An Agent for Arielle (The Pinkerton Matchmaker Book 12) Read online

  An Agent for Arielle

  An Agent for Arielle

  The Pinkerton Matchmaker Series Book #12

  Parker J. Cole

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © 2019 Parker J. Cole

  Cover Art by Black Widow Books

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition: January 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

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  The Pinkerton Matchmaker Series

  About the Author

  Join Parker’s Bodacious Readers

  Works by Parker J. Cole

  Chapter One

  Arabette Grove, West Indies

  March 1871

  “Arielle, put that vase down!” Brutus Bradford shouted, pointing a long thick finger at his eldest daughter. “You will do as I say at once.”

  Arielle shrieked. “You can’t make me!”

  She hurled the vase to the floor, listening with intense satisfaction as it shattered into several pieces.

  “Arielle! How dare you resort to this childish behavior!”

  “When you treat me like a child, Papa, I will act like one!” She breathed noisily through her nose. Her eyes darted around the room, seeking something else she could send careening to the floor.

  There, above the mantel behind her father, the marble figurine of a woman with ethereal features and an unrealistic long neck. If she destroyed it, then her father would have no choice but to renege on this…arrangement he had the audacity—the gall!—to spring upon her.

  “Don’t you dare,” Brutus warned, his dark blue eyes narrowing. “I see that wild light in your eyes, ma fille. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t.”

  “I’ll do what I please,” she told him in a deadly tone. “Tu es sur mon chemin.”

  Brutus’s eyes narrowed at her flippant remark, “You’re in my way.” A remark many of the workers, and visitors to Arabette Grove, knew was Arielle’s preferred method of stating the obvious. Move or be moved.

  “You will not speak to me this way,” Brutus warned with the drawing together of his black, bushy eyebrows.

  Ignoring his words, she crossed her father’s study with long strides, her wavy, long hair flapping gently against her back. Her teeth ground against each other. With each step, her desire to do more destructive damage grew. That long-necked angel or whatever it was, was as sure as broken. As soon as she got her hands on it.

  “No, Arielle!”

  Brutus dashed in front of her, gripping her by the arms and shaking her. “You will not—”

  She shrieked like a wildcat and fought against his superior hold, using her flailing arms and nimble body as a catalyst to tear herself away. “I’ll do what I please. You can’t make me.”

  Breathing as if she’d run across the hundreds of acres of the sugar plantation her father owned, she seethed through her tight lips. “I will not give myself to a man I don’t know. I will not marry a man whom you have picked out for me.”

  “You will do as I say,” Brutus took a step to the right when she would have gone around. “Do you understand me?”

  “I will not.” She darted to her left in an attempt to get around him but he blocked her, shifting his wide girth again.

  “You will. I have already made that decision.”

  Her head knifed to the side as if her father had slapped her. He might as well have, though he’d never struck her, or her sisters, ever in their lifetimes.

  “You expect me to meekly go to America to be some politician’s bride? How can you ask me to do something like that? I have no wish to leave Arabette Grove.”

  Brutus took in a deep breath. “Not just any politician. A Negro politician. His name is Matthias Blackburn.”

  “I heard you the first time when you mentioned his name,” Arielle retorted with a dismissive toss of her hair. “I am not impressed.”

  “You are the woman he asked for,” Brutus reminded her. “He remembered you from his visit two years ago and waited this long before asking for an arrangement. I’ve decided to give your hand to him.”

  Arielle darted to the right, faster than Brutus could move and yanked the marble figurine from its place on top of the mantel. She hovered it threateningly above her head, and eyed her father. “I will break it, Papa.”

  Though he swallowed in a nervous manner, nonetheless he shook his head. “Ma fille, you can break every valuable piece in this entire mansion. You can hurl yourself into the walls and fall to the ground in one of your fits. But…you will be the wife of Matthias Blackburn.”

  Arielle held Brutus’s gaze. What she saw in his dark blue eyes made all the heat seep from her body. Her arms slowly fell to her sides, the long-necked figurine dangling from her fingers like a forgotten toy.

  “Papa? Surely you aren’t going to take me away from the only home I have ever known?” She made sure to add that little girl whimper. It made her father succumb to her wishes in times past. She’d practiced enough in the mirror to know what kind of image she wanted to present.

  For good measure, she made her eyes tear up in the corners. Not enough to trail down her cheeks, though. She had an appointment with Percy Willmington, the middle son of the neighboring plantation, Armoise Orchard. He wanted to give her one of his prized mares as a birthday gift. Percy liked the image of the helpless female she presented to him from time to time.

  “I’m not falling for your tricks, Arielle. I’m done being twisted about your finger.”

  Surely something had to work in her favor. He couldn’t do this to her.

  She wasn’t going to accept this! Marriage to some man across the ocean. She had more than enough to choose from.

  Arielle Bradford, the eldest daughter of the very rich privateer—turned plantation owner—Brutus Bradford and his Haitian wife, Roseline, purported to have been a highly desirable woman, had no need to go across the ocean to seek a husband!

  From the hard muscle leaping along his cheek, she knew, for the first time in her life, she knew, nothing would change her father’s mind. The tears dried up in the corners of her eyes but her mood was no less morose.

  “Papa, why are you doing this? I have no wish to go to America.”

  “Nonetheless, you will go. You waste your life and your intelligence away here on the plantation, making every man of every race that has ever walked the Earth fall to your feet. I have overindulged you over the years. That is my fault.”

  “Papa!” Anguish filled her voice. She could scarcely believe what she was hearing.

  “You are the apple of my eye.” He reached over and caressed her cheek with gentle fingers, his deep blue eyes tender. “Your mere, God rest her soul, was my life. You’re so much like her. Fierce. Proud.”

  The soft, loving look he gave melted away as he drew his hand away from her face. “But, it is time for you to be a woman. Time for you to stop these games. You do nothing more th
an seek the attention of men.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Papa! I am not some harlot—”

  “Nor did I mean to imply that, ma fille,” he responded in a soothing tone. “Neither was your mother. But you do love the attention of men. You bask in their adoration.”

  “And I shouldn’t?” Arielle lifted her chin in the air. “Should I apologize for the beauty that God gave me? Should I hide my light under a bushel and pretend to—”

  “You are the daughter of a goddess,” Brutus interrupted with a wry twist of his mouth. “As all of my daughters are. It’s to be expected.” He cleared his throat and said briskly. “Matthias Blackburn seeks my daughter for his wife and my daughter he will have.”

  Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. How could he—

  “I am not some…slave to be bought and sold.”

  Brutus smacked her cheek as soon as the words left her throat. Arielle’s hand covered her face. Not that he had hurt her but the shock of it rendered her still.

  His pale skin grew mottled as he clenched out through his teeth. “You are my blood, Arielle. The very best parts of your mother and I. Don’t ever, as long as God gives you breath, ever suggest I would treat you in such a way. Comprendre?”

  Arielle nodded like a horse, shame crawling through her. She had gone too far.

  The silence rippled between them like turbulent waves of the ocean. Then her father exhaled and took the long-necked figurine from her numb fingers. “It is words such as that which makes this decision the most appropriate one. You need the correct and restricted lifestyle being Matthias’s wife will bring you.”

  Arielle jerked and straightened, her chagrin forgotten. Restricted?

  Brutus set the marble woman back on the mantel, his back toward her. “You will be guided by him.”

  Her eyebrow arched. Guided?

  “He will temper your fierce nature and mold it as is befitting a wife of status.” Brutus caressed the length of the statute, thus missing the outrage which dominated her face.

  “It will be important that you rein in your riotous whims as his wife. He will need your help in his work.”

  “His work?” Arielle’s head cocked to the side. Her fingers flexed as the blood boiled underneath the surface of her skin.

  “Yes. His last letter I received talks about it. I’ll let you read it for yourself so you can become acquainted with what he is doing. I think, once you’ve had time to study it, you’ll understand why your presence is necessary. And also, why you must go.”

  With deceptive meekness, she asked, “May I have the letter, Papa?”

  He went over to his desk and opened the drawer. The thick letter was handed to her. It took all her willpower not to rip it into two.

  “I suggest you read it. Once you have, you’ll understand why Matthias asked for you.”

  “Very well, Papa.” She started to leave the room, when Brutus called her name.

  Pressing her lips together, she half turned in his direction. “Oui, Papa?”

  “Everything I do for you and your sisters is because I want the very best for you. Do you know that?”

  Arielle gave a slow nod in acquiescence and left the room. It took a supreme amount of willpower not to slam the door behind her. She now had to plan because there wasn’t any way, no way, she would marry Matthias Blackburn.

  However, a trip to America…it didn’t sound so dire now. Arielle continued on down the hall, ignoring the elegant opulence of her birth home as her mood became more thoughtful. The Negro, from what she gathered, was gaining power and influence now after the War Between the States had ended. What would it be like to be part of that new rising?

  She glanced at the folded papers in her hand and smiled. This would be her ticket to a whole new adventure!

  Colorado City, Colorado

  April 1871

  “Where do ya think you goin’, boy?” Bartholomew Lassiter, foreman of the Richardson Mining company asked in a silky voice.

  Caleb Smith bit back a curse as he tried to navigate one of the worst nightmares a Pinkerton agent ever had to face.

  Having his cover blown.

  “I’s not goin’ anywheres, Mista Lassiter,” he uttered in the slave dialect of his past. “I’s thought I’s heard one of the boys hollerin’ out like and I’s come to see what all the fuss was ‘bout.”

  Jonathan Drogin, the fourteen-year old boy he’d been assigned to track down and bring back to his worried grandparents, crept closer to his back. He could feel the boy trembling against him. Hear his wispy breath bursting in and out of his emaciated, malnourished chest. A slight wheeze accompanied the sound like the discordant tones of an offkey musical instrument.

  “Zeus,” Jonathan whimpered his assumed name in a small, pathetic voice, “Don’t let them take me. I wanna go home.”

  He had to get the boy out of here now. Salders, the man he’d hired to transport him and Jonathan Drogin to Denver, wasn’t going to wait too long at the rendezvous point on the outskirts of the small mining community.

  “Is that so?” Bart Lassiter drawled. The lamp he held up danced firelight on his sneering face, giving him a sinister look. Behind Bart stood two of his men on either side. Ted Cummings and Oral Ingerman. The same meager light illuminated their visages, sharing the same maliciousness as Lassiter.

  “That’s so, Mista Lassiter.”

  All around, the other young boys, ranging anywhere from nine years old to fourteen, sat up in bed, their frightened eyes locked on the spectacle happening. Their very presence was a major part of the evidence he’d come to collect.

  “I do believe you’re full of horse puckey, Zeus.”

  Lassiter was no fool, however. A surprising aspect of his nature that could be a problem. Caleb had met men like him before, cruel with a cold intelligence which made for an uneasy encounter.

  “No, suh, Mista Lassiter.”

  “So why you got little Johnny hiding behind yer back like ya do?”

  Because I am going to get him away from this life.

  “Mista Jonathan was jes’ followin’ me out, suh. I reckon he was ‘bout to go to the outhouse.”

  A drop of sweat trailed down the center of Caleb’s back. Salders should be arriving at the rendezvous in about fifteen minutes. It would take ten minutes, on swift feet to get there but now, he had no idea. Lassiter aimed to cause trouble, the kind Caleb didn’t want or need.

  Lassiter nodded toward the boy who still cowered behind him. “Johnny Drogin, go on ahead and get to the outhouse then. You don’t need no scab, ‘specially a colored one, mollycoddling you.”

  If anything, the boy’s body trembled harder. “I—I want Zeus to come wit’ me.”

  It was the wrong thing for the boy to say. Lassiter’s eyebrow arched in a knowing way. Caleb knew he’d have to do this the hard way. But when had things ever been easy for him?

  “Ain’t that interestin’?” Lassiter remarked to no one in particular. “I been watchin’ you for a long while now, Zeus.” He placed the lamp on the small table in the center of the room. “And somethin’ about you don’t strike me right.”

  “I’s donna know what ya talkin’ ‘bout, suh.” Caleb tensed, aware of time slipping away. How was he going to get Jonathan out of here?

  “See, I know the colored man supposed to be free now but seems to me, that being free don’t necessarily mean you and me on the same line, you understand.”

  Caleb understood exactly what the man was saying. It was one thing for the Negro to be free. Quite another thing for him to be equal. “No, suh, I’s don’t.”

  The foreman took a step toward him. Jonathan’s tiny, bony hands clutched his sides. “You can quit lying now, boy. See, I done seen colored folks like you before. None of them act like you do. They know they place.”

  Despite his efforts to maintain his innocence, Caleb could feel his blood begin to heat.

  “See, unlike the rest of them that come and do their work like they supposed to, you come in here asking a
ll sorts of questions. Questions you ain’t got no business asking. Asking questions about the lies some of the workers have been spreading.”

  His unease grew. He’d no idea that Lassiter suspected him. Caleb was almost certain that he’d blended in well with the rest of the workers when he came three weeks ago.

  “Ain’t none of these boys ever been underground.” Lassiter addressed the room at large. “Have ya’ll?”

  A collective murmur in the negative went up. Caleb didn’t blame them for lying. They were all frightened of Lassiter. Not because he did any physical harm to them.

  It was his complete disinterest in their well-being and their lives.

  Jonathan Drogin had told him how when the second boy, a young man by the name of Peter Williams had died, crushed by a sudden collapse, Lassiter had shrugged and ordered the body removed and dumped once it was safe to go inside.

  “It was the look on his face, Zeus,” Jonathan had told him in a trembling, frightened voice. “Peter dyin’ didn’t mean nothin’ to him.”

  “See? They know I pay close attention to the law here.” Lassiter took another step closer. “So I want to know why you are asking questions, Zeus?”

  Caleb stared down from his considerable height of seven feet. He could hardly tell the foreman the truth. That Dolan Richardson, the primary investor of the mine, had reached out to Archibald Gordon, the head of the Pinkerton Agency, in order to substantiate claims he’d received of his foreman, Bart Lassiter, using children to work in the dangerous conditions of the mine.

  Although the young boys were allowed to work above ground, separating the rock from the coal harvested from the depths of the earth, it was strictly forbidden for them to go underground unless they were eighteen years of age.

  Yet, in spite of the lie the boys had told, within the past three weeks, Caleb had seen most of them underground, doing the work of grown men in bodies not meant handle the rigors of mining.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Lassiter gave a malicious smile. “Boy?”

  “Jonathan,” Caleb said, dispensing with all pretense. He had to a mission to complete and no one was going to get in his way. “Move back.”