Lilith Saintcrow - The Damnation Affair

Li Ang made some remark in her native tongue. She could have been calling him a dogfaced monkeylicker, for all he knew; all Chinois sounded the same to him. But at least she said it nicely enough.

“I don’t worry so much about little Hammis or some of the othern. It’s the older ones.” He popped the last bit of biscuit in his mouth. “Like Tommy Kendall, for example. Or that Browis boy. Like to send her home in a sobbing heap. Maybe I should have a quiet word, you think?”

Li Ang shrugged and made another short comment. Jack sighed, scratching at his forehead. “Well, they’re likely to take that nose in the air as a challenge. Quiet word might sort it out, or might make ’em nastier. God damn , Li Ang, why do I always end up talking around you?”

“Lo-nu-lee,” she half-sang as she charmed the water in the washsink afresh, sparks of mancy crackling. “Jack is lonely.”

Well, shit. I knew that. His mouth pulled sourly against itself, and he balanced the plate and cup on the door. I should just shut up while I can.

It took the schoolmarm a damnably long time to get ready, and his mood didn’t grow any brighter. At least he refrained from opening his fool mouth anymore, and Li Ang collected his plate with a dark look and shuffled away.

By the time he heard a light step in the hall, he was half-ready to tell the Boston miss something had come up and he wasn’t available to squire her around all damn day. His mouth was dry and he’d already wiped his hands on his pants, cursing himself as the bacon grease made itself felt.

She looked cool and imperturbable in some sort of flowered dress, a pale ruffled parasol at her side and her hat perched smartly on brown curls. As if she was about to go stepping out on a Boston street instead of sitting in a dusty wagon with him, going to look at a one-room schoolhouse that was probably as fine as a chicken coop to her delicate sensibilities.

“Good morning, Mr. Gabriel.” She was even wearing gloves , for God’s sake. She offered her hand as if she’d never met him before. “I must apologize for my previous disarray. Shall we?”

His brain froze like a hunted rabbit and his mouth decided to mumble. “No trouble.” Under the gloves her fingers were slim and fragile.

She don’t belong here. He swallowed, dryly, and her dark eyes mocked him for being dirty and shapeless. Jack Gabriel reclaimed his hand, jammed his hat back on his head, and mumbled something else.

It didn’t figure to be a pleasant afternoon.

Miss Bowdler’s Book of Charms For Frontier Living had been quite adequate so far, but Miss Bowdler’s Book For Schoolteachers had not prepared her for a ramshackle barn of a building still smelling of raw wood probably hauled from the distant, frowning mountains with a tiny outhouse tucked behind it like a secret. It had a bell, certainly, and a very new slate board. Fine gritty sand drifting over the floor, riding drafts that bore a striking resemblance to a maelstrom. The long rickety seats looked decidedly uncomfortable, and the desks sloped a bit. A rack of pegs for coats and the like, a boot-scraper near the door, a potbellied stove that would perhaps be beyond her powers to keep lit, and precious few windows added to the general air of “barn.”

But she essayed a bright smile. “This will do very well, I think. Was it much trouble to build?”

He gave her a look that suggested she was perhaps a trifle soft in the head. “Got to build everything, out here.”

Well, of course. Slightly irritated, she forced her fingers to unclench. “So it was trouble.” Ill-tempered of her, of course, but she had the idea manners were perhaps missing in this quarter of the country. Or if not, they were certainly lost on this inhabitant of said quarter. “I apologize.”

“Didn’t mean that, ma’am. Just meant, we were afraid you’d be offended. Not quite what a Boston miss might be used to.”

There are slums in our fair city, sir, that would put this to shame. Though she had never gone a-treading them. It was not the thing for a young lady; but Robbie had brought back bloodcurdling stories more than once.

In the absence of a clear trail to Robbie’s whereabouts, the least she could do was attempt the employment she had pursued and was expected of her.

Perhaps a peace offering to this uneasy man would not go amiss. “It seems solid enough. I am greatly heartened.”

“Thank you kindly.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. How had she set herself wrong with him? If he disliked her so thoroughly, why had he elected himself to show her this place? Mrs. Granger would have been a far better choice, being on the Committee of Public Works as she was, and a matron Quite Respectable to boot.

Abruptly, Cat realized she was alone with a man, miles from civilization, and she had not even asked for a chaperone. How forward did she appear? She took a few nervous steps away, her skirts making a low sweet sound, and a stream of golden sand creaked from the rafters as the wind shifted.

“Damn dust,” he muttered, swinging his hat. “Pardon, ma’am. It’ll be less thick in here after the rains. Roof’s sound, at least, and some of us will come out and stopper up any drafty bits before winter gets bad. We was fair excited about your arrival.”

Oh, good heavens, rain. If God is merciful, I might not be here at the advent of such an event. She tried another bright smile. “I am glad to have been anticipated. Now that I have some idea of the facilities, shall we—”

“I reckon I might need a dipperful. Well’s out front, ma’am. I’ll be back.” And he vanished out the front door with long swinging strides, dark hair askew and tinged with the ever-present golden grit.

Well, do as you please, sir, as long as you leave me in peace. She shook her head, then eyed the sorry collection of long desk-boards. Slates and chalk, certainly. Rubbing-cloths were in the desk. She spied a familiar shape under a fall of oilcloth and held her breath, twitching the covering aside with two gloved fingers and finding a very sorry-looking upright piano, twanging discordantly as she touched a yellowed key. Well, a tune-charmer could not be that difficult to find even here in the wilderness; if all else failed…well, she had played worse. It might do to teach some of the more promising students a little refinement.

Though they probably needed refinement here about as much as Cat needed the hair ribbons she’d brought. She had not thought much beyond gaining the town; she had expected Robbie to show his face long before now.

Well, I am possessed of a small independence, and this is not Boston. It is a start. She sighed, smoothing the covering over the wrecked hulk of the piano. How had it been hauled so far out West? she wondered. Shuttled on the railway, or bumping along on some prairie schooner, finally fetching up here? Had it been sent by dirigible from abroad, perhaps, and washed up in this inhospitable place? Flotsam of a sort, just as she may well turn out to be?

How on earth would she find Robbie? Even here at the edge of civilization a woman did not go wandering about a town looking for a man. Perhaps she might engage someone to take a message to him—but his last missives had been rather striking in their insistence on secrecy and that Cat must not, under any circumstances, enquire openly about him.

It was a puzzle, and one Miss Bowdler’s books could not help her solve.

A faint scratching caught her attention. She frowned, glancing about. The entire barnlike structure was dead quiet, and she was abruptly conscious, again, of being miles away from anything even resembling civilization.