The first time they met, her husband introduced them. "This is Seth," said Sal, slapping his friend on the back, and Amelia smiled prettily and shook Seth's hand. "He's going to help us with our cause." Sal had told Seth all about Amelia, and Seth already admired her, but this delicate woman was not what he had expected.
Seth brought Amelia's hand to his lips and kissed it in gentlemanly fashion. "I promise I won't let you or your husband down. We're in this together."
He broke that promise, more than once.
...
The first time he really saw her was the night Sal died. He saw Sal go up in flames and he had to hold Amelia back to stop her running into the fire. Her screams were piercing.
"He's gone. He's gone," he told her, as she repeatedly pummelled him trying to get free. "There's nothing you can do." Finally she collapsed in his arms, still screaming. He stroked her hair and soothed her, promising that he would find the strikebreaker who killed Sal and make him pay.
Revenge was sweet, but Seth never got the chance to avenge Sal's death. Amelia got there first. She lit a match, slowly, deliberately, and let it fall, watching with no emotion as Sal's killer burned. Seth's anger was white-hot, but cooled eventually. Amelia's wrath was cold, merciless, and unending.
He watched her walk away from the remains of the strikebreaker, and knew in that moment that he needed her at his side.
...
The first time they kissed she was crying over Sal. He held her, assuring her that he knew what she was going through, that he had lost someone he loved too, and she responded by locking her fingers in his hair, looking him in the eyes and kissing him. They were so close by this point, it felt almost inevitable.
"Who did you lose?" she asked later, lying in his arms with her back to him.
He hesitated, not ready to tell her the whole story, not sure how she would react if she found out he was once a strikebreaker, like the man who had killed Sal. "Just a girl. We were young. It was my fault. Mine and my father's." He couldn't bring himself to mention his brother. "He didn't want to let me go."
"My father was a brute, too." She blew out smoke. "I guess they brought us together."
"I guess they did."
...
The first time she saw him in his preacher's outfit, she laughed. "You look good as a man of the cloth," she said mockingly.
"But do I look convincing? Holy?"
"Very. But why this disguise?"
"My father once killed a preacher," he said truthfully. "The preacher was a good man. I wanted to be like him, not like my father."
"And what better way to spread the word of our cause." She touched his collar. "People will believe anything from someone in this costume."
"You don't believe in anything?"
"I stopped believing in God a long time ago." Her face clouded over. "But I believe you can do this. Even in this ridiculous outfit."
"I could take it off, if you prefer." He picked her up and spun her around, before laying her down on the kitchen table.
...
Amelia opened her eyes to find Seth holding her hand. "Hey," he said, seeing her. He looked exhausted, but his smile lit his whole face up. "Thank God. I was afraid I'd lost you."
Amelia looked down at her stab wound, covered in bandages. She remembered her confrontation with the woman who had said Amelia had killed her husband. He killed mine, she had responded, I'm not sorry and the other woman had attacked.
"That woman—" she whispered, hardly able to speak. "Her husband—"
"I know. He killed Sal."
"Is she—" she began.
"She's gone," he reassured her. "It's just you and me here."
She squeezed his hand, then brought it up to her lips to kiss. "Praise the Lord."