Czytaj książkę: «Darling Jack»

Chapter One

ChicagoMay 3, 1869

“I need a wife.”

“That’s impossible, Jack. Entirely out of the question.” Allan Pinkerton leaned back in his chair. He raised both hands to knead his throbbing temples, then closed his eyes a moment, wishing—praying, actually—that when he opened them again both the headache and Mad Jack Hazard would be gone.

But—damn it—they weren’t. The nagging pain was still there, and so was his best and bravest operative. The man was a headache in human form, slanted back now with his arms crossed and his brazen boots up on the boss’s desk.

“I need a wife, Allan,” Hazard said again, in that voice that still had a touch of English mist, even after all these years.

The founder of the world’s largest, most successful detective agency sighed as he continued to massage his forehead. “You work alone. Damn it. You’ve worked alone since the war. It’s the way you’ve wanted it.”

“Not this time.”

Something in the man’s tone made Pinkerton lean forward. Jack Hazard made demands. He didn’t plead. But now there seemed to be a tentative note playing just beneath the usual bravado.

“If it were possible,” Pinkerton said. “But it’s not. Right now all of my female operatives are assigned. There’s no one—”

Hazard cut him off, jerking his thumb toward the closed office door. “There’s a roomful of females out there, and you bloody well know it.”

“Secretaries.” Pinkerton dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “They always gather when you come. You know that. They flock like silly pigeons at a popcorn festival.”

“Surely one of them—”

“No.” Pinkerton banged a fist on his desk. “Absolutely not. They’re clerks, not operatives. None of them has been trained or is qualified.”

“They’re women, for God’s sake. That qualifies any one of them to play the part of my wife. It’s not as if you’re asking them to use a gun, or to wrench a confession out of a counterfeiter.”

“I understand that, but…”

“What you need to understand is this, old friend.” As Hazard’s voice lowered, his eyes lifted slowly to meet Pinkerton’s straight on. Gray to Gray. Steel to stone. There was a spark. And then it died. “I can’t do it alone. Not this time.”

Suddenly Pinkerton did understand. He understood all too well, and his voice softened considerably. “Perhaps I ought to assign someone else…”

“No.” In one swift and fluid movement, Jack Hazard’s boots hit the floor and he was out of his chair, towering over Pinkerton’s desk. “She’s mine. If anybody’s going to bring Chloe Von Drosten down, Allan, it’s going to be me. Nobody else. Me. You owe me that, damn it.”

Pinkerton didn’t answer for a moment. He studied his folded hands, then let his eyes drift closed. When he spoke, it was quietly, with calm deliberation. “The woman did you considerable damage, Jack. More than I had imagined.”

“I’m over it,” came the terse reply.

“And the drinking?”

“That, too. It’s been five months.” Hazard yanked his watch from his vest pocket and snapped it open. “Five months. Hell, it’s been a hundred twenty-two days, ten hours and thirty-seven minutes.”

Pinkerton sank back in his chair, out of Hazard’s towering shadow. He massaged his temples a moment before asking, “You don’t believe you need more time?”

“I’ve had time. Now I need something else.”

“Revenge?” Pinkerton lifted a wary brow. “I won’t have one of my agents rolling around like a loose cannon, bent on nothing more than wreaking havoc.”

Hazard shook his head. “No, not revenge. That isn’t it. What I need, Allan, is redemption.” He smiled gnmly as he closed the watch and jammed it back into his pocket. “And a wife.”

And then his voice didn’t break so much as it unraveled, coming apart in a thready whisper.

“Allan Please.”

The commotion down the hall had drawn Anna Matlin to the door of the file room. She stood there now, shaking her head and watching two more secretaries as they attempted to enter Allan Pinkerton’s anteroom simultaneously. After a collision of shoulders, a collapse of crinolines and a good deal of elbowing and hissing, the women somehow managed to squeeze through and to join the throng already inside.

It didn’t take a Philadelphia lawyer or a Pinkerton spy to figure out what was happening He was back. It happened once or twice a year. The arrival and departure of Johnathan Hazard sent the entire office into a tizzy, a frenzy of swishing skirts and sighs and giggles. Last spring, Martha Epsom had broken her ankle racing down the hall Today, Judith and Mayetta had nearly come to blows while wedged between the doorjambs. All for a glimpse of Mad Jack Hazard. All for the sake of a fluttering heart. A fleeting sigh.

Such silliness.

Anna was about to turn and go back to her filing when someone grasped her elbow.

“Come along, Mrs. Matlin.” Miss Nora Quillan’s voice was brisk and efficient. Her gnp on Anna’s arm was secure. “There’s a batch of expense sheets somewhere in there.” The woman cast a dour glance at the door of the anteroom. “Perhaps you’d better get them before they’re trampled.”

There was no refusing Allan Pinkerton’s steelwilled longtime secretary. Not if one had a thimbleful of sense, anyway, or if one prized one’s employment at the agency, which Anna most certainly did.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, even as the tall, broad-shouldered woman ushered her down the hall.

“I’m glad to see at least one of our young ladies has a sense of decency,” Miss Quillan muttered. “Some modicum of pride.”

They had reached the door to the anteroom now. Beyond the threshold was pandemonium—the sighing, simpering and swooning of a dozen or more of Johnathan Hazard’s devotees.

Miss Quillan clucked her tongue in disgust. “I’m helpless. Mr. Pinkerton insists this…this frenzy is good for morale, although for whose, I really couldn’t say. Certainly not mine!” She narrowed her eyes on Anna now, and her mouth crimped in a small smile. “I’m glad to see you’re immune, Mrs. Matlin.”

“Well, I’m not exactly…”

“Yes. Well. You’re a sensible girl. You’ll find the expense sheets over there by the window. I hope. Good luck.” Nora Quillan sniffed and waded into the feminine melee, clapping her hands and shouting, “Ladies! Ladies! Could we have a little order in here, please?”

It wasn’t that she was immune, Anna thought as she made her way to the window. That wasn’t the case at all. It was rather that she didn’t believe in expending useless emotions. She wasn’t the sort of person who wasted dreams. Not that she had any. But if she had…

She gave a little shrug, and was reaching for the sheaf of papers on the library table when the door of Allan Pinkerton’s office opened. There was a lastmoment jostling in the anteroom, a flurry of movement followed by a communal sigh that dwindled to a breathless hush as Pinkerton’s most illustrious spy appeared.

Anna’s hand halted in midair. Her heart, like countless others in the room, gathered speed, bounded into her throat and then plummeted to the pit of her stomach.

Johnathan Hazard—Mad Jack—was the most beautiful man in the world. From his jet-dark hair to the tips of his high glossed boots. He was broad of shoulder, narrow of waist, and perfectly tall. His bearing was straight and military, although Anna knew he had never been a soldier. His air of command was that of a duke or baron, even though he was the fourth son of an earl. Still, he was beautiful. Hazard was fashioned, Anna thought suddenly, not as a man at all, but as a model for what a man might be, if all the gods could agree on a single definition of masculine beauty. Or if they consulted her.

Which they hadn’t. Anna reminded herself quickly and firmly, redirecting her gaze to the stack of papers and the task at hand.

“Well?” Allan Pinkerton stood at Jack Hazard’s shoulder. He spoke with the hushed tone of a conspirator. “That’s the lot of them. A bevy, if you will. Take your pick, Jack. And be quick about it. I’d like to get back to business.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Hazard shifted his stance and crossed his arms, surveying the roomful of women. “I’ll need her for a month or so. Which one can you spare?”

“None of them, damn it.” Pinkerton shot back. Then he demurred. “Well, anyone but Miss Quillan, I suppose. The whole place would come undone without her.”

“I don’t want your ramrod, Allan. God forbid.” Hazard laughed as his gaze cut to the dark-haired secretary, who was poised like a pillar of salt behind her desk. And then, just at the edge of his vision, there came a sudden flash of light, a glint of gold that made him turn toward the window.

“What about her?”

“Her?”

“Over there. The little mouse. The one in the brown dress and the spectacles who’s doing her best to blend into the woodwork.”

Pinkerton squinted. “Oh. Mrs. Matlin.”

“Mrs. Matlin?” A frown creased Hazard’s forehead. “Is she married?”

“No. At least I don’t believe so. She’s a widow, as I recall. Been here for years.”

“I never noticed her.”

“I don’t suppose many do.”

Jack Hazard grinned. “A widow ought to do nicely. See that she’s on the train tomorrow morning, will you?”

Pinkerton cleared his throat. “I’ll ask her, Jack, but I can’t promise—”

“Don’t promise, Allan. Just do it.”

Then, with what seemed like a gust of audible sighs at his back, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency’s most illustrious spy walked out of the room.

Nora Quillan already had her hat and gloves on. As on most days, she had worked late. Today in particular, with all the commotion, she had been hard-pressed to get the agency back to some semblance of order. Having done that, Nora was ready to go home to a cold supper, a single glass of ale and a good night’s sleep. Still, she knocked on her employer’s door and walked into his office before he was able to call, “Come in.”

“You’re making a dreadful mistake, Mr. P.,” she said.

“Another one, Nora?” Allan Pinkerton turned from the window, hands clasped at his back, an indulgent grin upon his lips. “And just what is this dreadful mistake?”

“I know you think the world of Johnathan Hazard, but—”

“He’s the best man I have,” Pinkerton said, interrupting her.

“He was.” Nora sighed now as she crossed the room and settled on the arm of a chair. “His imprisonment during the war changed him. And now, after that Von Drosten woman sank her claws into him—and probably her fangs, as well—he’s worse. Much worse.” She narrowed her gaze on the man at the window. “Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed it. And I must say I’m shocked that you’d risk letting him fall into her clutches again.”

Allan Pinkerton was accustomed to his secretary’s candor. He valued her opinions. Nora Quillan was rarely wrong. In this instance, however, he prayed she was. Dead wrong.

“Did Jack say anything to you?” he asked her.

Nora sniffed. “He didn’t have to. I’ve known him for over ten years. Nearly as long as you have. The changes are obvious, although I must say he’s done his best to mask them.”

Pinkerton nodded—in agreement, in dismay. He was remembering his detective’s uncharacteristic plea earlier that day, the way the man’s voice had shattered, the tremor in his hands that he’d been hard-pressed to disguise. But Hazard had, damn it. He had.

“He isn’t drinking anymore, Nora.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t. Especially if he’s under her influence again. That woman is evil, Mr. P. Surely you recognize that now if you didn’t before. The Baroness Von Drosten is the devil in silk and ermine.”

“She’s a fake,” Pinkerton said through clenched teeth.

A harsh laugh broke from Nora’s throat. “It doesn’t seem to matter, does it? Fake or not, she still manages to cast her evil spell on—”

“That’s enough, Nora.” Allan Pinkerton sagged into the chair behind his desk and began massaging his throbbing temples. His own worries about Jack Hazard were legion; he didn’t need Nora’s to aggravate them.

“Hazard has a plan,” he said, attempting to put an end to the discussion.

“He had a plan before,” Nora shot back, as soon as the words were out of her employer’s mouth. “He was going to seduce her last year, wasn’t he? But instead, the baroness seduced him. And worse.”

“This time he won’t be alone.”

Nora rolled her eyes. “That’s the other mistake I was intending to bring to your attention. To send littie Mrs. Matlin along on this…this devil’s business… is like sending a lamb to the slaughter.”

“She agreed, Nora. We spoke at length this afternoon,” he muttered. “The woman even seemed rather pleased.”

“She wants to keep her job! How the devil else would you expect her to behave?” Nora shot up from the arm of the chair now, planting her fists on her hips. “You’re determined to carry through with this, aren’t you?”

Allan Pinkerton closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head.

Nora threw up her hands. “I knew it. Sometimes I don’t know why I bother wasting my breath,” she muttered on her way to the door. “Nothing good will come of this. You mark my words. Jack Hazard will be lost forever, if he isn’t already. And God only knows what will happen to poor, unsuspecting Anna Matlin.”

“Is that all, Nora?” Pinkerton asked wearily.

“I should think that would be quite enough,” she said with a sniff. “Good night, Mr. P. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After his secretary slammed the door, Allan Pinkerton leaned forward, cradling his aching head in his hands, praying that for once in her life the infallible Nora Quillan was fallible—and dead, dead wrong.