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Darling Jack. Mary McBride
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“What’s the matter with you?” the madam had hissed into her pillow.
“Everything,” he’d wanted to say. “Nothing. Dead men can’t feel pain or passion. Aren’t they both the same?”
He sat now and watched her undress—sinuously, seductively—sorry he had reduced the notorious madam to using tricks she hadn’t had to resort to in years. Not that they did any good, he thought sourly.
She stood before the pier glass, having tilted it to give him a perfect and unobstructed view as she peeled away various layers of satin and lace. Down to her red corset now, she unhooked it slowly, held it closed a moment, then shed it the way a jeweled snake might rid itself of useless skin, letting it drop, forgotten to the floor. In the mirror, her breasts had a silvery sheen. Small, yet succulent. Not a feast, by any means, but a delectable dessert.
He ought to get up, Jack told himself. He ought to move toward her, to offer the palms of his hands like warm salvers, to take the delights the famous Ada Campbell was offering. A year ago, he would have, only it wasn’t in him now. He couldn’t move.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he said in response to the frown that was digging between her eyes and darkening her beautiful face.
“All right.” Ada snatched up her corset and strode to the wardrobe, where she grabbed a silken dressing gown from a hook and shoved her arms through its sleeves. “You can sleep here tonight, but don’t bother coming back,” she said on her way to the door. “Ever.”
She stood there a moment, shaking her head, her expression wavenng between fury and dismay. “You were a lot more fun when you were drinking, Jack. In fact, I think I liked you better that way.”
The ensuing slam reverberated through the room, probably throughout the house, but Jack didn’t blink. His fingers merely tightened on the bottle.
It was a game he played every night. A test. He told himself he hadn’t quit. He was in training—like an athlete preparing for a competition, like a Thoroughbred doing evening workouts around a track.
He was going to win, God damn it. And that sweet prospect was worth every insult and humiliation he’d had to endure, including begging Allan and suffering Ada’s current disgust.
Nothing mattered except bringing the baroness down. Killing her would be too easy. Jack felt his lips sliding into a feral grin. He had imagined murdering her a thousand times, playing out a variety of scenarios in his head. But each time he pictured Chloe Von Drosten dead, it gave him no pleasure, because in death she looked so peaceful, so far beyond earthly pain.
The sad truth, he had to admit, was that he wasn’t so certain he could do it. To murder the baroness, he’d have to be alone with her. It hadn’t been so long since their last encounter that he couldn’t imagine all his hard-won sobriety and all his rage shuddering and collapsing at the crook of a red-tipped finger or drowning in one of Chloe’s wine-colored smiles. He was a damn drunk, but he wasn’t a fool.
He needed a wife—a buffer. What a choice he’d made! A mouse to cower between him and the devil. Mrs. Matlin, the plain, bespectacled widow. The nonentity.
Ah, well. In a month, the little clerk would have served her purpose, and she could come back to the haven of the agency and fade into the woodwork. While he…
His fingers loosened on the bottle of sour mash now, moving slowly, caressing the warm, handheated glass. In a month, this would be his reward, and like little Mrs. Matlin, he could slip back into his own brand of oblivion.
His gaze swung to the door the madam had slammed with such disgust. “Ada, love, when I was drinking, I liked me better, too.”
Anna was late getting to the train depot the next morning, first because she’d taken too much time brushing her hair and subduing it into a sleek bun at the nape of her neck, and second because the Misses Richmond had been intent upon giving her the benefit of some crucial, lengthy last-minute advice. In her efforts to disengage herself from her landladies and to escape from the house, Anna had nearly forgotten her spectacles and had to rush back up to her room on the third floor to retrieve them.
Up there, she had looked around the little room almost wistfully. “Don’t be silly,” she’d said to herself. “You’ll be back in a few weeks, with memories. Memories galore.”
The omnibus had gotten her to the depot with only a minute or two to spare. Then, after seeing that her borrowed trunk was properly stowed—“Keep a sharp eye on your luggage, dear,” the Misses Richmond had cautioned—Anna herself had had a mere second to clamber aboard through a billowing cloud of cinders and steam. By the time she located a forward-facing seat—“Never ride backwards. It’s bad for the digestion.”—and settled into it, Anna’s carefully tamed hair was wildly corkscrewed and her glasses were steamed up and sliding down her nose.
She extracted a hankie from her reticule, and was wiping the wet lenses when the train gave a long hoot and then, with a lurch, moved away from the depot. Anna planted her glasses back on and gazed over the rims in search of a familiar face among the passengers.
He wasn’t there. Johnathan Hazard wasn’t there!
Turning toward the window now, she scanned the wooden platform as the train moved slowly past it. She half expected to see the famed Pinkerton agent vaulting over a baggage cart, then sprinting alongside the train. A little smile touched Anna’s lips as the image flourished in her brain.
Hazard would toss a valise through an open window, then time the rhythm of his stride perfectly as he reached for a metal handrail and levered his long, supple body onto the moving vehicle. He would stand in the doorway then, casually brushing the sleeves of his fine-fitting frock coat and straightening his waistcoat with a subtle tug. All the while, without even appearing to move those gray-blue eyes, he would be gathering information, and by the time the last car passed the depot, Johnathan Hazard would know just how many passengers were on board and their disposition in the various seats—and specifically, he would have found hers.
Easily, then, as if the train were standing still, he would move along the aisle to arrive at the vacant seat beside her. His breathing would be even, despite his race against the mighty locomotive. And, when he sat, there would be the faint aroma of bay rum and hearty exercise. He would cock his head in her direction, take her measure in a glance, and say…
“Ticket, madam?”
Anna’s gaze jerked to the patent brim of the conductor’s cap and then to the empty seat beside her.
“Conductor, you must stop this train. Immediately.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“I said…” Anna was rummaging through her handbag now for the official pass Mr. Pinkerton had given her the day before. She hadn’t lost it, had she? Or left it behind? Where the devil—? Her fingers gripped the cardboard pass, and she flashed it at the conductor. “I order you to stop this train.”
The man smiled. “Ah. A Pinkerton, are you?” He looked at her more closely now. “I never would have guessed.”
“My partner hasn’t arrived,” Anna told him, trying to subdue the plaintive note in her voice and the flutter of panic in her chest, attempting to sound more Pinkerton than pitiful. She was a representative of the world’s foremost detective agency, after all. She had credentials.
“A lady, is she?” The conductor had to widen his stance as the train picked up speed. His gaze wandered around the car.
“No. A gentleman. A man by the name of Johnathan Hazard. He’s…”
“Well, now, why didn’t you say so before? Mad Jack’s