Page 4 of Hazard a Guest
“Did I do that?” she gasped, touching her mouth. “That doesn’t sound right. Jones, does that sound right?”
Jones looked very put upon by this question.
“Jones doesn’t talk much,” she said to her errant stepson. “He mostly communicates with his fists.”
Jones frowned, leaning closer to the tiny glass he was polishing as though it and it alone understood his plight.
Mr. Withers looked a little queasy at this revelation, eyes darting between Ember and Jones with a growing redness around his bulbous nose.
“Was that all you wanted to say, dear?” Ember pressed, leaning against the gleaming wood of the bar with an encouraging smile. “I do have to open soon, if you don’t mind speeding this along.”
“You!” the idiot said again, just as pointlessly. “You will be hearing from our attorney!”
“Looking forward to it!” Ember called as he clambered out of the broken stool, which fell to the floor like it wished for the sweet embrace of death.
She watched with amusement as he scrambled out the door, trying to slam it behind him and not quite managing with the latch not catching, leaving the thing swinging quietly in his wake.
“Ah,” said Ember with a grin at Jones. “That’s always fun, isn’t it?”
“It is not,” said Jones softly.
“Ah, chin up, Mr. Jones,” she tutted. “I know better attorneys than he does. I can promise you that.”
The entire weekhad been slow for the Forge. Probably because of the slush that kept dribbling from the sky, cold and heavy and morose.
This time of year was always spotty and quiet. A lot of the hells that flanked the Forge would close during these months, but Ember saw that only as a gift for her own commercial interest.
After all, even a single lucky gambler would be buying drinks and cigars. She was like to break even if the tables lost to a meager crowd. Tables always recouped with the gift of time. She’d never seen it unfold any other way.
And besides, there were some Londoners who didn’t flee to the countryside at the first brisk breeze.
Those were her people.
When it was exceptionally slow, she had time to prowl the architecture of the rooms, imagining tables adjusted this way or that, playing with the dart board her mam had sent from Kildare, or forcing Jones to consider color schemes for the card racks and place settings.
He had a keen eye for color, that one, even if he claimed not to. Without Jones, Ember never would have found such a perfect combination of curtains and carpet. The man was a domestic genius wrapped in 15 stone of muscle.
In any event, once the slush had the good sense to be snow, the city would liven up again and all that holiday cheer would trickle right in through her doors. In the meantime, Ember had been experimenting with private events.
And tonight was her favorite. It sat in her ledger, once a month, reading:The Spinsters: Private, WedPM.
Initially, it had been a handful of ladies from a small social group, half a dozen who gambled and drank whiskey in secret here with the windows shut tight and the curtains tied over them. But, over time, the attendance list had grown enough that Ember couldn’t manage it alone. The curtains stayed drawn, but these days it felt more like atmosphere than necessity.
It turned out that there were a lot of widows, spinsters, matrons, and mothers in this city who fancied a bit of faro and a stiff drink.
It was also the night of the month when her dearest friends in the city came to her.
Dot Cain and Millie Murphy were not much for cards, nor dice, nor darts, but they came anyhow. Dot, far too reasonable to ever enter a game of chance, often just watched with a sort of quiet fascination in her tiny blonde frame.
Millie, however, was unpredictable. Some nights she sat with Dot, twisting a coil of brown hair over her finger and discussing the finer points of life and luck, and others she went directly for the dice table to win a handful of shillings. The latter only happened when she had spent whatever she’d won the time before.
Ember didn’t play at all, of course. The numbers sang far too loudly for that to ever be fair. But she watched sometimes, counting cards and calculating odds in her mind in an effort to guess the outcome.
Usually she could, but sometimes the players would surprise her. She liked when that happened.
The bell began to chime in earnest the absolute moment the event began. The church bells of St. James never even made it tothe full seven chimes on the hour before feminine voices, crystal clinks, and the percussion of colliding dice and shuffled cards had overtaken the volume inside.
Dot and Millie arrived together, sharing an umbrella coated with the misery of seasonal shift. They found Ember immediately, leaning against the bar while Jones and his new trainee scrambled to figure out how the devil to make a negus for an impatient white-haired woman with half-moon spectacles.
