Cold Copper: The Age of Steam Read Online Free Page A

warm.
    There were three sorts of people in the room: workingmen who had already dealt with livestock for the day, there to drink away the weather until they could tend fields or see to their evening work; travelers with shiny shoes cooling their heels, stuck until they could strike out west for more temperate lands; and the employees of the place—a bartender and six saloon girls. Out of sight in the back rooms would be the other ladies who worked there, the sort who took a man’s money in exchange for a certain kind of attention.
    The saloon girls were dressed in the prettiest finery Rose had ever seen.
    Feathers adorned their hats, and their bright silk corsets and skirts were covered in tassels and sequins. All of the dresses—if you could call them that—were worn cut in such a way a man didn’t have to imagine what kind of woman was under the layers. The hem of their skirts were so high, you couldn’t help but see their stockings, all the way up to the knee.
    They were rouged, coal-eyed, and…and
pretty
, with hair done up in curls and shiny pins and flowers.
    Rose was suddenly very aware of her grease-stained overalls, her heavy, square man’s coat and boyish flat cap with her hair tucked up. She didn’t look a thing like these women. Wasn’t even in their league when it came to pretty.
    And right there, sitting at a table near the corner of the room with a woman on his lap, was Captain Lee Hink. Hat off, sun-pale hair mussed up, he hadn’t shaved for a day at least. He was a strong man and a tall man, and had just the sort of rakish swagger to him that made women swoon.
    He saw her stopped just inside the door. He didn’t smile, didn’t move a muscle. His eyebrows, however, lifted up into his uncombed hair, shifting the black patch over one eye.
    While she had been busy studying the saloon, every single person in that place had turned to look at her, as shocked as if a three-headed mule had come strolling in.
    Women weren’t allowed in the saloon. Not a woman in boy’s clothing. Not even a proper woman.
    But Rose wasn’t a proper woman. She was an angry woman.
    And she was angry at that man.
    “You can’t be in here, miss,” the bartender called out from behind the bar. “No women allowed.”
    Rose ignored him and stomped across the room, gunning straight for Hink.
    The corner of his mouth cupped a smile, and just as quickly poured it out into a frown, though that damn eye of his twinkled with mirth.
    “Mr. Hink, I need to have words with you.” Rose stopped in such a way that most of the table was between her and that painted vixen on his lap.
    “Don’t think this is the sort of place for you, darlin’,” he said. “Why don’t you run on home now like a good girl?”
    The vixen giggled and leaned her head down a little closer to Hink’s ear, all the while giving Rose the kind of look that was usually reserved for buying cattle at auction.
    “Run on home?” she asked. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Lee Hink,” Rose said with as steady a voice as she could muster. “But if you think for one minute I’m going to do anything you ask me to do, ever again, you are sore mistaken.”
    “Now, Rose…”
    Rose reached into her pocket, and couldn’t help but be pleased when Hink twitched.
    He was darn right to twitch. She carried all sorts of trinkets and more than a few weapons in the pockets of the length wool coat.
    But today, right now, all she pulled out of her pocket was the paper rose he had given her.
    “I won’t accept false gifts from sweet-talking men like you.”
    She tossed the fragile velvet and paper rose at his feet.
    “Rose,” he said almost softly, as if the air had come out of him.
    She shook her head. No honey words would change her mind. He’dbeen carousing while she was rebuilding his ship, refitting the boiler and setting the new guns. He didn’t care a whit for her feelings. He only wanted her devising skills.
    She turned and walked across the saloon