Copperhead

curvy figure. If I were her I would not wear that horizontal panel at my waist, Helen mused.

Frye followed Helen’s gaze. “Did you meet Roxanne?”

“That man,” said Helen. It suddenly occurred to her that he could be a spy for Copperhead, here for some sinister purpose. “Do you know him?”

“Oh, you,” said Frye. “Of course.” She stood up, mussing Helen’s perch on the cushions, and gestured imperiously, the two glasses she held clinking together. “Rook!” she said. “Rook!” He grinned impudently at Frye, excused himself from the brunette, and came loping over, sliding through the tangle of sitting-down bodies.

“You. Meet this young woman named Helen,” said Frye. “Now, if I understand the situation correctly, she’s going to need an escort home tonight.” To Helen she said, “I would invite you to stay, but you’re going to tell me no, and I don’t do well when people tell me no.” She turned back to Rook. “Now I know you’re ridiculously charming and everything, but she has a husband so no funny business.”

“No funny business,” said Rook, shaking Helen’s hand as soberly as if they were now meeting for the first time. That warm sandalwood scent lingered around her fingertips.

“Does everyone just do what she says?” said Helen, and then immediately bit her tongue, for she hadn’t meant it like that, not like she was betraying the confidence Frye had just shared.

Frye just laughed at her discomfort. “If they’re smart they do,” she said. She waved a pair of now-empty martini glasses at Helen. “I’ll see you later this week.”

Frye left and then they were alone in the crowd. All sorts of things to say whirled through her mind as she studied him, this man. Rook. He had no hydra pin—but if he were a spy, he wouldn’t, would he? What did he want from her?

A hint of a smile played over Rook’s features as he watched her studying him. Languidly he offered an arm and said, “Shall we?”

Helen settled on saying airily: “Kind of you to offer. But I’m afraid I find your suspicious ways suspicious. I don’t need an escort who’s going to trail ten feet behind me like a sneak.”

“No, that’s too far,” he agreed. “I plan to be within … oh, about six inches.”

His grin was irresistible, but she tried valiantly to be firm, to not let his charm trump her sensible suspicions. He had been at the Grimsbys’, after all. For all she knew he was a spy for Copperhead, sent to keep an eye on her. “Really, you needn’t,” said Helen. “You have a whole party to amuse you. I’ll be fine.”

“As fine as when you dumped the bugs on that idiot on the trolley? And he turned into a raving lunatic?”

Helen couldn’t think of a response to this. She tried, but by the time she’d come up with anything barely usable, she seemed to have her coat on and be at the door with him.

“Some people need to have bugs dumped on them,” she said brightly as she put on her lilac gloves. She tried to make it sound as though it was just good common sense.

“I quite agree,” Rook said. “In fact, I found it quite admirable.”

“Thank you,” said Helen.

“And yet, if you can’t promise me that you will incite no more men by throwing bugs on them, I think you’d better have an escort. You know. For their safety.”

“There is that,” said Helen. She muffled her scarf tightly around her chin and neck. It was no iron mask, but it made her feel better.

They stepped out into the cold.

Rook moved silently along beside her as they passed through the theatre district, crossed the empty trolley tracks, headed through the neighborhoods that would eventually take them up to Helen’s own. If he stopped talking he could blend into the night and she would not see him again. It was odd—he was neither as tall nor as stout as Alistair, and yet Helen felt safer walking beside him in the night than she would have with her husband. It was a peculiar feeling to have in her gut about someone that her intellect told her to mistrust. Perhaps it was the way she had seen him interact with the drunkard on the trolley—sleek and swift, perfectly calm—and yet the man had immediately backed down. Yet even if she had not witnessed that moment she thought she would feel just as safe. Safe from others—but safe from him, too—despite his joke about staying close, if she told him to keep five feet away the whole journey home, she rather thought he would do that.

But how smart was it to trust him?

“You followed me last night, didn’t you?” she said suddenly. “After the Copperhead meeting.”

“I saw him take your iron mask,” he said. Alistair, he meant. Your husband, he meant, but did not say it. “You were in danger.”

“I was in a car,” she said dryly. “You, what, ran along beside us because of a mask?”

“Stole a bike,” Rook said cheerfully. “Borrowed if you’re feeling generous. I did return it.”

“It’s certainly very flattering,” said Helen, “I’ll give you that.” She looked sideways at him, trying to puzzle him out. Even if she believed that he had just followed her due to concern for her welfare, there was still the point that he was at a Copperhead meeting last night, and here in what might as well be the enemy camp tonight. Somehow she had ended up with a foot in both worlds—but how had he? “Where’s your lapel pin?” she said. “Don’t you walk the party line?”

His grin faded. “I had other business there last night. I am not a member of Copperhead.”

“Other business,” repeated Helen. “So now it really gets interesting. I doubt you were in charge of the catering.” She stopped on the sidewalk. “And come to that, why were you near the trolley stop today? Did you know that was going to happen to that poor man?”

Rook looked sober at the reminder of the trolley stop incident. “Did you see what happened? Did he provoke those Copperhead men?”

“They started it,” Helen protested, then admitted, “but he wouldn’t back down.”

“Moug always was a hothead.”

“You knew him. I’m sorry.”

He nodded, and added, “Look, I wasn’t near you; we were simply both near the Grimsbys’. Now can you take that suspicious look off your face? My intentions toward you are entirely honorable, I swear.”

Helen noticed that he did not claim that all his intentions were honorable, but she let her shoulders loosen. Perhaps she had been too blunt. Normally she was better at keeping her conversation partner soothed, flattered, well bantered. But apart from not entirely trusting this man, the storm of worries in her chest swirled round and round, leaving her adrift. What on earth would she do without Jane? The lights from the theatre district faded behind them as they walked on, leaving them in a darker neighborhood of old row houses and shaggy bits of garden. They cut through a stretch of park, winding their way up into the hills.

“Things on your mind?” Rook said softly.

Helen laughed and tossed her hair, building up her wall again. “Just thinking how divine your Miss Frye looked in her dragon and slacks. I’m positive I could never pull off such a thing. Yet I think I should try to go to her little musicale, what’s it called again? You tell me, do you think it would be worth seeing?”

The flow of chatter seemed to break and crash over him, leaving him unaffected. “I think it is likely ridiculous. Frye is better than her material.”

It was so easy to pretend there was nothing more on her mind than flirting with a handsome stranger. So easy to fall into the role of frivolous, laughing Helen. “Ah, the sort of thing where you grab your date and waltz out at intermission for cocktails. Then you sneak back in, half-sloshed, and afterward…” But there her imagination failed her, never having known anyone in a play. “And what do you do then?”

“The curtain falls. Rises. The actors come out and the audience breaks into a completely unwarranted sea of applause, mostly based on the number of cocktails they have had. When they are done, we slip through the pass door and find Frye’s dressing room. The biggest one, with the star. Which is probably the size of a shoebox and tucked under some stairs. We bring her flowers—”

“—oh, dear, I would have forgotten that—”

“—and she kisses our cheeks and we tell her how wonderful she was.”

“We lie?”

“Like rugs,” Rook said cheerfully. “Or, if you like, you tell her that the scenery was very beautiful, and you could hear all of the actors surprisingly well.”

“Ohhh,” she said, and then, “Oh,” with the bump of reality.