”

“What you need to understand is this, old friend.” As Hazard’s voice lowered, his eyes lifted slowly to meet Pinkerton’s straight on. Gray to Gray. Steel to stone. There was a spark. And then it died. “I can’t do it alone. Not this time.”

Suddenly Pinkerton did understand. He understood all too well, and his voice softened considerably. “Perhaps I ought to assign someone else…”

“No.” In one swift and fluid movement, Jack Hazard’s boots hit the floor and he was out of his chair, towering over Pinkerton’s desk. “She’s mine. If anybody’s going to bring Chloe Von Drosten down, Allan, it’s going to be me. Nobody else. Me. You owe me that, damn it.”

Pinkerton didn’t answer for a moment. He studied his folded hands, then let his eyes drift closed. When he spoke, it was quietly, with calm deliberation. “The woman did you considerable damage, Jack. More than I had imagined.”

“I’m over it,” came the terse reply.

“And the drinking?”

“That, too. It’s been five months.” Hazard yanked his watch from his vest pocket and snapped it open. “Five months. Hell, it’s been a hundred twenty-two days, ten hours and thirty-seven minutes.”

Pinkerton sank back in his chair, out of Hazard’s towering shadow. He massaged his temples a moment before asking, “You don’t believe you need more time?”

“I’ve had time. Now I need something else.”

“Revenge?” Pinkerton lifted a wary brow. “I won’t have one of my agents rolling around like a loose cannon, bent on nothing more than wreaking havoc.”

Hazard shook his head. “No, not revenge. That isn’t it. What I need, Allan, is redemption.” He smiled gnmly as he closed the watch and jammed it back into his pocket. “And a wife.”

And then his voice didn’t break so much as it unraveled, coming apart in a thready whisper.

“Allan Please.”

The commotion down the hall had drawn Anna Matlin to the door of the file room. She stood there now, shaking her head and watching two more secretaries as they attempted to enter Allan Pinkerton’s anteroom simultaneously. After a collision of shoulders, a collapse of crinolines and a good deal of elbowing and hissing, the women somehow managed to squeeze through and to join the throng already inside.

It didn’t take a Philadelphia lawyer or a Pinkerton spy to figure out what was happening He was back. It happened once or twice a year. The arrival and departure of Johnathan Hazard sent the entire office into a tizzy, a frenzy of swishing skirts and sighs and giggles. Last spring, Martha Epsom had broken her ankle racing down the hall Today, Judith and Mayetta had nearly come to blows while wedged between the doorjambs. All for a glimpse of Mad Jack Hazard. All for the sake of a fluttering heart. A fleeting sigh.

Such silliness.

Anna was about to turn and go back to her filing when someone grasped her elbow.

“Come along, Mrs. Matlin.” Miss Nora Quillan’s voice was brisk and efficient. Her gnp on Anna’s arm was secure. “There’s a batch of expense sheets somewhere in there.” The woman cast a dour glance at the door of the anteroom. “Perhaps you’d better get them before they’re trampled.”

There was no refusing Allan Pinkerton’s steelwilled longtime secretary. Not if one had a thimbleful of sense, anyway, or if one prized one’s employment at the agency, which Anna most certainly did.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, even as the tall, broad-shouldered woman ushered her down the hall.

“I’m glad to see at least one of our young ladies has a sense of decency,” Miss Quillan muttered. “Some modicum of pride.”

They had reached the door to the anteroom now. Beyond the threshold was pandemonium—the sighing, simpering and swooning of a dozen or more of Johnathan Hazard’s devotees.

Miss Quillan clucked her tongue in disgust. “I’m helpless. Mr. Pinkerton insists this…this frenzy is good for morale, although for whose, I really couldn’t say. Certainly not mine!” She narrowed her eyes on Anna now, and her mouth crimped in a small smile. “I’m glad to see you’re immune, Mrs. Matlin.”

“Well, I’m not exactly…”

“Yes. Well. You’re a sensible girl. You’ll find the expense sheets over there by the window. I hope. Good luck.” Nora Quillan sniffed and waded into the feminine melee, clapping her hands and shouting, “Ladies! Ladies! Could we have a little order in here, please?”

It wasn’t that she was immune, Anna thought as she made her way to the window. That wasn’t the case at all. It was rather that she didn’t believe in expending useless emotions. She wasn’t the sort of person who wasted dreams. Not that she had any. But if she had…

She gave a little shrug, and was reaching for the sheaf of papers on the library table when the door of Allan Pinkerton’s office opened. There was a lastmoment jostling in the anteroom, a flurry of movement followed by a communal sigh that dwindled to a breathless hush as Pinkerton’s most illustrious spy appeared.

Anna’s hand halted in midair. Her heart, like countless others in the room, gathered speed, bounded into her throat and then plummeted to the pit of her stomach.

Johnathan Hazard—Mad Jack—was the most beautiful man in the world. From his jet-dark hair to the tips of his high glossed boots. He was broad of shoulder, narrow of waist, and perfectly tall. His bearing was straight and military, although Anna knew he had never been a soldier. His air of command was that of a duke or baron, even though he was the fourth son of an earl. Still, he was beautiful. Hazard was fashioned, Anna thought suddenly, not as a man at all, but as a model for what a man might be, if all the gods could agree on a single definition of masculine beauty. Or if they consulted her.

Which they hadn’t. Anna reminded herself quickly and firmly, redirecting her gaze to the stack of papers and the task at hand.

“Well?” Allan Pinkerton stood at Jack Hazard’s shoulder. He spoke with the hushed tone of a conspirator. “That’s the lot of them. A bevy, if you will. Take your pick, Jack. And be quick about it. I’d like to get back to business.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Hazard shifted his stance and crossed his arms, surveying the roomful of women. “I’ll need her for a month or so. Which one can you spare?”

“None of them, damn it.” Pinkerton shot back. Then he demurred. “Well, anyone but Miss Quillan, I suppose. The whole place would come undone without her.”

“I don’t want your ramrod, Allan. God forbid.” Hazard laughed as his gaze cut to the dark-haired secretary, who was poised like a pillar of salt behind her desk. And then, just at the edge of his vision, there came a sudden flash of light, a glint of gold that made him turn toward the window.

“What about her?”

“Her?”

“Over there. The little mouse. The one in the brown dress and the spectacles who’s doing her best to blend into the woodwork.”

Pinkerton squinted. “Oh. Mrs. Matlin.”

“Mrs. Matlin?” A frown creased Hazard’s forehead. “Is she married?”

“No. At least I don’t believe so. She’s a widow, as I recall. Been here for years.”

“I never noticed her.”

“I don’t suppose many do.”

Jack Hazard grinned. “A widow ought to do nicely. See that she’s on the train tomorrow morning, will you?”

Pinkerton cleared his throat. “I’ll ask her, Jack, but I can’t promise—”

“Don’t promise, Allan. Just do it.”

Then, with what seemed like a gust of audible sighs at his back, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s most illustrious spy walked out of the room.

Nora Quillan already had her hat and gloves on. As on most days, she had worked late. Today in particular, with all the commotion, she had been hard-pressed to get the agency back to some semblance of order. Having done that, Nora was ready to go home to a cold supper, a single glass of ale and a good night’s sleep. Still, she knocked on her employer’s door and walked into his office before he was able to call, “Come in.”

“You’re making a dreadful mistake, Mr. P.,” she said.

“Another one, Nora?” Allan Pinkerton turned from the window, hands clasped at his back, an indulgent grin upon his lips. “And just what is this dreadful mistake?”

“I know you think the world of Johnathan Hazard, but—”

“He’s the best man I have,” Pinkerton said, interrupting her.

“He was.” Nora sighed now as she crossed the room and settled on the arm of a chair. “His imprisonment during the war changed him. And now, after that Von Drosten woman sank her claws into him—and probably her fangs, as well—he’s worse. Much worse.” She narrowed her gaze on the man at the window. “Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed it. And I must say I’m shocked that you’d risk letting him fall into her clutches again.”

Allan Pinkerton was accustomed to his secretary’s candor. He valued her opinions. Nora Quillan was rarely wrong. In this instance, however, he prayed she was. Dead wrong.

“Did Jack say anything to you?” he asked her.

Nora sniffed. “He didn’t have to. I’ve known him for over ten years. Nearly as long as you have. The changes are obvious, although I must say he’s done his best to mask them.”

Pinkerton nodded—in agreement, in dismay. He was remembering his detective’s uncharacteristic plea earlier that day, the way the man’s voice had shattered, the tremor in his hands that he’d been hard-pressed to disguise. But Hazard had, damn it. He had.

“He isn’t drinking anymore, Nora.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t. Especially if he’s under her influence again. That woman is evil, Mr. P. Surely you recognize that now if you didn’t before. The Baroness Von Drosten is the devil in silk and ermine.”

“She’s a fake,” Pinkerton said through clenched teeth.

A harsh laugh broke from Nora’s throat. “It doesn’t seem to matter, does it? Fake or not, she still manages to cast her evil spell on—”

“That’s enough, Nora.” Allan Pinkerton sagged into the chair behind his desk and began massaging his throbbing temples. His own worries about Jack Hazard were legion; he didn’t need Nora’s to aggravate them.

“Hazard has a plan,” he said, attempting to put an end to the discussion.

“He had a plan before,” Nora shot back, as soon as the words were out of her employer’s mouth. “He was going to seduce her last year, wasn’t he? But instead, the baroness seduced him. And worse.”

“This time he won’t be alone.”

Nora rolled her eyes. “That’s the other mistake I was intending to bring to your attention. To send littie Mrs. Matlin along on this…this devil’s business… is like sending a lamb to the slaughter.”

“She agreed, Nora. We spoke at length this afternoon,” he muttered. “The woman even seemed rather pleased.”

“She wants to keep her job! How the devil else would you expect her to behave?” Nora shot up from the arm of the chair now, planting her fists on her hips. “You’re determined to carry through with this, aren’t you?”

Allan Pinkerton closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head.

Nora threw up her hands. “I knew it. Sometimes I don’t know why I bother wasting my breath,” she muttered on her way to the door. “Nothing good will come of this. You mark my words. Jack Hazard will be lost forever, if he isn’t already. And God only knows what will happen to poor, unsuspecting Anna Matlin.”

“Is that all, Nora?” Pinkerton asked wearily.

“I should think that would be quite enough,” she said with a sniff. “Good night, Mr. P. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After his secretary slammed the door, Allan Pinkerton leaned forward, cradling his aching head in his hands, praying that for once in her life the infallible Nora Quillan was fallible—and dead, dead wrong.

Chapter Two

For someone who had proceeded with slow caution for most of her twenty-six years, Anna Matlin felt as if she were speeding downhill on ice skates. For someone who had enjoyed invisibility for so long, she suddenly felt as if she were standing, quite naked, in the hot glare of a spotlight. And Anna wasn’t altogether certain that she liked it.

Everything was happening so fast, so unexpectedly. First there had been Mr. Pinkerton and his astonishing request. Then, at the Edgewood Inn, where Anna habitually took her meals, when she quietly announced she would be gone for the next few weeks, everyone had seemed, well…disappointed. Even sad. Anna had been amazed, particularly when the cook, Miranda, after shaking Anna’s hand, pulled her to her great, damp bosom and wailed how much she would miss her.

Right now, her landladies were behaving as if Anna were the center of the universe.

She had been a boarder in the big frame house on Adams Street for six years. She paid her rent on the first Saturday of every month and, when she wasn’t working at the Pinkerton Agency, Anna spent most of her time in her third-floor room, reading. Her landladies, the Misses Richmond, had always treated her kindly while keeping their distance. Until tonight. Anna had asked to borrow a trunk. Along with the luggage, however, she was now receiving a good deal of unasked-for advice.

Little Miss Richmond—Verna—was perched on the footboard of Anna’s bed at the moment, while big Miss Richmond—Dorothy—stood in the doorway, rather like a prison matron, jingling a set of keys.

“Your employer purchased a ticket for you, I presume,” Miss Dorothy said now.

“Well, not exactly.” Anna stuffed her hairbrush in the carpetbag, then took it out again and put it on the dresser She’d be needing it in the morning. She reached into her handbag and produced a small but official-looking square of paper. “He gave me this, instead.”

Miss Verna snatched it from her hand. “Oh, my. This is interesting. It seems to be a pass of some sort for the Chicago, Alton and St. Louis Railroad.”

“I’d be more comfortable with a ticket, myself,” Miss Dorothy said with disdain “One never knows about these things.”

“It looks quite official to me, sister.” Miss Verna handed the paper back to Anna. “I’m sure it’s all right.”

“A lot you know,” the larger sister snapped. “And just when did you last travel by train, Verna Richmond?”

“Actually, I’ve never…”

“Precisely.” Miss Dorothy gave her keys an authoritative jingle. “I’d be much happier, too, if you weren’t traveling alone, Mrs. Matlin. You did say that was the plan, didn’t you?”

Anna merely nodded now, as she continued to take underwear from the dresser, fold it, then lay the garments carefully in the trunk. She had indeed told her landladies she was being sent to St. Louis alone, not knowing whether or not they would take exception or offense to the truth, unsure whether or not they would let her return after traveling with a member of the opposite sex. For, when this surprising assignment was over, Anna had every intention of returning—to this house and this room, to her quiet life.

A little ripple of excitement coursed through her, bringing goose bumps to her skin. She was going to St. Louis with him. With Johnathan Hazard. As his wife! Suddenly she wanted to pinch herself—again— to make certain this wasn’t a dream. If it was, Miss Dorothy’s voice broke into it.

“We’ll want to know where you’re staying, dear. I don’t suppose your employer gave you a hotel pass, as well? You’ll want to choose a simple establishment.”

“Hotels can be dreadfully expensive,” Miss Verna put in, but when her sister clucked her tongue, she quickly added, “Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never stayed in one personally.”

Anna laid another chemise in the trunk. “Actually, I don’t know where I’ll be staying. Someone in the St. Louis agency is meeting me there. I’m sure he will have made all the proper arrangements.”

Her landladies gasped in unison.

“He?”

“Who, dear?”

“Or she,” Anna said quickly. “Come to think of it, the manager of the St. Louis agency is a woman.”

It was a lie, of course, albeit a small, off-white one, but it allowed the Misses Richmond to let out their collective breath. After another few minutes of quizzing and advising, the two spinsters left Anna to her packing. Miss Verna came back a moment later to present her with a going-away gift—“A volume of verses by Mr. Browning, dear. I know how much you like to read. And do be careful with your spectacles. Traveling can often bring mishaps. Or so I’ve heard.” The woman even kissed her on the cheek before retreating downstairs.

All things considered, it had been an amazing day, Anna thought when she had finished packing, then donned her cotton nightdress and finally slid beneath the covers of her bed. She laid her spectacles carefully on the nightstand, as was her habit, closed her eyes and crossed her hands over the counterpane, with every intention of falling asleep instantly, as she always did.

A second later, she was sitting up, staring wide-eyed into a moonlit corner of the room.

“Dear Lord, how did this happen? What in the world have I done?”

She knew precisely when it happened—that moment in Mr. Pinkerton’s anteroom this morning when Johnathan Hazard’s gaze met hers and sent her heart skittering up into her throat and her stomach plunging to the soles of her feet. It had been as if the man had hit her. She hadn’t been able to catch her breath; she had even feared she might faint. Then he had walked out of the office, and for a second Anna had been tempted to run after him. She had stood there, her fingers clenched in the folds of her skirts, every muscle in her body about to explode with motion, every nerve screaming for speed.

Even now Anna wasn’t sure what she might have done if Miss Quillan hadn’t clapped her hands just then. “Ladies, it’s time to get back to business,” the secretary had proclaimed. Then, after conferring briefly with Mr. Pinkerton, Miss Quillan had added, “Oh, Mrs. Matlin. Would you be so kind as to remain here a moment, please? Mr. Pinkerton would like to have a word with you.”

“Me?”

She had felt her face burning then, believing that somehow her employer had read her thoughts, that Allan Pinkerton, master detective, had detected her explosive heartbeat and was about to fire her for such inappropriate behavior.

But, instead, once Anna was in his office, the first words out of his mouth had been, “Mr. Hazard needs a wife.”

After that, although he spoke at length, Anna had barely comprehended his meaning. She remembered nodding solemnly. She remembered saying yes and taking the railroad pass from Mr. Pinkerton’s extended hand.

“Be at the depot at 8:30,” he had told her. “Hazard will fill you in on the particulars.”

The rest of the afternoon was a blur. Word had gotten out in the office, despite the fact that Anna hadn’t breathed so much as a syllable. How could she have? She’d still been hard-pressed to catch her breath.

“Why did he pick you?” someone asked. Anna could only shake her head.

“Some people have all the luck,” Mayetta had said with an indignant sniff.

Some people did, but Anna Matlin had never considered herself one of them.

And this wasn’t lucky at all, she thought now as she stared at the packed trunk in the corner of her room. This was insane. Whatever had possessed her earlier, and made her agree to this preposterous adventure, suddenly and completely escaped her reckoning. And yet…

Anna lay back and closed her eyes. There had been that magical moment this morning, when Johnathan Hazard’s eyes met hers. She couldn’t even have said now just what color those eyes were. Gray, perhaps. Or a deep, disturbing blue. They were beautiful, though, like all the rest of him, and they had sent a shocking, nearly electric message all through her.

Even now, hours later, her heart began to beat erratically in her breast. Come, those eyes had said. Risk it Yes.

“No.” The word left her lips as little more than breath as Anna dug deeper into the familiar warmth of her bed.

The only risk she’d ever taken in her life had turned out badly. She’d come to Chicago with Billy Matlin, even when her father had warned her, “If you go, girl, don’t bother coming back.” She had married a young dreamer—sweet Billy—who had pursued his dreams beyond her and who had perished—somewhere in the mountains of Colorado in his quest for gold.

She’d never been a dreamer. It didn’t make sense that now, at the age of twenty-six, she had suddenly allowed herself to be swept up in a dream. But she had been. In a single moment. At a single glance Come. Risk it.

Not that she’d had much of a choice. Mr. Pinkerton had never said in so many words that there was one, though his manner had been hesitant somehow, and there had been enough pauses in his speech that Anna could have stopped him at any time. But she hadn’t. There she had been in Mr. Pinkerton’s office, not collecting papers before or after hours, or dusting, as she occasionally did when he was out of town, but having been invited in by the great Mr. Pinkerton himself. And there he had been, looking the way God might have looked sitting behind a desk, asking her to act, if only for a while, as a Pinkerton detective. She had been astonished beyond words and flattered beyond belief. It had never occurred to Anna to say no.

Until now.

Still…there was him. Johnathan Hazard. Mad Jack as he was so often called. As a file clerk, Anna was privy to a great deal of information about the Pinkerton employees. It wasn’t that she snooped, exactly. It was just that it was difficult not to read papers as she put them in their proper folders and files. She knew, for example, that Nora Quillan was thirty years old and divorced. And she knew that Johnathan Hazard was the fourth son of an English earl, and that he had come to America after being asked to leave Oxford for “behavior unbecoming,” whatever that meant.

He had begun working for Mr. Pinkerton ten years ago, and by the time Anna started with the agency, Johnathan Hazard had already been somewhat of a legend in the Chicago office. Back then, of course, in 1863, the war had been going on, and most of the agents, Mr. Pinkerton included, had been working as spies for President Lincoln and the Union army.

She remembered the day when word had come that Hazard and his partner, Samuel Scully, had been captured in Virginia and been condemned to hang as spies. A dark cloud had settled over the office, not to lift until the men received a stay of execution. Hazard had appealed to England, the country of his birth. It wasn’t known just what Scully had done to escape the hangman’s noose, but there had been talk of his giving information to his captors, especially when another Pinkerton spy was arrested and summarily hanged.

After four years, the gossip had died away. So had Samuel Scully, Anna thought. No one, it seemed, knew for certain what had happened in that Virginia prison. No one inquired anymore. Mr. Pinkerton stood staunchly behind agents, whether they were dead or alive, and he would have fired anyone who dared to suggest that Scully had been a traitor.

It had been after the war that Johnathan Hazard truly earned his nickname—Mad Jack. He had gone after and brought in the most daring of thieves and counterfeiters, all the while sending in the most outrageous expense reports Anna had ever seen. His file was thick with them, as well as with dozens of written reprimands from Mr. Pinkerton. They never seemed to hamper his career, however, or his dazzling reputation.

Still, in the past five or six months, Anna couldn’t recall having filed a single paper in the Hazard file. A year ago he had been assigned to recover some jewels believed stolen by the Baroness Chloe Von Drosten. He had simply disappeared after that— from the office and from the files. There had been rumors. Rumors aplenty. That he had fallen into drink and dissipation. That he had retired. That he had been fired.

And then, suddenly—today—he was back. Dark and tall and elegant. Swaggering, even when he was standing still. Anna felt her lips curling up in a smile now as she pictured that. Johnathan Hazard’s absence seemed to have made all the secretaries’ hearts grow fonder. Maybe even her own.

She thought once more about her astonishing day. From the moment that man looked at her, it had been as if she were moving in some odd spotlight, being noticed by people who ordinarily ignored her. And not merely noticed, but cared for. She felt, well…quite special.

She had never wanted to be special, though. Quite the opposite. She had planned to live her life quietly, retiring from the Pinkerton Agency when her hair was gray and her bones were bnttle, moving to the seaside, perhaps, where she would spend her remaining days taking quiet walks on the beach and reading all the books she didn’t have enough time for now.

Of course, she still would. But now, when she retired, she would have one dazzling memory to savor. And that, Anna supposed, was worth a bit of risk.

In a month or so, she would be back in the file room, and invisible again. But no one would be able to take away the memory that for one bright and splendid month, she had been not only a Pinkerton spy, but Johnathan Hazard’s wife, as well.

She was going to have an adventure. After that Anna thought as she drifted into sleep, she would return—to this room, to her filing, and to her comfortable oblivion.

It was well after midnight when Ada Campbell, the madam of the city’s foremost house of pleasure, determined that all was well in the parlors downstairs and that she could at last retire to her personal quarters on the second floor, where Mad Jack Hazard was waiting for her.

Not that she was anticipating an evening of love, she thought as she climbed the ornate staircase, stopping once to peer at a nick in the oaken banister and then again to pick up a feather from the Oriental runner that led to her rooms.

Jack had been back for nearly a week. The handsome Pinkerton agent was one of the few men whom she permitted in her rose-brocaded sanctuary and to whom she gave her favors gratis. Only on this visit, Jack Hazard was behaving more like her guest than her lover. He hadn’t touched her once. Damn it.

Ada frowned as she neared her door, questioning her own abilities at seduction. She’d never had to seduce this man before, though. Not Hazard. Not any other man, for that matter, but particularly not Hazard. He’d always been more than eager to join her in her bed, and more than creative once there. Masterful, in fact. The best. What the devil was wrong with him now? And how was she going to fix it? For, if she didn’t, the madam decided, there was really no use in having him around.

She paused to adjust the frame of a French watercolor that had cost her a small fortune. If there was anything that Ada Campbell, the city’s foremost madam, didn’t need at this juncture in her career, it was a constant, live-in reminder that her personal charms were on the wane.

His head snapped up as soon as she stepped into the room, and he flashed her that cavalier grin she’d come to adore over the years. Good God, the man was handsome. It would be a pity to have to kick him out.

The bottle of sour mash—full as far as Ada could see—still rested on the draped and swagged table. Hazard’s fist was still clenched around it.

“Hello, love,” he said in a voice at once soft and sad and annoyingly sober. “All done downstairs?”

Ada sighed, fearing she was done upstairs, as well, unless she took some drastic action that would bring her former lover to his senses. She plucked her ear bobs off, tossed them in the direction of her jewel box and proceeded to take off her clothes.

With his fist tightening around the bottle, Jack swallowed a groan. Ada, it seemed, had reached the end of her tether, not to mention her patience. He had expected that. He was surprised it hadn’t happened earlier—last night, for instance. Or the one before that, when he’d kissed her, then promptly turned his back and fallen asleep—or, more exactly, feigned sleep for both their benefits.

“What’s the matter with you?” the madam had hissed into her pillow.

“Everything,” he’d wanted to say. “Nothing. Dead men can’t feel pain or passion. Aren’t they both the same?”

He sat now and watched her undress—sinuously, seductively—sorry he had reduced the notorious madam to using tricks she hadn’t had to resort to in years. Not that they did any good, he thought sourly.

She stood before the pier glass, having tilted it to give him a perfect and unobstructed view as she peeled away various layers of satin and lace. Down to her red corset now, she unhooked it slowly, held it closed a moment, then shed it the way a jeweled snake might rid itself of useless skin, letting it drop, forgotten to the floor. In the mirror, her breasts had a silvery sheen. Small, yet succulent. Not a feast, by any means, but a delectable dessert.

He ought to get up, Jack told himself. He ought to move toward her, to offer the palms of his hands like warm salvers, to take the delights the famous Ada Campbell was offering. A year ago, he would have, only it wasn’t in him now. He couldn’t move.

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he said in response to the frown that was digging between her eyes and darkening her beautiful face.

“All right.” Ada snatched up her corset and strode to the wardrobe, where she grabbed a silken dressing gown from a hook and shoved her arms through its sleeves. “You can sleep here tonight, but don’t bother coming back,” she said on her way to the door. “Ever.”

She stood there a moment, shaking her head, her expression wavenng between fury and dismay. “You were a lot more fun when you were drinking, Jack. In fact, I think I liked you better that way.”

The ensuing slam reverberated through the room, probably throughout the house, but Jack didn’t blink. His fingers merely tightened on the bottle.

It was a game he played every night. A test. He told himself he hadn’t quit. He was in training—like an athlete preparing for a competition, like a Thoroughbred doing evening workouts around a track.

He was going to win, God damn it. And that sweet prospect was worth every insult and humiliation he’d had to endure, including begging Allan and suffering Ada’s current disgust.

Nothing mattered except bringing the baroness down. Killing her would be too easy. Jack felt his lips sliding into a feral grin. He had imagined murdering her a thousand times, playing out a variety of scenarios in his head. But each time he pictured Chloe Von Drosten dead, it gave him no pleasure, because in death she looked so peaceful, so far beyond earthly pain.

The sad truth, he had to admit, was that he wasn’t so certain he could do it. To murder the baroness, he’d have to be alone with her. It hadn’t been so long since their last encounter that he couldn’t imagine all his hard-won sobriety and all his rage shuddering and collapsing at the crook of a red-tipped finger or drowning in one of Chloe’s wine-colored smiles. He was a damn drunk, but he wasn’t a fool.

He needed a wife—a buffer. What a choice he’d made! A mouse to cower between him and the devil. Mrs. Matlin, the plain, bespectacled widow. The nonentity.

Ah, well. In a month, the little clerk would have served her purpose, and she could come back to the haven of the agency and fade into the woodwork. While he…

His fingers loosened on the bottle of sour mash now, moving slowly, caressing the warm, handheated glass. In a month, this would be his reward, and like little Mrs. Matlin, he could slip back into his own brand of oblivion.

His gaze swung to the door the madam had slammed with such disgust. “Ada, love, when I was drinking, I liked me better, too.”

Chapter Three

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.

Chapter Four

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.

Chapter Five

A flat-bottomed ferry carried them down and across the Mississippi River from Alton to St. Louis, and transported Anna out of Illinois for the first time in her life. She sat by the railing, contemplating the water, wondering how anything the color of mud could manage to glitter so brilliantly in the warm May sunlight. Ahead, on the river’s western bank, the city of St. Louis was coming into view. Unlike Alton, which nestled upon high green bluffs, St. Louis marched right down to the riverbank in rows of red brick, granite, and twinkling window glass.

A little ripple of excitement ran down Anna’s spine. Not that Missouri was California, or even Colorado, but it was farther west than she’d ever imagined she would go. She wondered now if she would have gone west with Billy Matlin if he had asked her. But he hadn’t asked. He’d said he’d send for her. And then he never had.

She smoothed her skirt over her knees now. The poplin, not too different from the color of the river, was faring rather well, she thought, and didn’t look at all wrinkled—which it should have, considering she had slept in it the night before.

For all Johnathan Hazard’s reassurances, Anna had not felt comfortable in that hotel room. She had slipped her shoes off, then stopped, not once even considering removing her dress. Especially not with that whiskey bottle in evidence. By his own admission, Hazard was a drinker. If she was awakened by a roaring drunk, Anna had decided, she wanted to be dressed.

What awakened her, however, had been morning light, and the sight of Johnathan Hazard’s chin dipping toward his chest and both his arms hanging limply over the sides of his chair. The bottle was where it had been the night before. On the table. Unopened.

Since she had been already dressed, Anna had waited downstairs while her companion shaved and added an additional nick to the collection on his face. She had been touched somehow by that bright spot of blood, just an inch or so above his strong jawline. She was thinking about it now on the ferry when the warm breeze suddenly carried the scent of bay rum.

“We’ll be arriving shortly, Mrs. Matlin.”

Anna tugged her gaze from the chimneys and church spires on the western river bank to the man who had just taken a seat beside her. By now, the new shaving injury had blended in with the rest. Dark whiskers were already making a return appearance on his chin. The shadows beneath his eyes were darker. Grimmer, than yesterday. Or did they only appear so because she now knew just how Johnathan Hazard passed his long nights?

She smiled at him. In response, his mouth barely flickered at the corners.

“A husband normally addresses his wife by her Christian name, Mrs. Matlin,” he said with a certain stiffness. “I’m afraid I don’t even know yours.”

“Anna,” she whispered, and when he didn’t respond, she said it more loudly, adding, with a hint of irritation, “Of course, if you don’t care for it, you may call me anything you like, Mr. Hazard. False names are quite common in this business, as you well know.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I was expecting—” he gave a small shrug “—something else. Ruth, perhaps, or Jane, or…”

“A plain name,” Anna said. For a plain woman.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he gazed at her, those blue-gray eyes drinking her in again and coming to rest, as they had the day before, on her mouth. “I like it,” he said a bit huskily. “Your name, I mean. Anna. It’s musical. And quite lovely.” His gaze cut away abruptly.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “My husband…” Anna suddenly remembered Billy wooing her with a silly off-key song he’d made up about Anna in Havana. It seemed a thousand years ago.

“What are you thinking, Anna?” Johnathan Hazard’s smoky voice intruded on her reverie. “What goes on behind those forbidding bits of glass?”

Her hand fluttered up to her spectacles, readjusting them. “Nothing, Mr. Hazard. Nothing interesting, I’m sure.”

“Jack.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ll have to call me Jack.”

“I’ll try, but…”

Hazard’s eyes flicked toward a man who was fast approaching them along the ferry rail. He snagged Anna’s hand and brought her fingers to his lips. “Do it, Anna. It’s time to be my wife. Now.”

His mouth caressed her fingertips, warmly, briefly. Then he let her go and rose to greet the bewhiskered man who had come to a stop by their chairs.

“Anna, this is Henry Gresham, on his way to St. Louis to oversee some last details at the new racecourse. Henry, may I present my bride?”

The man swept off his low-crowned hat and held it over a checkered lapel. “How do you, Mrs. Hazard? Your husband tells me you’re from Michigan. Father’s in lumber, eh?” He slanted a small wink toward Jack.

Anna felt dizzy for a second. So, it had begun. She was a Pinkerton spy now, and obliged to carry out this charade. Her father was not in lumber. When she last saw him, he’d been covered with coal dust, his pale eyes barely visible through a mask of grit. If you go, girl, don’t bother coming back. That had been a thousand years ago. Now she was the daughter of a well-to-do lumberman, from…Where in blazes was she supposed to be from?

“Yes,” she said. “Pine, for the most part.” Her “husband” gave her a small smile of approval. Or was it relief?

Her reply seemed to satisfy the bewhiskered Gresham, as well. He nodded happily, then turned his full attention to Jack.

“Planning to enjoy all the prerace festivities, are you, Hazard? The city’s fairly bursting at the seams already, I hear. People are coming from everywhere. New York State. Virginia. I understand the breeding business is picking up in Kentucky, too, after all the problems during the war. This will certainly be the biggest purse since then. Word has it that even the Baroness Von Drosten will be there with that horse of hers, Chloe’s Gold.”

“Really.” A single eyebrow arched on Jack’s forehead, while the rest of his face remained placid, disinterested. “I hadn’t heard.”

“She’ll win the stakes, naturally. The baroness. Everybody expects it. That horse of hers hasn’t lost a race in the two years he’s been running. Seems—” Gresham stopped suddenly. He looked at Jack then, as if he were only just recognizing him. Color seeped through the whiskers on his cheeks. “Well, you’d know more about that than I, I suppose, considering your, er, relationship with…” Now the man’s gaze fell on Anna, and his voice faltered. “Well, you know…”

No, she didn’t, but Anna felt obliged to put the poor man out of his obvious and self-inflicted misery. “Where will you be staying in St. Louis, Mr. Gresham?”

“Oh, at the Southern Hotel, naturally. Is this your first visit, Mrs. Hazard?”

Anna nodded, thinking it was her first visit anywhere.

“Nice city,” Gresham said. “We won’t have to use these cumbersome ferries much longer, either.” He angled his head toward a conglomeration of wagons and men on the western bank. “Just getting started with a bridge right there. In a few years you’ll be able to cross the Mississippi in a matter of minutes.” He shrugged then. “Well, we’re nearly there. I’d best see to my baggage before some lackey dumps it into the murky waters, eh?”

He grabbed Jack’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically, then tipped his hat to Anna. “A pleasure, Mrs. Hazard. Enjoy your honeymoon, eh? See you at the races, Hazard.”

Honeymoon. The word took Anna by surprise. She had forgotten they were newlyweds. Freshly, thrillingly, in love. Her glance sprang up to Jack’s face, but he wasn’t looking at her. He didn’t seem to be aware of her at all as he stood with his fists tightened on the railing and his eyes fastened on something, or someone, far away.

* * *

“That was a very credible performance,” Jack whispered a while later as he held her elbow and guided her along the gangplank to the levee. “I think that blowhard Gresham really believes you’re a lumber heiress.”

“You might have informed me earlier, Mr. Haz— Jack,” Anna said. “Is there anything else in my background I ought to be aware of?”

He came to a halt halfway down the gangplank and looked down at her. “Don’t take this so seriously, mouse. All you have to do is hang on my arm and behave like a bride. Let me take care of the rest.”

“Yes, but-”

Before she could argue, he was leading her along the narrow walkway again, and Anna focused her concentration on not plummeting into the river. Once her feet touched the paving stones on the wharf, however, she pulled her arm from her companion’s grasp and took a step away from him.

“I’m your partner,” she informed him, pointing her chin into his face.

That face darkened immediately. “You’re my bloody wife. Your job is to confine yourself to that role. You are to share my accommodations and my meals, gaze up at me adoringly through those ridiculous lenses and look happy hanging on my arm.” Jack’s low voice slipped to a deeper, more menacing register. “Beyond that, Mrs. Hazard, you have no role. Do you understand?”

The look Jack gave her had sent more than a few men rushing for cover. But the mouse wasn’t flinching. That lush mouth of hers was thin with ire now, and sunlight was snapping off her spectacles like sparks. The mouse was mad. For a second, Jack wanted to laugh at her surprising behavior. He might have, but out of a corner of his eye he saw Gresham cutting toward them through the crowd.

“Perhaps we ought to clarify one or two things,” Anna was hissing, “before we proceed any further.” Her fists were planted on her hips.

She looked more like a fishwife than a bedazzled bride, Jack thought. And Henry Gresham, who would carry any and all gossip with him along with his baggage, was bearing down on them fast.

“Did you hear me, Mr. Hazard?” she demanded now.

Gresham came to a standstill beside them. The man’s smile was as murky as the river. “Lovers’ spat, Hazard?”

Bloody hell. He had to keep the woman from ruining everything before it had even begun. Other than hurling her into the Mississippi, Jack could think of only one thing to silence her. He snagged her by the waist and clamped her hard against his chest, then stifled her furious mouth with a kiss.

He had expected to meet rigid, icy lips, but Jack knew immediately he’d been wrong. Maybe it was the sudden shock of it. Or maybe she hadn’t been kissed in a long, long time. But, for whatever reason, Anna Matlin’s mouth felt lush and luxurious beneath his. She received his kiss the way a pillow receives a weary head, while her body softened and warmed against his like silk sheets.

Without any volition on his part, his tongue tested the soft seam of her lips. They gave way. Instantly. Sweetly. It was heaven for a moment.

Bloody hell. Jack broke the kiss and cast Henry Gresham a victorious man-to-man look, while the mouse still clung to him like breeze-blown silk. “We’ll be seeing you at the hotel, Gresham, no doubt. Sooner or later, eh?”

Jack’s lascivious wink did exactly as he had intended. It sent the man off with an equally lascivious chuckle, and then Jack looked back at the woman in his arms. Even through her lenses, he could see a distinct glaze in her eyes. He wanted to kiss her again. Right then. He stepped back with an abruptness that unbalanced her.

He gripped her arm. “No more outbursts in public, Anna. You could ruin everything. Please, from now on, think before you speak.”

“Yes. All right.”

Anna was amazed that she could speak at all. And as for thinking…Well, just then she wasn’t sure she’d ever again be able to rise to that monumental task. Jack Hazard’s kiss had taken her by storm, the surprise of it sending streaks of lightning clear to her feet, the sensuality of it reverberating through every nerve and fiber.

He was ushering her along the levee now, and Anna was trying to make her feet move in concert with his. Not any easy undertaking at all, when her knees had turned to pudding a moment ago and were only now solidifying. This was no way for a Pinkerton agent to behave, she reminded herself as she rushed along.

It was no way for a self-respecting woman to behave, either. To be so flummoxed by a kiss. To have her legitimate and quite serious concerns turned into frilly bows and butterflies by a man’s mouth on hers. And it wouldn’t happen again.

Jack Hazard came to a halt. His dark face glowered down on her. “I apologize,” he snarled. “It won’t happen again, Mrs. Matlin. Mrs. Hazard. Whoever the hell you are.” He let go of her arm to drag his fingers through his hair.

Had the kiss affected him, too? There was a definite flush to his face that Anna had never seen, and his fingers trembled as they threaded through that shiny black hair. Jack Hazard, master spy, seemed nearly as unsettled as she. Oddly enough, the notion, which should have perplexed her, calmed Anna instead. She could almost feel her features smoothing out.

When she spoke, her voice no longer bristled. “Apology accepted, Mr. Haz—Jack. In the future, you’ll find a simple ‘hush’ will do if you require my silence. Or—” she demonstrated “—a finger placed just so upon the lips.”

“Fine,” he snapped, not even looking at her while he dug in his pocket. “Here’s four bits for the porter.” He slapped the coins in her hand. “All of it. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He pivoted on his heel and stalked toward a line of waiting carriages, turning back just once to glare at her and growl, “And don’t help.”

There was a good deal of traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians, between the levee and the hotel, four blocks away. Jack sat in the carriage, his shoulders jammed into the corner, putting as much distance as he could manage between himself and the mouse, who was gazing out the window now, apparently enthralled by her new surroundings. Little murmurs of excitement kept riffling across her lips, and every so often she’d reach up to push her glasses up or tug them down a notch.

It was just St. Louis, damn it. Just a city. Not so different from Chicago. You’d have thought Anna Matlin was taking a carriage across the moon. Now Anna Hazard, Jack thought, correcting himself. His—God help him—wife.

Now that they’d arrived in St. Louis, all his energies and attentions should be directed toward his plan. Instead, his attention was focused on the woman beside him and his energies were concentrated below his beltline. Ever since that kiss.

That damnable kiss. He threw her profile a black glance, meant to be brief, then found his gaze once again drawn irresistibly to her lips.

He’d have thought she would struggle more when he silenced her so outrageously. But she had melted beneath his mouth. Not wilted, or given in like a cowering mouse, but warmed and softened like a woman. Of all possible reactions, that was the last one he had expected.

Or wanted, he told himself now as he wrenched his gaze away from her and stared out his own window. He wanted only one thing. Well, maybe two. He wanted to bring Chloe down, and then to celebrate his sweet victory with a toast that would go on indefinitely. And for all the warm luxuries of her mouth, Anna Matlin had nothing to do with that.

When the carriage came to a swaying halt in front of the arched main doorway of the Southern Hotel, he leaned toward her and whispered without warmth. “You’re among the idle rich now, Anna. Your job is to conduct yourself accordingly.”

Chapter Six

The lobby was the grandest room Anna had ever seen. Its thick Persian carpets drank up the sounds of bootheels and the brass wheels of the baggage carts that whizzed by her, while it muted the dozens of conversations that were taking place all around her.

Jack had seated her smack in the middle of the room on a round velveteen banquette. “I’ll be right back,” he told her, adding a pointed “Mrs. Hazard,” as if he felt the need to remind her of her role once more.

How could she forget? As Mrs. Johnathan Hazard, Anna had already received more attention in one day than in the rest of her life put together. Waiters, porters and cabbies looked at her now, rather than through her. It was an altogether new experience, and not one with which she was completely comfortable.

She peered through a maze of people and potted palms, letting her gaze rest on the tall, elegant man who was leaning against the marble registration desk. The polished stone mirrored his long legs and gave back the gloss on his boots. At this distance he seemed pure god again. She couldn’t see the shadows that haunted his face, or the myriad little human nicks. He had an aristocratic air that perfectly suited this room. And then, she remembered, of course, he was an aristocrat by birth. The son of an earl, whether the first or the fourth, was all the same to the daughter of a hard-luck coal miner.

Her hands twisted in her lap. She couldn’t do this. She hadn’t the background to bring it off. Or, right now, the simple courage. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to be in her little third-floor room in the big house on Adams Street, snuggled in her bed listening to the faint bickering of the Misses Richmond downstairs, reading a book, turning its pages and losing herself in distant places. Not here, where she was truly lost.

But it was too late. Jack’s black boots were striding toward her now across the Persian carpets. He had a blue-uniformed bellman in tow.

“Baggage, madam?” he asked her.

Anna tilted her head toward her borrowed trunk. It had looked so fine when the Misses Richmond produced it for her from the attic. Now, here in the lobby of the Southern Hotel, the little camelback contraption looked pitiful.

“Just the one?” The young bellman seemed confused until Jack informed him, rather crisply, that the rest of their luggage had been shipped earlier.

The next thing Anna knew, she was wedged between the two of them in an elevator, going up.

“I’ve never been…” she whispered.

“Relax.”

A warm hand spread across her back and, amazingly enough, Anna’s heart slowed down and her stomach returned to its proper place inside. She was able to coax her wobbly knees along the hallway to an elaborately carved pair of doors at the far end.

“Your suite, sir,” the bellman said, fitting a brass key into the ornate lock.

“Thank you,” answered Jack, at the same time praying the mouse would keep her accountant’s observations to herself when the boy finally opened the door.

She did, but just barely. A little gasp fluttered out of her. “Surely this can’t be—”

Jack pressed a finger to his lips, then moved it to settle softly against hers. “Hush, darling. Naturally you’ve never seen a honeymoon suite before.”

Before she could reply, he swept her up in his arms and strode across the threshold like an eager groom. He realized his mistake before he’d taken his second step. If Anna’s mouth was beguiling, the feel of her body in his arms was pure temptation. She was as light as a little girl, but the curves of her body were warm against him, and indisputably a woman’s.

Damn fool, he castigated himself. His bid to impress a simple—and hopefully talkative—bellman of their newlywed ardor had succeeded only in heating his own bloody bloodstream. The bellman was so busy drawing drapes, he didn’t even notice.

He wanted to drop the mouse like a sack of grain then and there. He put her down with something like grim gallantry, then stepped back from her heat and her female fragrance.

“Send someone up to see to Mrs. Hazard’s belongings, will you?” he said to the bellman, who was now opening a wardrobe to disclose an array of coats and trousers.

“Yours arrived last week, sir,” the bellman said.

“Fine.”

Anna glanced up from the seams she’d been straightening to see the display of elegant clothes. There were frock coats in shades from dove gray to rich ebony. All with trousers to match, she noted. There were white shirts, with and without ruffles, like drifts of pristine snow. On the wardrobe’s door, silk neckcloths shimmered like gay ribbons. It was a haberdasher’s dream.

The bellman had opened Jack’s valise by now and was adding to the display. He unwrapped the whiskey bottle, gave it a knowing look and announced, “I’ll have glasses sent up.”

“No need,” Jack snapped.

The uniformed man shrugged as he set the bottle on a table, then proceeded to take more items from the valise. While he moved silently from bag to wardrobe and back, Anna was watching Jack. He stood in the center of the room, seemingly ignorant of his surroundings, his whole attention focused on that bottle. A muscle jerked in his cheek. His hands drew up into white-knuckled fists. She could almost feel his craving sweeping through her own body, attempting to gain control, and she didn’t wonder for a second why they called it “demon rum.”

She didn’t know what to do. Then her lips twitched up in a tiny, helpful smile. “Well, I believe I’ve some unpacking to do,” she said, then turned toward her camelback trunk and felt in her handbag for the key.

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