Cold Copper: The Age of Steam Read Online Free

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 tobring 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’sletters. 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