The Damnation Affair

schoolhouse door, her bosom—the only soft thing on that big bony body—lifted high with indignation and plump with starched ruffles. The rest of her was in severe dark stuff, and she looked so rigid with disapproval he was surprised her skirts didn’t creak.

She sallied down the stairs, head held high and the poor feathers on her hat hanging on for dear life. “Sheriff!” she crowed, her lips so pinched the word was a hoarse croak.

Oh, Lord. He tried his best not to wince yet again. “Afternoon, Mrs. Granger.”

“Do you know what she’s done?” Granger was fairly apoplectic. Her color was a deep brick-red, and strings of her graying hair stuck to her forehead, wet with sweat. She looked fit to expire right there on the steps. “Do you?”

He decided a measure of strategic befuddlement might work. “Last I heard, she was teachin’.”

“There are unrespectable women in there, Sheriff! On the very seats our children…the seats…” Letitia Granger’s jaw worked.

He tipped his hat back a little, scratched at the creased band of sweat on his forehead. He took his time with it, as if he was stupid-puzzled. “Well, where else should she teach ’em? At the church?”

That was probably the wrong thing to say, for Mrs. Granger’s eyes flashed and she sailed across the yard, dust sparking and crackling in her wake. She was so het up she was throwing mancy even though she had no Practicality, and Gabe at least had the comfort of knowing he wasn’t the only one the Boston miss had tied up in a tangle there was no working free of.

“It’s unchristian!” The woman stopped, her hands fisting at her sides. She probably packed a punch like a donkey’s kick under all that starch.

“Well, they ain’t no Magdala nuns, I’ll allow that.” He nodded, slowly. “But they paid her fair and square, and I can’t find no law against it.”

“Law? Law? It ain’t a question of law, Sheriff, and—”

“It ain’t?” He hoped she couldn’t tell the surprise on his face was a mockery. “Why are you all het up, then? And squawkin’ at me?”

She looked about ready to have a fit right there. “The town shall hear of this!” she hissed. “Do you know what she told me? That teaching was her business, and she thanked me kindly to keep myself out of it. Why, I am on the Committee! We’ll see her out! ”

That collection of biddies can’t even decide what color the Town Hall should be painted, let alone where it should be built and who’s going to pay for it. But they had put together the subscription to pay Miss Barrowe.

He’d thought about that on the ride here. If the miss didn’t watch her step, she could be sent back to Boston without a Reference.

Somehow, he thought Miss Barrowe might not mind as much as Granger thought. She’d obviously come from money and manners, which was just another puzzle about the girl. What was she doing here?

What did you come here to escape, Mr. Gabriel?

“Now, how would we get another marm out here?” he wondered, openly. “Was hard enough to get this ’un. Been weeks now, and she’s at least kept some of the little ’uns out of trouble.” He scratched at his forehead some more. “Why not just let her be?”

Granger’s lips trembled. For a moment he thought the woman might actually weep. Instead, she stuck her nose in the air and sashayed past him. He hurried to help her up into her wagon, and she snatched her hand back as soon as she had hefted her bulk up as if his heathen fingers singed. The horses weren’t happy to leave the trough, but they obeyed. Her wagon set off down the road for town, raising a roostertail of golden dust, and Gabe let out a sigh that threatened to blow his hat off his head.

I should have just never gotten out of bed this dawnin’.

The steps creaked under him, and he gave the door a mannerly tap. He opened it to find six women sitting straight-backed and uncomfortable in long desks just slightly too small, the bottom of the tabletops actually hitting their knees. Miss Barrowe, smoothing back a dark curl that looked bent on escaping, stood tense by the slate board, her fingers almost white-knuckled around a yardstick that vibrated with hurtful mancy discharged not too long ago.

Bet that’s what she hit Tils with. The sudden certainty made him want to smile, but he banished the notion, reaching up to take his hat off. No reason not to act proper. Besides, it gave him a chance to compose his expression, so to speak.

“Sheriff Gabriel.” Low, and clear. “What is it?”

Given the day she’d had, he was probably lucky she didn’t say anything worse. “Just checkin’ to see all’s well, ma’am.”

“You may sit quietly.” She pointed with the stick, at the very back row. “We are rather busy.”

“Yes ma’am.” He settled himself into a seat.

Mercy Tiergale hunched her shoulders as she bent over a slate she shared with Anna Dayne. Dark-eyed Belle and sharp-nosed blonde Trixie sat shoulder to shoulder, and the youngest of Tils’s girls, Anamarie, hunched next to tall rangy Carlota like she expected Tils to come thundering in any minute. Lace shawls more fit for the saloon than for walking around town, the comb in Carlota’s hair glimmering mellow in the late-afternoon light, Mercy’s cheap paste earrings swinging gaudily. They were a sorry picture indeed, and as out of place as a sheep in a pulpit.

But Miss Barrowe continued, in the same clear tone, patiently tracing each letter on the board. By the end of the session, the women could write their names on the slates, which Miss Barrowe collected and locked in her desk. “To keep them from misadventure at a man’s hands,” she said grimly, and the ripple that went through the saloon girls, barely controlled, reminded Gabe of a flock of minnows in a clear stream.

“Very good,” she said, standing before them with her hands clasped. “You are all quick, and docile. You are capable of being educated. I shall see you tomorrow, then. You are dismissed, ladies.”

They sat and blinked at her for a few moments. The silence was thick, and Miss Barrowe’s gaze flickered to Gabe in the back of the room. He should have been in town, looking after whatever mayhem the end of the afternoon would bring, or watching Freedman Salt’s door, or any of a hundred other tasks. But here he sat, cramped in a desk the likes of which he hadn’t seen since seminary after the orphanage, and he stared at the schoolmarm hungrily.

Mercy let out a disbelieving half-laugh. Carlota breathed a profane term Miss Barrowe pretended not to hear.

Gabe unfolded himself slowly, and he found himself the object of every gaze instead of just the marm’s. “Take you back to town, ladies,” he said, and wondered why Belle and Anamarie blushed, and Mercy’s laugh seemed more genuine this time. Miss Barrowe’s smile was like sunlight, but she suddenly looked very…fragile.

“Thank you, Sheriff.” Prim as always, but high color in her cheeks. The pulse in her throat leapt, and found an answer in his own chest.

It was at that moment Jack Gabriel admitted to himself that he was in deep water, and sinking fast. He couldn’t say he minded.

But Miss Barrowe might.

Chapter 12

Her mother would be scandalized. Her father would be amused, but perhaps also scandalized. If either of them were alive, instead of dead of Spanish flu, she would not be here.

But Cat could not find it in her heart to set her course differently.

The charm-hot water in the bathing-tub rippled as she stretched a foot up, her toes spreading as she relieved them of the pressure of being crammed into a point-toe boot all day. Her charing-charm was skinwarm, resting quiescent against her breastbone.

I struck a man in the face today. Mother would simply die.

Rather too late for that, though. Her face scrunched up, and she slid down farther in the rude copper