Sara Mitchell - The Widow's Secret

“Of course not!” She hoped.

“Hmm.” His gaze shifted to the gold coin, and the ten-dollar bill, and Jocelyn watched, fascinated, while he examined them with narrowed eyes and deft fingers. “Excellent workmanship, but someone mishandled the printing on this bill, which indicates an entire set was likely bungled. Coin’s probably bogus, as well…but this just might be the break we’ve been looking for.” Excitement sparked in the words.

Jocelyn sank back down onto the sofa and allowed herself a single shuddering breath.

Operative MacKenzie’s head lifted. “You all right?” She nodded but didn’t trust herself to speak yet; his gaze turned speculative. “In my business, I’ve learned how to distinguish a counterfeit bill from the real one. I’ve also learned the same about people. Sometimes it’s more difficult to discern the counterfeit from the genuine, particularly when you think you know someone. Or, in your case, when you think you knew someone.”

Dumbfounded, Jocelyn lifted her hand to her throat, her eyes burning as she searched Operative MacKenzie’s face. “Earlier…you said ‘ten years.’ We’ve met before, haven’t we?” she asked hoarsely. “Before Clocks & Watches?”

“Yes. We have.” He hesitated, clasped his hands behind his back and contemplated the floor for a tension-spiked second. “It was at a wedding. Yours, to Chadwick Bingham. You were leaning against a marble column, and you’d removed your shoes because they were pinching your toes.”

“You’re that young man? You said Chadwick told you the freckles gave my face character. No wonder I—” Roaring filled her ears, and a vortex sucked her inside its black maw. “Chadwick never said that. My freckles embarrassed him. And I…I wished—”

“Gently, there.”

A hard arm wrapped around her shoulder, startling her so badly she jerked. “Whoa. Relax, Mrs. Tremayne. Let’s lean you over a bit, hmm? I’m holding you up so you don’t topple onto the carpet. As soon as I can, I’ll fetch Katya. All right?”

The words washed over her, lapping at the fringes of the whirling vortex. His warmth and his strength surrounded her. If only she could trust him, if only she could lean against him, draw from his strength, savor the feel of his protective embrace. Soak up his kindness.

Kindness, she had learned through painful experience, usually covered a shark-infested sea, boiling with ugly motives.

She would never trust a man again.

Micah struggled to remember that he was a federal operative, that the woman he held was not the blushing bride he’d met one evening a decade earlier, but a witness who—strictly speaking—was also a receiver of stolen goods.

He stroked his hand up and down her arm, spoke softly, as though he were gentling one of his brother’s high-strung mares. Propriety be hanged—she felt like a bundle of sticks, brittle enough that the slightest pressure would snap her.

And her eyes, Lord. As Micah gazed into them, he felt as though he’d come face-to-face with himself. There were secrets in her eyes. Secrets, and pain.

As a man, Micah might yearn for the opportunity to help assuage the pain.

As a U.S. Secret Service agent, he was bound to investigate the secrets, particularly those associated with the Bingham family.

For the moment, however, the widow Tremayne was a terrified woman, one who needed a gentle hand and a reason to trust the man who had terrified her.

In the end, Micah took her for a ride in his rental buggy. Katya, who communicated through the use of a lined tablet and pencil she kept in her pocket, refused to accompany them, despite Mrs. Tremayne’s and Micah’s invitation. After eyeing her mistress, she wrote for a moment, then handed the paper to Micah.

She has fear, all day. Needs help. You are good man. A servant like me. I clean house, you help lady.

The maid’s extrapolation of Secret Service to Secret “Servant” touched him; he wished her mistress shared Katya’s wordless trust and was surprised by Mrs. Tremayne’s docility, though he doubted it would last. For a few blocks they drove in silence. But the late-afternoon sun was warm, the sound of the steady clip-clop of hooves soothing, and eventually Mrs. Tremayne relaxed enough to shift in the seat, and glance up into his face.

“Katya is very perceptive, for all her youth. I’m surprised she refused to accompany us, but she’s obviously taken a shine to you. Even if you were taking me to the police station to be arrested, Katya would tell me not to worry.”

“I’m not taking you to the police station. I have no intention of placing you under arrest. The motive behind this outing is to banish your worries, which I’m sure you know achieve nothing but wrinkles and gray hair. A fate worse than death for a lady, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Unless the lady has a head full of garish hair.” At last she smiled, the rueful sweetness of it arrowing straight to Micah’s gut. “But thank you all the same. I’m much better.”

“God gave you a beautiful head of hair, Mrs. Tremayne. Why not celebrate it?”

He might have struck a match to tinder. Temper burned in her eyes and the words she spoke next were hurled like fire-tipped darts. “Operative MacKenzie, we may or may not have to endure each other’s company in the future. If we do, please know that the next time you feel compelled to utter any divine reference, however oblique, I will leave the room. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly. Since we’re traveling in a buggy along a fairly crowded street, however, I’ll be especially careful how I phrase my remarks.”

Well, he’d known the docility would not last, but he hadn’t anticipated such a violent reaction. Micah wondered who had poisoned her mind, not only about her hair color, but about God. On the heels of that question, it occurred to him that her comments might be a clever ploy, designed either to draw attention to herself or to deflect probing questions about why she had abdicated her status as a member of the Bingham family.

If she’d been a different sort of woman, the watch with its vital evidence might still be hidden in her music chest.

A stray breeze carried to his nostrils the faint whiff of the gardenia scent that permeated her house. It was a poignant, powerful scent and threatened to turn his professional objectivity to sawdust. Micah’s hands tightened on the reins. “I do have a secondary motive for this drive. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stop by and talk to Mr. Hepplewhite a moment. See if perhaps Benny Foggarty returned.”

“Certainly.” She drew her jacket tighter, but at least her response was civil. “I’d enjoy seeing Mr. Hepplewhite again myself, if only to have him vouch for my character.”

Micah prayed the old watchmaker would do precisely that, since his own view of Jocelyn Tremayne Bingham was regrettably distorted at the moment. For the next few blocks he stared between the horse’s ears, excoriating himself. The Secret Service had spent years tracking the most vicious network of counterfeiters in the agency’s brief history.

Operative Micah MacKenzie was not sharing a buggy merely with a distraught, vulnerable woman. He was sharing a buggy with the widow of the man whose family—eight years earlier—had arranged for the murders of three people, one of them Micah’s father.

Micah glanced sideways at her profile. Sunbeams streamed sideways into the buggy, turning her freckles a rich copper color. It was difficult to nurture suspicions about a woman whose face was covered with copper freckles.

When they reached Broad Street, throngs of pedestrians, buggies and bicycles choked the roadway as well as the sidewalks.

“Strange,” Mrs. Tremayne commented in a warmer tone. “I’ve never seen such a crowd on a Wednesday afternoon.”