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An Agent for Danielle
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An Agent for Danielle
An Agent for Danielle
The Pinkerton Matchmaker Series
Book 55
Parker J. Cole
Copyright Information
Copyright © 2020 Parker J. Cole
Cover Art by Black Widow Books
All rights reserved.
First Edition: January 2020
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
FOREWORD
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
EPILOGUE
The Pinkerton Matchmaker Readers Group
About the Author
Join Parker’s Bodacious Readers
Works by Parker J. Cole
FOREWORD
Please note the events I have included in the story is a classic understanding of succession regarding the Kingdom of Dahomey within the context of An Agent for Danielle, but it’s one hundred percent fictional. I’ve used the names of the past kings of Dahomey but that’s about it.
What is true will be shown in the author’s note at the end of the book. Happy reading!
CHAPTER ONE
Denver, Colorado
July 1872
The moment Danielle Bradford laid eyes on the Pinkerton Agency of Denver, Colorado, she wanted to tear the building apart with her bare hands.
Each brick, each windowpane, each slat of wood assaulted her senses. Its existence was an insufferable affront. She longed to obliterate the foundation. Yank the pillars out of the earth as if she were Samson with the Philistines. See it crumble to the ground, reduced to no more than a pile of rubble.
Destroy the building responsible for the destruction of her family.
Then—and only then—would the cauldron of her blood rage cool.
Danielle marched across the street from her vantage point, unaware of the carriages and passersby who may have taken a second or third glance at the woman who walked with the stately, purposeful gait of an angry queen.
Her lip curled. What could be so arresting about this place? What power did it possess that it ensorcelled her sisters to stray from home?
The could fit inside of Arabette Grove twice over and still have room to rattle. Did it have the majesty of her childhood home, a towering edifice of stone and woodwork that had withstood the hands of time? Could this pedestrian street, with its crowded lanes and lumbering buildings contend with the vast, emerald fields of windswept sugarcane beneath its shadow?
Could this building house and treasure within its walls a legendary love like Arabette Grove did for her father and mother?
Danielle halted outside of the door and glanced both ways down the street. No passersby on the sidewalk. Not too many carriages. She’d waited months for this moment. Nothing and no one was going to take it away from her.
She lacked the physical ability to annihilate this place but, by God, she’d make the people who decimated her family pay dearly.
The clear echo of the doorbell rang inside. Despite her resolve, her muscles twitched jerkily.
A woman with a clear face and serene eyes answered her summons. Although Danielle had never met Marianne Chapman before, she knew of this woman. Her sisters had described her more than once in their letters home.
She despised her with as much ferocity as she hated this building.
“Hello there. May I help you?”
How polite Marianne’s voice sounded. For some reason, that made Danielle uneasy.
Somehow, she managed to eke out the words. “Are you Marianne Chapman?”
The woman gave an odd smile. “I was.”
Enigmatic as the statement was, the blood boiled under her skin. Her heart thundered in her chest. “And this is the Pinkerton Agency, where my sisters Arielle—”
Her proud, spoiled eldest sister who once held the men of Arabette Grove and the surrounding plantations in the palm of her hand. She had Papa wrapped around her little finger because of all the daughters, she resembled their mother the most.
“Brielle—”
How she missed the stiff, detached tones of her intelligent sister who once headed the Benjamin Banneker Society, a consortium of intellectuals who met to discuss items of scholarship, academia, and other mental pursuits.
“and Camille—”
Would that she could embrace her sweet, nurturing sister who could make a rainy day go away.
“--have all come?” she finished.
Marianne’s face relaxed. “Yes.” The woman’s eyes roved over her. “You must be Danielle.”
Something inside of her snapped. “And you must be very, very quiet.”
Marianne blinked rapidly. “I beg your pardon?.”
The moment had come. With a swiftness born of practice, Danielle reached into the confines of her vest coat and withdrew the pearl-handled pistol her father had given her for her sixteenth birthday. “It’s similar to the one I had made for your mother,” he’d told her that day. “I knew you, of all my daughters, would appreciate it.”
I do, Papa. I do.
“Listen to me very carefully. If you make a sound or say one word, I will shoot you. Do you understand?”
Moisture from Danielle’s palm slackened her hold around the handle of the pistol. She tightened her grip. No need to get nervous now. She had to do this.
“Do you really want to shoot me, Miss Bradford?” Marianne spoke in a calm tone.
“Yes,” Danielle told her truthfully. No one had to lie when they were the ones holding the gun. “I would like to very much.”
In fact, her finger slid along the arch of the trigger in an almost lover-like way. The feel of the metal soothed as nothing much else could these days.
Marianne’s clear eyes narrowed on the action of her caress along the gun. A pulse began to beat at the bottom of the woman’s throat. Danielle exhaled. Good. The woman finally understood the precariousness of her situation.
“For what reason do you wish to shoot me?”
“I told you to be quiet, didn’t I?” Danielle cocked the gun.
Marianne’s face drained of all color.
Danielle felt a grim satisfaction. It would be so easy. A pull of the trigger and then the woman would be no more. By no means would Danielle’s heart, but at the very least, she’d feel a miniscule lift of sorrow at her demise.
Motioning with the gun, she ordered, “Now, back up slowly. No need to make ourselves a public spectacle. Slowly.”
As the other woman took measured steps backward, Danielle inched forward, glancing around her to make sure she wasn’t observed.
“Well,” Marianne said, “if you going to shoot me, at least tell me why. I think I have the right to know that.”
“Don’t stand there and talk to me about rights, Miss Chapman.”
“It’s Mrs.—”
“You and all the people here in this agency understand exactly what you’ve done.”
“You’ll have to enlighten me.”
Why was the woman so calm? That calmness unsettled Danielle more than hysteria. The way she kept looking at Danielle, her eyes wary, but kind. As if Marianne thought that somehow, this had nothing to do with her.
This has everything to do with you. The Pinkertons ruined my life!
“I want to know where my sisters are. You better tell me where—”
The hairs on her neck stood up in warning an instant before something hard as steel clamped itself around her waist and lifted her off her feet. In a flash, she was heaved against a brick wall, and a long, black-clad arm reached alongside her own. A warm breath and roughened skin brushed against her cheek while hard fingers tangled with her own, forced her arm to her side, and disarmed her of the gun.
It happened so fast, Danielle barely realized she was held captive and made immobile in mere seconds.
She heard the bullets fall to the ground as her captor emptied it.
Coffee-tinged breath wafted across her nose as a low voice whispered, “You allowed yourself to become too sure of your surroundings. A mistake you won’t make ever again, will you?”
The man’s lips brushed against the shell of her ear. She shivered in reaction as a hot needle-like sensation riddled down her spine. Who was this man? More importantly, why did he sound so frighteningly familiar?
Marianne fell weakly against the wall. “God bless you, Lucien.”
The name wasn’t familiar, but why was the voice?
“Unhand me,” she demanded.
“Make me, ma reine,” he dared. “Only then, will I let you go.”
A fine trembling wracked her limbs at his arrogance. “As you wish, monsieur.”
She slammed her head back feeling it connect with his chin. He howled and his hold slackened. She jabbed an elbow into his middle, and then kicked his shins.
He let her go and she fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs and skirts. Instantly she rolled away and leapt to her feet. She whirled around to attack the man
when one look at his face turned her volcanic fury into a glacier.
Akaba!
Blood dribbled down from his mouth. He’d retrieved a snowy white handkerchief and was using it to staunch the flow.
Oh, dear God, how could I have struck him! Of all the people in the world.
Dressed in black with a brilliant white shirt, she beheld the man with midnight dark skin smoothed over chiseled, handsome features. Bluish undertones accentuated high cheekbones. Broad dark eyebrows outlined the deep-set black eyes over the wide nostrils. He stood well over six feet with an inbred masculine grace.
Danielle groaned. How, how could she have struck the son of the king of Dahomey?
***
Glorious. Simply glorious.
I must have her, and by Dieu Tout-Puissant, God Almighty, I will.
Lucien Moreau winced as he pressed the handkerchief to his bleeding mouth, but it was worth the pain to see Danielle Bradford again. He’d desired her when she’d been a young girl of fifteen years, one of the four exquisite jewels of her father, Brutus Bradford. Roseline, Brutus’s wife, had known of it and had attempted to deter his interest in her.
“She is a child, Prince Akaba.”
He’d been taken aback by that declaration. “Mrs. Bradford, I do recall from my father’s rather fond memories of you that you were the same age when Brutus kidnapped you.”
She’d at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Brutus did not kidnap me. It only appeared that way. It was my idea that he should—”
Roseline’s voice had trailed off as if she realized the slippery slope she’d found herself on.
“Brutus waited three years before he took you as his bride, but it’s my understanding that it was purely his strength of will that kept you chaste through no help of your own.”
One rarely got the better of Roseline, but words escaped her that day. Finally, she’d said, “Don’t be so impudent. Really, Prince Akaba, you talk of things that have nothing to do with you.”
“Perhaps,” he’d admitted. “I simply wish to point out that age is a poor indicator of maturity. Some are children at thirty years while others are old souls at twelve.” His voice hardened his next words. “I was sold into diplomacy far younger than either of you. I know.”
“You are to keep away from my daughter.”
Lucien had grinned at her insistence. “Do you think you can order me to not take her? If she were of Dahomey, she’d already be my—”
“Arabette Grove is not Dahomey, Prince Akaba.” Roseline reminded him with blunt fierceness, the claws of motherhood unsheathed and armed for battle.
“True,” he acquiesced. “But you and I both know that one day, she will belong to me.”
“You have some explaining to do, Miss Bradford,” Marianne stated in a firm, gentle voice bringing Lucien back to the present.
Danielle recognized him and she almost went to her knee in respect when he gave a curt shake of his head. He didn’t want anyone to know who he really was. His royal lineage as the son of the king of Dahomey wouldn’t mean much to the people of America.
But France on the other hand…
Her startling gray eyes narrowed but she gave a minute nod of understanding.
“I want to see my sisters.” She refused to cower despite her folly. Dieu Tout-Puissant, the woman should have been his queen from the moment he set eyes on her.
Marianne took a step back, an incredulous look on her face. “Surely you could have asked to see them instead of threatening me with a gun.”
Lucien grinned. “Who knows, Marianne?” He mocked, wincing as the words further added injury to his split lip. “Perhaps Miss Bradford felt as if you would withhold that information.”
“I refuse to apologize for my approach.” Danielle folded her arms and her chin lifted.
Her profile showed the perfect outline of a mulatto cameo. How graceful the lissome column of her neck. The rounded chin with its stubborn pride. Her mouth, that full, luscious brown mouth just made for a man like himself to possess. A man who could appreciate the smooth silk of that burnt umber skin and the ample curves hidden by the voluminous material of European dress.
What he wouldn’t give to see her dressed in the vibrant style of his own people, adorned in cloth made of many colors, draped loosely so that the bright sun could bathe its light upon her skin. Rings of gold should encircle her arms and wrists. Intricate paint dotted along her forehead and face to celebrate her place by his side.
“Lucien?”
He jolted and blinked. Marianne stared with bewilderment in her eyes. “Je suis désolé,” he apologized. “What did you say?”
“What do you think we should do?”
“I want to know where my sisters are,” Danielle said once more. “It’s imperative that I speak with them.”
Lucien frowned. He squinted now, seeing past the loveliness he coveted to mold to himself to the woman beneath. Palpable waves of tension stemmed from her body.
“Why do you need to see your sisters, Danielle?”
She turned those gray eyes to him. “Please. You must bring my sisters back. Our father is dying.”
CHAPTER TWO
Danielle’s legs almost crumbled beneath her as the unvarnished truth of those words struck home. Gritting her teeth, she tightened the muscles along her calves. No weakness. Time enough for tears later.
Marianne’s face wrinkled. “Oh no, Miss Bradford. I’m so sorry.”
The false sympathy grated her ears. “I neither need nor desire your solicitude. I need my sisters.”
Prince Akaba took a step forward. The blood-soiled handkerchief looked incongruous in his dark, blunt-tipped hands. He leveled a stern gaze on her. “Why is he dying, ma reine? Did the fever come back?”
“If the fever had taken captive my father’s life, I wouldn’t be here,” she retorted. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. “I’d be there to care for him. A fever I can fight with my love and bare hands.”
The prince’s face blurred, and she blinked to clear away the moistness. “However, I cannot fight this place. The Pinkertons have stolen my sisters from my father until only I was left.”
“Miss Bradford, the Pinkertons did no such thing. Each of your sisters came here of their own free will.”
“Do you honestly think I believe that nonsense?” Danielle spat with venom. “I don’t know how but they were lured here across the ocean away from all that was good and perfect. What spell does this ramshackle house cast?”
Marianne’s gaze drifted to Prince Akaba’s. “Lucien?” It was more than a question but a plea for intervention.
“Danielle, why is your father dying?”
Her lips tightened as she clipped out, “Why else do you think? From a broken heart.”
Marianne’s eyes softened. “Miss Bradford I—”
“Do not speak to me, Miss Chapman.”
“Mrs.—”
“I don’t want to hear another word from you.” A shrill note filled with hysteria cracked the air like a whip. “How often have my sisters sung your wretched praises. How resourceful you are. How you keep this agency from collapsing onto itself.” Her hands locked in fists by her side. “Every time I saw your name, I wanted to strike you from the page.”
Each letter home had pierced the knife of loneliness deeper into Brutus’s heart. Behind the pleasure of receiving news of his daughters’ well-being lurked the monster of isolation. Danielle had felt the loss of her sisters’ presence as keenly as if someone had torn a limb from her body.
Her father must have felt it much worse.
“All of you bear a marked trait of your mere, ma cherie. A goddess who shared the best parts of herself with all of you in some way. I was never fully without her presence because you all were here, and thus, she was close to me.”
Danielle remembered how her father had paused in his musing and gazed away. “What shall become of me when all of you are gone?”
Marianne’s voice interrupted her musing. “How can you resent me when you’re the one who threatened me with a gun?”
Danielle snarled. “I’d do more than that if I could. I’d—I’d—”
“That is enough, Danielle.”
Prince Akaba’s voice carried an authoritative command. Though he was not her king, he was still a king, or would be one. Roseline had honored his position and she must do the same.