by P. Creeden
An Agent for Clenna
The Pinkerton Matchmaker Series
P. Creeden
Contents
An Agent for Clenna
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
About the Author
Love Western Romance?
An Agent for Josie
An Agent for Opal
A Bride for James
A Bride for Henry
A Pony for Christmas
Brokken Rising
An Agent for Clenna © 2019 P. Creeden
Cover by Virginia McKevitt
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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An Agent for Clenna
What’s a good Catholic girl to do? When Clenna finally sees her dream of becoming a Pinkerton Detective agent becoming a reality, she’s struck with the news that to become one, she has to marry her training agent—at least temporarily. But marriage is one of the most sacred of institutions of the church, and she’s not certain she’s ready to violate it.
Ben Mercer was a sharpshooter for the Union in the War. Some people call him a cold-blooded murderer, others call him a hero. But Ben likes to live from one adventure to the next, which is why he joined the Pinkerton Detectives. He’s not keen on babysitting a new, female agent for training, and he’s definitely not keen on marrying her before they leave.
But when the railroad believes they’ve caught two of the bandits who’ve been holding up the train, and they turn out to be Clenna’s brother and cousin, she’ll do just about anything to keep from seeing them hung.
Chapter 1
April 1872
Clenna
A hand came out of the alley and grabbed Clenna by the shoulder. She jumped to the side and screamed. But when she turned around, her cousin, Declan laughed so hard his face had already begun to turn red.
She frowned at him and placed her hands on her hips. “Declan Kelleher, you do need to grow up someday, don’t you know? You can’t go around grabbing women by the shoulders and expecting a good response. Sneaking up on people is rude and dangerous. You’re lucky I didn’t deck you.”
“Clenna Murphy,” her cousin said with a frown. “It’s Keller, not Kelleher—I’d thank you not to make the mistake again.”
Lifting an eyebrow at her cousin, Clenna shook her head. “You’re not fooling anyone. Changing your name won’t change the fact that you speak with a brogue, and that shock of red-hair you have is not as common in Germany.”
Her cousin shushed her, looking around as though seeing if anyone was listening.
“I’ll speak as loud as I want,” Clenna said, upping her volume. “If you shush me, you’ll only make me louder.”
“Fine,” Declan whispered. “But please don’t talk about the plan so loudly. James and I are doing this because we’re tired of living in the slums here in New York. We want to head out west and have an adventure, but the railroad won’t hire us because we’re Irish.”
She rolled her eyes. “James already told me.”
“You’re coming with us, then?” Declan asked, his eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Absolutely not.” She folded her arms across her chest and humphed. “As if I’d be interested in coming with you two eejits—you only want me around to do your cooking and cleaning.”
He rolled his eyes. “You know as well as I do that cooking and cleaning isn’t what you’re best at. You have other talents that people on the railroad specifically would be shocked to discover and with our help, you can show them all how impressive you are.”
“That’s all well and good, but I’m still not interested in staying in railroad camps and working on the line,” she huffed.
“Then what are you going to do, Clenna? You can’t stay here with no one to take care of you. I hear that Scottish fellow at the laundry has been sweet on you for a while.”
“As though that is my only other option,” she said with a shrug. She hated that everyone believed she needed a man in her life to take care of her. “I know what I’m going to do, but I’m under no obligation to tell the likes of you.”
A cat screeched and rushed past them both, making Clenna jump a bit to the side to avoid the little monster. Although Clenna liked to look at animals from afar, she’d learned to avoid them close up. They tended not to like her. She’d been scratched, bitten, stepped on too many times in her twenty years, and eventually learned the lesson. After the animal passed, she let out a slow breath. “I hate surprises.”
Her cousin stood there, looking at her like she had two heads.
“What?” she asked, frowning.
“You’re really not going to tell me where you’re going? Clenna, I do worry about you, you know. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Nor do I want to lose touch with my favorite cousin.”
Clenna’s heart pinched in her chest. For a long moment, she held her breath, afraid that if she let it out, she’d tell him exactly what she’d planned, and he’d laugh. Finally she settled on what to say. “I’m not ready to tell you what I’m going to do, but I’m using my savings to take the train to Denver in the Colorado Territory. If you need to reach me, you can contact the Pinkerton Detective Agency there.”
Declan’s eyes went wide. “You’re going to answer that advertisement, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t help but smile wide as she shushed him. “I told you that I’m not ready to say.”
Slowly her cousin shook his head. “You don’t need to say. You know full well you don’t need to say with me. I know you better than anyone else does. If they are accepting strong female agents, they are sure to choose Clenna Murphy.”
Warmth prickled through her body at the sound of confidence in her cousin’s voice. She hadn’t expected him to be supportive. A lump formed in her throat. “Of course they will,” she said, even though she wanted to hug him and tell him how much he meant to her, too. Instead, she blinked away the sting of tears from her eyes and kept walking. Although spring had barely arrived in New York City, the weather was unseasonably warm and muggy. Clenna swiped the sweat from her nose. She always seemed to sweat there first. Since they’d come to New York from Ireland back when Clenna was nine years old and James, her brother, was eight, each of the cousins had had a dream of going to the west. They wanted to see open land and fields and know just how big this new world actually was. Declan even dreamed of seeing the ocean on the other side of the wilderness after hearing talk of California gold.
Each of them had their own dreams. And with the passing of Declan’s mother, they d
ecided it was time to take their decade long dreams and make them into reality. The boys, by working the railroad, and Clenna by using the savings she’d been building since earning her first dollar as a assistant engineer. It took a lot of wrenching and pinched thumbs, but she’d finally gathered enough money to consider making the trip out west. And the advertisement for female Pinkerton agents came at just the right time.
“Then I guess it’s settled, then.” Declan still strolled by her side as they reached the river and the sun peeked through an opening in the overcast sky to the west. “We’re all leaving by train on Saturday, then.”
The lump in Clenna’s throat still wasn’t ready to let her speak. So, she nodded instead, mesmerized by the light shining across the clouds. She’d done many things on her own. It wasn’t that she was afraid of leaving, exactly, but her heart still remained unsettled about the future. If it weren’t for her cousins leaving Saturday, she’d be happy to remain working and saving more money for years to come. Eventually she’d go. Eventually. But now, eventually was Saturday.
Ben
Ben Mercer lined up the shot in his sights and exhaled slowly, pulling the trigger when he was halfway through the breath. The rifle pushed on his shoulder in a comforting, familiar way, and the smoke from the end of the rifle rose into the air. Ben backed from the edge of the rock outcropping quickly, knowing that the gun smoke would giveaway his location. And if the bandits had a sharpshooter like him, he didn’t want to be an easy target for return fire.
He counted to ten, waiting for the smoke to dissipate before he stood and made his way down the hill. Small rocks slid under his feet, making each step unsure, but he smiled at the feeling of almost falling, and moved faster. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he laughed and peered back up at the rock and clay hill. Even though he’d slid several times on the way down, he didn’t once fall. But each slip had gotten his gumption going and that’s what he liked most, the feeling of his heart racing in his chest—the feeling that he might fall, he might get shot, he might get caught—but then surviving past the momentary threat.
The chestnut gelding he had tied to a tree nearby shied a bit as he approached him. “Easy there, boy,” Ben said as he offered the palm of his hand for the horse to sniff. “You’re just fine. Nothing to be scared of.”
He liked the skittish type of horse, preferred them to the type that just did their job as if they had no soul. This kind of horse had personality. It didn’t trust just anyone, but when Ben earned their trust, he knew that it was a bond that was forged for a lifetime—even if he never saw the borrowed horse again. Slowly, Ben moved his hand down the gelding’s neck and approached the rifle scabbard on the back of the saddle. After shoving the barrel of his rifle in, he untied the reins and mounted the horse in a smooth motion.
The gelding picked up a jog right away, before Ben could even get his right foot in the stirrup. With another laugh, Ben reached down and turned the rawhide wrapped fender toward his toe and barely got his foot in before the horse started to lope. As Ben settled in the seat of the saddle, he shook his head and peered back the direction he’d come from. At least the horse was heading home to the livery. Ben left the reins slack and let his hips and back move with the motion of the horse. Although he hadn’t quite planned on making the horse run the whole way home, he knew it was better to get away from the area as fast as he could.
He’d taken out the man that he and Billy had believed to be the leader of the bandits, shooting the ruffian in the leg. The bandits were likely to think that it was a failed assassination attempt. That’s what Billy and Ben had wanted them to think. In the meantime, it was going to be much harder for the leader of the gang to ride with that leg injured, and they’d have to consider who was the one who’d made the shot. There was a lot of money involved in what they’d been taking from the railroad and what the railroad had coming in on the next train. The worst thing that could happen to the bandits was for them to think that they were turning on each other. And that was Billy Hogge and Ben Mercer’s plan. As a former Union sharpshooter, Ben was more than ready to use his skills to cause discontent among his prey. As a Pinkerton detective, he was ready to get the sheriff involved too.
If everything fell into place, they’d be ready to ride the rails back to Denver by the day after tomorrow.
After letting the gelding take the bit and run for three or four miles, Ben could feel its sides heaving. He tugged the horse’s mouth and hoped that the gelding was ready to listen to his commands now. Immediately the horse quieted into a jog. He tugged the bit again, and the horse settled into a walk. Each breath the horse panted lifted the saddle up and down on its back. Ben reached down and patted the horse on the neck. Skittish horses like this one didn’t like to be kept in strict confines. He’d had a skittish horse as a boy and learned quickly that there was no way to have control of the animal a hundred percent of the time. He had to be happy with finessing the horse and letting it have some measure of control. It eased the horse’s nature and made them calmer in the long run.
Just as he thought that, the horse jumped to the side, away from a hare that darted out of the brush and into the path. Ben skidded to the side of the saddle a bit, grabbed the horn and straightened himself. His heart raced, and that brought a smile to his lips. While he’d been wool gathering, the horse’s breathing had become more even. With a cluck and a little squeeze with his legs, the horse started back in a jog again. It wasn’t long until the city of Cheyenne came into view and the livery where the gelding lived. The horse began chomping once more at the bit, but with each pull the horse made, Ben gave it a gentle correction of his own. This was what Ben had been saving his energy for. It wasn’t right to let the horse run the last bit of the way home. If he allowed the horse to do as it pleased then, it would never be gentle enough for most travelers to lease from the livery. It would always want to run the last bit home, making it a bit unruly and too ornery for most riders.
Of course, Ben won the battle and the horse stayed at a slow jog, even walked the last few hundred yards. Once they reached the livery, Ben dismounted from the colt and patted him on the neck. Mr. Durant, from the livery, came over and took the horse from him. “He seems to prefer you to most of the riders he’s dealt with.”
Ben nodded and unsnapped the rifle holster from the back of the saddle and then slung it over his shoulder. “He just needs a man who knows that a colt like him needs finesse, not a heavy hand.”
The old man smiled. “That’s for certain.”
Before the old man left with the colt, Ben let the gelding nuzzle his hand. Then he started toward the inn. He needed to tell his partner, Billy, that Ben’s step in the plan was now complete. They were ready to start phase two.
Chapter 2
Clenna
When Clenna reached the ladies’ boarding house in Denver, she stood on her last, frazzled nerve. Everything was much too new, and she’d never had to deal with so many strangers in order to get where she was going and reach her goals. She’d hardly slept on the train even though she’d spent almost three days on it. Honestly, she didn’t know how anyone slept on the thing. Sitting in a car full of strangers, both men and women, how could anyone get a good night’s rest? It was a wonder.
Her shoulders ached and her feet throbbed. If she didn’t get a place to actually lay down fully soon, she was liable to find herself lying on a sidewalk somewhere in the city. Denver was nothing like New York. The sky here was clearer, the sun shone brighter, and the air didn’t have that muggy heaviness that she’d gotten used to in that city. Her heart fluttered in her chest and she felt renewed vigor when she looked out from the porch of the boarding house toward the park that sat in the middle of the way. Tomorrow she’d head over to the Pinkerton Agency and see about becoming an agent—that was her plan. But for right now, she needed to find a room to stay in and eat a good, hearty meal. She had a craving for potatoes. There’d been none on the train ride in. She’d barely eaten on the train, eit
her, since she’d been trying to keep her savings as intact as possible, not knowing when she might first see pay as a detective.
She breathed in the clean Denver air, and then turned on her heel and walked into the boarding house, promptly running into a small, mouse of a woman with dark hair and blue eyes.
“Oh! Pardon me,” the small woman said, a hand fluttering to her lips. “I didn’t see anyone there.”
Clenna lifted a brow. As she was nearly a head taller than the woman, she didn’t see how the tiny thing could miss her. “It’s quite all right,” Clenna said as she stepped to the side out of the woman’s way.
But instead of heading out, the dark-haired woman peered up at her. “I’m Josie Roth, by the way. You look new. Will you be staying here at the boarding house?”
Slowly, Clenna nodded. “I intend to. I’m Clenna Murphy.”
“Excellent,” Josie said with a wide smile. “I’m in need of a roommate so I can cut my expenses. I’m hoping to only be staying here a week or so longer, at the most. Is there any chance you’d be interested in sharing a room with me?”
In her heart, Clenna thanked God for this opportunity which presented itself before Clenna even knew she had need of it. “Absolutely, I’m on a budget myself.”
The small woman linked elbows with her. “Then I will take you to see the front desk so that they can see we’re together and then give you a key to my—I mean our—room.”