The Widow's Secret. Sara Mitchell

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СКАЧАТЬ His head tipped sideways while he searched her face with an intensity that triggered a self-consciousness Jocelyn thought she’d eradicated long ago.

      Then he touched the brim of his gray bowler hat, one end of his mustache curling upward as he offered a crooked smile. “Take care, Mrs. Tremayne. God doesn’t always choose to intervene in our circumstances, and life on Earth isn’t always kind to innocence.”

      Before Jocelyn could fry him with a scalding retort, he was half a block down the street.

      “God doesn’t always choose to intervene…” Bah! Jocelyn could have informed the man that God might exist, but He never intervened. For ten years she’d carried the awful burden of her past, and God never supplied one moment of peace. All that religious doggerel was nothing but a lie to soothe simple minds.

      As for the rest of the stranger’s insulting remarks, she’d been deprived of innocence long ago, and she couldn’t figure out why he had made the observation.

      If she ever saw him again, which she knew was unlikely, but if she did, she planned to inform him that he was an incompetent bounder, a slavering wolf disguised as a gentleman in his three-piece woolen suit and natty red tie.

      On the way home, when she realized she was pondering her encounter with the mysterious gray-eyed stranger as a curative for her growing sense of isolation, she ground her teeth together, and initiated a conversation with the person sitting across from her in the streetcar.

      Micah MacKenzie lost his quarry.

      Frustration pulsed through him like an abscessed tooth, but he vented the worst of it by kicking over a stack of empty crates at the back of the alley where Benny Foggarty had disappeared. Benny, the glib-tongued engraver-turned-informant for the Secret Service, was now officially a fugitive, courtesy of Operative MacKenzie.

      Thoroughly disgusted with himself, he retraced his steps back to Broad Street, then settled in the shadow of a bank awning. Shoulders propped against the brick wall, he tilted his bowler to hide his face, so he could survey passersby without drawing attention, and mull over his next move. Benny’s dash into that store could have been deliberate, instead of a scramble to find a hiding place because something had made him bolt. After nine months, Micah thought he knew the way Benny’s mind worked, but he acknowledged now that he may have been mistaken about the expression he’d glimpsed on his informant’s face.

      Because of one particular woman’s presence in Clocks & Watches, a more thorough investigation not only of her, but of the other customers and Mr. Hepplewhite was required, regardless of Micah’s personal feelings.

      Decision made, he expelled a long breath, allowing his thoughts to return to the woman he’d practically abandoned midsentence when he spotted Benny.

      Lord, a bit more warning would have, well, given me a chance to prepare. It was a childish lament. Aside from a miracle or two over the last millennium, life’s pathways were mostly paved one brick at a time. Believers learned to call it faith. Right now, however, Micah felt like a brick had been hurled against his head. Chadwick Bingham’s wife…

      The shop owner had addressed her as Mrs. Tremayne, and the obnoxious Seward Fishburn corroborated hearing her addressed thus—which indicated that Chadwick must have died, and his widow remarried. Though Micah’s initial shock had faded, a surprising regret boiled up without warning, catching him off guard. Once again this fascinating woman had dropped into his life, yet once again she was beyond his reach—for more than the obvious reasons.

      She hadn’t remembered Micah, of course, and why should she? He’d been a gangly college boy without a shred of sophistication, invited to the wedding along with the rest of his family only because his father had been head bookkeeper at one of the Binghams’ New York banks.

      But as he mulled over their recent encounter, he realized that although she might not have remembered the awkward college boy, she had recognized Micah on some level. Her eyes, still long-lashed, a unique swirl of green and amber and nutmeg-brown, had flared wide in surprise and what he chose to hope was gladness…before she cut him off at the knees. Her frosty voice had been stripped of the soft Southern sweetness he remembered.

      The Bingham family had done their job well.

      Micah tucked his thumbs inside the pockets of his vest, struggling to reconcile the enchanting bride with the embittered woman on the sidewalk in front of Clocks & Watches.

      Even on a cloudy day her hair still glowed with color, shot through with every hue of red in God’s palette. And the freckles still covered her face, making a mockery of her chilly disdain.

      Lord, of all the people in the world, she’s the one I don’t want to be suspicious of.

      A raindrop splashed onto Micah’s nose. He tugged down the brim of his hat, and set off across the street. Regardless of his feelings, and her current marital status, Jocelyn Bingham Tremayne required thorough investigation.

      She would have children, of course.

      Children…

      For their sakes as much as hers, Micah hoped his investigation would prove her innocent. Deep in thought, he caught a passing horsecar and rode to the terminus at New Reservoir Park, where, instead of tending to his duties, he watched the sky gradually clear of rain clouds. When sunset turned the western horizon glowing red, he breathed a silent prayer for strength, then caught the last horsecar back to town.

      Chapter Two

      It rained once more during the night, but the next morning brought enamel-blue skies and the fragrance of fall in the air. As she patiently curled snippets of her hair on either side of her forehead, Jocelyn abruptly decided to take a drive in the countryside.

      The spit curls on her forehead were forgotten as she yanked the pins out of her topknot and began twining her hair into a braid instead. Trying to look fashionable while driving an open buggy was not only vain, but ridiculous. She may have turned into an eccentric, but she would not stoop to silliness.

      Katya, the day servant she employed to clean house and do the laundry, had just arrived and was filling a pail of soapy water when Jocelyn clattered down the stairs to the basement kitchen.

      “Morning, Katya. I’m going for a drive in the country.”

      Katya smiled her crooked smile and nodded. The Russian girl had suffered some dreadful accident when she was a child, and though she could hear, she could not speak; the right side of her mouth remained paralyzed, her vocal cords somehow damaged beyond repair. Jocelyn had spent the past two years teaching her to read and write English, so for the most part communication between them remained snarl-free, but Katya was as reticent about her past as Jocelyn was. If sometimes the silence in the brownstone chafed a bit, Jocelyn could always go next door and talk to her neighbors.

      “I should be back early this afternoon. I made some hot-cross buns last night, and there are preserves in the larder. Make sure you eat something, all right?”

      The girl gestured to the pantry.

      “I’ll stop by the market on my way to the livery stable, pick up something for lunch. I can put it in my shopping bag.”

      Jocelyn grabbed some extra handkerchiefs to stuff inside the bag, as well, since any drive in the country included dust or, since it had rained the previous night, splatters of mud СКАЧАТЬ