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“He was a Reb, ma’am. But not anymore. War’s been over some years now.”
“I am aware of that.” She brushed off her skirt, keeping her head down so her black straw bonnet shielded her face. So, Mr. Macready had been a Confederate soldier. Papa had fought on the Union side. Her saucepan was boiling over.
“What,” she said in as steady a voice as she could manage, “precisely has the colonel ‘figured’?”
“That you all could sign up at the schoolhouse first. That way, we’ll know how many.”
She tried hard not to frown, she really did. Frowning just added wrinkles to her already sundried face. Not that anyone knew how parched her skin was; no one but herself ever touched her cheek or her nose, or any other part of her. Which was the reason why she was braving the wilds of Oregon instead of withering into an old maid in Kansas.
“That way you’ll know how many what?”
Henry Morehouse studied his dusty brown button-top shoes. “I’d rather not say, Miz Mayfield. Best we just go along and do it. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Henry?” Back in Kansas, grown men had quaked at that tone. She used it now because she was exasperated.
The boy shuffled two steps backward. “Don’t usually answer to Henry,” he mumbled. “My friends call me Hank.”
Lolly stepped toward him. In her stocking feet they were exactly the same height. “Hank, then. Best we just ‘go along and do’ what?”
“S-sign up, ma’am. Like I told ya.”
“Sign up for what?” She narrowed her eyes in her best Pin the Polecat look and watched the Morehouse boy bite his lower lip.
“For, uh…for what the colonel figured, ma’am. That’s all I can tell ya, till we get to the schoolhouse.”
Lolly spun on her heel, then wished she hadn’t. Ignoring the bite of wood splinters through her stocking, she collected her shoes from the platform, rescued Hank’s mashed hat from the railroad tracks and returned to the motionless boy.
“March,” she ordered.
“Oh, yes, ma’am.” He started to salute, then realized his error and grinned sheepishly at her. “Just follow me.”
The schoolhouse sat smack in the center of a field of blue lupine and scarlet Indian paintbrush. A wandery path snaked its way through the ankle-deep blooms to a run-down building that looked more dilapidated than any farmer’s neglected barn in Kansas. Why, the gaps between the split logs weren’t even chinked! She could tell they had been at one time, but the mud-and-straw daubing had dissolved to dust. The wind, or the snow, could whistle through at will. No doubt the students froze in the winter and baked in the summer.
It was high summer now, Lolly reflected as she zigzagged along the path behind Hank Morehouse. The air brushing her cheeks felt hot, and the heavy, lazy heat pressed the air out of her lungs. The schoolhouse would be an oven.
And it was. The instant she stepped over the threshold her already-wilting underclothes stuck to her back and chest, and her muslin drawers pasted themselves to her legs. At every step she heard the skitch-skitch of her inner thighs brushing together. Could everyone else hear it, too?
The three gray-haired ladies seated behind a long oak table didn’t even look up. The only other occupants of the room were two younger women sitting off to one side, spines straight, hands folded, smiles unwavering.
Lolly crossed the uneven plank floor with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was this some sort of inquisition?
Hank clumped up to the table. “Got another one fer ya.” He plopped her satchel on top of an empty school desk and stuffed his lanky frame into the child-size seat.
All three elderly women snapped their heads up.
Lolly’s stomach tightened into a hard knot. Another one? Another what?
A large-bosomed matron in a royal-blue day dress grasped a pencil. “Name?”
“Another what?” Lolly ventured in her Refined Voice.
The woman’s eyebrows waggled. “Bride,” she said. A satisfied smile spread over her face. “Name?”
“Leora Mayfield.” Lolly swallowed. “But I believe I am the only bride. At least that was my understanding from the newspaper advertisement.”
“Oh, no, dearie,” a lilting voice sang. “There’s no profit in just one bride.”
“Profit?”
“Well, you see, dearie,” the woman cooed. “We, that is the Maple Falls Ladies Helpful Society, are determined to finance construction of a new schoolhouse. You can see for yourself that this one is in such sad disrepair, and—”
“Let me tell it, Minnie.” The Bosom in Royal Blue made a sweeping gesture. “This schoolhouse was built back in twenty-seven, you see, when old Abel Svensen left us a small bequest in his will.”
“That was over fifty years ago,” Minnie interjected, her hands fluttering as she spoke. Dressed in a lavender-sprigged dimity, the tiny woman looked like a dainty butterfly trying to decide where to land.
“Now,” Royal Blue continued, “the walls are collapsing, the floor is buckling, the outhouse needs—”
“Dora Mae Landsfelter!” Minnie’s hands danced. “Not in polite company.”
Dora Mae turned snapping blue eyes on Lolly. “So you see, Miss Mayfield, that is why we need a new schoolhouse.”
“But…”
“Why,” the older woman continued in a no-nonsense tone, “we, the ladies of the Maple Falls Helpful Society, have resolved to raise the necessary funds.” She held Lolly’s gaze in an unblinking look.
“Why,” chimed the third woman, rising from her chair behind the table, “the Helpful Ladies are sponsoring this competition.”
Lolly blinked at the three. “Competition?”
“To be the bride!” Minnie’s hands swooped and circled in the warm air. “Isn’t it exciting?”
Exciting? Lolly pondered the word. Being a bride would certainly be exciting. The answer to her prayers. All her life she’d longed to fall in love and marry, have a family, a home of her own. Now, as she approached her thirtieth year of virginity, she’d given up on the fall-in-love part. She just wanted to get married and have a family, like other women.
But a competition?
“What kind of competition?” She tried to use her Kansas Quaking voice, to no avail.
The lace ruffles at Minnie’s neck shuddered with excitement. “Oh, dearie, I’m so glad you inquired. Our competition—”
“Let me tell it,” Dora Mae interrupted. “First, the candidates will—”
“I thought up that part,” the third woman chirped. “Let me tell it!”
“Candidates?” Lolly whispered. Candidates?
“Of course,” Dora Mae exclaimed. “What is a competition without competitors? Ruth, you didn’t make that part at all clear.”
Ruth Underwood’s round, pleasant face fell. “Oh, of course, the competitors.” She tipped her head toward the two young women seated against the wall. “Miss LeClair just arrived yesterday. And—”
Dora Mae raised an admonishing hand and took over. “And our own hometown candidate is Miss Gundersen. She’s the schoolteacher, so we thought…”
Minnie’s hands took flight. “We selected our schoolteacher to represent all the other women in Maple Falls, the ones who—”
“Who have been pursuing our prize bachelor, Colonel Macready, for years. The ladies of the Helpful Society thought it best to avoid infighting among our native population.”
Lolly needed to sit down. Her head spun, and her undergarments were beginning to feel squishy against her hot skin. Worst of all, she wanted to laugh. Papa always said if something funny went by, notice it. Well, now she was noticing it like crazy. This whole idea was ludicrous.
She had been duped. She’d sold the newspaper office and vacated her room at the boardinghouse in Baxter Springs and come out to Oregon to…to…well, not to marry, as it turned out. To compete for the groom!
It was too much. Simply beyond the pale.
At that moment a disturbing idea flitted into her consciousness. “What is wrong with Colonel Macready?”
Three pairs of eyes widened in consternation. Dora Mae’s pencil catapulted out of her fingers and clicked onto the floor. “Wrong?”
“Oh, dearie, you can’t be serious?” Minnie fanned her face with her fingers.
“That man is God’s gift to the feminine gender,” Ruth added. “Why, even my old heart quakes something terrible when he as much as walks by, and I’ve been—”
“Married for thirty-four years,” Minnie finished for her.
“Thirty-five years, Min. Makes no difference. That man is a man.”
“I see,” Lolly said. “And we, the three of us—” she glanced at the two young women now perched at the edge of their chairs “—are supposed to…”
She couldn’t say it. Something inside her rebelled at the thought of having to compete for a husband. By all rights, in a civilized world, it should be the other way around. He should fight for her. After all, Cinderella did not chase after the prince, did she?
On the other hand, Cinderella wasn’t counting the days until her thirtieth birthday. A lump of hot coal plopped into her chest.
Lolly’s gaze traveled over the trio of Helpful Ladies to rest briefly on Hank Morehouse, slumped in decided disinterest over her satchel, his eyes shut. She forced her attention to the other two candidates.
Both young. Twenty at the most. One, dressed in a stylishly cut emerald-green silk with matching shoes and a fringed parasol, looked the perfect Southern lady. Miss LeClair, no doubt. Even in the wilting heat, not one hair straggled from her crown of golden ringlets.
The other woman, seated next to Miss LeClair, looked even younger in a pretty blue-checked gingham with pearl buttons all the way to the hem. Her soulful brown eyes were set in a rather plain-featured face.
Lolly knew exactly what had driven herself to this step. What, she wondered, was wrong with them?
Perhaps, a voice whispered, they are as desperate as you are.
She eyed the younger women again. Both held her gaze for a brief moment, and in that instant Lolly recognized something. Whatever their reasons, whatever their differences, they were all sisters under the skin. They all wanted to get married.
“It’s for the school, dearie. You do see that, don’t you?” Minnie’s sugary voice floated to her over the buzzing in her ears.
“For the children,” Dora Mae added. “Twenty-seven students will attend the Maple Falls school come the fall term. They simply must have a new—”
“All right, all right,” Lolly murmured. “A schoolhouse is a fine thing in a community.”
Dora Mae thrust the pencil at her. “Just sign right here, Miss Mayfield.”
“And then,” sang Minnie, her hands stroking the air, “you can meet the other brides.”
Chapter Two
Dora Mae smoothed the creases in her royal-blue skirt, captured Lolly’s hand and tugged her across the floor. “May I introduce Miss Fleurette LeClair, from New Orleans. Miss Leora Mayfield.”
The green-silk-clad woman tipped her head. Her face wasn’t the least bit welcoming. It wasn’t even friendly. Her green eyes shot ice chips up and down Lolly’s plain black travel ensemble. Lolly tried to smile.
The perfect lips opened. “Wheah you from?”
“Um…well, I’m from Baxter Springs, Kansas. I used to run a news—”
“Oh,” Miss LeClair sniffed. “That explains it.”
Lolly’s mouth opened of its own accord. “Explains what?”
“All that black,” Fleurette drawled. “And, my heavens, yoah shoes.”
“What’s wrong with my shoes? They’re brand-new. I ordered them from Bloom—”
“It’s summertime, honey. Or have you not noticed?”
“And this,” Minnie interrupted with a flutter in her voice, “is Miss Careen Gundersen. Most everyone calls her Carrie, and she was born and raised right here in Maple Falls.”
Carrie extended her hand and enfolded Lolly’s in a firm grasp. “I don’t in the least object to black in the summer,” she murmured. “It’s quite elegant.”
Lolly smiled at her, then turned her gaze to include Miss LeClair. “I am pleased to meet you both, even under these rather odd circumstances.”
Her remark met with a prolonged silence.
“I mean, it is a bit odd, don’t you think? All three of us competing for the same—”
“Decidedly,” Miss LeClair acknowledged with a little nod that made her ringlets bounce.
“Perhaps just a bit,” Carrie allowed. “But you haven’t met Colonel Macready yet. He—” she drew the word out on a long sigh “—makes it all worthwhile.”
“Really,” murmured Miss LeClair.
Carrie beamed. “I’ve been calculating the odds. I’m quite good at mathematics, being a school-teach…”
Her voice trailed off as Miss LeClair pivoted and headed for the doorway, unfurling her parasol on the way.
“I am not interested in mathematical odds,” she said over her shoulder. “It is a lady’s breedin’ and accomplishments that will tip the scale.”
Her cool-as-silk tone hinted at an assumed superiority that made Lolly’s lips tighten. The back of her neck began to tingle. For a fleeting moment she imagined a jungle, tangled green vines full of twittering birds and silent, deadly snakes. Deep inside her a kill-or-be-killed instinct stirred.
Carrie broke the awkward quiet. “Let’s all go over to the hotel and have some lemonade, shall we?” Her earnest brown eyes rested on Lolly, then on Miss LeClair. Lolly watched Fleurette deliberately turn her back and address the Helpful Ladies.
“When am Ah to meet Colonel Macready?”
