Mary McBride – Darling Jack (страница 8)

“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.”