Much to her heartfelt dismay, Anthea Bright really was in Kansas now. And to think that it had not been long ago at all that she'd not only anticipated her residence in that state, but had deliberately chosen it. Her miscalculations weren't usually so, well, huge.
My dearest sisters:
I am delighted to be able to report to you that my first week on the job has vastly exceeded my dreams.
Anthea stared at the words, she'd just neatly penned in her precise hand -- her fourth attempt at beginning this necessary letter -- and decided they weren't entirely a lie. After all, nightmares counted as dreams, didn't they? And even in her worst ones, her imagination had proved too limited to envision the true disaster of her first week as school mistress of the Haven Township School.
I have eighteen students, ranging in age from five to sixteen, each of them bright and hardworking and imaginative.
Now, that was even closer to the truth. Though the handful of blotched, misspelled, and downright inaccurate compositions stacked at one end of the rickety table that served as her desk attested otherwise, she'd collected ample evidence during the past week of her pupils' fiendishly bright and imaginative tendencies...as long as their activities were bent toward making life as difficult as possible for their brand-new teacher.
As to the schoolhouse itself, there are three large windows on each opposite wall, and in the morning when I arrive, the room is flooded with cheerful sunshine.
Not through the windows, however. Thin boards covered four of them, and the other panes were so grimy, streaked with soot from within and mud from without, that no mere sunlight could burn through the coating.
However, plenty of light gained admittance through the wide gaps between the laths in the wall, striping the old puncheon floor like a Hudson Bay blanket. She'd have to do something about those openings soon or her ink would freeze in its well once the weather turned cold.
Perhaps she should have tried penning fiction instead of teaching to generate income, Anthea thought with wry amusement. She hadn't suspected she had such a gift for enhancing the truth.
The resounding crash of the schoolhouse door against the wall made her jump. Her pen shot across the page in a streaking line.
The school building faced west, and bright spears of late afternoon sunlight burst through the door squeezing around a broad figure that seemed to take up the entire entrance. She squinted against the light unable to make out any features except the outline of wide shoulders and great height haloed in dazzling gold.
"I --" Anthea swallowed hard, forcing formality and assurance into her voice. If she'd, learned one useful thing in her first week of teaching, it was that a good illusion of confidence was nearly as effective as the real thing. "May I help you?" she asked in tones well learned at Miss Addington's Select School for Young Ladies. A very useful skill, that particular tone.
The low growl she received in answer might have been intended as a greeting or a threat. Her heart thudding hard, she mentally cast about for an available weapon and found none. She'd been assured upon her arrival that tales of the Wild West notwithstanding, Haven was ever so much safer than her hometown of Philadelphia.
The figure stepped into the room and the door slammed shut behind him. Her eyes adjusted slowly, the hazy outline sharpening.
She would have guessed that since her arrival six days ago, she'd met nearly every resident of the small town. But not this one. She might have forgotten half the names and faces who'd dropped by the schoolhouse to pay their formal respects -- and...
