“Well, it’s a lovely place, and everyone has been so pleasant,” Rose said. “You could be almost anywhere.” She was leaning on Hink’s arm pretty heavily as she made her way across the room.
Hink had recovered from most of his injuries to the point that he was moving smoothly. All, that is, except for his broken arm and missing eye. He wore a soft cloth over the eye, with a bandage messing up his hair a bit as it held the patch in place and covered the burn on his forehead. Once both the eye wound and the brand on his forehead were less sensitive, they’d fashion a patch, which he would wear for the rest of his life.
There was nothing they could do to hide the five-pointed star branded into his forehead, other than see it healed properly. He would carry that scar to his grave.
While he hadn’t exactly taken his injuries gracefully, after spending three days drinking and coming up with new cuss words for Alabaster Saint’s damned soul—an activity that his crew, and the Madder brothers, had joined in quite readily—he had shouldered the fact that he would never have his full eyesight again. Nor go unnoticed as the president’s man.
As for having Rose at his side, leaning on him, well, he didn’t look one bit upset about that.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to support you a bit more, Rose?” he asked. “Perhaps my arm around your waist?”
“Like yesterday?” Rose asked.
“Yesterday?” he asked glibly.
“Yesterday. When you helped me,” she said. “If you thought you were putting your hands on my waist, you need a refresher on body parts, Paisley.”
He stopped cold and Rose was forced to stop too. “What?” she said, searching his face. “Are you all right? Your eye. Is it hurting again? The scar? Do you need the medicine?”
“Who,” he bit off, “told you my name is Paisley?”
Rose’s look of concern slid into one of wide-eyed innocence, though she was having a hard time keeping a smile off her face. “I’m not sure I recall. It must have been one of the crew.”
“Seldom,” Hink groused. “That man talks too much.”
“It’s a lovely name,” Rose continued as they got back to walking. “And a lovely fabric. Why I’ve always admired paisley dresses, haven’t you, Mae? They’re so…frilly.”
“Yes,” Mae agreed. “Very pretty.”
“My mother,” he said through his teeth, “happened to like paisley. She had this one dress, given to her by a man who—” He shut his mouth.
“A man who what?” Rose asked.
“A man who—” Hink narrowed his eye as if just figuring her game. “Never mind what the man did, all right now? I prefer you use ‘Lee’ when you address me.”
“What? Not ‘Captain’ or ‘Marshal’ or perhaps ‘lord king of all the land’?”
“Well, I’d never stop a woman from calling me king.”
“King Paisley,” Rose mused. “Certainly has a ring to it.”
“Forget it,” he said, blowing out his breath. “You may call me Captain Hink. And not a syllable more.”
“Didn’t mean for you to get all flustered,” Rose continued mercilessly. “It’s just so difficult to sort through all your names. And you’re sure there aren’t some other things you’d like me to call you?”
“I can think of several things I’d like to hear on your lips,” he said with a wicked grin, holding her gaze as he helped her sit in the other chair near the fire. “But not in polite company, my dear.”
Rose’s cheeks flamed red. “Oh,” she managed.
Hink walked over to the fire, looking pleased as punch at securing Rose’s silence.
“Were you looking for me?” Mae asked.
“Yes,” Rose said, jumping on the change of subject. “We were. I know it hasn’t been very long since we’ve been here, and the road was…hard.”
Hink crouched down at the hearth and used the poker to rearrange the wood and ashes. Molly’s death weighed heavily on him. He had refused to talk about it, or her.
“Hard on all of us,” Rose amended. “This”—she waved toward her left side, where the Holder still capped her shoulder beneath her dress—“it’s not the most worrisome thing that’s happened, but I don’t want to carry it all my life. It’s a part of a weapon an awful lot of folk want their hands on. I’d rather be quit of it, if I can.”
“We don’t know what will happen if we try to remove it, Rose,” Mae said. “Even the Madders aren’t sure what will happen.”