Devon Monk: Cold Copper

She turned and walked across the saloon floor and straight on out the door. The door hadn’t even clicked shut before the piano man started playing again, and one of the women laughed.

She kept right on walking. It was cold out, Rose knew that. But she didn’t feel the wind, didn’t hear the clatter and racket of people making their way along the wide dirt streets with horse, wagon, carriage, and the grumbling steamer carts.

All she could hear was the echo of Hink’s voice saying her name. Saying it like he was trying to catch up a fleeting thing.

Too late. It was too late. He wanted a life of drinking to soothe the anger of losing his eye and crashing his airship. If he wanted a life with a woman full of ruffles on his lap, then he could have it. She had other things planned. Greater things.

And she was the kind of woman most likely to be wearing goggles or men’s trousers rather than ruffles and perfume.

Maybe they weren’t made for each other after all.

It was time to be moving on. She’d sold just enough devices through the watch shop; she’d have money for a train ticket east. Straight through to Chicago, then on to New York City. She wanted that, wanted to shake this town and the coven soil from her boots and get on with seeing the wonder this wide world could bring.

But she hadn’t planned on seeing it alone. Her best friend, Mae Lindson, was gone with Cedar Hunt, the Madders, and Miss Dupuis, looking for the next bit of the Holder.

She knew what they were doing was important work—the ache in her shoulder and terrible scar where the tin scrap of the last piece of the Holder lodged in her flesh reminded her daily of what that dangerous device could do. She was glad they were hunting for it before it brought plague, madness, and destruction to all it touched.

And now she wished she’d gone along with them instead of staying here with the witches at the coven and, most especially, with that no good, cheating air pirate Captain Lee Hink.

“Out of the way!” A set of hands—no, a whole body: hands, arms, and the rest—slammed into her all in one motion and sent her spinning down to the ground.

She braced for the fall, throwing hands out in front of her, but instead two hands quickly moved around her waist and stopped her fall.

Suddenly finding herself suspended an inch or two off the road, Rose watched as her cap took a tumble in the wind and rolled down to the corner of the sidewalk.

“Please excuse my manners,” a man’s soft tenor said. “I am terribly sorry for our collision. I’m going to hoist you up on your feet now, if you’ll pardon my handling of your overcoat.”

Rose nodded, wondering if she was about to be pickpocketed by the most polite thief she’d ever met.

The man shifted his grip so that he stood close against her, then lifted. In a moment, she was standing, and for a tick or two longer than that, the man held her with his fingers resting lightly on the top of her hips and all the rest of his body pressed against her back.

Rose had spent most her life in Hallelujah avoiding the sort of men who manhandled women. She knew how to break free of a man’s embrace, knew how to hurt a man, in both polite and less-genteel ways.

But she found herself wishing he might just turn into some kind of fairy-tale prince, come to save her from that airship pirate, come to put the happy back into her ever after.

“Are you recovered, miss?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rose said. “Yes, I am.” She finally stepped away and turned so she could properly thank him.

That nice voice of his went with a smooth shaved face, sharp jaw, and an elegant sort of arc to his cheekbones and nose. He wore spectacles, gold-wire circles that couldn’t contain his wide and startling green eyes. The man also had on a bowler hat that didn’t quite cover the brown bangs swept across his forehead.

He wasn’t much taller than her, and had a trim, thin build.

“Excellent,” he said with a smile. “I must apologize. Wearing that…fashion, I mistakenly took you to be a…well, one look at your face and I would have known. I certainly don’t want to make a reputation of running down lovely ladies.”

Flattery, mostly. Rose knew what it was, knew how men used it. But his smile didn’t have that kind of hook behind it. He looked nice, sincere, a little flustered by nearly running her over.

It would be the perfect cover for a thief, but she knew by the weight in her pockets that he wasn’t that either.

“Apology accepted,” she said. “It was my fault as much as yours. I wasn’t watching where I was going.” Rose glanced up at the street to see exactly where her wandering feet had taken her.

Hardware store, tinsmith, tailor, but not the shops familiar to her.

She’d walked most this town, coming in to pick up necessaries for the witches of the coven, and more often than that, to linger at the blacksmith’s or talk to the elder Mr. Travis, who spent most his time repairing watches while his sons and grandsons minded the shop and customers.

But she wasn’t on the side of town she knew best.

“I’m not sure I know quite where I am, to tell you the truth,” she said.

“Oh?” He looked up and down the street, and at the rambling townsfolk, horses, and buggies, as if trying to get his bearings himself. “We are just east of Bucker’s Run, I believe.”

The man had a deep blue canvas-covered book in his hand, which he used to point at the shingled cottage and hitching post behind them a bit. “That’s Old Miss Bucker’s place, if you’re of the curiosity.”

Rose scowled. “There’d never be enough curiosity in me to want to know about Miss Bucker’s place or any other place of such negotiable affections, thank you very much,” she said archly.

The man frowned, his eyebrows dunking down to the tops of his glasses. “I’m not sure I understand why you wouldn’t want—oh,” he said. Then, a little louder, “Oh! No, I assure you, ma’am, Miss Bucker isn’t a…isn’t one of those…Why, it’s not…It is a lending library.”

He held up the book as if to prove the use of the place, and she noticed that his cheeks had gone a high color. “I would never, I assure you upon my honor, I would never suggest a woman with your obvious”—he swallowed hard and stepped back just a bit so he could gesture toward her—“qualities would be interested in a place of ill repute.”

The poor man was tying his cinch in knots, trying to secure her favorable perception of him while defending her honor. It was…sweet.

“Please, Mr.… ?” she said.

“Wicks,” he supplied. “Thomas Wicks, at your service.” He gave her a small bow.

Rose smiled again. Such manners on this man, she wondered where he’d been raised. “I am surely sorry for my hasty and poor estimation of you, Mr. Thomas Wicks,” she said. “I’m afraid you haven’t caught me at my best.”

“That collision of ours may have jumbled us both a bit,” he said. “Miss… ?”

“Small,” she said. “Rose Small.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he said. “Might I accompany you back to roads more familiar?”

Rose looked around again. A steamer cart chugged down the half-frozen street, high walls painted with DIRKSON’S CELLAR ICE across the side.

The weather was taking a turn for the worse, and that stone-colored sky was about to dump more than rain over the town. She wasn’t the only person who knew it. All the folk on the street were rushing to get business done, and get back to warmth and walls before the storm hit.

Everyone was in a hurry except one figure—a man. He stood on the corner of the street, his broad shoulders leaned against the wood telegraph pole there, his hands in the pockets of his long leather duster, and his head tipped down so his eye patch was shadowed by the brim of his hat.