Chapter Three
I Don't Trust You
She'd known it from the first moment she'd laid eyes on him. He couldn't be trusted.
"I don't like him," Jordan said shaking her head slowly. "Not one bit."
The main lounge of the Delta Marker was crowded with rich passengers enjoying their cigars and whiskey and card sharps eyeing their next marks. Jordan stood with Nigel at the bar watching the stranger from some distance. He'd come on board the day before, looking every inch the Mississippi Delta gambler with his felt planter's hat and silk brocade vest. He had flashed a fat wad of cash and quickly ingratiated himself with the gambling men on board, who were all too willing to take advantage of some young dandy with too much time and money on his hands.
There had been something about him that had set her off the first moment she saw him. It could have been that cocksure grin or his self-confident swagger.
Or it could have been the way those flashing blue eyes of his seemed to see right into the heart of her.
She hadn't let any man know her that way, not in a long time.
"He's from Memphis. The youngest son of a plantation owner there," Nigel said with a hint of suspicion in his voice. "He's off the Memphis Queen, or so he says."
Jordan looked at him a long time through narrowed eyes. "No," she said with firmness. "He's no Memphis Queen gambler. And he's certainly no Southern gentleman." She nodded her head subtly towards his feet. "Look at his shoes. They're scuffed, and the heels are worn. Those shoes belong to a man used to being on his feet all day. Those are a working man's shoes. Now look at the suit. It's brand new. All stiff and shiny. Not a loose thread or a hair out of place. It's like he's wearing a costume. Like he's play-acting. Like he's not who he says he is."
"Maybe he's one of those Pinkerton men investigating the murder of that poor girl."
The murder on board the Mississippi Princess a few days earlier had rattled them all. The other boat had been docked next to theirs, and it was all a bit too close for comfort. It hadn't been the first murder on board a riverboat, not by a long shot. But the victim had always been some shiftless gambler killed in a fight over a woman or a game of cards. This was different. It was a young, pretty girl from one of the best families in St. Louis, and suddenly, no one felt safe.
They had heard that the Pinkertons would be called in. The law in some of these Mississippi port towns was as crooked as the card sharps on board. A few years earlier, a Scotsman named Allan Pinkerton had founded a private detective agency in Chicago, the first of its kind in America, and his men were chosen for their integrity, experience, and street-smarts. This stranger may have projected a self-confident air, but he still seemed wet behind the ears.
"A Pinkerton man?" Jordan snorted. "Who? Farm boy over there?"
Then she narrowed her eyes again and scanned his face. No, she was wrong. He might not be some young cad from Southern royalty, but he was no naïve farm boy, either. There was a stern set to his jaw, and a hardness to those blue eyes that she hadn't noticed before. Life hadn't been easy for him. Something – or someone – had toughened him.
She had been watching him play cards from across the room all evening while she nursed her brandy. Usually, gambling on board these riverboats was limited to tournaments organized by the owners, but Jordan turned a blind eye to these small, private games.
She watched as a slow smile spread across the stranger's face and he triumphantly fanned his hand out on the table in front of him: a full house. His opponent slammed his cards down on the table with disgust, a string of curses following from his mouth.
"It seems Lady Luck has smiled on him," Nigel muttered as the stranger raked his winnings into his pile.
"Well, Lady Luck can be fickle," said Jordan. As if he had heard them, the stranger looked up with a brash grin and winked at her.
"Why, the cheeky devil…" Nigel chuckled softly and turned to Jordan. A pink heat had spread across her cheeks. "What is about him that has you so rattled, love?" he asked. She was silent, but he could see her hands tremble slightly as she raised her glass to drain the last of her brandy. "I'll have him put off the boat at the next stop," he said quietly. "In the meantime, I'll ask Bug to keep an eye on him."
He squeezed her wrist reassuringly and headed to the wheelhouse to find Bug, leaving Jordan suddenly feeling alone and vulnerable at the bar.
He had felt her eyes on him all night as she whispered with the tall man next to her.
Woody had been dispatched from the Pinkerton agency in Chicago to investigate the murder of the girl who had been taken from the Mississippi Princess. Good girls from fine St. Louis families didn't just disappear and end up dumped in the river like that. Woody's superiors believed her murder was linked somehow to the shady world of gambling on these riverboats, and Woody believed it, too.
Because of the skill with cards he had developed in Chicago, he had been sent undercover to pose as a gambler. He had asked questions in town before boarding the boat, and there was plenty of whispering about the mysterious, alluring woman who owned the Delta Marker. Jordan Cavanaugh was a fallen woman, they claimed, a "lady of the evening," whose favors could be bought – for the right price.
There was something suspicious about her and the tall, gaunt Englishman who never seemed to leave her side. What was he? Her protector? Her lover? Or something else? Woody only knew that no one could get within five feet of her as long as he was there with her.
His suspicions had immediately fallen on her as soon as he had come on board. Call it a hunch, call it a professional's instinct, but he knew she couldn't be trusted.
She was beautiful, with dark, almond-shaped eyes that gave her a slightly exotic cast. Her long chestnut hair hung in loose tendrils against her swan-like neck, which was set off by a cameo on a black velvet choker at the base of her throat. Her full bosom spilled over the top of her bodice, and the total effect was seductive. He had to remind himself that she might be a suspect in a murder.
The Englishman had left, and he watched as she glided across the room, a word here and there for her passengers until she reached his table and eased herself into the seat that had been abandoned by his opponent. He started to rise to his feet, but she stopped him with a wave of her fingers.
"Welcome aboard." She offered him her hand. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."
"The pleasure is mine, Miss Cavanaugh."
"You have me at a disadvantage…"
"Hoyt. Woodrow Hoyt. They call me Woody back home."
She smiled slyly. "Back home in Memphis, right?"
So, he was being tested. He smiled back at her guilelessly and didn't bat an eye. "That's right."
"Tell me…" she started, "If you were on the Memphis Queen, you must know Captain Walker."
"You must be thinking of Captain Warren. He's the captain of the Memphis Queen. Captain Walker was the captain of the Gem of the Delta, at least until he died of diphtheria last spring."
She smiled. Touche.
He opened his mouth to speak when another man staggered drunkenly over to their table and dropped a handful of coins and wrinkled bills on the table in front of her. His breath stank of whiskey, and he could barely stand.
"What's this?" she asked him in mild curiosity.
"Twenty dollars," he slurred. "You said I could have a turn with you when I won more money. Well, there it is. Twenty dollars."
Woody watched as Jordan tensed visibly, but she spoke to him with strained good humor.
"I believe what I said was that there wasn't any amount of money you could win to buy a night with me. Besides, in your condition, I think the spirit might be willing, but the flesh would be weak." She held up her little finger with a smile and let it droop.
The man frowned and wobbled on his weak legs. "That's twenty dollars! It's a fair bargain! Who do you think you are?"
"I'm the owner of this boat, and I can't be bought by the likes of you."
"Look at you putting on airs," he sputtered angrily.
Woody put a hand between them. "Move along, friend. The lady says she's not interested."
Jordan's head whipped around to face him. "I can take care of this…" she hissed.
"Lady? What lady?" the drunk man went on. "I don't see a lady. All I see is a fancied-up whore."He grabbed a handful of money in his sweaty hand and tossed it in Jordan's face.
Before Woody could react, she had pulled a tiny derringer from her garter and had it trained on his stunned, puffy face. Nigel had appeared from nowhere and had the man's arm twisted behind his back.
There was a moment while the man blinked his eyes in surprise, and then Jordan spoke in a cool calm voice. "Got him, Nigel?"
"Oh, yes…" Nigel nodded and handed him off to Bug. "See our friend off the boat."
Woody exhaled as Jordan tucked the tiny pistol back into her thigh garter. The other passengers had craned their necks to see the disturbance. "A round of drinks on the house," she called over to the bartender, and a noise of approval rippled through the crowd.
Nigel offered her his hand and kissed it with a flourish. "I believe it is time to retire for the evening, my dear. Will you join me?"
She rose from Woody's table with a nod of her head and they glided back across the lounge. She turned and looked at Woody over her shoulder as they left through the door the lead to the private cabins.
Woody watched her go and shuffled the deck of cards. His first instincts had been right. A woman like Jordan Cavanaugh could not be trusted.
