by Alyssa Cole
“Did you agree with your father?” Malcolm asked. “Did you want to leave?
She cleared her throat and hoped he didn’t see the moisture that glossed her eyes. “I tried leaving—I’d gone to Liberia to see if repatriation was something that appealed to me.”
“Since you’re here with me, I gather it didn’t?”
She didn’t like that, with me, but she didn’t address it.
“I knew on the way there that I’d made a mistake,” she said. “And it grew more apparent with each passing day once I’d arrived. Everyone I met was perfectly nice, but just because you’re surrounded by folk who look like you doesn’t make a place your home. I want to change things here, in my own country, and there’s a way that I especially can be helpful.”
She paused. She almost didn’t want to tell him. Sitting in the cool evening air talking with Malcolm made her feel normal, and people always treated her as anything but once they learned about her talent. But the man was a Pinkerton, so he’d find out eventually. Best to do it on her terms.
“What is this talent? Leaving people in frightful suspense?” He gazed at her with an interest that brought heat to her face, although she was all too used to being stared at.
“My mind works in a funny way,” she said, fixing her gaze on the ground. “I can remember everything I read and see, and most of what I hear. I remember it and it doesn’t go away. And when this rebellion started and I heard talk of slaves getting information to the Union to help them defeat the Confederates, I just knew I could be of service.”
She darted her gaze in his direction and then wished she hadn’t. It would have been better if he’d looked at her as if she’d grown another head, or if he said it was the devil’s work. She was used to that. Instead, his eyes fairly glowed with admiration.
“Funny is not the right way to describe this skill, Elle. Extraordinary. Wondrous. Magnificent.” His voice was deep and rich, and each of his words sloughed away a layer of her defensiveness.
Oh dear Lord, she thought, then looked away at the darkening sky to avoid those eyes of his. She’d seen that there were specks of gold in their depths, flashing at her like a lure trying to reel in a curious fish.
He gave a short, sudden laugh and she stiffened at the derision she picked up in the sound. Perhaps she’d judged him too soon and now he would show he was just like the rest of them. A memory of being onstage in a stifling room in a too-warm dress flashed in her head. Ellen, recite the first chapter of Mrs. Stowe’s wonderful novel for the audience.
“What?” she asked, chin rising haughtily of its own accord.
He sighed deeply. “I thought to impress you with mention of the paltry sum of poems I’ve memorized. You probably have hundreds in that pretty little head of yours, an unimaginable multitude.”
Elle felt that peculiar relief he kept inspiring in her. “You’re quite correct. I’m sorry, Mr. McCall, but you’ll have to find another way to impress me,” she said.
Where did those words come from?
She realized she was sitting loose-kneed beside him, leaning across that invisible line that represented a safe distance from a man. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
If he noticed her withdrawal, it did nothing to dim the brightness in his eyes as he regarded her. “I’ve been told I have a knack for accomplishing the impossible, so be quite careful what challenges you lay before me, Miss Elle.”
The air around them suddenly seemed heavy, like a humid July evening instead of the crisp cold of January. Elle stared at him, unsure of what to say and why she was wondering just how he’d approach such a challenge. Malcolm was looking at her, too; then the grin she was learning to steel herself against pulled at his lips.
“A detective who remembers everything,” he said, pivoting back to her revelation. “Well, this just verifies what I knew when I first saw you.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That you’re something special.”
Elle’s heart sped up at his words, although she kept her face expressionless. Blank. Few people had ever considered her on her own merit. Most of the abolitionists she’d worked with saw her as a creature to be pitied or an oddity to be put on display. Even Daniel, love him as she did, had eventually only seen her as a prize that should have been his. Now this man strode in relaxed as you please, making her feel like she was something more than a morality tale or a sentient recording device.
It wasn’t fair.
“That’s how I came to be a detective,” she said after clearing her throat and steeling her reserve. She would not acknowledge such a compliment. She couldn’t. “This has been my most important mission thus far. I’ve been sending what information I can through the grocer MacTavish and his crew, who has ties to the Loyal League. The head of the League recommended me personally for this job and I nearly bungled it today.”
She cut her eyes at him. He had been the one to make her lose her wits in the dining room earlier.
“Because of me,” he acknowledged. He had the grace to look shamefaced.
She nodded. “Because of you.”
“They’ll forget,” he said confidently. “I’ll make them forget.”
“How?” she asked.
“They’ll be too busy focusing on charming old Malcolm McCall,” he said. He spoke the words with a confidence that wasn’t misplaced. After all, there she was sitting on the grass with him and sharing stories as if they were old friends.
“What information have you gotten since you arrived in Richmond, Malcolm?” she asked, trying to change the topic back to what was important. “I mean, Mr. McCall.”
“How is it that I’m calling you Elle but you think you should call me mister? We can’t have that.”
Elle rolled her eyes.
“Can you focus on the task at hand for more than thirty seconds?” she asked in exasperation.
The thrashing of footsteps approaching through the high grass sounded from down the hill.
“Someone’s coming,” he said in a low voice, jumping to his feet and grabbing her hand to pull her behind him.
“The master detective at work,” she muttered, as he sprinted ahead of her into the more heavily wooded area. He dove behind a stand of thick bushes and dragged her with him just as two men stepped onto the bluff. They seemed to be surveying the wide expanse of river. Elle was so focused on the men that it took her a moment to realize how Malcolm held her.
She’d been pulled into his lap as they crouched. He snaked one arm around her waist just under her bosom, holding her close against his chest. The other hand rested on his revolver. His thighs surrounded her on either side, hard as the uncomfortable chairs in the Caffrey parlor but much more pleasant to perch on, though both were forbidden to her. He smelled of leather and horse and sweat. The sweat of a hard day’s work, not the stale scent of someone who’d gone ripe while being waited on all the day. There was a difference, Elle had learned.
The sculpted planes of his chest made their outlines known to her back, and the beat of his heart was like a soft, insistent knock that she could not answer. Would not. Her own was hammering harder than a blacksmith at a forge.
She risked a glance up at him and her breath caught; the encroaching men had best fear taking a step too close to them. Malcolm’s jaw was tight and his gaze was narrowed like a hawk’s. Behind his smiles and jokes, McCall was a man to be reckoned with. She didn’t know why this made heat race up the back of her neck, but it did.
She wanted to position herself away from the overpowering heat and scent of him, but the noisy crinkling of her skirt could attract attention. She rested her hands on his thighs to balance herself, ignoring the play of hard muscle beneath her palms, and focused on eavesdropping. That was her sole purpose for being in Richmond, and she’d do well not to forget it.
“I think we can move the last of the materials over the river by night without being seen. We can station a lookout here to signal when we arrive,
” the man with the skinny legs and short torso said.
“I don’t know,” said the second man, taking off his hat to scratch his bald head.
“We don’t have time for dawdling, dagnabbit! The Yanks will choke this country to death like a snake in the crib while you’re busy thinking. Just give me the go-ahead!”
Smugglers? Elle wondered. Why would they be meeting here of all places? Thanks to Mary’s talks, she knew which routes were deemed best and which were considered too dangerous for the small, swift boats that slipped in with goods for the highest bidder.
Malcolm shifted just the slightest bit, but Elle wore no hoops in her skirt to keep her a respectable distance from him, and the raising of his knees caused her to slide farther down into his lap. Her bottom shifted over his groin and he exhaled sharply, his breath tickling the curls at the nape of her neck.
She tried to put Malcolm out of her mind as she listened to the men, but a sweet warmth was spreading in her belly, and the sensation spiked when his large hand gripped her waist even harder. She could feel the strength of him through the thin cotton dress and the chemise beneath it as his fingers pressed into her. She couldn’t tell if he was pulling her closer or trying to preserve her modesty by holding her away, but his touch felt much too good either way.
The dawdling man finally spoke. “All right. Let’s tell Caffrey that the plan should be set in motion. The final word on the matter will arrive soon enough and then we’ll see whose war this is.”
They turned and walked away, but neither Elle nor Malcolm moved, lest one of the men circle back for some reason. The dusk deepened as they waited, each moment feeling like an eternity. Through her skirts, Elle felt something warm and solid press into her behind. She’d felt that seductive pressure before, during her brief romance with Daniel, and her core pulsed at the remembered pleasure that had followed.
Her quickened breath was audible, and she was sure he could feel the heat radiating from her, especially from the part of her that was pressed against him.
“I should get up,” she said finally.
He should have moved his hand from her waist, but he didn’t. “Maybe you should. But do you want to? That’s another thing entirely, isn’t it?”
His mouth was near her ear, and the deep vibration of his voice made her shiver. His lips brushed against the shell of her ear as he spoke, and Elle let out a soft gasp from the unexpected goodness of it. His manhood surged against her bottom once again.
“Malcolm, we should leave this instant,” she said more firmly, although she didn’t move, either. She knew if she turned around she would see the kind of person she’d been told to avoid intimacy with all her life. But sitting like this, he was just a man. A warm, solid man who stirred something inside her that went against everything she thought she knew of herself.
His breath rasped in her ear as he released the hold on his gun. His hand moved slowly, the drag of his fingertips across her collarbone raining sparks of pleasure in their wake. Elle had read about doctors who applied electrical currents to their patients as treatment, and she wondered if it was anything like the feeling Malcolm’s touch inspired in her. She was all sensation beneath this barest caress of his hand. The sound of rushing water drowned out everything else, making Elle feel as if they were alone on an island of infinite possibilities even as the logical part of her protested.
His fingertips caressed her throat. When his hand slid over the raised scar, he paused abruptly. “What happened here?” His lips grazed her ear as he spoke, sending a burst of sensation through her.
“An agitator in Baltimore—” She froze. Those gray-blue eyes . . . they were suddenly all too familiar.
She leapt out of his embrace, stumbling away on shaky legs. Her body fairly cried out in displeasure at the loss, but she couldn’t allow this to happen. He was a man used to getting what he wanted, so his ignorance was understandable, but she knew well enough what could happen to her if she succumbed to his advances. On top of that, he’d nearly cost her mission twice now, it seemed.
“You were the dock worker who chased me,” she said, pointing a finger at him. Her cheeks had already been heated by his proximity, but now scalding humiliation raced up her neck to join the arousal. There she’d sat boasting of her powerful memory—to a man she should have recognized on sight. Perhaps LaValle, and Daniel, had been right to doubt her.
“I was the detective posing as a dock worker who rushed you to a doctor as you bled,” he countered. He rose to his feet, hands raised. He regarded her with narrowed eyes, and she knew that he, too, was pulling up memories of that day and trying to match her face to the raggedy slave woman he’d encountered. “You ruined my best workman’s shirt that day.”
Elle was struck. He was the one who had saved her? That realization was crowded out by the memory of what he’d insinuated that chaotic day: that she was a woman who could be had cheaply. A hussy.
She adjusted the neckline of her dress and pulled her cloak closed. Beneath it, her skin still tingled where he’d traced paths with his fingertips.
“We may disagree on whether you drove me into danger or saved me from it, but on one thing we cannot. Nothing good lies down this path,” she said, adjusting her skirt and hoping the rustling of fabric hid the shake in her voice. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re Union or Reb—I won’t be used as a plaything to satisfy your curiosity. If you must know, I’ll tell you straight out that I’ve got the same thing beneath my skirt as any of the white misses you’ve bedded. Just a few shades darker.”
Malcolm rose to his feet with a grim laugh and a shake of his head. It was full dark now, but the starry night sky provided enough light for her to see him by. He took her hands in his, rubbing his thumbs over the backs of them and sending unbidden desire racing through her at his touch.
“Elle, I won’t lie and say that I’m not curious. It’s your eyes . . . there are depths there that make a man itch to know you better. Your wit is quick and your tongue sharp. Is it so hard to believe I have no ulterior motives?”
She snorted.
“There are always ulterior motives,” she said. That was one thing she’d learned in this life. Everyone who had offered her anything—abolitionists, missionaries, and even Daniel—had all wanted something in return.
Elle lowered her face so she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the way Malcolm looked at her, like she was a tome that he wanted to curl up with for days on end, savoring every word. She was quiet for a long while, struggling against her warring emotions. Their brief contact had felt good, and somehow right, but anything further was out of the question. It was simple as that. It angered her that he could speak of the possibility of more so casually. But of course he could; for men like him, an infatuation with a black woman would be seen as a lark. But the ways it could ruin her were endless.
She pulled her hands from his. “How quickly you’ve forgotten your offer of protection, Mr. McCall. Does Mr. Pinkerton know that he’s sending men who are too busy trying to bed a house slave to do their damned jobs? You haven’t provided me with one iota of information, but you found time to seduce me in the underbrush. How does that help the Union? How does that help my people gain their freedom?”
She said the words more for herself than for him, but she saw that they had an impact. He folded his arms behind his back, as if that was the only way he could keep from reaching out for her.
“You’re not really a slave,” he reminded her, his voice low.
“Correct. If I were, you could have your way with me without this pretense of seduction.” Her face was warm and she was perilously close to tears. Why?
“Elle—”
“What? Nothing you can say changes the essential fact that I will not have you. Even if I would, I’m certainly not someone you would bring home to Ma and Pa, am I?” she asked. He didn’t say anything, but his long silence was answer enough for her.
She drew herself up and turned to walk down the hill, pretending her heart didn’
t hurt because a man she barely knew couldn’t even pretend to lay claim to her.
“Wait here a stretch before you come down in case there are people about. Couldn’t have word spreading that you were seen up here with a darkie,” she said.
“Elle—” he began, but she cut him off.
“It wouldn’t do either of our investigations any good if we were thought to be fraternizing, Mr. McCall,” she said, all business.
With that she began picking her way back down the hill, hoping to save at least a few shreds of dignity after letting him grope her like she was an adventuress.
“It’s not safe for you to walk alone,” he said, starting after her.
“Anything is safer than walking with you, Mr. McCall,” she said bluntly, holding up a hand to stay him. “Good night.”
She stumbled down the hill hoping that a good night’s sleep would rid her of the awful feeling lodged in her chest. She’d been right to be wary of Malcolm McCall. She was well acquainted with being correct, but never had she so sorely regretted it.
CHAPTER 4
The hullabaloo of downtown Richmond swirled around him, but the clatter of carriages and cries of vendors trying to hawk their meager wares may well have emanated from the moon for all Malcolm noticed. He kept his eyes and ears open, although he couldn’t stop thinking of how perfectly Elle had fit in his arms the evening before, and of the stinging rejection that had washed over him as she marched down the hill. He wasn’t overfamiliar with that emotion and found he didn’t like it one bit.
The discovery that she was the woman he’d encountered in Baltimore was both a shock and completely unsurprising. There, too, his eye had been relentlessly drawn to her, even in the chaos that had surrounded them. It’d been reckless to chase after her, demanding answers in the midst of a riot. When she’d gone down bleeding and choking, he’d let his cover slip completely, gathering her up from the street and hustling her to a doctor he knew treated Negro patients. He’d had to slip out of town immediately after, and his persona of a German dock worker had been lost to him, but he’d often wondered what had become of her. Now he wished he’d never found out because he was sure Elle Burns was going to be his downfall.
