An Agent for Phoebe

by Nerys Leigh

  The Pinkerton Matchmaker

  An Agent for

  Phoebe

  Nerys Leigh

  THE PINKERTON MATCHMAKER:

  AN AGENT FOR PHOEBE

  Copyright: Nerys Leigh

  Published: 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted, without written permission from the author. You must not circulate this book in any format.

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  WANTED:

  Female Agents to join National Detective Agency

  Daring women who seek adventure and are of sound mind and body.

  You will help the criminal elements answer for their crimes and secure safety for their victims.

  You will train with an existing agent…

  Chapter One

  September, 1872.

  “I’m not marrying this woman, and that is final!”

  Phoebe came to a startled halt at the shouting emanating from the open door ahead. She glanced back uncertainly at the young woman who’d answered the door on her arrival at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency Denver headquarters. Pearl, she’d said her name was.

  Pearl shrugged and smiled, waving her on.

  “Jonah...”

  “I told you this three years ago, Archie. I won’t train any more new agents, and I certainly will not train a woman. Are you out of your mind?”

  “It’s worked well so far,” a Scottish-accented male voice said. “The other agents...”

  “…are too young and stupid and easily swayed by a pretty face to know any better. The whole thing is ludicrous. You promised me I wouldn’t be a part of it.”

  “Yet. I said you wouldn’t be a part of it yet. But the situation has changed now. We’re running out of unmarried agents and you’re the best match for Mrs. Welch.”

  Phoebe stopped in her tracks again. They were talking about her? Getting married?

  “I don’t care. I’m not marrying her.”

  “Jonah, you’re one of the best agents I’ve got, and usually I just let you get on with things. But in this case...”

  She rushed to the door and marched inside. “Married?!”

  The two men in the room spun to face her. By the surprise on their faces, they hadn’t known she’d arrived.

  She looked between them, not sure at which of them to direct her ire. “You expect me to get married?”

  The man with the beard recovered first. “Uh... Mrs. Welch?” He was the one with the Scottish accent.

  Pearl hurried in behind her. “Mr. Gordon, this is Mrs. Phoebe Welch. Mrs. Welch, may I introduce Mr. Archibald Gordon, our lead agent, and Mr. Jonah Hays, your, um...” She looked uncertainly at Mr. Gordon.

  Mr. Hays stood around six feet tall, the occasional glint of silver in his dark hair and a hint of fine lines at his brow and the corners of his eyes. Phoebe might have thought him attractive, if she’d had any interest in men whatsoever anymore.

  He looked her up and down and the lines at his brow deepened.

  For some reason, that made her even angrier.

  She turned away from him to face Mr. Gordon, the man she evidently needed to set straight. “Mr. Gordon...”

  “My apologies, Mrs. Welch. I didn’t know you were here. Would you like to sit?” He held out his hand towards a chair.

  She ignored it. “Am I to understand that you are expecting me to get married?”

  His hand lowered to his side. “It’s a purely temporary arrangement, in name only. For propriety’s sake. You and Agent Hays will be spending a lot of time alone together and...”

  She lifted her chin. “Absolutely not.”

  Mr. Hays waved his left hand at her. “See? Even she doesn’t want to.”

  A nerve twitched in Mr. Gordon’s jaw. “This isn’t a discussion, Jonah. Those are your orders.”

  “Well, they’re not mine,” Phoebe pointed out. “Nowhere in the letter I received or the advertisement I answered did it say that to become a Pinkerton agent I would be expected to marry.”

  Mr. Hays jabbed a finger at Mr. Gordon. “And you know me better than to expect me to follow orders without question.”

  “It’s utterly preposterous that you wouldn’t include such an important detail,” she continued.

  “Preposterous is exactly right. My job has never and will never include...”

  “ENOUGH!”

  Phoebe gasped in a shocked breath.

  Mr. Gordon winced. “Sorry, Mrs. Welch. I didn’t mean to shout at you.”

  She suspected he did, but she had more pressing issues to object to, chief amongst which was the expectation that she would be getting married again.

  “Both of you, please sit down.” Mr. Gordon indicated two chairs in front of a desk on the far side of the room.

  “I don’t want to sit down.” She lifted her head and set her feet. “I want this cleared up right now.”

  Mr. Hays nodded, folding his arms across his chest as he echoed her stance. “So do I.”

  Pearl covered a smile with her fingers, although Phoebe couldn’t for the life of her see what was funny about the situation.

  Mr. Gordon looked between the two of them, his lips pressed together. “All right, we’ll clear this up right now. Jonah, I’m your superior, and you will obey my orders. Mrs. Welch, this rule of the female recruits marrying their training agents for the duration of their first case was instituted to protect all concerned, and it has been working very well for the past year. If you want to become an agent, you will be required to obey it. No exceptions.” He moved his eyes back to Jonah. “Does that clear things up?”

  Mr. Hays grunted and looked away, a vein twitching in his neck.

  Phoebe opened her mouth, ready to argue. At a warning look from Mr. Gordon, she closed it again.

  She’d sworn she would never marry again. She’d well and truly learned that lesson from the first time. But she badly wanted to become a Pinkerton agent. She was done waiting for other people to dictate her life.

  It wouldn’t even be a real marriage. At the end of the case it would be over and she’d be blissfully free again.

  Really, how bad could it be?

  She decided to not consider that question too deeply.

  “Fine,” she said, “I’ll do it. As long as the marriage ends the moment the case does.”

  Mr. Gordon inclined his head in acknowledgment. “You have my word that you can have an annulment as soon as you return. If you still want one.”

  “Of course I’ll still want one.” There was no question of that.

  He looked at Mr. Hays. “Jonah?”

  He huffed out a breath. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Certainly. You can train Mrs. Welch, or you can spend the next two weeks cleaning out the privy. I personally think your skills would best be utilized on the case, but it’s your choice.”

  “Some choice. All right, I’ll do it. Better get it over with now, though, before I change my mind.”

  They were going to do this at once? She’d only just arrived. “Wait a minute.”

  Pearl stepped forward. “Mr. Gordon, maybe you could speak with Mrs. Welch first? She has only just got here.” She nodded pointedly to Phoebe.

  Phoebe suddenly felt like a trapped animal. Maybe Mr. Hays had the right idea about marrying straight away.

  “No, let’s do it now,” she said. Before she ran away and di
dn’t come back.

  Mr. Gordon looked between her and Mr. Hays. “If that’s what you both want.”

  “It isn’t,” Mr. Hays muttered, but he nevertheless moved to her side.

  Mr. Gordon nodded. “Mrs. Welch, I’m licensed to perform marriages so I’ll be conducting the ceremony, and I remind you both that this is legally binding.”

  “I’m not agreeing to obey him,” she said. If she was going through with this, she was making things clear from the start. “And no loving or honoring either.”

  Mr. Hays looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

  She stared right back, silently daring him to object.

  “None of that is included,” Mr. Gordon said. “Although, as your training agent, it will be advisable for you to listen to what he says.”

  “Oh, I’ll listen,” she replied. She just wouldn’t necessarily obey.

  Pearl gave a delicate snort, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “Now just a minute,” Mr. Hays began.

  “Jonah.” Mr. Gordon’s tone held a warning.

  Pressing his lips together, Mr. Hays scowled at him.

  “All right, then. Jonah Hays, do you take Phoebe Welch to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

  “I guess.”

  “Jonah.”

  Mr. Hays huffed a sigh. “Fine, I do.”

  Mr. Gordon moved his gaze to Phoebe. “Phoebe Welch, do you take Jonah Hays to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

  She managed to suppress a brief moment of panic, although it still took two tries to get the words out. “I do.”

  Mr. Gordon gave them a relieved smile. “Good. I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  “There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Pearl said.

  Phoebe managed a weak smile.

  She felt as though she was going to be sick.

  Chapter Two

  Mr. Hays disappeared after the ceremony, something Phoebe was grateful for. The whole marriage fiasco had left her reeling and she wanted some time alone to recover, time that most definitely had to be spent far from her new husband.

  Pearl showed her to a room at the top of the house and left her to get settled. After unpacking the two carpet bags she’d brought with her, she sat in the upholstered chair by the window and gazed past the cheery yellow curtains to the cloud-studded sky beyond.

  Only then did she allow herself to fall apart.

  Dropping her head forward with a groan, she pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. How could this happen? How could she be married again?

  The desire to march downstairs and give Mr. Gordon a piece of her mind swept over her. How dare he order her to get married like he had the right to dictate her life? How dare he force her to do the one thing she swore never to do again.

  She was out of the chair and halfway to the door before she stopped herself.

  She needed this job. She wanted this job. Being a Pinkerton agent would let her spread her wings and fly.

  It was only for a couple of weeks. She could endure two weeks of marriage. It wouldn’t be like her real marriage. She wouldn’t allow Jonah Hays to tell her what to do and ignore her needs in favor of his own. And at the end, she would be the one leaving. Well, they’d be leaving each other, but that was as good as her doing the leaving.

  Wiping at her eyes, she sat down again. She could do this. She was strong.

  Settling back in the chair, she gazed out the window again.

  She was a strong, independent woman, and no man, not even her new husband, would change that.

  ~ ~ ~

  Jonah passed the case file into his right hand and raised his left to knock on Mrs. Welch’s bedroom door.

  No, Mrs. Hays’ bedroom door.

  That thought prompted a wince. The only Mrs. Hays he knew was his mother. Well, and his two sisters-in-law. But the point was, he hadn’t planned on having his own Mrs. Hays, not since Bridget’s answer to his proposal thirteen years previously had been, ‘I’m sorry, no. And by the way, I’ve met someone else.’ The idea that he was now married, however temporarily, made him deeply uncomfortable.

  Phoebe’s bedroom door.

  If he thought of her by her Christian name, it might make the whole experience a bit more bearable.

  “Come in,” a sleepy voice called from inside the room.

  He opened the door to see her seated in a chair by the window, rubbing at her eyes.

  “Sorry to wake you.”

  “It’s all right.” She lowered her hands and her eyes flicked to his feet and back up again.

  Was it an appraisal? He hoped she didn’t have any ideas of taking the marriage seriously.

  He held up the file. “Our case. Thought we should discuss it before we leave tomorrow.”

  “Oh. Yes.” She moved to rise, her eyes widening when he walked into the room. “What are you doing?”

  He blinked at her in confusion. “Um, nothing?”

  “You can’t come into my bedroom!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it is highly improper for a man and woman to be alone together in a bedroom.”

  Ah, maybe that was why Archie had made them get married.

  He raised one eyebrow. “This will be news to my folks.”

  “That’s different. They’re marr…” She stopped.

  One corner of his mouth twitched. “You were saying?”

  Heaving a sigh, she sat back. “All right, you may come in. But leave the door open. And don’t get any ideas.”

  He looked around the room, his gaze settling on a wooden chair tucked beneath a small desk in the corner. Despite having worked out of the Denver Pinkerton Headquarters for almost seven years, he’d never been up here. It was a pleasant room, if a little yellow for his tastes.

  “The only ideas I have about this marriage involve getting it over with as quickly as possible. No offense intended.” He picked up the chair and carried it over to place in front of her.

  “Well, how could I possibly take any offense at that?” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Carefully keeping his face straight, he sat down. “Good.” He handed her the file. “We’re going to investigate a disappearance up in Black Hawk. The man’s mother has hired us to find him.”

  He waited while she scanned the first page, watching her as she did. Archie had shown him her file, so he knew she was forty-one years old and had been widowed two years previously after twelve years of marriage. He had to admit, she was a strikingly handsome woman, with dark, almost black hair and green eyes.

  Not that it made a difference to him one way or the other what she looked like.

  “Has there been a search?” she asked.

  “Next page. Looks like the local marshal had search parties out, but they gave up after ten days of finding nothing.”

  They would be looking for Ralph Baker, age twenty-seven, unmarried, an accountant and auditor for the Gilpin Rock Mining Company. He’d gone missing two weeks earlier while auditing the Deep Rift Gold Mine outside of Black Hawk, a mining town up in the mountains east of Denver. There was a photograph of him. He looked much younger than twenty-seven, but then Jonah might not have been the best judge of that. Lately, he was noticing that the older he got, the younger people in their twenties appeared.

  “It says several men at the Deep Rift Mine saw him wander off drunk the night he disappeared.” She flipped through the few pages again. “Is there a tavern at the mine?”

  “Probably a saloon. It’s close to an hour by wagon from Black Hawk itself, so the miners would want somewhere more convenient to get their alcohol when they’ve been working and they don’t want to go all the way into town.”

  She shook her head, muttering a deprecating, “Men,” as she read.

  “You don’t like men?”

  She looked up from the file. “I imagine some of them have their uses.”

  He wondered if that would include him. “What about your husband?”

  A shadow darkened her featu
res, although he couldn’t tell if it was grief or something else. “He died two years ago. If you’re asking if he had his uses, the answer is it’s none of your business.”

  He acknowledged her reprimand with a small nod. She was right, although he couldn’t help feeling curious. “Fair enough.”

  She returned her gaze to the file, evidently reading. But then she said, “What about you? Have you ever been married?”

  Ah, so she wasn’t completely uninterested in him. “Nope.”

  “Why not? You’re, how old, in your mid-thirties? You don’t like women?”

  “I’m thirty-nine, and I like women just fine. I just don’t feel the need to chain myself to one.”

  She raised her eyes at that. “Chain?”

  It was probably a bad choice of words. “I just mean that I do better on my own.”

  “Hmm,” she said, which could have meant anything.

  Maybe it would be better if he was honest. “Look, we’ve both established we’re unhappy at being forced into this marriage. Let’s just solve this case, get an annulment, and this nightmare will be over. We won’t ever have to speak to each other again.”

  She leveled a stare at him. “You really know how to make a woman feel special. Are you sure not marrying was your choice? Or was it just that you couldn’t find a woman willing to sufficiently lower her standards?”

  His mouth dropped open. He’d certainly never met a woman who spoke to him like that. He didn’t know whether to be indignant or amused.

  “I’ll have you know that I could have had my choice of plenty of women. I was considered quite the catch before I decided to devote myself to my work. I could have been married several times over, if I’d wished.”

  Admittedly, that was some time ago, but he was still in good shape. Women still looked at him. Not that he went out of his way to notice, but they did.

  And why was he defending himself to her? It didn’t matter what she thought.

  “Goodness,” she said, her expression flat, “I had no idea I was in the presence of such an irresistible specimen of manhood.”