Mary McBride – Darling Jack (страница 9)

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?”