An Agent for Belle (The Pinkerton Matchmaker Book 11) Read online

  “You’re from a rough neighbourhood?” From the expression on Mr. Stevens’ face, he didn’t believe her.

  She lifted her chin. “I am. So I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself.”

  “No matter where you’re from, it doesn’t compare to Cheyenne, believe me. There are things go on there that no woman should see, especially not one as young as you.” He looked her up and down. “How old are you anyway?”

  “Twenty-one,” she shot back. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six, and I’m guessing I know a lot more about lawless frontier towns than you do.”

  She tried very hard not to be annoyed, but it wasn’t easy. “Then it’s a good thing you’ll be with me. Isn’t that what you’re there for, to train me in how to handle any situation as an agent? Or are you not up to the job?”

  “She’s got you there, Val,” Mr. Gordon said, his moustache curling into a smile.

  Mr. Stevens huffed out an irritated breath. “Fine, we’ll go to Cheyenne and get ourselves stabbed or shot or whatever, all so we can save some burlesque show.”

  Belle smiled. “I’m all ready.” And then it dawned on her what he’d said. “Wait… burlesque show?”

  Chapter Four

  Married! How could he be married? And to barely more than a girl. All right, so Belle was quite clearly a woman, and a frustratingly beautiful one at that, but she was still young. And now he was taking her to one of the most dangerous places in America. If he hadn’t loved his job so much, he’d have told Archie what to do with his assignment and quit.

  Val was annoyed, and when he was annoyed, he got quiet. His mother used to call it sulking, when he lived at home. He wasn’t sulking. Children sulked. He was… dealing with his anger in a quiet, dignified manner.

  They had more than an hour’s wait for the train when they reached the station and Belle used the time to have breakfast in a nearby restaurant. He’d already eaten, so he simply sat across from her and didn’t sulk. In silence.

  Once they were on the train he gave her the file on their assignment to read and settled in with the newspaper he’d bought at the station, wishing he’d brought a book to not sulk with.

  They were more than three hours into the four-hour journey, with barely a word exchanged between them, when she finally said something. “Mr. Stevens, I know you’re not happy about all this, being married to me and having to take me to Cheyenne and everything else, but the least you can do is be civil. It will hardly be easy to train me if you won’t speak to me.”

  He looked up from the newspaper he’d already read through twice. “Seeing as we’re married, I think it would be all right if you called me Val. And I wondered when you were going to say something.”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “I didn’t figure it would take you this long though.”

  “I thought you were annoyed at me and didn’t want to talk.”

  At least she was observant.

  He lowered the paper to his lap. “I’m not annoyed at you. This isn’t your fault, except maybe that we’re still going to Cheyenne. If you’d said you were too afraid to go, I might have gotten Archie to change his mind. If we’re going to work together, you’re really going to have to learn to pick up on my cues and follow my lead.”

  She frowned. “What cues?”

  “I gave you plenty of openings to say you’d rather not go to a place as rough as Cheyenne.” Well, a few openings. A couple of openings. He’d given her at least one solid opening. “And instead you came up with that story about growing up in a rough neighborhood in New York City. Which clearly you didn’t.”

  He waved a hand at her obviously high quality dress as proof. He knew Marianne had had traveling dresses made for each of the women, but what Belle wore now wasn’t one of them. In fact, the dress she currently had on was much better, this one being a pale blue that complemented her coloring and fit her slender curves perfectly.

  He really needed to stop noticing her slender curves.

  She glared at him. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you? Probably think you can tell everything about a person just by looking at them. Valentine Stevens, the great Pinkerton detective, nothing fools him. Well, for your information this is the best dress I have and my parents sacrificed and saved for months to buy it for me and it’s the only one I have that didn’t belong to one or both of my sisters first. We live in a tiny, three-roomed house where my sisters and I all shared a bedroom until Louisa got married, and both my mother and father have to work. So don’t tell me I’m lying. You don’t know anything.”

  She sat back and swiped at her eyes, her lips pressed together as she stared out the window.

  Val’s gut coiled into a ball at her angry, heartfelt little speech. What was wrong with him? He was behaving like a louse to a woman who was away from her home and family for probably the first time in her life. A woman who, for the time being at least, was his wife. And he’d all but made her cry. He liked to think he was a better man than that.

  The past couple of weeks, since he’d been told he not only had to train one of the new prospective female agents but also marry her, had thrown his nicely settled world into a spin.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She glanced at him, her disturbingly pretty blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. I guess this whole marriage thing is as much of an adjustment for you as it is for me.”

  Blinking the moisture away, she nodded. “Nothing personal, but marrying you is the last thing I expected when I came, and the very last thing I wanted. In fact, I can’t think of anything worse.”

  She couldn’t think of anything worse than being married to him?

  “It’s not that bad,” he said indignantly. “I mean, I can hold a decent conversation and I’ve been complimented on my wit and charm on many occasions, and I’m not hideous to look at and…” He stopped when her eyes sparkled with amusement. “Oh, very funny.”

  Her full lips widened into one of the prettiest smiles he’d ever seen.

  He couldn’t help smiling back. Maybe being married to Belle for a few days wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  If he could keep her alive in Cheyenne, that was.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Crossways Hotel was in the better part of Cheyenne, if the town had such a place.

  Val had chosen it for that very reason, and also because it was within easy walking distance of James Horton’s establishment and he’d never stayed there before. If he had to go undercover, he didn’t want anyone to be able to recognize him.

  He followed Belle up to the desk in the lobby, placed their luggage on the floor, and tapped the bell.

  “This is nice,” she said, looking around.

  He glanced at the tidy but plain decor. “I’ve stayed in better. And far, far worse.”

  A man with a neat moustache and beard emerged from a door behind the desk. “Good afternoon, sir, ma’am. How may I help you?”

  “We’d like two rooms, please,” Val said, “adjoining, if you have them. For one week to start with but possibly longer.”

  The clerk brought a ledger out from behind the desk. “I can help you with that. What’s the name, please?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Valentine Summers,” he replied, using one of his usual aliases.

  The man’s eyes flicked between them. “You’re married?”

  “That’s right.” He smiled affectionately at Belle. “I’m the luckiest man on earth.”

  She smiled back, but he could just tell she wanted to roll her eyes.

  “If you’re husband and wife, why aren’t you sharing a room?”

  “His snoring,” she said, without missing a beat. “Honestly, you’d swear a freight train was passing by. Just about scared the wits out of me on our wedding night. I thought there was a bear in the room. For my own sanity and to save our marriage, we sleep in separate rooms. Isn’t that right, darling?”

  It took all his trainin
g to keep his expression neutral. “It certainly is, my dear.” Snoring?

  As soon as the man looked down to write in the ledger, Belle’s smile turned to a smirk. Val tried to glare at her with his eyes.

  “No knives allowed in the hotel outside the rooms and guns must remain holstered at all times,” the clerk rattled out in a manner that indicated he’d said the exact same thing a thousand times before. He took two keys from a range of hooks on a board on the wall behind him and placed them into the hand Belle held out. “You’re in rooms ten and eleven. Would you like any help with your luggage?”

  “No, thank you,” Val replied, in no hurry to prolong their time with the man who now thought he snored like an animal. Once he and Belle were up the stairs and out of earshot, he said, “I snore like a bear?”

  She grinned as they turned down a corridor. “I thought it was a very good excuse. And he didn’t question it at all. Anyway, for all I know, it’s the truth.”

  They reached a door with the number ten etched into a wooden plaque and he waited for her to open it. “I do not snore, at all. Like a bear or otherwise.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I don’t!”

  She pushed open the door and threw an amused look back at him. “The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.”

  He followed her into the room. “Don’t throw Shakespeare at me.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Yes, I know Shakespeare,” he said, before she could put her shock into words. “I may not be an expert in telling where a woman is from, but I’m not completely ignorant.”

  One corner of her mouth hitched up. “Glad to hear it.”

  He smiled at her back as she walked to a door to their right and opened it into room eleven. She was smart. And funny. And he was beginning to suspect he liked her.

  He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but it might turn out to be fun.

  ~ ~ ~

  By the time Val finished unpacking the few belongings he’d brought, Belle had yet to emerge, so he went down to the lobby to pick up two copies of the local newspaper he’d seen there when they arrived.

  When he got back to his room, he knocked on the door separating it from hers. He heard the key being turned in the lock.

  She’d locked the door. Did she not trust him?

  “You locked the door,” he said when it opened.

  She gave him a level stare. “No wonder you’re a detective. Nothing gets past you.”

  “If we’re going to work together, you need to trust me.”

  “I do trust you, where the assignment is concerned. And in the unlikely event I need protecting, I fully trust that you will, if need be, do all you can to ensure my safety. I’m not sure, however, that I trust you not to come through this door without knocking. So it stays locked.”

  He was rapidly learning that Belle was just about impossible to understand. It was a good thing they weren’t going to stay married.

  “In that case I will be locking my side too. How can I trust you not to barge into my room while I’m in a state of undress?”

  The corners of her lips twitched. “I guess you can’t.”

  “Then it’s a good thing there’s a lock.” He held up the papers and walked forward. “If you’re ready, I have your first lesson in investigating a case.”

  Her eyes darted down to his feet. “What are you doing?”

  He stopped on the threshold. “I’m coming in so I can teach you about investigating.”

  “Into my bedroom?”

  “Yes. Unless you want to come into mine.”

  There was something satisfying about seeing her flustered. “But there’s no one else here. We can’t be together in a bedroom. It’s improper.”

  He suddenly understood the reason they’d been forced to marry. He still didn’t like it, but maybe it wasn’t as pointlessly stupid as it had seemed.

  “There’s nothing improper about a husband and wife being alone together in a bedroom. In fact, it’s pretty much expected. Unless you happen to be married to the world’s loudest snorer, of course.”

  She bit her lip. “Oh. Yes.” She glanced back into her room. “I suppose it’s all right then.”

  It was all the invitation he needed. He walked in, dropped into one of two upholstered chairs by the window, and smiled up at her. “I must insist, however, that you keep your hands to yourself. I do have a reputation to protect.”

  She took the chair opposite him. “I’ll do my best to restrain myself.”

  He lifted the newspapers. “Lesson one in becoming a Pinkerton detective – the local paper. Possibly the best source of useful information in an agent’s arsenal. The first thing I do in any investigation is buy a paper.” He handed one to her. “Tell me what you see.”

  She scanned the front page while he did the same. “There was a robbery at Pacey’s Mercantile yesterday. A man injured in the brawl at the Railtrack Saloon four days ago has died. The gang responsible for a robbery at the train depot last week are still at large, although the marshal is confident they will be caught and the safe they stole recovered soon. And there’s a sale on women’s hats and shoes at Fulton’s general store.”

  He nodded, mentally filing away the headlines. “Do any of those stories seem to you to have any bearing on our case?”

  She looked at the paper again and he watched her study the articles. She was a thinker. That was good.

  “Not unless the wardrobe mistress at the theatre needs more hats and shoes,” she said after half a minute or so. “Should I read the rest?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He flicked through his own copy of the newspaper, skimming through the articles in a way that had become second nature to him whilst surreptitiously watching her at the same time. It wasn’t long before he was looking at her more than the newspaper. The sunlight streaming through the south-facing window shimmered over her hair, highlighting subtle depths of color he hadn’t noticed before. She stared intently at the pages, her full, pink lips pursed ever so slightly and her long, slender neck tilted forward as she read.

  “I don’t see anything that obviously relates to the theatre,” she said, looking up.

  He rapidly dropped his eyes to his own paper and then raised his gaze slowly as if he hadn’t been staring at her the whole time. “You’re probably right, but we’ll keep the paper, just in case. You never know when something may come up that we’ll want to check on again.”

  She nodded, folded the paper neatly, and placed it on the table between them. It looked pristine, as if it hadn’t even been read, with not a single crease marring the pages.

  “So what do we do now?” she said, glancing out the window.

  He tossed his markedly more disheveled newspaper on top of hers. “We’re not meeting James Horton until the morning, so how about some supper? I could go out and get us something.”

  She turned back to him, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Could we have a look around first?”

  His stomach jolted. “Look around? You mean, around outside?”

  She nodded. “I want to see the town. Shouldn’t we familiarize ourselves with the area?”

  A vision flitted through his mind of walking her down the street in her expensive dress while every man in the place ogled her. “I am familiar with the area, and it’s not a place a lady should be walking around at night.”

  “It’s not even six,” she pointed out.

  “Or during the day.”

  She puffed out a sigh, slumping back in her chair. “I have to go outside sometime. Why do you hate Cheyenne so much?”

  He shifted in his seat. “I don’t hate it. I’ve just had some bad experiences here and I know what it’s like. Cheyenne is a rough place.”

  “What bad experiences?”

  Perhaps if he told her she’d be too afraid to go outside.

  Of course, then he’d have to tell her the embarrassing parts as well. “It’s not important. They were just… bad.”

&n
bsp; She leaned forward, her pleading eyes making a puppy seem downright amateur in comparison. “Please? I could learn from it. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To give me the benefit of your experience as an agent? I’d be ever so grateful.”

  She was good. He knew she was manipulating him and yet he still had an overwhelming urge to tell her his entire life story. She was going to be useful in getting information out of people. Men, at least. He had no idea if it would work on women since there was an undoubted element of attraction involved.

  Oh, that wasn’t good. He was attracted to her. This was all Archie’s fault for pairing him with a redhead. He’d always had a weakness for redheads.

  Sighing in resignation, he sat back. “I was almost killed here. Twice.”

  She gasped, her eyes lighting up. “Really? What happened?”

  “You’re being far too enthusiastic about my brushes with death.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “You survived. You can’t not tell me now.”

  He sighed again. “Fine, but you’d better be suitably sympathetic. It happened last July…”

  Twenty minutes later, Belle was in gales of laughter and Val was wishing the floor would open up and swallow him.

  “Whatever happened to your trousers?” she managed to gasp out, wiping at her eyes.

  “I don’t know. I never did find them.”

  That revelation brought more giggles. “How did you get back to the hotel?”

  “I walked.”

  “Without your trousers?”

  “Yes. Something I will never, ever do again.”

  She stared at him for a moment and then burst into more laughter, pressing her hands to her stomach as if needing to hold herself together.

  He couldn’t help smiling, despite his acute embarrassment. It was infectious, the way she laughed with such abandon. If he’d married her for real, hearing her laugh every day would have been a definite perk.

  “So now you’ve heard all about one of the most embarrassing events of my life and shown not one ounce of sympathy, shall we go get supper?”

  She stopped laughing abruptly. “One of the most embarrassing?”