Revenge and the Wild(4)

As he looked at Westie with large eyes as blue as a broken heart, a dormant ember stirred within her.

“Hello, Alley,” Westie said, hoping her dirty face would conceal the blaze in her cheeks.

He nodded without speaking.

“How did it go?” Nigel asked Westie.

She’d been looking for the cannibals who’d killed her family since she was fourteen. In the beginning Nigel didn’t approve of her leaving for weeks without knowing how to use weapons properly or fight, but he never stopped her—even after he’d taught her those things, he still didn’t like her being gone. When he looked at her this time, there was hope in his gaze, like maybe she’d finally given up.

“Could’ve gone better,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

Nigel released the breath he’d been holding. “I see. Well, anyway, we’ve missed you around here. You’ve been gone too long. The road is no place for a teenage girl.”

After two months away, Westie had forgotten what it was like to have someone worry over her. It came as both a relief and an annoyance.

“I’m no girl. Women my age are married and sprouting children.”

Nigel shrugged his lips and shoulders together like a ventriloquist dummy with one string for all motions. “Perhaps you should be doing the same.”

Westie glared at him. “Maybe you’re right. I reckon I ought to stop turning down the suitors lining up, waiting to take my copper hand in marriage. Imagine the wedding night.” She grabbed two walnuts from a decorative glass tray on the table beside the door and crushed them together into a fine powder with a gentle flex of her metal fingers.

Nigel gave her a thoughtful look and sighed. “I fear I’ve done you a great disservice by letting you run wild all these years. It’ll be difficult finding proper suitors for you with those manners.”

She let the walnut dust slide from her fingers onto a Turkish rug and looked at her copper machine. “Manners don’t have a thing to do with it.”

“Have you been keeping up with your lessons?” he asked.

She patted the leather satchel slung across her chest. “Right here.” Ever since she’d gotten kicked out of school, Nigel had been her teacher—a rather relentless one at that.

“Wonderful.” Westie pretended not to notice Nigel holding his breath and leaning away from her. It had been some time since her last bath. “Then I suppose you’ve earned your prize.” He turned to his assistant. “Alistair, would you be a saint and fetch Westie’s reward? It’s in my study. Oh, and some drinks, if you will.”

With a nod Alistair disappeared.

A gray-haired Chinese woman wearing a maid’s uniform walked in holding a broom and pushed Westie to the side to sweep up the dust at her feet. Confusion twisted Westie’s features as more and more servants buzzed in and out of the room. The only time Nigel hired anyone to clean was on special occasions.

“What’s with the help?” she asked.

Nigel looked down, brushing some invisible thing off his shirt. “I’ve invited a guest for supper. He’ll be here shortly; the rest of his family will be traveling from Sacramento via airship tomorrow morning with Mayor Chambers. They’re possible investors for Emma.”

“But you detest the mayor.”

“No . . . I dislike the mayor’s charging-bull approach to politics, but he’s bringing me investors, so for now I find him quite agreeable.”

Alistair walked into the room holding a jug, two glasses, and a parasol of fine antique lace and pearls tucked under his arm. Seeing tea in the jug instead of wine, Westie frowned. Her disappointment deepened when Alistair handed Nigel the parasol. It was beautiful, no doubt. All the gifts he gave her were beautiful, but they were usually swords, or daggers. Westie had never been the type of girl to sit in front of picnic baskets or stroll down city streets with a handsome man on one arm and a parasol on the other.

“Thank you, Nigel. It’s, uh, something, but . . .”

Nigel ran a long finger down the length of it before gripping the end of the parasol and giving it a sharp yank to unsheathe a gleaming sword made of Japanese steel.

Westie immediately reached for it. “Now that’s something.”

Nigel made a tsking sound, holding it just out of her reach. “You must be careful.”

He pointed to the umbrella tip of the parasol. Westie noticed the opening of a barrel, and just above it, a bolt and trigger.

“Oh!”

A gun. Nigel carried a weapon just like it himself, hidden beneath the dark wood of his cane. He took it everywhere and used it to aid the limp he’d acquired from an orc bite during the creature war, when man and creature had been fighting over territory in the West.

Westie smiled down at her gift. Not even an outlaw would take a lady’s parasol from her. She liked the idea of never being without a weapon.

She threw herself into Nigel’s arms for a hug. He tensed beneath her. Nigel was not affectionate in a physical sense, nor was Westie, usually, but she was thrilled with her gift and he was getting a hug whether he liked it or not. Her mechanical arm with the power of a hundred horses was there to see he didn’t argue.

“All right, that’s quite enough,” he said, pushing her away with a smile in his voice. “Go on, clean up. Supper is in two hours.”