Mary McBride – Darling Jack (страница 10)
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.
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.
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.
“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?”