Sara Mitchell - The Widow's Secret

She’d looked less traumatized when she thought he might be about to arrest her. “Because—” her voice turned tremulous as a young girl’s “—because the thought never occurred to me.”

“Well, get used to it, Mrs. Tremayne. I don’t know yet whether your involvement is by happenstance or design. But either way, you’re now under my protection.”

“As an operative for the Secret Service?”

“Partly.” He held her gaze with his as he slowly lifted her hand until it was inches from his lips. “But also as a man.” Every nerve ending in his body rioted as he fought the urge to bring her hand those last two inches. “I’ll take you home, then I’ll return here. I hope you and your maid are efficient packers, Mrs. Tremayne. I have a ticket on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac leaving Byrd Street Station first thing Friday morning. You and Katya will be accompanying me back to Washington.”

Washington, D.C., 1894

Through the window of the ladies’ hotel on F Street, Jocelyn and Katya watched Operative MacKenzie swing aboard a streetcar. He was on his way to a meeting with the chief of the Secret Service, and Jocelyn’s muscles were skeined together in painful knots. “Do you think he’s an honorable man?” she asked Katya, who nodded with more decisiveness than Jocelyn felt. She waited in silence while the maid wrote on her tablet.

Is very good man. Likes you.

“Rubbish. He’s behaved like a gentleman, but he’s no different from anybody else. I’m under investigation, that’s why he brought us to Washington with him.” The knowledge chafed, yet not once during the six-hour train journey from Richmond had he treated her like a criminal.

Of course, neither had he accorded her the familiarity he’d extended when she’d all but swooned in front of Clocks & Watches. Since Chadwick, Jocelyn had not handled death with any degree of equanimity. Swallowing, she tried to banish the memory of the faces of the crowd, ghoulishly craning for a view of Mr. Hepplewhite’s body, found sprawled in the stairwell that led to his upstairs apartment. Operative MacKenzie had refused to share any further details, but Jocelyn’s vivid imagination needed no embellishment.

Katya scowled and wagged a sheet of paper in her face. Is differernt. Sees YOU, not hare.

“Dear Katya, it doesn’t matter, especially if Operative MacKenzie’s chief believes I’m involved with some notorious counterfeiting crowd.” She stared blindly down to the street below, watching the soothing motion of a white-coated street sweeper pushing his broom. Perhaps if she went for a stroll…

Katya followed her, and Jocelyn sensed her reluctance to end the discussion. “By the way, you misspelled two words,” she said, hoping to divert her. When it came to reading and writing, Katya was a perfectionist.

She could also be as contrary as a goat. Don’t spelling matter. He likes you. Sees more than red hare. You lissen. Be careful. Should tell me things. I take care of you.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the watch,” Jocelyn retorted wearily.

She fretted over how easily she’d refused to confide in Katya, who after two years knew more about her than any other living soul. Yet with little effort Micah MacKenzie managed to wrest from her secrets she had never shared with anyone.

Of course, Micah MacKenzie was also the first adult male in ten long years to touch more than her gloved hand. Hating the sick sensation swimming about her middle, Jocelyn tormented herself by imagining his reaction had she plonked down beside him on the train seat. He would have been courteous, of course. But she would only have shamed herself and embarrassed them both, acting on that frenzied need for connection, however ephemeral, to someone other than Katya, who offered a dollop of comfort.

No doubt he’d offer that comfort when he slapped his handcuffs on her wrists, after being ordered by his chief to arrest her.

God in heaven, she longed to hurl the angry cry, what did I ever do to make You hate me so?

Micah took the steps up into the Treasury Building three at a time.

Nodding, occasionally speaking to people he passed in the maze of hallways, he tried to juggle his mounting uneasiness with the conviction that he would be able to do the right thing, for everyone.

Especially Mrs. Tremayne Bingham. Regardless of the mounting evidence against her, he could not bring himself to believe she was guilty of anything but an ill-advised marriage. A faint memory surfaced, something his mother once mentioned about the Tremaynes, about why an old, distinguished Southern family married their daughter off to a Yankee from New York City. Next time he visited her, he might risk asking.

A fellow operative was just leaving the chief’s office when Micah reached the top-floor offices of the Treasury Department.

“You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest, MacKenzie,” he said. “Best put on some armor.”

“Thanks, Welker.” Confidence dissipating, Micah stepped inside the office with a sense of impending doom.

Chief William Hazen, appointed to head the Service earlier in the year, greeted him but remained seated behind his ornate walnut desk.

“You’re late, Operative MacKenzie.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry.”

“Humph. Well, I have a meeting in ten minutes, so let’s see what we can accomplish with the time we’ve got.” Rising, he came around the desk to stand in front of Micah. “According to your telegram last night, you confiscated the watch you loaned Benny Foggarty, along with some hopefully vital evidence. Let’s see it.”

Micah removed the watch case from his coat pocket, flicked it open and withdrew the bill and coin, handing them to Chief Hazen. “Bill’s damaged bogus goods, as you’ll see, but the front is some of the best work I’ve stumbled across in years. Paper’s hardly distinguishable from ours, including the silk fiber. Possibly made in England, or Connecticut.”

Beneath a thick handlebar mustache, Hazen’s lips compressed in a thin line. “Most troubling. I believe the ten-dollar gold piece is from one of the coin mills operating out of New Jersey.” He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Though the amount of gold wouldn’t cover half a filling in a tooth. Most likely underneath the shiny gold surface we’ll discover a blend of copper, antimony, possibly tin. Just last week we seized a sizable quantity of those materials, which, by the way, included a stack of bona fide silver dollars.”

Micah nodded. “Milling’s good but not top rate, and I thought the weight wasn’t quite right.”

“What about the handwriting on the back of this bill?”

“Obviously, it will require thorough examination downstairs, but if you’re asking my opinion…” Micah hesitated, then finished honestly, “I didn’t recognize the handwriting. Benny could have forged it, or it could be the work of the person he stole the goods from. It’s also possible the network has found someone new in Richmond….” His voice trailed away. No sense stating the obvious.

“A fortunate happenstance, your securing the evidence after losing Foggarty.” His movements deliberate, Hazen set the watch, coin and bill on top of his desk, then turned back to Micah. “Let’s talk about this woman—your telegram gave Tremayne as her name, right? Tell me about her.”

Loyalty, honor, integrity and faith all clashed as Micah waged an internal battle with his conscience. Mrs. Tremayne might have resumed using her maiden name for any number of reasons. Yet the extremity of her self-imposed isolation, and her fear, struck a false note. An innocent citizen who discovered obvious forgeries would have instantly conveyed them to the local police. An innocent citizen would have greeted an operative of the Secret Service with relief, and immediately handed over the evidence.