Before John, Stephen had been the only man in her life, the only man with whom she had shared a bed. After he had been wrenched from her by an outlaw’s bullet in a skirmish outside Denver, she’d believed no one could ever take his place and she would never marry again, that she would remain celibate for the rest of her days. And so she had until the night a few short weeks ago when John clumsily but touchingly proposed to her.
She’d been brazen that night, so consumed by love and desire that she had amazed herself as well as John by quite literally seducing him. And she hadn’t felt a bit guilty afterward. It was not in any way a betrayal of Stephen’s memory, because it was not merely the scratching of a suppressed biological itch. It was a true act of love — that first time, and the three times... no, four... they had shared his bed since. After seven long years of self-endorsed celibacy, she had almost forgotten how pleasurable such intimacy could be.
Stephen had been a wonderful lover: gentle, considerate, always seeking to pleasure her as well as himself. So was John. Not that she would ever compare them, but she couldn’t help thinking that John was... well, more experienced in the art of lovemaking. From years of long practice with numerous conquests, no doubt, not that his profligate past bothered or concerned her. The thought of their most recent coupling brought warmth out of the high collar of her lace-trimmed shirtwaist. Shameless woman. No. Just a woman in love for the second and final time.
She hadn’t told or even hinted to her closest confidantes, Amity Wellman and Callie French, about the premarital consummations, though if she had she suspected that they would not have been disapproving. Callie, in fact, would probably have congratulated her for finally shedding her inhibitions. Her middle-aged cousin’s plump, matronly demeanor concealed a permissive attitude and an occasionally ribald sense of humor (she had once intimated that she’d been something of a bawd in her youth). She was also an inveterate matchmaker; she’d actually cheered when Sabina told her of John’s proposal and her acceptance.
Predictably, Callie had insisted on hosting the wedding at the Frenches’ Van Ness Avenue mansion. Sabina, after consulting with John, had agreed on the firm condition that invitations were to be issued to just a select few of their friends and business acquaintances. If she’d given Callie carte blanche, the occasion would have evolved into an extravaganza, complete with an orchestra to play the Wedding March and a guest list that included members of the socially elite she barely knew. Even what Callie referred to as “small, intimate dinner parties” invariably turned into showcase affairs. It had been at one of those, Sabina had reminded her, that she’d met handsome Carson Montgomery of the rich and powerful Montgomery clan. Their brief mutual infatuation had not ended well, in large part because of the rattling skeleton in Carson’s closet.
Three weeks from Saturday — that was the day she would become Mrs. John Frederick Quincannon. Now that the date had been set, invitations were ready to be sent out and other arrangements attended to — all except her selection of a wedding gown, and a decision John kept waffling on as to whom he wanted to be his best man. As for their honeymoon, a reservation had already been made at a secluded inn in the Valley of the Moon...
Enough daydreaming. There was business to attend to — a report on her investigation of a series of shopliftings that had plagued the White House and City of Paris dry goods emporiums. It had taken her just three days to spot the pair of young women, working in tandem, who were responsible for the thefts, track them to a Folsom Street apartment, and there recover most of the stolen items.
She consigned the scrap of notepaper and altered business card to the wastebasket, put a Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services letterhead on her blotter, and reached again for her pen.
Outside, a Market Street trolley car came rumbling up from the Ferry Building, followed by a much louder noise, stutteringly explosive, that drowned out the trolley’s clanging bell and clattering passage. Sabina didn’t have to look out the window to tell that the din had been created by a horseless carriage. You saw more and more of the rackety things on the city’s streets these days, tearing along at speeds up to twenty miles per hour, frightening pedestrians and animals with their tailpipe eruptions. It wouldn’t be long after the new century arrived in two years, she predicted, before motorcars replaced horse-drawn conveyances as the primary method of transportation. John, who disliked change, chafed at the idea, but it didn’t disturb her. Progress was inevitable; it was pointless to not accept its benefits and disregard its drawbacks.
She dipped her pen into the ink jar and wrote the report in duplicate, one copy for each of the gentlemen at the White House and the City of Paris who had joined together to seek her services. She had just finished enveloping the reports when John returned. The Seth Thomas wall clock gave the time as a few minutes before three.
She said, smiling, “Rather a long luncheon, my dear,” as he shed his derby and Chesterfield.
“Yes, but we didn’t dine until one o’clock. I stopped at the bank on the way back.”
“How was the fare at the Olympic Club?”
“I can’t say. Mr. Hoxley ordered for the table — barley soup and vegetable salad. His idea of a healthy meal, not mine or the other gent’s — James O’Hearn, superintendent of the Monarch Mine.”
“A productive meeting, was it?”
John rubbed at the scar tissue on his left ear. “Very productive.”
“You were offered an assignment?”
“Yes. A lucrative one.”
“To do what?”
He touched his ear again, then fluffed his beard. Something was weighing on his mind; she could tell by the indulgence in his habitual gestures, his slightly distracted mien. “Undercover work,” he said.
“What sort of undercover work? Something to do with the Monarch Mine?”
“Yes. It’s one of Hoxley and Associates’ largest and most profitable holdings.”
“Located where?”
He crossed to his desk before answering, taking out his briar pipe and tobacco pouch on the way. Definitely something on his mind. Sabina had a sudden feeling it was something she would not be pleased to learn.
“Near a settlement called Patch Creek, northeast of Marysville,” he said when he was seated.
“What sort of trouble are they having?”
He packed and fired his pipe. “A gang of high-graders has been systematically looting the mine,” he said between puffs. “Neither Hoxley nor O’Hearn has any idea of how it’s being done or exactly who the thieves are, but O’Hearn has a notion that an outsider named Yost may be involved.”
“What makes him think so?”
“No specific reason, other than Yost has shown up in Patch Creek three times in the past month, claiming to be a representative of a newly formed organization called the Far West Mine Workers Union but not doing much in the way of recruiting. Mostly he plays stud poker and drinks with the miners, the rest of the time keeping to himself. His most recent arrival was two days ago — not on union business this time, so he claims, but with an alleged interest in buying land in the area.”
“That seems a rather flimsy cause for suspicion.”
“Perhaps. Mine bosses are always leery of union men and their motives.”
“So Mr. Hoxley wants you to travel to the gold camp and investigate the high-grading.”