The Widow's Secret. Sara Mitchell

her tongue around her lips to moisten them. “He made a comment about my watch.” Instinctively, her hand cupped it. She could feel her heart frantically thudding beneath the soft linen of her shirtwaist.

      “I can see why. It’s a beautiful piece. A gift from your late husband?”

      “My father.” Pressure built inside her chest, crowding its way up her tightening throat. “He gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. I’ve worn it ever since.” Until she’d had to take it to Clocks & Watches to be repaired.

      Life was unfair, Chadwick used to remind her. Either learn how to duck—or close your eyes and let it pummel you into dust.

      “My father gave me a watch once,” Operative MacKenzie said. “I’m afraid I was more entranced with its internal workings than keeping track of time. By the end of the evening, watch innards were scattered all over the table. I put it back together, but it never did keep good time.” He smiled at her, uncapping the charm as though it were a potent elixir. “Made a perfect excuse to be late for chores or other loathsome tasks I didn’t want to do.”

      She was too fatalistic to believe she possessed the strength of will to continue her resistance much longer, not when Operative MacKenzie treated her with a quixotic blend of gallantry and steely determination. Somehow that knowledge helped ease the pressure in her chest a bit. She wondered if condemned prisoners looked with the same tremulous longing upon their executioners.

      Jocelyn Tremayne, you are a weak and foolish woman. Postponing the inevitable, she asked, “How old were you?”

      “Twelve. So Benny commented on your brooch watch?”

      She nodded. “Then the gentleman at the counter made some rude comment, and—you said his name was Benny? Benny left. After I paid for the repairs, I did, too. And before you ask, I’ve not seen him since.”

      When was telling the truth a lie? At what point had she become so adept at it that she could sit in her parlor and not tell an operative of the United States government that she had, albeit without her consent, become a receiver of stolen goods?

      “Hmm. I believe you, Mrs. Tremayne.” Then he added, “About that, at least. It’s a good thing your father gave you a brooch watch. They’re more difficult to pinch.”

      Tell him. Give him the incriminating evidence and be done with it. Why not get it over with? Her thoughts spun in a maddening tornado of lurid visions of her fate, with chain gangs and rat-infested dungeons tilting her toward mental paralysis.

      She opened her mouth to confess. “If Benny’s nothing but a thief, why are you chasing him?” dribbled out of her mouth instead.

      Perhaps she was a lost soul after all, beyond hope of redemption.

      Operative MacKenzie sat back in the chair, his finger returning to trace the line of his clean-shaven jaw while he studied Jocelyn. Unable to stop herself, she stared back. He was tall; even when seated he dominated the room, with those clever gray eyes and thick tawny-brown hair whose prosaic color she envied with all her heart. As before, he was dressed in a gentleman’s day wear: gray-striped trousers that matched his eyes, and a double-breasted waistcoat under his black woolen frock coat—a thoroughly masculine man comfortable enough to make himself at home in her fussy, feminine parlor.

      This man was going to arrest her—and she was gazing at him as though he were her savior instead of her executioner.

      But from the instant they’d met the previous afternoon, something about him had quickened feelings inside her that she thought were as dead and cold as her marriage. His deep voice washed over her, and she drifted in the currents, savoring the fleeting connection.

      If only she could pray for strength, and be equally soothed by the assurance of a response.

      “We don’t usually chase after thieves,” he was informing her, “unless they also print money from counterfeited engraved steel plates. Benny Foggarty’s one of the best engravers in the business. He’s also a gifted forger, taking photographs of bills, then touching them up with pen and ink. For the past nine months Benny’s been…ah…helping…me track down the principals in a notorious gang of counterfeiters. If we can’t put the ringleaders out of business, last year’s financial woes will look like a picnic in comparison.”

      He paused, but when Jocelyn did not respond he shrugged, adding softly, “Life can be complicated. You’re an intelligent woman, Mrs. Tremayne. But you’re also…let’s say, a ‘guarded’ woman. Makes me wonder what’s happened to you over these past ten years.”

      She almost leaped off the sofa. Ten years? Ten years? What could he mean—He must know Chadwick, after all. And if he had known Chadwick ten years ago, he must know who she was. He probably also knew—

      Rising, she locked her knees and struggled to breathe. “I need to…” The words lodged beneath her breastbone. She pressed her fist against her heart. “Operative MacKenzie…”

      Her entire marriage had been a lie; how ironic that finally telling the truth would result in her complete destruction. She could feel the internal collapse, feel her will buckling along with her knees, until ten years of secrets and shame collapsed into rubble.

      “Take your time, Mrs. Tremayne. Contrary to what some would have you believe, Service policy prohibits the use of thumbscrews on widows.”

      Because he didn’t modulate the tone, it took Jocelyn a second to realize he was actually teasing her, as though he’d peeked inside her soul and discerned what would disarm her the most effectively. Disarm, yet somehow calm. Chadwick had used sarcastic humor as a weapon, but never tolerated laughter directed his way—never.

      But Chadwick’s image blurred, then dissipated like a will-o’-the-wisp until she could see only the commanding figure of a man with windswept hair and smoke-gray eyes…who had risen from the chair. Whose hand was stretched out as though he were about to touch her.

      Prickles raced over Jocelyn’s skin. She might crave his touch with a force more powerful than the longings for Parham, her long-lost family home, but she had long ago given up girlish dreams.

      In a flurry of motion she sidestepped around him, practically babbling in her haste. “I have something for you, something B-Benny dropped in my shopping bag the other day. I didn’t discover it until yesterday morning. I was going for a ride in the country and—Never mind. I should have told you before, but I—but I—”

      His hand dropped back to his side. “It’s all right, Mrs. Tremayne. Go ahead, finish it. You’ll feel better for it, I promise.” The kindness in his voice made her eyes sting.

      “I doubt it,” she whispered.

      It was done. Whatever happened to her no longer mattered. Exposure, shame, condemnation—prison. Nothing mattered but that she had finally gathered the strength to do the right thing, for someone other than herself. No longer could she control her quaking limbs. Fumbling, she opened the doors to the sheet-music cabinet, tugged out the bottom drawer, her fingers scooping up the watch box. Her steps leaden, she walked back across the room to Operative MacKenzie and thrust out her hand.

      “Here. This is what I found.” She thrust the object into his hands. “Inside the box there is a ten-dollar bill wrapped around a coin. The bill is obviously counterfeit. I don’t know about the coin.”

      As she talked, he opened the box, removed the bill and coin. “I gave him this case,” Micah said. “He was to hide inside it the evidence he promised to bring me. Something, or someone, made him bolt into Clocks & Watches. Mrs. Tremayne, you’re not going to swoon at my feet, are you?”

      “Of course not!” She hoped.

      “Hmm.” His gaze shifted to the gold coin, and the ten-dollar bill, and Jocelyn watched, fascinated, while he examined them with narrowed eyes and deft fingers. “Excellent workmanship, but someone mishandled the printing on this bill, which indicates an entire set was likely bungled. Coin’s probably bogus, as well…but this just might be the break we’ve been looking