An Agent for Brielle Read online




  An Agent for Brielle

  An Agent for Brielle

  The Pinkerton Matchmaker Series Book #20

  Parker J. Cole

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2019 Parker J. Cole

  Cover Art by Black Widow Books

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition: March 2019

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  The Pinkerton Matchmaker Series

  About the Author

  Join Parker’s Bodacious Readers

  Works by Parker J. Cole

  Chapter One

  Pinkerton Detective Agency – Denver Office

  July 1871

  Brielle Bradford checked the contents of her sister’s letter once more. “427 Chain Bridge Road,” she said out loud. The sign above her confirmed she was at the right place. Stuffing the letter back into her reticule, Brielle took in a deep breath and then rang the doorbell.

  A moment later, it opened. The last person she expected to see darkened the doorway.

  “Mr. Blackburn,” she breathed.

  The tall Negro man exceeded her height by more than a foot as he stood there with the commanding presence of a Dahomey king. His flat, broad brow lifted up over his right eye. “Well, well. If it isn’t the little liar I fell in love with two years ago.”

  Brielle straightened her five foot, five-inch frame. She should have known this meeting would not go as planned. When did anything that involved Matthias Blackburn go as planned?

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Interesting.” His black eyes glittered down at her in a dangerous way. “I was going to ask that of you.”

  The inside of her stomach twisted at the accusatory tone of his voice but she lifted her chin in defiance. She knew she had a lot of explaining to do.

  “May I come in?” She preferred to have this conversation out of the earshot of the passersby. Or, rather, she preferred to not have this conversation at all but it seemed as if dieu Tout-Puissant had other plans.

  Matthias moved aside and she stepped into the coolness of the dormitory. An uneasy silence lingered in the foyer as the door snapped shut behind them. She fiddled with her reticule, smoothed the wrinkles of her trail worn gown. When she could no longer preen herself, she lifted her eyes and met the gaze of the man she’d lied to two years ago.

  Of course, his looks had improved in their time apart. His travels all over the country had given the sun ample opportunity to bake his skin to a warm, dark roasted almond. Alert black eyes scrutinized her above a broad, flaring nose. A thin mustache lined his full upper lip.

  His starched collar and black tie framed the strong column of his neck. The tailor-made suit hugged his shoulders with a perfect fit. Its deceptive simplicity spoke of his wealth. With his wavy black hair pomaded and parted on the side, he appeared every inch the politician.

  “Well?” He questioned. “Do you still recognize me?”

  Brielle blinked. Heat crawled up the back of her neck as she realized she’d been staring. “I recognize you, Mr. Blackburn.”

  “Mr. Blackburn, is it?” He made a scoffing noise. “I think we’re on…shall I say…friendly sufficient terms. You can address me by my Christian name.”

  The guilt-ridden muscles of her stomach relaxed. Her hands clenched her reticule with a death-like grip. With great effort, she stymied the retort ready on her lips and instead replied, “You would have to bring that up, wouldn’t you?”

  He crossed his arms. “It was the only thing that kept me sane for two years. The fact that we—”

  “Matthias?”

  Brielle whirled around at the sound of a feminine voice. A pretty woman with lovely hair and a serene air stood before them. “Oh, I thought perhaps we had another recruit.” She came forward, her eyes kind. “You must be Arielle Smith’s sister.”

  “My name is Brielle Bradford.”

  “Is that so?” Matthias drawled in sarcasm. Brielle did her best to ignore his caustic tone but her smile was brittle as she greeted, “Please to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” The woman stretched out a hand. “I’m Marianne Chapman but please call me Marianne. Arielle isn’t here right now. She and her husband, Caleb, are out on assignment.”

  Brielle retuned the handshake. “I was aware I may have arrived during her next mission.” She and her sisters, Camille and Danielle, had been struck dumb when their father had announced that Arielle had become a Pinkerton agent and had married a man none of them had ever seen.

  An ironic twist of providence since their father had sent Arielle to America to marry Matthias Blackburn.

  “Wonderful.” Marianne’s gaze swept over her in a lightning quick assessment. Brielle sensed the woman had gathered more information about her in that once glance than in a two-hour interview. “Are you also interested in becoming an agent?”

  Brielle gave a vehement shake her head. “Pas du tout. Not interested at all. My skills lean toward the academic side of life.”

  A thoughtful frown appeared on Marianne’s face. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “I’m president of the Benjamin Banneker Society on my island home in the West Indies. It’s a scholarly guild dedicated to honing mental acuity through the study of literature, science, and mathematics. My principal interest is in mathematics.”

  “How interesting,” Marianne murmured. “How very, very interesting.”

  “Is something the matter?” Brielle noted the speculative gleam in the woman’s eyes.

  “I must speak with Archie.” Marianne’s gaze drifted over at the silent man by Brielle’s side. “I’m sure Matthias will be glad to show you around.”

  In a flurry of skirts, Marianne disappeared down a hall.

  Brielle longed to call her back. Now, nothing prevented her from having this overdue tête-à-tête with Matthias.

  Another thought came to mind: what was Matthias doing here in the first place?

  “I’ll show you to the library.” He stepped to the side to allow her to pass before him. “There’s no one there at the moment. We can discuss the reason for your visit without any distractions.”

  He made it sound like a threat.

  “Will you let me explain?”

  In the ensuing silence Matthias’s black, penetrating gaze seemed to pierce directly into her soul. Strip her of all sense of privacy. If she let him, his singular glare would bare her vulnerability to him.

  No, she did not have vulnerability. Vulnerabilities only existed if one allowed them to exist. Sense and reason precluded all other notions. Within the confines of these two mental rationalities, life could be readily dealt with.

  He extended an arm to give her leave to walk ahead of him and said nothing until they had entered the library. Brielle batten down the prick of alarm as he shut the door. Propriety should have been observed but Matthias would not do anything to compromise her.

  At least, she believed he wouldn’t.

  “Now, that we’re alone,” he began in a tight voice, “I’ll listen to everything you have to say. Let’s start with your reasons for pretending to be your sister when I asked you to marry me.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I had every intention of telling you the truth?” Brielle’s proud chin lifted up in defiance. “Or are you going to shout out at me?”

  “Shout at you?” Matthias gave a bark of a laugh. “I’m past shouting, Brielle, not Arielle.” He remarked in a pointed fashion. “I want to wrap my hands around your—”

  He pressed his mouth closed, unsure of how to end that phrase. Around the swan-like column of her throat, where he could strangle her? Or around her slim waist where he could draw her lithe form up against him?

  Matthias had difficulty determining which would bring him the most pleasure. What an effort to subdue the chaotic emotions that coursed along his body! The sight of her again, after desolate absence, wreaked havoc on him. Was this how a man felt when his thirst had been quenched by cool, refreshing water?

  Vitality arced through his veins as he gulped in the sight of her – that rich, smooth toffee brown face with its wide molasses-hued eyes. Black, curly hair pulled back in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Her voice with its husky, almost heavy French accent along that unique West Indies flair reminded him of the sweetest musical tones.

  At that moment, she licked her full brown lips in a nervous way. The moistness along the seam drew his eyes. Now he was sure he knew what would bring him the most pleasure. It had nothing to do with her neck.

  He ripped his eyesight from her delectable mouth. Never mind her beauty. He had to get back to the matter at hand. Her lies. “Why did you tell me that you were Arielle?”

  “I thought at first you knew tha
t I wasn’t Arielle.”

  His eyebrows drew inward. “Why would you think that when I asked you for your name?”

  Brielle turned her head away. “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  “If you will cease interrupting me, I can tell you.”

  Matthias massaged his right temple where a dull ache began to pound against it. “Go on.”

  “Most men are enamored of my sister.” She intertwined her hands and lifted that chin of her a little higher. “When I had deduced you truly thought I was Arielle, I thought it would be amusing to play a little trick on you.”

  “I never saw your sister the entire three months I was there. Perhaps from a distance, maybe I saw men floundering about but I’d never spent any time with her.”

  Matthias’s chest expanded. “I spent nearly moment I could in your presence.”

  “Yes, I know.” Her eyes darted away from his.

  “You don’t. From the instant I first saw you, I had no desire to see another woman.”

  “My sister is beautiful,” she answered in a small voice. “I cannot hold a light to her brilliance.”

  “Au contraire. Arielle, the real Arielle, cannot hold the flicker of candlelight to the beauty of the sun before me.”

  A cold look hardened those soft, brown features. “You don’t have to resort to pretty words. I am impervious to them.”

  Matthias couldn’t allow that to go unchallenged. “That’s not how I recall it.”

  She gave an unexpected jerk. He knew he’d hit the mark but she had her pride. “There’s no need to—”

  Bidden by the incessant need to touch her in some capacity, he tramped over to where she sat on the settee. He hefted her to her feet and gripped her upper arms.

  So warm, his mind whispered in delight as he felt the heat of her flesh through the material of her clothing. I’ve missed her warmth.

  “Every day I woke up, I wanted to be with you. I sought you out, again and again.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” Brielle interrupted. “I was there for the events.”

  “Perhaps you need reminding, Brielle.”

  “That’s not necessary—”

  “I spent hours, metaphorically at your feet, as you explained knotty points of mathematics. For weeks, I sat with you in the gardens behind Arabette Grove and listened to your views on any and everything. Enthralled by your intelligence that seems without end. I’ve watched you cut one of your fellow members of the Society as you argued—”

  “I do not argue,” Brielle narrowed her eyes. Her body stiffened like marble.

  He allowed himself a hint of amusement. No, Brielle didn’t argue in the conventional sense. She decimated whatever point you were trying to make with concise questions or comments meant to cut through unwelcome rhetoric. She’d made some of the great minds of the island feel like simpletons.

  His fingers flexed on her arms. “No,” he acquiesced with some sorrow, “you don’t give yourself the relief of passionate exhibition.” He stared into those molasses colored eyes which had haunted his dream. “Well, at least, you didn’t until that night when—”

  “Matthias, please. Must you bring up that night?”

  “I must, Brielle.” It was the memory of that night that kept him alive when the pain of leaving had almost crushed him.

  “After all our verbal sparring, and conversation. After all your attempts to dissuade me from your company. After I even tried to distance myself from you for my own good.”

  “Your own good?” Her brow creased. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t.” Matthias sighed and released her. “How could you?”

  Brielle didn’t comprehend the magnitude of his metamorphosis when she entered his life. Could anyone? The only being that could understand would be the lowly caterpillar. Unlike him that the small creature knew what greater glory waited for it.

  Matthias hadn’t even known his heart was a caterpillar until that night, the one Brielle refused to speak about. His love for her burst forth on the wings of a butterfly.

  “Do you remember? After all we had done to fight this…regard between us, you and I walked through the gardens behind the mansion and then—”

  A knock at the door interrupted them. Matthias bit back a groan and stepped away just as the door opened. Marianne poked her head through the slit. “Matthias. Miss Bradford. I’m sorry to intrude but I wonder if you might be willing to help us?”

  Chapter Two

  Brielle had disciplined herself to react to the hurdles that Life threw at her with dispassionate objectivity. Assess the problem, weigh its impact from all directions, and formulate the best equation to solve it.

  Matthias Blackburn had been a random variable she hadn’t accounted for.

  An erroneous calculation on her part.

  Yet, nothing prepared her for the words that exited Mr. Archibald Gordon’s lips as she sat across from the redheaded man in his office. Her mouth almost dislodged from her jawline in shock. “Me? Become a Pinkerton agent?”

  “On a temporary basis,” Marianne added with a smile. Brielle hardly thought the duration of such a preposterous idea would have any effect on her bemused state of mind. Her incredulity rang out like the gongs of a bell in the office. “You must be joking.”

  “Not at all, Miss Bradford,” Mr. Gordon contradicted in his Scottish brogue, much to her dismay. “We believe your scholarly attributes may be of benefit to us.”

  Marianne nodded in agreement. “It is a matter of some urgency or we wouldn’t be improvising like this.”

  “Can you tell us more about it?” Matthias asked beside her.

  Brielle almost retorted that she did not need him to speak for her but forced herself to remain silent. With grasping mental fingers, she tried to regain some of her composure and listen to what the man had to say.

  “Does the name Dallmann mean anything to either of you?”

  Brielle frowned. “The name Dallmann is significant, oui.”

  “I know of Lady Elizabeth Dallmann.” Matthias turned his dark eyes toward her. “She’s an English society hostess, transplanted from across the Atlantic.”

  “Is she related in any fashion to Michael Dallmann?” She tried to ignore the way his gaze once again seemed to bore into her soul.

  He nodded slowly. “I believe that is her husband’s name, yes.”

  Why did he have to keep looking at her with such intensity? Was it because they had yet to finish their tête-à-tête Marianne had interrupted? Most likely. So much had been said and yet, so much had been left unsaid between them. For a moment, before Marianne had interrupted them, the look in his eyes had made her breath catch in her throat.

  It was the same look she remembered from that night when—

  “I know of him.” Brielle gushed out. Determinedly, she penned her thoughts in the back of her mind like a cluster of hens. “He’s a chemist of some repute who follows the likes of Louis Pasteur. I’ve read his papers regarding Pasteur’s views on spontaneous generation and its inherent flaws. And on the new process called ‘pasteurization’.”

  Matthias steepled his hand under his chin. “His wife, Lady Dallmann caters to the intellectuals and the bluestockings of the area. Several times a year, she hosts a week-long ‘cerebral colloquy’. A meeting of minds.”

  Brielle followed Matthias’s loose-limbed stride as he rose and went over to the window. “Lady Dallmann’s father was an ambassador for the British empire. She has been exposed to great minds all over the world. All who consider themselves elite of mind are invited, be they rich or poor, titled or not, White, Negro, or any race.”

  “Obviously your connections in the political arena gave you access to her.” Mr. Gordon interjected.

  Matthias nodded without turning around. “The governor found her a delightful woman.”

  Brielle glanced back and forth between Mr. Gordon and Marianne. “Why do you ask us about Mr. and Lady Dallmann?”

  “Lady Dallmann came to see us yesterday. She asked if we had an agent who would be able to infiltrate her cerebral colloquy and discover the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “If a murder had taken place.”

  “A murder?” She and Matthias spoke at the same time.