Clive Kensington's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Clive locked the bank at six and walked home the long way, thinking. Dorothea had told him to come after sundown through her back door. The problem was plain. Gritstown watched. If any tongue caught him slipping behind the sundries shop at dusk, her name would be dirt by breakfast and his suit for her hand would be finished before it began. He needed to arrive unseen, and he needed to leave the same way. He took stock of what he owned. A gray banker's coat everyone knew on sight. A pale hat. Boots that clacked on plank walks. None of it would serve. He remembered a trunk his uncle had left him three winters back, still shoved under his bed. Clive dragged it out and lifted the lid. Inside lay a long dark riding cloak, black wool heavy in his hands, and a wide-brimmed hat worn soft at the crown, the band sweat-marked from miles Clive had never ridden. He tried them on before the small mirror. In the low lamp, he did not look like the teller from the bank. He looked like any drifter passing through. He waited until full dark. The moon was thin. He kept off the main street and cut behind the livery, then along the wash where the ground muffled his boots. Two men stood smoking outside the saloon and did not turn their heads as he passed the mouth of the alley. He pulled the brim lower and kept walking, slow, the way a stranger walks who has nowhere to be. At the rear of the shop he stopped and listened. Nothing but wind and a dog somewhere three streets over. He tapped the back door twice, waited, tapped once more. The door opened a hand's width. Green eyes found him under the hat, then the hand pulled him inside. Dorothea shut the door and slid the bolt. She looked him over, the cloak, the hat, the mud he had not thought to knock off his heels. "You learn quick, Mr. Kensington," she said, quiet. "Half the town would trade a week's wages to know you stood here tonight. You didn't give them the chance." She took the hat from his head and hung it on a peg by the door, as if it belonged there. A single lamp burned on the table behind her. Two cups. A folded paper weighted with a stone. She turned the lamp lower and sat. "Sit down," she said. "There are things I will only say once, and I need you to hear them before you decide whether you still want to walk up to my door in daylight." Clive pulled out the chair across from her. He had made it in unseen. Whatever she said next, he could not unhear.