The Marriage Masquerade

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  “They’ll go undercover if they have to, Sam. Don’t underestimate them. But did you say you ‘pay’? You still do?”

  He blinked, surprised. “My God, yes. Why didn’t I think of that before?” He tapped his forehead. “I’m not thinking straight. But Yancey, I received a statement for their services from the asylum not too long ago. And from what you’re telling me, she’s been dead for six months.”

  “Well, maybe not, Sam. Either I’m wrong and she’s alive, or the people running the asylum aren’t as honest as they should be.”

  Sam scrubbed his hands down his face. “Dear God. I turned Sarah over to hyenas.”

  “You don’t know that, Sam. Even if the doctors are dishonest, you did nothing wrong. Your heart was in the right place.”

  “No. I just wanted rid of her, Yancey. And they were the only ones who would take her.”

  Yancey felt so desperate, so in over her head. “But your heart was still in the right place, Sam. You wanted help with her and for her. It’s not your fault if the doctors turned out to be crooked.”

  His expression was rough, ragged. “I don’t know. I just hope we haven’t underestimated the power of my money to buy those doctors’ silence regarding the truth. Otherwise”—his gaze roved slowly, tenderly over her face—“I may never have a chance to truly … live, Yancey.”

  Her heart leaped. She had the distinct impression he had been about to say “love.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sitting there on that hillside in the warm sunshine, Yancey basked in the warmth of the look Sam was giving her. She didn’t see how she could keep her heart detached from her mind’s workings in this case. Then she had an idea. “Sam,” she began, “I think you ought to officially retain the Pinkertons to act on your behalf in this matter.”

  “No.”

  Yancey blinked. “You don’t even want to hear my reasons why?”

  “No.”

  “But you said you want to know the truth.”

  “And I do. But you don’t fool me for a minute, Yancey Calhoun. You mean I should retain you, don’t you? You’re the only Pinkerton around. You’re asking me to officially put you in harm’s way.”

  Yancey puckered up sourly, as if she’d just bitten into an unripe persimmon. “I’m already in harm’s way, Sam. I’m here and pretending to be your wife, aren’t I?”

  “Oh, I see. You would prefer being professionally retained by me, then. Is that because I don’t have such a good record with wives?”

  Yancey gasped. “You stop that right now. I won’t listen to it.” She pulled herself up to her knees. “One more word like that and I’ll leave you sitting here on this hill by yourself to rot, is that clear? And that’s not even all I’ll do. I swear to you I will”—she cast about for something severely threatening—“go tell your mother on you, Sam Treyhorne. Don’t think I won’t.”

  His face was red, his eyes were the darkest gray she’d ever seen them, and he was already pointing at her, no doubt intending to roundly tell her off. But then he blinked and started laughing. “You’ll what? You’ll tell my mother on me?”

  Embarrassed, laughing at herself, Yancey plopped back down beside him. “Oh, be quiet. You were being so awful to yourself, and it was the only thing I could think of.”

  “Yancey Calhoun, you are an absolute delight. And you will be the death of me yet.”

  “Actually, I was hoping to preserve your life, Sam. Not end it.”

  “Come here.” He surprised her by pulling her to him and soundly kissing her, this time with no hesitation and no holding back.

  Delighted to the tips of her toes, her heart singing, Yancey recognized this for the opportunity it was and threw her arms around his neck, giving him every ounce of passion she felt for him. Immediately, Sam’s arms went around her and he held her tightly to him. His kiss said he was every bit as hungry for her as she was for him. Indeed, his hands roved over her back, kneading her muscles. His breathing erratic, he fisted her skirt in his hands, pulling at the material, pushing it up her legs, then his hands were on her thighs, caressing her bottom through her underclothes.

  Yancey gasped, moaned into his mouth, then planted tiny, biting kisses along his lips as she pushed herself against him. The next thing she knew, Sam toppled over backward, taking her with him. He was lying on his back with her atop him. Startled, her hair flying everywhere, her arms still around his neck, and her breasts crushed against his chest, she looked down at him. He was grinning up at her. Though her passion was aroused and she could barely breathe, Yancey pulled back to stare wide-eyed at him. “What just happened, Sam?”

  “You got yourself hired, that’s what. Is this how you interview every prospective client? No wonder you Pinkerton women are so successful.”

  Into the dead silence that followed this, Yancey heard a horse neigh. A bird chirp. A dog bark. Men calling out to each other some distance away. She and Sam had behaved like wantons and outside, under God’s blue sky. “Oh, dear heavens, Sam.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She pulled her arms loose and disengaged from him, sliding off him sideways, gracelessly, struggling to sit up. She tried to right her clothes and her hair. “We are out here in the open. Anybody could see us.” She smacked at him just lying there and grinning at her. “I’m serious,” she cried. “What were we doing?”

  Sam jackknifed to a sitting position and then arranged himself with a knee bent, an arm resting atop it. His expression was droll, his eyebrows arched. “You aren’t seriously going to tell me you don’t know?”

  Yancey stared at him in exasperation. How was it possible for the man to be so supremely handsome even now, when here she was, her clothes twisted around, her hair a fright—“Of course I know. Don’t be ridiculous. But we’re out here in the open, Sam. We could be seen.”

  “Please don’t expect me to be upset about that. If we were, then we would certainly make a very good case for actually being married, wouldn’t we?”

  “Oh, you’re impossible.” Then she stopped, suddenly recalling what he’d said several moments ago. “I’m hired? Really?”

  He shrugged, a grin tugging again at the corners of his mouth. “I can deny you nothing. Jewels, furs, employment, whatever you want.”

  He was teasing her. She knew that. Yet she couldn’t help but feel ashamed somehow, as if she had used her feminine wiles to bring him around. She lowered her gaze to her lap. Trying not to feel how kiss-swollen her lips were, she smoothed the folds in her skirt, just for something to do.

  “What’s wrong, Yancey? Didn’t I do as you wanted?”

  She met Sam’s questioning gaze. “Yes. I just hope it wasn’t for the wrong reason. I’ll do a good job, Sam. I swear I will—”

  “Shh.” He’d put his fingers over her lips. “I know you will.”

  Then he sat back and watched her, making Yancey feel awkward, ill at ease. His gaze on her body made her feel undressed and made her wish she were. Feeling on the brink of forgetting herself and her mission here, she fell back on professional behavior. “Maybe we should talk about the case. Tell me more about Sarah. Before we, uh, sidetracked ourselves, you were saying she was worsening.”

  He looked askance at her abrupt shift of tone and subject—Yancey felt her face heat up—but then he blessedly complied. “All right. At the time, I had no idea what I was dealing with. Then her bad moments came more frequently. Obviously I knew she was disturbed, but I never suspected the depths of her outright insanity.”

  Yancey suspected he was glossing over the awful episodes and the fear he’d felt. She didn’t blame him a bit, though. Certainly, living through it once was more than enough.

  “The doctors convinced me that her condition would only worsen over time. They strongly recommended that I commit her for my own safety and hers. I didn’t want to, Yancey. You have to believe me. But I did it. Right then. I put her away.”

  Yancey put a sympathetic hand on his arm. “It sounds to me as if you had no choice.�
�

  He looked away from her, showing her his stern profile and set jaw. A muscle jumped as if he were clamping down on his back teeth. So different from the laughing man who’d just kissed her. “Choice? I was just so damned relieved to hear that she was beyond my help. I wanted only to be rid of the burden of caring for her. And now my decision may have killed her.”

  Yancey tightened her grip on Sam’s arm. He looked at her hand as if he’d had no idea she was touching him. “You did the only thing you could, Sam. You didn’t cause her death. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything about this other Sarah Calhoun in Chicago.”

  Sam glared at her. “Don’t do that. You think it’s her, don’t you? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  Yancey released his arm and exhaled. “Yes, I do believe this other woman was your wife.” And she’d been carrying a child. Sam’s child? He didn’t seem to know. Yancey looked into Sam’s pained eyes and made a decision on the spot. Not until she knew without a single doubt that it was indeed his wife who’d been murdered would she divulge that dreadful news to him—and maybe not even then. She would have to weigh his right to know, she told herself, against what the news of that final tragedy would do to him. The truth or the greater kindness? That was what she needed to consider.

  “She begged me not to leave her.” His voice sounded hollow, strained.

  Yancey’s heart constricted. She wanted so badly to hold him and comfort him. “I can’t even imagine. It must have been awful for you, Sam. And for her.”

  His expression cleared as he focused on her. “Yes. It would have been better had she had no awareness of her surroundings. But she did. I visited when I could. But it turned out to be less and less often. I had to pursue a living so I could pay for her care. But more often than not when I did go, I couldn’t even see her because she’d be having a spell. After a while, I didn’t go at all anymore.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Is it?” He was acting as judge, jury, and hangman to himself. “Not too long after I sent her away, I had to mortgage the ranch and sell off the cattle. Then finally the land. All to pay for her care.” He was quiet for a few moments, but then again took up his narrative. “At precisely the point when I was having to consider exactly how I could support myself and Sarah, I received word that Geoffrey was dead. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Ironic? How do you mean?”

  “I mean, I came back to England because of my brother’s death, which endowed me with great wealth and a title and all this land. Except for the title, it has turned out be everything I could want. But I wanted them in America. Only that certainly wasn’t to be. Still, my brother’s death also afforded me the means to pay for my wife’s care. Ironic, as I said.”

  “More ironic than you know. It’s a good thing you were in America when he died, Sam,” Yancey said wryly. “Otherwise—and for all those reasons you just gave—you’d be my prime suspect in your brother’s death, not Roderick.”

  “My God. I suppose that’s true, isn’t it? And now I’m not a suspect in Sarah’s death because I was in England when she was killed.”

  Yancey nodded. “There’s nothing like the width of an entire ocean to act as your alibi. But you know, Sam,” she began, “the Sarah Calhoun in Chicago, by all accounts, lived quietly and worked as a maid in a boardinghouse. I just don’t see how that poor woman and the violent woman you’re describing to me could be one and the same.”

  “I can. When she wasn’t in a state, she was just bewildered and timid. But she could take care of herself. In fact, she liked keeping house. So being a maid, in some simple way, might have been something she understood. Too, it was my understanding that at the asylum the doctors believed that performing simple chores, doing for themselves, was good for the patients.”

  “I see. Then it makes more sense. But what do you think she was doing out of the asylum?”

  “I have no explanation for that. She wouldn’t have been released without my being informed. Even if she’d escaped somehow, the doctors would have told me.” Sam frowned. “Assuming they are honest.”

  Yancey slumped. “Oh, Sam, do you know how much I hate all of this? All I can do is assume. I know nothing. Usually on a job I enjoy this part, the search for motives, trying to find out how all the pieces fit together. But in this instance I hate it. I hate it because for the first time I know the people involved and I care. It makes everything different. Harder. I don’t want to tell you my theories. This is your wife we’re talking about. Well, maybe your wife. There. I’ve done it again. Do you see what I mean? I can hardly throw my suppositions out and look for the logic in them without seeming the worst kind of callous woman.”

  Sam gripped her wrist. “I don’t see it that way at all. You’re not upsetting me. I want to know. I hired you, remember? And even though it may not seem like it at the moment, I have come to terms with what I had to do regarding my wife. It’s something I must live with. But I want you to talk to me. I need for you to tell me everything. Besides, I think if we talk long enough we’ll find out how Roderick fits into all this.”

  Yancey chuckled as she covered Sam’s hand that held her wrist and squeezed it affectionately. “You’re very certain that Roderick is our villain, aren’t you?”

  He pulled his hand back and frowned hugely. “I don’t like the man. I’ve been looking for a reason for years to poke him in the nose. Or worse.”

  “I know you have. And I don’t blame you. But that brings up something else. Earlier you said that one of the reasons you need me to masquerade as your wife was so your cousin wouldn’t know your affairs. By that I assume you mean Sarah’s … madness?” He nodded. “I thought so. What are your other reasons?”

  Sam’s face colored, surprising Yancey. “If you weren’t introduced as my wife, who exactly could I say you were, Yancey? You’re an unmarried, unchaperoned woman in my home. And your bedroom suite is next to mine.”

  Assailed by a sudden shyness, Yancey looked down. “I see the problem. That would not do.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. So, it’s easier for now—at least while Roderick is here—to say you are my wife.”

  “But you have to tell your mother the truth, Sam.”

  “No. You don’t know her. She can’t keep a secret.”

  “She kept her letter-writing a secret from you.”

  His puckered expression said he didn’t like being reminded that he’d been duped. “Perhaps I should have said she’s not a good actress, that she can’t be trusted not to misstep and give the game away accidentally. No, I would feel safer if, while Roderick is here, she doesn’t know.”

  “As you wish. But in that case, and given what you’ve told me of her”—Yancey grinned—“make certain I’m not here when you do tell her the truth.”

  Suddenly sober, Sam winced as if something had hurt him. Very quietly, he said, “I can’t imagine you not being here, Yancey.”

  Taken by surprise, but afraid her heart was in her eyes, Yancey lowered her gaze to her lap. “Still, your poor mother,” she murmured, choosing to ignore his last remark. “She thinks her daughter-in-law is dead.”

  “Not for long,” he said, cupping her chin and raising her head until she met his warming gaze. “Not with you, the green-eyed evidence to the contrary, staring her in the face.”

  Yancey smiled and Sam returned it, taking his hand away. Then, as if seeking a position on the ground conducive to being practical, he shifted about and ran a hand over his jaw. “We need to worry more about Roderick, actually.”

  “I agree. You said he looked like hell, I believe was your word. What do you make of that?”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, he had been on the road for two days with my overwrought mother. I can almost sympathize with him, yet I feel he deserves that and more. What concerned me more was his mannerisms and the things he was saying, how he was saying them. They seemed off somehow. Artificial. Smug. As if he knew something that we didn’t. I know I sound vague, but that’s the best I
can do.”

  “Not as vague as you think. You might make a good detective yourself, Sam. The other agents and I, once we get a few facts together, turn them all over to see how they feel. We go more by instinct or blind feeling at the beginning of a case than I almost care to admit.”

  That seemed to please Sam. “Do you mean it? Do you think I’d have a future as a Pinkerton?”

  Yancey chuckled. “Dear God, no. I don’t think Mr. Pinkerton is currently hiring titled nobility.”

  “Oh. A shame. I think I’d like it.”

  “You’d hate it.”

  “I don’t think I would.”

  “You would. And you’d have to take Her Grace Nana and her nurse and Scotty along. And Mr. Marples and the cats.”

  “I would not.”

  “Shall we go inside and put it to them? They’d want to go. And I cannot imagine a bigger nightmare, Sam. Think about yesterday and a simple jog into the village. We had nearly a dozen people, two carriages, and an assortment of animals.”

  Sam’s grin was bright and teasing. Yancey wished for a big spoon with which to lap it up. “I see what you mean,” he conceded graciously.

  Then he surprised her by jumping to his feet and towering over her still seated there on the grass. “Enough of this sitting around,” he declared, holding his hand out to her. “Come on. We’re going back inside and set our plan into motion.”

  “We have a plan?” As if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to place her hand and her fate in this man’s keeping, Yancey accepted his assistance and allowed him to tug her to her feet. The feel of her hand in his, of his much larger fingers intertwined with hers, of his palm, his skin, against hers, sent tiny shocks up Yancey’s arm. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t enough presence of mind to question him. “What plan, Sam? I didn’t know we had a specific one.”

  “We don’t.” Still holding on to her, he set off energetically down the hill at such a clip that she struggled to keep her feet. “But you’ll think of something,” he informed her over his shoulder. “It’s what I’m paying you for—beginning right now, Miss Pinkerton Agent.”