The Damnation Affair

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Por Gaetano mio.

Te absolvo.

The stagecoach creaked to a stop, fine flour-white dust billowing, and Catherine Elizabeth Barrowe-Browne gingerly unlaced her gloved fingers from her midriff. Her entire body ached, both with the pummeling that was called travel in this part of the world and with the unremitting tension. Her nerves were drawn taut as a viola’s charter-charmed strings.

For a moment, the sensation of not jolting and shuddering over a bare approximation of something that in a hundred years’ worth more of wear might possibly be generously called a road was exquisite relief. Then Cat’s body began reminding her of the assaults upon its comfort over the past several days, with various twinges and aches.

Also, she was hungry. A lady was far too ethereal a creature to admit hunger, but this did not make the pangs of fleshly need any less severe.

“Damnation!” the driver yelled, and the coach creaked as the two men hopped off. The fat, beribboned woman in mourning across from Catherine let out a tiny, interrupted snore, spreading herself more firmly over the hard seat.

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