Chapter One
The schoolhouse had emptied an hour ago, and June still hadn’t found the will to leave her desk.
She ought to have.
Slates needed wiping and the stove needed banking.
Little Tom Hadley had abandoned his McGuffey’s reader on the bench again.
The boy lost a book a week and would lose this one as well if June didn’t shelve it, which she would do presently.
Only, the light through the western windows had turned that particular gold only October brought, the perfect color for reading, which would only be here so long.
Once she stood up to shelve little Tom’s book, she would have to admit that the afternoon was ending and that she ought to go home. But she’d walked the river road home at the same hour every weekday for four years. It’d still be there if she delayed by twenty minutes, as would Aunt Mae and supper.
For now, she could read.
She owned the copy, of course. The passages coming up next would have Elizabeth Bennet walking three miles through mud to reach her sister, and Mr. Darcy noticing that the exercise had brightened Elizabeth’s eyes, yet it would change nothing in his manner and everything beneath it. June giggled as she turned the pages.
A man might look at a woman so and not see the mud at all.
Then again, Elizabeth had walked her three miles with color in her cheeks and still had enough wit to charm a drawing room. June’s river road seldom had any mud to it, and she kept her wit folded within the pages of her books.
Which would explain why she had eighteen dollars a month to her name but no husband. Although, seeing how every married woman in Hannibal mysteriously lost her post the moment she got hitched, June’s lack of matrimony likely worked in her favor. She had company enough in Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.
She pushed her small wire-rimmed spectacles up her nose and flipped the page again.
The door opened.
Is Tom back for his reader for once?
June looked up.
The man in the doorway stood in front of the setting sun, so, for a moment, he looked like a shadow wearing a hat. Then he walked in, and the shadow resolved into a tall man with brown hair a few inches too long and a traveler’s coat better than anything June had seen in Hannibal.
“’Scuse me, ma’am.” He took off his hat. “Heard in town the schoolhouse keeps a shelf folks can borrow from. That right?”
“Uh, yes, that’s right.” June closed her book and set it down. “Though, I confess, our selection is modest.”
The shelf had barely a dozen volumes the previous schoolmaster had left behind, and June had taken upon herself to maintain.
A worn Pilgrim’s Progress, two of Cooper’s novels, a Robinson Crusoe missing its last twenty pages, a battered Ivanhoe, and a miscellany of sermons and almanacs no child would ever ask for.
“That’ll do me fine, ma’am. Ain’t got nothin’ but a long evenin’ ahead.” He crossed to the shelf and tilted his head to read the spines. “Cooper. Huh. You ever read him, Miss… ?”
“Sinclair. June Sinclair.” She rose from her desk and approached him. “I have, some time ago.”
“What’d you reckon?”
June blinked.
No one had asked her opinion on a book in… well, who knew? Years, possibly. Well, Aunt Mae had, but she only did that because she knew what June would say and wanted the pleasure of getting a rise out of her.
She blushed.
What did she think of Cooper? A great many things, obviously, all of which her mind had held perfectly organized not five minutes ago, but which now clucked around her head like startled hens.
Say something, June, anything.
“I… found him stirring in the descriptions.” June looked away from the man. “Uh, and somewhat wearying in the speeches. Though, I was perhaps too young when I read him to be fair in my judgement.”
He laughed.
Oh, was that a bad thing to say?
Gentlemen rarely cared to hear a woman contradict a famous author—stupid, June, stupid—especially ones they had been about to comment on themselves. However, he did smile at her, not past her or politely through her, so maybe she hadn’t ruined the whole conversation.
“Wearyin’ in the speeches. Hell—beg your pardon, ma’am—that’s about the truest word anyone ever said on Cooper.” He shook his head. “Mind my askin’ what you got there on your desk?”
She glanced back at her book.
A man like this, a traveler, would likely think her silly, a country schoolmistress with her nose in a love story, and find it disgraceful that she sighed over a fictional Englishman. Not that she expected him to mock her. He’d likely smile politely and tuck the moment away to tell over a drink.
Then again, he had laughed at Cooper. Perhaps, she could trust him with Austen.
“Pride and Prejudice.”
“Hm.” He nodded. “A favorite of yours?”
“The favorite.”
“Well, in that case, I reckon I’m keepin’ company above my station.” He tucked the Cooper under his arm. “Mind if I take this one on good faith? I’ll have it back in a week.”
She glanced at the shelf.
The books primarily waited for the children to take an interest in them, and June generally loaned them only to those grown folk that Mr. Pritchard, who had endowed the collection, knew.
Even then, she always kept details—name, book, date out, date returned—in a small ledger.
In four years, she’d never let anyone walk off with a volume on nothing but his word.
She ought to fetch the ledger, but she knew she wouldn’t. There was a first time for everything, and he would be the one she broke the ledger rule for.
I ought to at least ask where he’s staying.
June blushed and smiled. “Of course.”
He tucked the Cooper under his arm, went to the door, and paused with his hand on the frame. The October light came through the window and laid itself along his jaw and the unshaven shadow at his throat. That coat of his outlined perfectly the easy set of his shoulders.
“Miss Sinclair.” He put on his hat. “A man could pass through a hundred towns ’fore he found a lady kind enough to talk Cooper with him. Much obliged.”
He closed the door behind him.
June took her book and pressed it against her chest. Keeping company above his station.
What a thing for a man to say. Even more, what a thing for a man to say to her.
No, it didn’t matter. He’d be gone from Hannibal soon enough—she should’ve asked when—and she’d be back to her reading and her river road.
At least I’ll see him again when he brings the Cooper back.
She stood there a moment longer than she ought have before she scolded herself and set about closing the school.
Slates first. Then stove. Tom’s reader went on the shelf where the Cooper had been. It wouldn’t do to leave a gap in the row now, especially one at eye level like that, and—
June shook her head.
Look at me, smiling at a shelf like a girl of sixteen.
Where had she set the recitation cards? On the desk, where her book had been, of course, no other place for them to be. Aunt Mae would notice the minute June came through the door—she had a way of noticing everything, the old cat—and June had no idea what she’d say when Aunt Mae, inevitably, asked.
A lecture would certainly be on its way, and June would deserve it after lending out one of Mr. Pritchard’s books without the ledger. She’d sit through it knowing all the while she would do exactly the same thing again tomorrow if she had the chance.
She'd finished her chores around the school and taken her bonnet and stood at the open window fastening it when the voices came.
Two men, perhaps three, on the path outside the schoolhouse. Nothing odd about that. The road ran past the schoolhouse, and folks often walked it at this hour. In fact, most locals liked to meet here before heading off together.
Then he laughed—she really ought have asked his name—and June froze.
She really oughtn’t eavesdrop. His privacy belonged to him, and doubly so considering he’d likely only stayed near the schoolhouse because a local he knew had told him to wait for them there. However… she hadn’t closed the window yet, and they would have no idea she’d stopped to listen.
“—gospel truth, I swear it. Plain as a fence post and twice as straight.”
“Whit, tell me you didn’t.”
“Sure did. Made her recommend me a book.” He laughed again. “Had to see how long she’d talk to a man ’fore she figured out he was funnin’ her.”
The other voice chuckled. “How long?”
“Hell, she still hadn’t figured it out when I left. Poor thing went the color of a beet when I asked what she was readin’. Pride and Prejudice, she says, like she was confessin’ to murder.”
The other man cackled. “You’re a bastard, Whit.”
“I’m a bored bastard is what I am. Spinster like that—schoolmarm, spectacles, the whole sorry kit—she’ll think on me a week. Cheapest entertainment I can find ’fore I leave.”
“What’re you gon’ do with the book?”
“Pitch it in the river, most like. What do I need a book for?”
Then another voice joined them and took them away.
June stood in the middle of that schoolroom with her bonnet strings half-tied and her hand on her throat.
She would not cry. Crying would only confirm her a fool thrice over, as she had heard all this before, in other rooms, though people tended to be more subtle when they spoke with her face to face.
That’s what you get for eavesdropping.
She finished tying her bonnet and locked the school.
***
“You’re home late.”
June hung her bonnet on the peg. “I stayed to read for a bit.”
Aunt Mae sat by the kitchen window, mending a skirt, and looked at June over her spectacles.
Fifteen years as a widow had thinned her, but all the walking she did—with June’s full support, of course—had kept her spry.
She kept her hair, more silver than brown now, pinned in the same neat coil she refused to change no matter how much June asked.
June looked down. “What?”
“Sit down. I’ll pour.”
Ever since Uncle Thomas had died, Aunt Mae had stopped pretending to like her tea weak, so June could right about leave her spoon standing in it.
“Now… ” Aunt Mae settled across from her. “Who was he and what did he do?”
“Aunt Mae, I don’t—”
“June Eleanor Sinclair.”
June gulped and told her. Aunt Mae usually took things on the chin when it came to talking and debates, but using your full name meant the time for arguments had ended.
So, June told her everything.
When June finished, Aunt Mae set down her cup. “I got half a mind to track that fella’ down and box his ears good.”
“Aunt Mae.”
“I truly do.” She reached across the table and put her hand over June’s. “But I won’t. You know why?”
June shrugged.
“’Cause he ain’t the trouble. You are.”
“What?”
“You been wastin’ your evenings on women who pity you and men that ain’t fit to look at you. Hell, child, you need to clear out of Hannibal altogether. This town’s made up its mind about you, and that ain’t fixin’ to change.”
“I know.”
“Good.” Aunt Mae rose, went to the sideboard, and returned with Matrimonial News under her arm. “Patty left this for you a few days back. I had a notion we’d be readin’ it together ’fore long.”
June skimmed the pages.
A widower in Kansas wanted a stout woman to help him keep hogs.
Stout did a great deal of work in that sentence, and June would not be reading the rest of his advertisement.
A man in Dakota Territory needed a wife fond of children and slow to talk back.
Slow to talk back. This man had really written this and sent it to the paper.
A bachelor in Denver looked like a good pick for a moment, but he wanted a woman with no spectacles.
Aunt Mae snorted at that. June set her teacup down with a thump.
What in the world do spectacles matter?
Then she found Mr. N. Calloway.
A horse rancher in the Wyoming Territory, near Lander, wanted a wife of intellect and education to teach three young children in his charge.
True, the advertisement said no romantic illusions, but nothing could be perfect.
At this point, June would just share Mr. Darcy with Elizabeth and be content with her lot.
“This one.”
Aunt Mae raised an eyebrow. “Wyoming’s a fair piece from here.”
“I know.”
“You sure about it?”
“I am.”
“Well…” Aunt Mae set the paper down. “Reckon we’d best get to writin’.”
***
Dear Mr. Calloway,
I write in response to your notice in Matrimonial News. My name is June Sinclair. I am six-and-twenty, in good health, and have served as schoolmistress in Hannibal these past four years. I know the McGuffey Readers and the methods of recitation and have taught children ages of five to fourteen.
I am capable and willing to undertake the instruction of your three children.
One matter I must mention plainly, if you are to accept me. My aunt, Mrs. Mae Sinclair, is my only living family. I cannot come to your ranch without her. She is fifty years of age and in sound of health. Though she can no longer work a full day, she can be of use in your household.
If this is not an obstacle, I await your reply.
Sincerely,
June Sinclair.