Darling Jack

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.