Darling Jack. Mary McBride
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