Captain Hink looked like he was trying hard to count to ten before yelling.
Rose didn’t want to wake everyone on the ship, most of all Mrs. Lindson. “Yes,” she said quickly, “a pillow would be very nice, Captain Lee Hink. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
He stepped the rest of the way up to her hammock and then seemed to realize there would be a bit of situating to get the pillow under her head.
Rose held out her right hand. “Just don’t jostle my left shoulder.”
He leaned down. Instead of taking her hand, he placed his palm against her back and helped her sit, while simultaneously tucking the pillow down behind her head.
This close to him, Rose could smell the grease and oil and soot on his clothes. His breath carried the sharp honey-burn of alcohol, all of it made warmer by the very nearness of him.
For a flicker of a second, Rose wondered what it would be like to kiss his lips. And then the very thought of that, with him leaning over her in such an intimate manner, made her busy mind start thinking other things and asking other questions.
What would it be like if he just crawled into this hammock with her? What would it be like if he took his shirt off, if they were all alone on this airship with nothing but the darkness of the sky to shelter them? How would he feel, heavy and naked against her?
She blushed so hard, her head hurt.
“Are you all right, Miss Small?” he asked, pulling back enough that he could see every inch of her blush.
What was wrong with her? Thinking such things. And blushing!
“Fine,” she managed. “Thank you, fine.”
Captain Hink paused and studied her face, which only made her blush until her stomach stung.
“It’s just, I’m not used to a man’s pillow…I mean, I haven’t seen a man’s kindness so, um, personal lately.” The last word sort of died on a whisper as she realized she was just babbling, and doing more to embarrass herself than to explain herself.
He bit his bottom lip, but couldn’t keep the smile from turning into a grin.
“Well.” He looked down at his boot for a second as if trying to decide something, then looked straight back at her. “Well.”
His eyes were piercing in the low light of the lantern, the angles of his face like something out of a fine art museum. And that half smile curving his lips let her know he knew exactly what she’d been thinking, and approved.
Good God and glim. If she’d been in a more embarrassing spot in her whole life, she didn’t know what it was. Still, Rose knew the best way to deal with a man was to step up to the dance. Stand up to him, and match him, move for move. Elbows out.
She raised one eyebrow, and held his gaze, daring him to call her out on her inappropriate thoughts.
“It’s a pity,” he said softly, “that you’ve not seen, personal, a man’s kindness, lately,” he said, keeping his smile down to something that looked platonic, though his eyes blazed with mischief. “If I’d known—”
“Good night, Captain Hink,” Rose said firmly. She glanced past him to indicate he could just turn that smirk around and get to walking now.
“Good night, Miss Small.”
He was still standing there. Still smirking.
She turned her head away and closed her eyes. After what felt like an eternity, he walked away, the sound of his bootheels against wood more and more distant. She opened her eyes again and watched as he moved out of the low lantern light.
The slight bell-tone sound of his palm gripping and releasing the metal overhead bars as if he were in the air instead of on the ground sang a soft counterpart to his retreating footsteps.
How could she have acted like such a fool? Maybe it was the laudanum muddling her mind. Or maybe she could blame it on the pain in her shoulder, which seemed to be getting worse.
The memory of his eyes, the angle of his jaw, that soft smile, the smell and nearness of his body all came rushing back at her and made her skin go tingly with itch.
It wasn’t her injury that made her lose her wits around the captain.
It was the captain.
And now he’d had a good old laugh at her expense. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. She usually didn’t give a hog’s heel for what a stranger thought about her.
But there was something different about Captain Hink.
Maybe it was his airship. Maybe she was the kind of girl who turned into a doe-eyed fool when she met a man who could fly.
Rose considered that for a moment. It was possible. But they weren’t flying, and she certainly didn’t want to be moving off the ground right now. It was entirely possible it was just the man himself that tightened her spring.
She wasn’t thinking straight, that was for sure. The pain was interfering with any logical thought. She needed the tea. She reached out for the cup on the shelf, but that only kicked everything up to hurting more.
She bit back a little groan and decided holding still was much better than trying to reach the tea.
“Would you like some tea, Rose?” Cedar asked quietly.
Had he been awake this whole time?
Of course he’d been awake this whole time. She and the captain had practically had their entire conversation on top of him. He must have heard it all. Every stuttering, embarrassing word.
“Yes,” she said, miserable with pain, and now with a whole new kind of embarrassment.
Mr. Hunt got to his feet. He didn’t make any noise at all moving in the dark. She’d always wondered about that. He had a way of fitting into his surroundings and taking on the silence of them, much like the natives of this land.
Maybe it was his wolf self that made him like that. Or maybe that was one of the reasons the Pawnee gods had chosen him to carry their curse.
He stood beside her, almost in the same place the captain had been standing. She hesitated to meet his gaze, but when she did, she discovered he wasn’t smirking at her. His eyes were kind, searching her face and then taking the measure of the wound on her shoulder.
She didn’t think she had the strength to hold out her hand again, but she didn’t have to. Cedar Hunt brought the cup to her lips and helped her drink.
The tea was cold and so bitter she almost couldn’t swallow it down, but she managed.
“How’s the pain?” he asked, replacing the tea on the shelf.
“Not so bad I want to claw out of my skin, but not so good I want to stay in it so much either. What happened, Mr. Hunt?”
“Someone rigged explosives to the girl. The dead girl. I tripped some kind of spark. The whole house went up. And you were hit. I tried to block the blast—”
“I remember,” she said. “Do I still have a piece of…” Her eyes went wide as she considered what might be embedded in her shoulder.
“…tin,” Cedar said.
“Tin,” Rose said, relieved. “Do I have tin in my shoulder?”
“Yes. It’s a very small key. The Madders think it’s a part of the Holder.”
“Oh.” She tried to work that through. The medicine was already starting to rub the edges off her brain, sanding her thoughts down to dust. “Do you think it is?”
Cedar nodded. “If we had the device, it would draw the key out quick. But we don’t yet. So we’ll need to try and dig it out. Mae has the steadiest hand, and she’s…” His voice tightened up on a growl, but he managed to breathe that down and continue in his scholar’s tone. “She’s unable to do that just now.”
“What happened to Mrs. Lindson? Are the Madders here?”
“She used magic, cast some sort of spell on the captain. She’s the reason we landed in one piece. But she fainted and hasn’t come to. As for the Madders…” Cedar rubbed at the bridge of his nose as if weary from too many hours spent reading a difficult text.
“Last I saw, they were fighting their way through the unalives in Vicinity. Do you remember them rising?”
Rose nodded. She’d likely be nightmaring on it for years.
“The Madders said they can track us and find us. Captain Hink and his crew pulled us out of that mess.”