Coming Up Roses

by Duncan, Alice

  “Yeah. He’s got a bum eye.”

  “Ew.” She made a face. “That’s not a very nice thing to call him.”

  “I guess it’s not. Folks on the edges of society tend to call people by descriptive terms.”

  “It’s still not very nice.”

  H.L. experienced the strangest urge to pick her up and take her home with him. She was so damned adorable, he could hardly stand it. She had such spirit and gumption, and she was so innocent and so wise, all at the same time, he just . . . well, he didn’t know, but he really liked being with her.

  Since he couldn’t act on his urge or become a kidnapper himself, he stuck his hands into his pockets and said, “No, it’s not.”

  They walked without talking for a few minutes. H.L. had hired a cab and a driver to take them to the dock this evening, since it was impractical to walk through some of the neighborhoods he expected to be frequenting, especially at night. After a minute or two, he pointed up the street. “That’s our cab there. I decided to hire a hack so we wouldn’t have to walk everywhere.”

  “Oh.” Rose sounded doubtful.

  H.L. wondered if she suspected him of motives that weren’t pure. Shaking his head, he guessed he shouldn’t be surprised if she did. If she and Annie Oakley were the best of friends, as she’d said they were—and he believed her—Rose probably considered him the lowest of the low. H.L. resented that.

  He’d worked hard to cultivate his devil-may-care newspaperman persona, but he wasn’t a bad man, and he didn’t like being taken for one. Hell, he was a good guy. If he cursed sometimes, and took a drink with the boys occasionally, and hung out with ruffians from time to time for the sake of a story, that didn’t mean he wasn’t an honorable fellow underneath it all. He’d never force a woman to surrender to his lusts, for instance.

  The notion of Rose surrendering to his lusts on her own and without being forced was such an appealing one, he discovered he was getting hard. With a stern internal lecture, he commanded himself to keep his mind on the business at hand. And what he wouldn’t like to do with his hands on Rose’s body. Oh, my, he could envision the process even as they walked together. He’d undress her slowly, slowly, making maximum use of his finger and hands, until she was squirming beneath him and begging him to have his way with her.

  “Damn,” he growled, furious that his mind had wandered down such a frustrating road. As if little Rose Gilhooley would ever let him touch her.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. May?”

  He glanced at her, scowling, and she seemed taken aback by his bitter expression. Since his own unruly feelings weren’t her fault, he made a monumental effort, hauled his mind out of the gutter, and even managed to smile, sort of. “Not a thing, Miss Gilhooley. Just thinking about—things.”

  “Ah, yes. Bear in Winter.” She cast him a worried frown. “If we can get to the general neighborhood where he’s being held, I’m sure I’ll be able to track him down.”

  They reached the hack, and H.L. gave the driver a two-fingered salute.

  The driver nodded back, chucked the cigarette he’d been smoking into the gutter, and said, “Thought you’d forgotten you’d hired me, Mr. May.”

  H.L. grinned up at him. “No such luck, Chauncy. And you’re still getting a bonus for driving us around the dock, too.”

  “I don’t like it down there. Bonus or not, if anybody tries to knife me, I’m outta there.”

  “Knife you?” Rose stopped in the process of entering the cab and stared up at the driver. Unfortunately, she stopped with her nicely rounded bottom in H.L.’s face. H.L. sighed deeply and decided the fates were against him tonight. “Good heavens, is it really that rough?”

  “I’m afraid so,” H.L. said. Because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he put both hands on Rose’s bottom and shoved. “In you go, little brother.”

  “Mr. May!”

  The cabbie squinted down at H.L., who shrugged and clambered into the cab after Rose. He hissed, “Hush up. We don’t want anybody, not even the cab driver, to know you’re not a boy.”

  Rose angrily tugged at her vest and jacket. “That’s no reason to put your hands on my person!”

  Since she’d whispered her reprimand, H.L. didn’t bother to shush her again. He muttered, “Sorry,” but wasn’t. The more he saw of Rose, the more he wanted to see of her. In more ways than one, darn it. He gazed at her chest and wondered how she’d managed to flatten that magnificent bosom of hers. It was a crime, that, and H.L.’s resentment against the man or men who’d snatched Bear in Winter edged up another notch.

  The cab jolted into motion and Rose said no more, although she was still fuming; H.L. could clearly distinguish the signs. Because he didn’t feel like wasting time arguing with her, he said, “Our first stop is to go to a certain tavern on the dock. It’s a low place and full of scummy characters, so stick close to me and don’t get into an argument with anybody. If you open your mouth, sure as the devil, someone will realize you’re not a boy.”

  “I can sound like a boy,” she said defensively. To prove it, she lowered her voice and added, “See? I sound just like my brother Freddie.”

  Actually, she did sound like a boy, although H.L. didn’t have a clue as to what her brother Freddie sounded like. Nevertheless, he didn’t trust her not to allow her moral outrage at the reprehensible treatment of Bear to get the better of her.

  “I don’t care who you sound like, keep your mouth shut.” He adopted a severe expression and leaned toward her. “This is not a farce, Miss Gilhooley. The people we’re going to be among tonight probably commit worse crimes than kidnapping when they’re paid for it. There’s every sort of villain on the dock, from prostitutes to dipsomaniacs to murderers, and I don’t want any more trouble than necessary. If you aren’t willing to play by my rules in this, I’ll take you straight back to the Wild West and go alone.”

  “You can’t do that!” Rose cried, forgetting to whisper. “You’re no tracker!”

  “No, but I’m a man, and I’m a lot bigger than you are. I don’t care how good you are in the wilds of Kansas, I’m more familiar with Chicago’s criminal underbelly than you are.” He wagged a finger at her, as he’d seen her wag her finger at the policeman. “Admit it, Miss Gilhooley. It’s the truth.”

  She glared at him ferociously for a few moments, then sat back and crossed her arms over her chest—her flat chest. “Oh, very well. But don’t expect me not to fight if I have to.”

  “Never,” H.L. said, after not heaving a regretful sigh over her flattened bosom and giving himself a point of honor for it. “I’ve come to expect you to fight even when you don’t have to.”

  Her glare got hotter. “And exactly what do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Forget it.” He turned to look out the window. Since night had fallen and the fog was thick, he didn’t see a thing but fuzzy balls of light from the gas lamps. They didn’t illuminate anything but haze, and they looked rather like enormous, nebulous fireflies in the dismal darkness.

  “Fiddlesticks.”

  The rest of their trek to the dock was accomplished in silence. When they arrived at their destination, H.L. paid the hackie off, and told Rose they’d find another cab after they’d rescued Bear in Winter. He only hoped they could.

  # # #

  Fog shrouded the peeling buildings and trash-strewn boardwalks. The stench emanating from the lake around the dock blended with the tang of creosote-coated ropes, half-rotten wooden hogsheads, dried fish, cheap tobacco, stale alcohol, and back-alley garbage. Rose tried to hold her breath, but couldn’t do it for very long without getting light-headed.

  “It smells awful around here,” she whispered to H.L., who walked beside her. She sensed that he was on the alert for malefactors.

  “Yeah. It’ll get worse when we get to the Sailor’s Rest. These dockside taverns are disgusting.”

  Hard to imagine, although Rose braced herself for worse odors ahead. “Am I walking all right?” H.L. had told h
er not to walk like a woman, and she, taking her cue from him, had commenced swaggering in imitation of his own king-of-the-world manner.

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Something in his voice made her glance up, and she saw his white teeth gleaming in a Cheshire-cat grin. Her heart did a brief flippity-flop in her chest before she glanced away again. “Good.”

  “Remember not to talk unless you absolutely have to.”

  “Right.”

  Now that they’d left the cab at the dock area, Rose felt not the slightest inclination to chatter. This place scared her. It was awful. It was even worse than the saloon district of Deadwood, because it was out of the realm of her experience. She felt sort of like she had when she’d visited splendid houses and universities. Only when she’d visited splendid houses and universities in the course of her employment with the Wild West, she hadn’t feared someone would leap out at her from besides a stack of barrels or a jumbled fishing nets and try to shoot her, as she did now. The weight of the weapons concealed on her person comforted her. She fingered the Smith and Wesson in her jacket pocket to ease her jitters. She was comfortable with weapons; it was people who frightened her.

  “Here it is.”

  Rose sucked in a breath of foul-tasting air and steeled her nerves. She told herself to get a grip on her apprehension, or she’d be of no use to H.L. May and, ultimately, to Bear in Winter. That thought calmed her slightly. When H.L. opened the door and walked inside, however, it took her a second to understand he hadn’t held the door for her because she was supposed to be his brother, not a lady. Bother. She scurried to catch up with him, then caught herself walking like a lady and halted to gather her wits about her.

  Taking her courage in both hands, she swaggered into the saloon behind H.L. Instantly, a pall of smoke, denser and smelling even more foul than the fog outdoors, enveloped her, and she nearly succumbed to a fit of coughing. Her eyes teared up, and she had to blink furiously to keep from crying.

  “Sort of thick in here, isn’t it?” H.L. said with an understanding twinkle in his eye, not to mention a mastery of understatement Rose couldn’t properly appreciate at the moment.

  “Yes,” she rasped when she could do so without exploding in hacks and coughs.

  “Come on over here. I see a table in a corner.”

  “Why do we have to sit in here?” Rose wanted to bat the smoke away from her face, but didn’t dare for fear the gesture would be remarked upon by the rough company.

  And the company was certainly rough. Rose had seen lots of villainous men in her day, but none like these. The rowdies in Deadwood were definitely cut in the Western style. Not these Chicago toughs. She’d never seen the likes of the men in this place. Many of them fitted her notions of sailors perfectly, with empty sleeves pinned to their shoulders, presumably lost eyes covered with black patches, and scars to beat the band.

  H.L. didn’t hold a chair out for her, naturally, since she was supposed to be his brother. He also had her sit against the wall so that his own back was exposed to the rest of the room. Rose appreciated this consideration as she pulled the chair out and sat in it. She scooted closer to the table for security’s sake. Not that there seemed to be much of that quality available in this room.

  The floor had been sprinkled with sawdust. Glancing at it, Rose stopped herself from wrinkling her nose, but just barely. It didn’t look to her as if anyone had swept the floor or spread clean sawdust in at least a century. She didn’t even want to guess at what some of the detritus littering it was.

  Yanking her attention from the floor and surreptitiously eyeing the unprepossessing flock of seamen seated in the tavern, she muttered, “Why are so many of these men missing limbs and eyes and so forth. Good heavens! That man over there is missing most of his ear!”

  “Shhh. Try to speak more softly, please.”

  Rose would have heaved a sigh, except that to do so she’d have had to take on a cargo of smoke, and she feared she’d suffocate if she did.

  “Very well,” she muttered, peeved. As if anybody could overhear anything she said over the din in this place.

  “The sailor’s life is a rugged one. Losing an eye is common. I understand that when the wind blows, often the yardarms will swing around and whack men in the eye. Fishermen also have to contend with hooks, nets, spikes, and the like. Whalers with their harpoons are always getting stabbed in the arm and leg and everywhere in between.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Not to mention the problems they have with sharks and storms at sea and pirates and the rest of the perils of the deep.”

  Rose peered at him closely. “Are you teasing me?”

  “No!” He appeared honestly piqued. “I’m telling you what I’ve learned from interviews with sailors. It’s a rough life. It’s probably every bit as rough as life out on the frontier.”

  “I don’t doubt it, if what you’re telling me is true.” Rose was finding it less difficult to speak softly since her throat was being scraped raw by the foul air in the tavern.

  A buxom barmaid sashayed up to their table. She eyed H.L. with a smirk that Rose could only deem seductive. She felt small and unfeminine and wanted to drive the barmaid away with one of the harpoons H.L. had just told her about. She said nothing.

  “What can I bring you, sweetheart?” the barmaid asked H.L. in a voice as smoky as the room.

  Rose didn’t scowl at her and was proud of herself.

  “Beer for the both of us, darling,” H.L. said with a wink.

  Rose didn’t kick him, either, and was doubly proud of herself. The rat. Did he honestly find females like this overstuffed beer-flinger attractive? If he did, Rose wanted nothing more to do with him, and that was that.

  Good heavens, whatever was she thinking? What did it matter to her what kind of women H.L. May found attractive? She rubbed her eyes, and wished she could remove her hat, because the air in the tavern was close as well as smoky, and sweat was beginning to make her scalp itch.

  “This little guy here don’t look old enough for beer,” the barmaid told H.L. with a wink of her own. “Want I should bring him a sarsaparilla?”

  His grin back at the woman was every bit as seductive as hers to him had been. Rose could hardly stand to watch, but didn’t dare look away. “He’s old enough,” H.L. said. “So am I.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” The barmaid laughed and moved off, swinging her hips as if they were attacked to one of those pendulum things Rose had seen in a London museum.

  Concluding that she’d only show herself in an unfortunate light if she were to comment on what she perceived as the overall sluttishness of the serving wench, Rose held her tongue with difficulty. She wanted to rail at H.L. May about his poor taste in women, even though she knew absolutely nothing about his taste in women, really. After all, perhaps he’d only been putting on a show for the barmaid.

  While this conjecture might have been the truth, it didn’t affect Rose’s overall black mood. She glowered into the smoky room and wished the earth would open up and swallow H.L. May and the slutty barmaid. And if it swallowed the rest of the people in this wretched place along with them, Rose would be just as happy.

  “Don’t look so cranky. I might just think you’re jealous.”

  Rose lifted her head so fast when she heard H.L.’s outrageous comment, she nearly broke her neck. “What?”

  H.L. squeezed his eyes shut as the room went silent. Rose realized she’d shrieked, and was embarrassed. Understanding that she’d just made a horrible mistake, and that if she were discovered to be a woman in disguise, the consequences might be dire, she blustered in a voice she hoped like the devil sounded masculine. “I don’t take that kind of talk from anybody. Not even my brother!” She glared daggers at H.L. and was pleased that her voice had come out ragged and hoarse. Small wonder, given the air in this joint.

  H.L. muttered, “Sorry, little brother. I was only teasing.”

  “Hmph.”

  The barmaid slapped two mugs of
beer on the table between them. Perceiving another opportunity to fool her audience, Rose lifted her mug, still glaring blackly at H.L., and took a gulp. She very nearly spat it back out again. Fortunately, she managed to swallow the awful brew, and the folks who’d turned to stare at her after her outcry lost interest and went back to their own business.

  Oh, but the stuff tasted vile. It was all she could do not to throw up after that one swallow. She tried to hide the reflexive gagging that overtook her by wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Even the thick smoke couldn’t hide the sparkle in H.L.’s eyes as he watched her. “Good recovery,” he said. “But I don’t think you’d better try that again. You look like you’re about to be sick all over the table.”

  “I am,” Rose choked out. “How can you drink this stuff?”

  “Drink it? I don’t drink it. It’s for show. I’d advise you not to drink any more of it, either. They only serve the lousiest liquor in this place. Here. Suck on this.” He reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a paper-wrapped peppermint. He palmed it and reached across the table toward Rose.

  After shooting a quick glance around the room and finding nobody watching, Rose took the peppermint, unwrapped it, and slammed it into her mouth. She could scarcely do so fast enough to suit her. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Just pretend to drink from now on, all right?”

  Unable to speak, she nodded and surreptitiously wiped her eyes, which were watering from her effort not to upchuck the unholy beer she’d swallowed.

  They sat in the tavern for forty-five minutes, pretending to drink beer, and carrying on a desultory conversation. Rose, miserably uncomfortable, felt as though she were choking to death and about to melt into a puddle of sweat. Worse, she was beginning to think this had been a futile effort and would come to naught, and then she’d have to live with the knowledge that she’d wasted an entire evening, nearly killing herself in the process, and not even rescuing Bear at the end of it, which might have made the discomfort worth it.