“Mae?” Rose asked, catching at her hand before she turned away. “Thank you for taking care of me. I’m sorry I’m…well, I’m sorry I’m such a burden.”
“Nonsense,” Mae said. “You’ve certainly looked after my well-being when I’ve needed it.”
Mae turned down the wick on the lantern next to Rose’s bed. Rose could hear her footsteps as she took to her own cot and settled down upon it, taking off her shoes but not her outer dress.
Molly turned out the lantern next to her bed, and the room was filled with the kind of ink black found only in the deep of caves.
“Mae,” Rose whispered.
“Yes?”
“Do you think it wrong for someone to want…happiness? When things seem so dire?”
Mae was silent for a bit, then said, “We all deserve happiness, Rose. Our lives should be filled with it whether the days are dark or sunny. Happiness doesn’t beg permission. It just walks across our threshold, sets itself down beside us, and waits for us to notice.”
“I suppose that’s so,” Rose said. “Thank you.”
From the sound of Mae’s breathing, she slipped into sleep quickly. Molly was snoring softly, and so were Hink’s men.
But for Rose, sleep was fleeting. To try to work herself down into slumber, she closed her eyes and imagined herself at Mr. Gregor’s blacksmith shop, naming each tool on the wall, in the order they were hung, and repeating what they were used for.
She’d gotten through most of the crimps and hammers when she heard footsteps at the doorway to the room. Not Mr. Hunt. He had a way of stepping so that it was difficult to hear his heel set down.
No, it was the captain, Hink. Her heart picked up a pace and she opened her eyes. She was used to the dark, but he obviously was not. He stepped over the threshold and walked a way into the room. Then he plucked a lantern from the hook on the wall and lit it, turning it low so that only the barest hint of yellow rimmed the blue edge of the wick.
He carried that with him, pacing by the foot of the beds, past his men, past several empty cots, then past Molly’s bed, where he stopped.
Holding his lantern up a bit, he scanned the rest of the room. Rose didn’t close her eyes, enjoying too much the play of softly lit shadows on his face.
She didn’t think he could see that she was awake. She wondered if he would come closer, wondered if he would sit down next to her.
But after a moment of assessing both Mae and Rose in their cots, he turned his back and made his way to the far end of the room, where he set the lantern back on the wall hook, glowing there like a lone star lost in the night. Then he eased down onto a cot without even bothering to take off his hat.
She wondered where Mr. Hunt was, wondered where Wil was. Mae hadn’t mentioned them.
Her curiosity was sated just a few minutes later. Mr. Hunt and Wil came into the room, both of them together on six feet not making as much noise as one man alone on two.
Mr. Hunt didn’t seem to need light to navigate the night. He moved through it naturally and silently, pacing across the room to where he finally settled in a cot between the other men and the women.
Wil made a slow and careful inspection of the boundaries and contents in the room, then set himself by the door, facing outward.
Rose closed her eyes and listened to the breathing around her. She wished she could be sleeping peacefully like the others, but her thoughts were still racing.
She tried to return to imagining Mr. Gregor’s shop, but her mind was crowded with Captain Hink. She imagined his smile, the hard angle of his jaw, and the low roll of his voice. She imagined they were alone on his ship, flying over the green blanket of trees that was interrupted only by fields and mountains and embroidered streams.
She imagined he was showing her how to fly the ship, how to know the feel of the engines, how to sense the stretch of wings.
Then her imagination wandered onward to other things. The taste of Hink’s lips as he kissed her, the heat of his skin, the touch of his hand against her body. Would he want her that way? Would he smile between kisses? Would he hold her gently or with possessive strength? Would he, even for one moment, love her?
Those were things she wanted to know. Things she might never have the time to learn.
She hoped Mae was right. Hoped happiness knew how to find its way into a person’s life. And she hoped if happiness found her, she might have at least one kiss, one loving moment, before she had to lay down this life.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hink was having a hell of a time trying to sleep. He heard Cedar come into the room with that wolf of his. Listened to him check in on Mae and Rose.
Mr. Hunt was nothing if not a protector of the women. Hink found that commendable, though right now he’d prefer if Mr. Hunt would mind someone else’s business.
He lay still, wishing sleep would drag him down already, but there was too much on his mind. He’d checked the
He’d paid his gold to Old Jack and signed the billing of what he could take from Jack’s stores. If luck would land on his side, they’d be out of this bear trap by tomorrow evening.
The things Mae Lindson had told him about Rose stuck and rubbed, no matter how he turned his thoughts around. Rose was dying. And the longer it took him to get his ship in the air, the less of a chance that there would be a way to see to it that she didn’t die.
Hink was itchy with the need to be doing something. To find the Holder or Alabaster Saint for the president, to get Rose to someplace that could mend her—hell, to get himself and his crew on a range of mountain that wasn’t filled with folk bent on wanting to see him and his ship dead.
But no matter how much he tried to tell himself it was all the crashing and being shot at that had set his nerves on edge, he knew that wasn’t so.
It was Rose Small.
He’d only spoken to her twice. But there was something about her, something behind that knowing smile and innocent eyes. Yes, she was a pretty thing, but he’d seen plenty of pretty women when he was growing up in a bordello. And he’d seen plenty of pretty women since then.
There was something about her. Even fevered, in pain, she stirred him. Made him wonder what her laughter sounded like. Made him wonder what would catch her temper, and what would tease her toward forgiveness.
Mae said she was looking for family. And Rose had seemed intense, rapt, when he’d been talking about the ship, about glim.
The sort of woman who wanted to travel, who found things around her wondrous even when it was just as clear how equally dangerous they were, was rare in this world.
Molly said he had fallen for her. He hated it when that Gregor woman was right.
Still, there wasn’t anything he could do about his feelings. Not right now.
He rolled over, and punched at the blanket roll under his head. The cots were loose strung and about as comfortable as sleeping on a swayback horse. He thought the stone floor might put fewer kinks in his back.
Didn’t seem to be bothering the others. Seldom and Guffin were snoring away, and Molly too, though more softly. He could pick out Cedar Hunt’s breathing and wasn’t fully convinced he was asleep. Mae, though, was still and breathing evenly. And Rose…
She made a small coughing sound in the back of her throat as if she were thirsty.
Then he heard her shifting, likely trying to get to the cup of water near her bed.
Mae would help her.
He waited for Mrs. Lindson to move. Nothing. Waited a bit longer.
