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Darling Jack. Mary McBride
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She had blossomed once—and briefly—at the age of sixteen, when she eloped to Chicago with Billy Matlin. But Billy had soon looked beyond her, to Colorado and the promise of gold.
“I’ll send for you,” he’d said. But Billy never had. He’d died instead, leaving his young widow pale and even more invisible.
Under bleak winter skies, in her somber wools and black galoshes, Anna Matlin was barely distinguishable from the soot-laden banks of snow along Washington Street as she made her way to number 89, the offices of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, where she had been employed for six years, filing papers and transcribing notes and more or less blending into the wainscoting.
In summer, in her drab poplins and sensible shoes, she seemed to disappear against brick walls and dull paving stones.
Whatever the season or setting, Anna Matlin was—by her own volition—invisible.
But every once in a while, particularly in summer, when the sun managed to slice through the smokedense Chicago sky, it would cast a rare and peculiar glint from Anna’s spectacles, a flash that for an instant made her seem exceptional and altogether visible.
As it did on the morning of May 3,1869…
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