Three nights this week. Three nights Hink had gone off to “see to a few matters” or “pick up some parts for the Swift” or “check on the crew in town.”
She had stayed behind at the farm owned by a coven of witches who had taken them all in when they’d nearly crashed the Swift trying to bring Mae Lindson back to the sisters. The coven had been happy to see Mae, Cedar Hunt, Wil, the Madder brothers, and Miss Dupuis leave the property in search of the Holder, but she, Captain Hink, and his crew had stayed behind to repair the Swift.
Hink had grown more and more restless and made up lies and excuses to go to town, while she nodded and smiled and believed him, just like the backwoods bumpkin he knew she was.
He’d even had the nerve to bring her back a wallpaper flower, cleverly folded and perfumed like a red velvet rose. He’d said it had come in on the rail all the way from France. He said he’d bought it up when he saw it because it reminded him of her.
She’d loved it. It had been the first time in her life a man had bought a pretty thing just for her. She’d been wearing it on her bonnet and scarves for weeks.
She’d even been so delighted by his gift that she had kissed him for it.
Kissed him. More than once.
And she’d made him something in return: a little compass on a chain that would always point toward a matching little compass she wore on a chain. It had taken some doing to make the two devices point only and ever toward each other, but she’d traded work at the watchmaker in town for access to his instruments after hours.
The compasses were the finest things she’d ever devised. And they’d cost her almost every cent she’d earned in the last two months.
But now she knew the truth.
He could try to wrap his lies up in pretty paper roses all he wanted, but she wasn’t falling for them again. Sweet Annie’s was more than a saloon; it was also a bordello.
Two nights ago, he’d gone into town for some boiler tubing for the Swift’s new guns, and hadn’t come home.
One of the younger sisters in the coven mentioned she’d seen him step into Sweet Annie’s while she was at the post office picking up the coven’s letters. Said he’d been clutching a half-empty whiskey bottle and was half out of his shirt, his arm around some plump raven-haired girl of the line.
It wasn’t like they’d taken vows. It wasn’t like he’d ever said she was his only one, or that he’d told her she was special. Still, she thought they had a beginning that was headed somewhere. She thought that somewhere might be love.
He’d told her she was beautiful.
He’d told her he didn’t want to live without her.
He’d given her a rose.
Which she’d been sure to stuff in the pocket of her overalls this morning so she could throw it in his cheating face.
Rose paused and stomped the snow and mud off her work boots, tipped back the flat cap she kept her hair tucked up into, then shoved open the painted red door to Sweet Annie’s.
She stepped in and got a face full of stink—alcohol, lavender, kerosene, wood fire, leather, and linseed overpowered by tobacco, sweat, and perfume. She clenched her teeth against the smell, straining it through her teeth as she inhaled.
This was what betrayal smelled like.
A man at the piano against one wall played out the strains of “Long, Long Ago,” sweet and sad.
The decor was done up nicer than she’d expected: wood ceiling polished to a dark shine, walls covered in paper with cream and gold designs. Tables set out to one side were in good repair, crowded with fellows playing cards and dice and women looking on.
The bar itself was honey-colored oak, and so high-shined you could see the reflection of the men who stood around it, boots propped on the brass foot rail with matching spittoons at their heels. Someone had gone and hung up a red, white, and blue star banner in loops across the back of the bar, and the gaslight chandeliers gave off a cheery halo of light, while the Franklin stove at the far end of the room on the wall between two closed doors kept the whole place warm.
There were three sorts of people in the room: workingmen who had already dealt with livestock for the day, there to drink away the weather until they could tend fields or see to their evening work; travelers with shiny shoes cooling their heels, stuck until they could strike out west for more temperate lands; and the employees of the place—a bartender and six saloon girls. Out of sight in the back rooms would be the other ladies who worked there, the sort who took a man’s money in exchange for a certain kind of attention.
The saloon girls were dressed in the prettiest finery Rose had ever seen.
Feathers adorned their hats, and their bright silk corsets and skirts were covered in tassels and sequins. All of the dresses—if you could call them that—were worn cut in such a way a man didn’t have to imagine what kind of woman was under the layers. The hem of their skirts were so high, you couldn’t help but see their stockings, all the way up to the knee.
They were rouged, coal-eyed, and…and pretty, with hair done up in curls and shiny pins and flowers.
Rose was suddenly very aware of her grease-stained overalls, her heavy, square man’s coat and boyish flat cap with her hair tucked up. She didn’t look a thing like these women. Wasn’t even in their league when it came to pretty.
And right there, sitting at a table near the corner of the room with a woman on his lap, was Captain Lee Hink. Hat off, sun-pale hair mussed up, he hadn’t shaved for a day at least. He was a strong man and a tall man, and had just the sort of rakish swagger to him that made women swoon.
He saw her stopped just inside the door. He didn’t smile, didn’t move a muscle. His eyebrows, however, lifted up into his uncombed hair, shifting the black patch over one eye.
While she had been busy studying the saloon, every single person in that place had turned to look at her, as shocked as if a three-headed mule had come strolling in.
Women weren’t allowed in the saloon. Not a woman in boy’s clothing. Not even a proper woman.
But Rose wasn’t a proper woman. She was an angry woman.
And she was angry at that man.
“You can’t be in here, miss,” the bartender called out from behind the bar. “No women allowed.”
Rose ignored him and stomped across the room, gunning straight for Hink.
The corner of his mouth cupped a smile, and just as quickly poured it out into a frown, though that damn eye of his twinkled with mirth.
“Mr. Hink, I need to have words with you.” Rose stopped in such a way that most of the table was between her and that painted vixen on his lap.
“Don’t think this is the sort of place for you, darlin’,” he said. “Why don’t you run on home now like a good girl?”
The vixen giggled and leaned her head down a little closer to Hink’s ear, all the while giving Rose the kind of look that was usually reserved for buying cattle at auction.
“Run on home?” she asked. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Lee Hink,” Rose said with as steady a voice as she could muster. “But if you think for one minute I’m going to do anything you ask me to do, ever again, you are sore mistaken.”
“Now, Rose…”
Rose reached into her pocket, and couldn’t help but be pleased when Hink twitched.
He was darn right to twitch. She carried all sorts of trinkets and more than a few weapons in the pockets of the length wool coat.
But today, right now, all she pulled out of her pocket was the paper rose he had given her.
“I won’t accept false gifts from sweet-talking men like you.”
She tossed the fragile velvet and paper rose at his feet.