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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Cheryl Anne Porter
Passionate Praise for the Novels of Cheryl Anne Porter
About the Author
Copyright
To my mother, Pauline W. Deal, for always being a rich source of inspiration and fun … and jewelry.
And to my sister, Paula D. Clark, for her fabulous research on the Pinkertons, for her unfailing support and enthusiasm … and for being older than me.
My sincere thanks to Ms. Carol Lillis for sharing with me (and always on short notice) her vast knowledge and expertise regarding the British peerage. Who knew there were that many of them? Your help has been invaluable, Carol, and any mistakes are mine.
I also must thank my favorite British gentleman, Captain Jeremy Steele-Perkins, for his help with my initial question regarding the peers. When I asked him what to call the duke’s mother, meaning what would be her title, he replied, “Well, I just call her Mummy.”
It was at this point that we (Pattie Steele-Perkins and I) looked at each other and brought Ms. Lillis in.
Chapter One
PINKERTON NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY
151 FIFTH AVENUE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 1876
The heavy door to Mr. Allan Pinkerton’s wainscoted private office was closed. Inside the well-appointed room, an aura of efficiency and stability emanated from the very furnishings, as well as from the agency owner himself. He sat ensconced behind his rectangular walnut-wood desk as Sarah Margaret “Yancey” Calhoun paced in slow ovals in front of him. She looked every inch the lady, but looks can be deceiving. And Yancey Calhoun was no mere lady.
True, a moss-green hat, similar in color to her eyes, perched atop her upswept auburn curls. And her fashionable street dress of merino wool trimmed in velvet matched the color of her feathered chapeau. She’d drawn off her white kid gloves which now, resembling protectively crossed hands, resided atop her drawstring handbag. In turn, that particularly feminine accessory lounged like an indolent cat on one of two padded leather chairs facing Mr. Pinkerton’s desk.
Putting the lie to the lady were her stiff movements and the halting manner of her speech. Neither fear nor illness underlay her behavior. The truth was Yancey Calhoun, sore over every inch of her body, was beat to hell. Her bruised jaw ached fiercely. A headache pounded with each beat of her heart, and her ribs hurt worst of all. But any movement of her bandaged right arm, where the whore’s bullet had grazed her skin, kept Yancey sufficiently mindful of her narrow escape from death only two days past.
“The only reason I’m alive, Mr. Pinkerton,” she was saying to her employer—a big man with a full beard, piercing deep-set eyes, and a prominent nose—“is I already had my gun at the ready and hidden under my handbag as I sat talking to Clara.”
Backed by two large windows between which his desk resided, Mr. Pinkerton’s frowning countenance told her that he wasn’t the least bit happy with that news. “Are you telling me that you went in there alone, knowing there would be trouble? That’s not how I’ve trained you, Yancey.”
“No, sir. It wasn’t until I was already seated in the room with the door closed that I realized something was wrong.”
“I see. Then, what tipped you off?”
“Clara’s behavior. She wasn’t acting the same as she had on my previous visits. She kept looking past me to the closed door of her room. Suspicious—and rightly so, it turned out—I secretly slipped my gun out of my handbag.” Yancey’s next thought had her attempting a grin, but her aching jaw reduced it to a grimace of pain. “You’d think a lady of ill repute would know she could trust an elderly Christian lady who’s there to rescue her from a life of sin.”
“And that’s what concerns me. The disguise, I mean.” Mr. Pinkerton tapped a finger against his lips, as if it helped him to think. “You did use a clever disguise, one that’s been successful in the past.”
“Something’s most definitely afoot. This is the third time in as many months that I’ve been found out. And I know I’ve been careful and well disguised. I know I have.”
“I don’t doubt you, Yancey. Still, it occurs to me that one of three things has happened.” He readied himself to count them out on his fingers. “One, someone in your personal life who, for some reason, may hold a grudge—”
“That can’t be it, Mr. Pinkerton. I have no family, as you know. And I’m not keeping company with anybody. So there’s no one to—” She’d almost said care. “No one to hold a grudge.”
“Then we must consider a second possibility. Someone from a past case of yours. Perhaps someone who didn’t seem important at the time.” He paused, staring pointedly at Yancey, who became increasingly concerned for what might follow. “You should know that I have assigned two senior agents to review the files of your recently closed cases.”
Just as she’d feared. Yancey’s posture stiffened with this direct hit to her professional pride. “You’re placing me under review, Mr. Pinkerton?”
He nodded in the affirmative. “For your own protection and nothing more. Do you understand?”
She could only stare at her employer. The agents would be looking for anything that, through her own carelessness or at least a lack of thoroughness, had rendered her unwittingly vulnerable. If such details were found with any consistency, her job with the agency would be at risk. Yancey swallowed the lump of angry pride clawing at her throat. “Yes, sir, I understand.”
“Good. Because I won’t sit idly by and have my agents threatened or allow them to come to harm.”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t expect you to.” Neither had she ever expected to find herself the target of a review. After all, she was careful. Calculating, even. She took pride in that. Living up to her code name—the Fox—she knew that she was crafty and sometimes sly. She had to be, if she hoped to stay alive. She’d been trained to approach each of her assigned cases as if it were a game of chess. Such forward-thinking tactics made her a highly successful agent. Or so she’d thought until recently when events began proving otherwise.
When Yancey realized that she’d been quiet overly long, she returned her attention to Mr. Pinkerton, only to see that he’d been watching her. Determined not to appear shaken, though she was, she moved the conversation along. “And the third possibility, sir?”
“Presumes upon the second one, actually. We could be looking for a relative of a criminal you’ve caught. Someone we knew nothing about. A brother. A widow. A son or a daughter or the like.”
Someone she hadn’t known existed. This was good, and Yancey per
ked up. “Yes, you’re right. Someone who may have bided his time until now.”
Mr. Pinkerton’s expression puckered and made him look older than his fifty-seven years. “Well, don’t look so happy about it. I fear someone may have put a price on your head.”
Yancey bit back a grin of pride. The bigger the bounty placed upon an agent’s head, the more respect that agent was accorded among the Pinkerton operatives. “I’ve thought of that, too, sir.”
“I’m certain you have. But it stands to reason. You can’t be as good as you are and not make enemies.”
Pleased at his acknowledgment of her abilities, Yancey pulled herself up to her full height, which wasn’t considerable—or even easy, given her bruised ribs. “Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Pinkerton’s frown was fierce. “Why are you thanking me? Do you think I’m happy that someone could be out to kill you?”
“No, sir. Not at all. I know you better than that.”
“I should hope so.” He leaned back in his chair, causing the hinges to squeak, and went on with the subject at hand. “Now, what I need from you, and in detail this time, is another recounting of what happened to you two days ago. I want to make certain I have the details straight in my mind.”
“Yes, sir.” Still standing in front of her boss’s desk, Yancey began. “As I told you, I was up in the red room with Clara. She was telling me about her last visit from Thomas Almont. About that time, a man burst in and shouted at Clara to shut her mouth. Surprised, we both jumped up. My purse and gun fell to the floor. The man told Clara I was a Pinkerton, pointed to my gun as proof, and said the agency is after Almont for that train robbery.” Yancey gingerly rubbed her jaw. “Clara certainly has a mean left hook when she’s defending her man.”
At last—a grin from Mr. Pinkerton. “Looks like it from here, too. Anything familiar to you about the man who burst in?”
Quirking her lips in thought, Yancey considered how best to answer that question. “Yes and no. What I mean is, when he burst in, I had time only to defend myself. Only afterward, when I had time to think, did I realize that I knew of him.”
“Let’s save that for now. What happened next?”
“Clara hit me and knocked me to the floor, practically atop my gun. And that’s the same moment I saw him charging. I knew I couldn’t fight both him and Clara—or allow a man of his size to get his hands on me. Clara tried to pull me up by my hair, but I twisted around and fired off a shot at him. He had no more than dropped to the floor when Clara let go of me, produced a gun herself from somewhere, and started shooting at me. That’s when I lit out.”
Recalling the chaotic scene, Yancey commented, “I don’t mind telling you that some surprised upstairs women and their customers will have a story to tell. There I was, a grayhaired old lady tearing out of there, a smoking gun in her hand and a dead man on the floor.”
“I expect you’re right about that.” Grim of expression, the man known as “the Eye” rubbed his forehead. “I’ve already talked to the police. As a favor to me and in consideration of your safety, they’ll pass this off as just another whorehouse disturbance. So that’s good.” He tapped a small stack of letters that lay atop his desk. “But now I want to talk about these. Why don’t you sit down and quit that pacing? You’re making me hurt just watching you limp around like that.”
“Yes, sir.” Yancey went to the overstuffed, leather-upholstered chair where her white gloves and velvet handbag lay. “Those letters started coming about the same time my cases began going sour.”
“Which is why they concern me.”
“Me, too.” Mindful of her many bruises from her fight with Clara, Yancey gingerly bent over and scooped up her belongings. When she straightened, she met Mr. Pinkerton’s concerned gaze. He was a good man whom she respected and admired. He’d taken a chance six years ago on a desperate and untried twenty-year-old girl with a burning in her belly to be an agent. Since then, he’d paid her very well, as he did all his agents, and had been nothing but good to her, much like a father—the one she wished she’d had instead of her own.
A fleeting yet hardened expression claimed Yancey’s features at the mere thought of her real father, that hateful man, Emeril Calhoun. He would have been well advised to stay away from his family and the small prairie homestead he’d abandoned years before. But he had returned home. And Yancey, an only child, had made him sorry that he had. But not before it had been too late for her mother. The remembrances ached too much. Yancey purposely blanked the long deceased and hateful man from her thoughts and lowered herself onto the chair that fronted her employer’s desk.
Mr. Pinkerton again indicated the letters that only today she’d turned over to him. “These letters, taken by themselves, say nothing to me except mistaken identity.”
“That was my first conclusion, too.” She arranged her gloves and her handbag—heavy with the weight of her gun—atop her lap. “An easy enough mistake to make, I suppose, since the writer doesn’t seem to have ever met her own daughter-in-law. Apparently all she had to go by was a name and a city.”
Mr. Pinkerton idly fanned the edges of the stacked letters, much as he would a deck of cards. “Very curious, indeed. Four of them. All from England.” He was thinking out loud. “All from the same woman saying she needs your help. Or that of someone with your name.” Suddenly he focused on Yancey. “When did the first one arrive?”
“Around Christmas. I didn’t pay it much mind, knowing this woman had the wrong American woman and thinking she would probably discover her own mistake. But I was wrong. She didn’t, and I’ve received a letter every month since.”
Troubling Yancey was the palpable desperation evident in the woman’s pleas. You must find it in your heart, she’d written in one letter, to forgive and put your troubles behind you. Please come to England at the earliest possible moment. We need you here more than words can say. I beseech you, Sarah. Please help us. Only you can.
Mr. Pinkerton hunkered over his desk and leaned toward Yancey, bringing her back to the moment. “Yancey, you are my best female agent since Kate Warne, God rest her soul. And the most experienced. So you should know better than to keep something like this to yourself. Why didn’t you tell me before today about these letters?”
“I didn’t think them important, not at first, not when I had only the one. But then they kept coming and got more insistent. In that last one, the lady as much as demanded this Sarah’s help. She called upon her sense of decency and duty to come to England at once.”
He’d been nodding as she talked. “Yes. I read that. And she’s British.”
“So was the man who accosted me in Clara’s room.”
His expression sharpened. “Aha. I see. Seemingly unconnected events connected.”
“Yes, sir. At first the letters appeared a harmless mistake. Then they continued to come, and my cases started ending badly. So, dismissing coincidence, I came to believe that this woman’s thinking I’m her American daughter-in-law could somehow be part of something more.”
“Turns out you were probably right, too.” Her employer’s stare was pointed. “You also made my point regarding the need to inform me immediately of curious happenings such as these.”
Yancey felt the warmth blooming on her cheeks. Being chastised by Mr. Pinkerton, who expected such high standards from his operatives, was never pleasant. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“All right, well, having said all that…” He waved a hand as if to brush away that subject. “Let’s look at what we have here. The letters. The complications in your cases. This Englishman who attacked you. And all occurring at roughly the same time. Hmmm.” He cocked his head at a questioning angle and frowned at her. “Did you never answer the lady to inform her of her mistake?”
Yancey shook her head. “No, sir. I was working undercover out in the field most of the time. I forgot about the letters. In fact, I didn’t even know about letters three and four until yesterday when I was home and could collect my mail.” She pointed
to the letters as if she were identifying a suspect. “She’s a persistent lady, this letter-writer, I’ll give her that. You’d think in the face of no replies—here it is April—she’d stop trying.”
“Yet she didn’t.” Mr. Pinkerton eyed her and his brow furrowed. “I have to ask, Yancey. You’re not actually the wife of this woman’s son, are you? You’re not the Sarah Margaret Calhoun she’s addressing?”
A bit taken aback, Yancey’s chuckle was one of denial. “Of course I’m not, Mr. Pinkerton. I thought you knew me better than that.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m too much the detective, I suppose. Just being thorough. But that is your name?”
Yancey firmed her lips. She’d never go by the name given to her by a father she refused to honor, even after his death. She went by Yancey, her grandmother’s maiden name. “Yes, that is my name. But I’m the wrong woman. This dowager Duchess of Somerset has me confused with someone else.”
“Apparently. But is there another Sarah Margaret Calhoun in Chicago?”
He knew his agents, he knew Yancey, and he would assume that she’d check. She had. “Yes, sir, there is. Well, there was.”
“Was?”
“She died last year. In November.”
Mr. Pinkerton was quiet for an uncomfortable stretch of time as he held Yancey’s gaze. “How unfortunate. How long have you known that?”
Had Yancey been less sore, she might have squirmed. “Since January.”
“I see. So you were curious enough three months ago to check, but not enough to inform me of these letters. Or to inform this dowager of her mistake and the other Sarah Calhoun’s death? I’m surprised at you, Yancey.”
Yancey self-consciously picked at a piece of lint on her skirt before meeting her employer’s gaze. “Allow me to explain my reasons, Mr. Pinkerton. You see, this other Sarah was known as ‘Miss Calhoun,’ and not Mrs. Treyhorne—or whatever her title would be if she were a duchess. And I thought it curious that a duchess would be working as a maid, which is what this other Sarah did. None of that seemed logical. So I could only conclude that she wasn’t the duchess. Given that, I saw no reason to further distress this English lady by telling her this other Sarah, who most likely was not her daughter-in-law, was dead.”
The Marriage Masquerade Page 1
