“What?” Mae asked. “Oh, no, thank you, Miss Gregor.”
“Molly,” she said. “Please use my given name. Friends and crew always do.”
“Thank you, Molly,” Mae said. “I can’t see anything else that can be done tonight. And Captain Hink said we might be flying out tomorrow if the Swift is in good repair, so I think sleep might be the best course for us all.”
“He said that, did he?” Molly asked. “Man seems awfully sure of the work he hasn’t even started on yet.”
“Is the ship badly damaged?” Rose asked.
“Oh, no worse than she’s been before,” Molly said. “We’ll fix her up so you wouldn’t even know she’d taken a hit. Whether it will take a day, or maybe two, is more my doubt.”
“But the captain said—,” Rose began.
“Yes, my dear, I know the captain.” She gave Rose a look. “And I know the sorts of things he says.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to say that you didn’t,” Rose said.
Molly closed her eyes for an extra moment, and a kindly smile curved her lips. “You haven’t said anything to bother me, Rose—may I call you Rose?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Molly strolled closer and then glanced over her shoulder toward the men in the room, listening for their snores.
Satisfied that they were sleeping, she said, “I just think the captain very much wants to see you and all of his passengers safely to your destination as quickly as possible. He has a way of promising the moon when his heart’s in it. And just between you and me? When his heart’s in it is when he always manages to come through.”
“Is it?” Rose asked, searching Molly’s face. Molly didn’t carry a heavy resemblance to Mr. Gregor. For one thing, her hair was iron black, whereas the blacksmith’s wild hair was fire red. But there was something to the arc of her cheek, the square of her chin, that reminded her very much of her good friend.
“Is what?” Molly asked.
“His heart … in it?”
Molly’s eyebrows quirked down just a bit, but she was smiling. “Are you asking me if the captain is concerned about the safety of the people who travel with him, or if he’s concerned about you, Miss Rose Small?”
“Both,” Rose said quietly. Yes, she should be much more modest about these sorts of questions. After all, she hardly knew Molly Gregor. But if she didn’t have much time left to her life, Rose figured she would live it as forthrightly as she could.
“Any passenger he agrees to have aboard the Swift—and those are few and far between—the captain has always seen to their safety and comfort. But you?” Molly unbuckled the tool belt around her hips and slung it over one shoulder. “He’s particularly interested in your safety and well-being.”
“Oh,” Rose said.
“And just in case you didn’t understand that, he likes you, Rose, though he’s barely said more than three words to you. I’m not one to tell the captain who to associate with, but I do want you to know that my loyalties will always fall at his side. Treat him kindly.”
Rose just nodded. It might be the medicine and the pain, but it didn’t seem like Molly was threatening her. It almost sounded like she was encouraging Rose’s interest. Maybe glim runners had a different sort of values when it came to a woman’s attraction to a man.
“Good night, Rose Small,” Molly said as she walked off toward her cot. “And good night to you, Mae.”
“Good night, Molly,” Mae said.
Mae came over to Rose and tucked her blanket in around her. “Cold?”
“No.”
“Pain?”
“Still bearable. The tonic helped.”
Mae smiled. “Good, then. Get some sleep. It’s nearly midnight and I think we’ll all want our wits in the morning.”
“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.