“Yes. Yes, I know.”
He chuckled now, a rich bass rumbling deep in his throat. “How can you be so certain, Mrs. Mathn, unless you look at me?” Warm, gentle fingertips found her chin then, and coaxed it upward. “There. Now that’s better.”
His eyes took her in then—fairly consumed her before coming to rest on her mouth. He made a tiny clucking sound with his tongue. What that meant, Anna didn’t know. Nor could she fathom the meaning of his huskily breathed “Well, now.”
She did know what “All aboard” meant, though, and when the cry suddenly sounded, Anna stiffened and stepped back.
“I ought to be returning to my seat.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Oh, don’t. Anna was thinking that if she could just get away from him for a moment or two, she would be able to pull herself together. But as she cast about in her brain for an excuse to go alone, Johnathan Hazard’s warm hand folded over her elbow and he moved determinedly toward the door, and then, a moment later, those long, lithe fingers of his were fitting themselves to her rib cage as he lifted her down to the platform.
He held her then, just a fraction of a second too long, but long enough for Anna to recall how good it felt to be touched, to be in a man’s possessive grasp. It had been years. Since Billy had left her, the most Anna had done was shaken hands. And now she was shaken to the very marrow of her bones.
She was hardly aware that she was being propelled along the platform now, her feet somehow managing two steps for each of Hazard’s strides. Ahead, the big locomotive was building up a towering pillar of steam. On her right, the coaches were trembling and grinding at their couplings. Anna quickened her steps.
Nearly rushing now, she wasn’t sure whether her haste was to get on board the departing train or to escape this unsettling, disconcerting man. Both perhaps.
“Where the devil are you going?” Hazard stopped, bringing her to halt.
“To my seat.” Her words came out in a mortifying little wail.
“Up there?” He angled his head toward the second-class coach in which she had been riding earlier. The train gave a lurch as the wheels began turning. The couplings squealed, and the cars inched forward along the platform. Hazard’s grip tightened on her arm.
“Yes! Of course!” Anna shrieked over the long blast of the whistle.
“I think not, Mrs. Mathn.” He swung her around then, as if she were no more than a yarn doll, and propelled her toward the door she had just rushed past.
“But…but this is…this is first class, Mr. Hazard,” she stammered
“Indeed it is, Mrs. Mathn,” he said as he lifted her up onto the moving train, then followed her in one long and graceful leap. “Indeed it is.”
Anna immediately appreciated the additional padding in the seats in the first-class coach, though she wasn’t one who required such luxury, and she meant to let her partner know that as soon as she found her voice.
Johnathan Hazard had deposited her in the luxurious chair, then settled in quietly beside her while Anna occupied herself in arranging and rearranging her skirts and experimenting with her handbag in various locations on her lap. Anything not to look at him. She adjusted the seams on her gloves. They wavered in a film of tears.
You shouldn’t have come. You aren’t up to this. When Mr. Pinkerton singled you out, you should have run like the wind in the opposite direction. You aren’t special, Anna Matlin. You ’re just a silly fool.
“Comfortable?” That voice skimmed over her flesh like breeze-blown silk.
Anna glanced at Hazard’s kneecap, not daring to look higher. “Quite.” No. I want to go home.
A moment passed, and then that zephyr of a voice caressed her senses again. “Look at me, Mrs. Matlin.”
She thought she might die if she did, or at the very least explode or self-combust, but Anna forced herself to raise her eyes to his. And then something quite inexplicable happened. It was as if she were seeing him for the very first time.
The eyes into which she was gazing were the same mixture of blue and gray she recalled, but rather than metallic, the hue was closer to that of a November sky on a day that wants to rain. Faint shadows lodged beneath his dark lower lashes, like remnants of nightmares and too little sleep. The creases at the corners were more plentiful, and far deeper, than she had realized.
The mouth that she had forever pictured in a dazzling grin seemed different now. Its natural bent, Anna noticed suddenly was downward, and its foremost expression seemed to be one of sadness rather than mirth. And the complexion she had always thought so dark and dashing was merely the result of whiskers, beneath which his skin was actually quite pale and somehow tender. Scarred, too, she saw quite clearly now, perhaps by hands that trembled when he shaved.
Johnathan Hazard was a human being! He wasn’t a god, after all!
The notion struck her like a physical blow, a whack between the shoulder blades that put all her systems back into proper working order. The rough beating of her heart smoothed out. The pinch in her vocal cords let go, and her lungs expanded, filling with sweet air.
Johnathan Hazard was mortal! How incredible that she had never noticed that before!
“You look…” she whispered, barely aware that her thoughts had moved to her lips, “weary.” Worn out, she might have said. Used up.
And then, as suddenly as she had glimpsed it, that vulnerability disappeared. It was as if she had never witnessed it at all, and once more Anna found herself gazing at Adonis, at the handsome Hazard mask.
“I am, Mrs. Matlin,” he said as he snapped open the watch he had recovered from the pickpocket. “It’s seven or eight hours to Alton, and I intend to sleep for the major part of them.”
Anna blinked. He was going to sleep? Now? “But Mr. Pinkerton said you would inform me of the particulars in this case.”
By now he was already settled deep in his seat, with his long legs stretched out, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed. He opened one to a mere slit as he said, “You’ll know everything you need to know.”
“When will that be, Mr. Hazard?”
“When you need to know it, Mrs. Matlin.”
“But…”
“Good night.”
Anna bit down on her lower lip. She was tempted to tell Johnathan Hazard that she wasn’t accustomed to being so curtly dismissed, but the truth was that she was accustomed to it. To being dismissed, if not outright ignored.
Funny, she thought as she turned her gaze toward the window. It had never bothered her before.
That evening, in Alton, on the high green bluffs above the Mississippi River, Jack Hazard was doing his damnedest to ignore the mouse. Just as he had been ever since that moment in the smoking car, when he’d lifted her face for a casual inspection and felt an immediate and far-from-casual response. His body had tightened like a bowstring.
That hadn’t happened in months. Not since he’d quit drinking. His manhood, it seemed, greatly resented the loss of significant amounts of fuel. Either that, or his dissipations during the previous year had taken a final and rather fatal turn. It hadn’t mattered to him much. It still didn’t, although he had to admit the sensation had come with as much relief as sheer astonishment. And worry. He didn’t want or need this kind of distraction. Not now.
The