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
