September 1871
Singapore, Michigan
Louise Smythe spotted her quarry and motioned her students to follow her across the sand dune. The sun shone hot for so late in the year, and the sand reflected the heat, bringing beads of perspiration to her brow.
As expected, her instructions were met with a chorus of complaints from the handful of young ladies currently enrolled in Mrs. Evans’s School for Ladies. Ranging from fifteen to eighteen years of age, the students had come to Singapore, Michigan, to better themselves. Louise taught the intellectual courses, such as literature, writing and mathematics, while Fiona Evans covered the arts. In addition, Louise included an occasional class on the sciences in order to improve the ladies’ ability to converse on all topics.
“My feet ache,” whined Linore Pace. The eighteen-year-old had landed in Singapore last fall after their ship foundered. She and five other young women were bound for the utopian colony of Harmony on Low Island. After completing the voyage on another ship, Linore had returned to Singapore in August after finding the island—and the man selected to become her husband—not at all to her liking.
“Mine too,” her cohort, Dinah, seconded. “I can’t figure how all this traipsin’ around is gonna get me a husband.”
“How this will procure a husband,” Louise corrected.
“Huh? Cure a husband o’ what?”
Louise inwardly groaned. A full summer of demonstrating proper grammar coupled with three weeks of formal instruction had failed to improve Dinah’s speech. Her writing was even worse. Suggesting that a man valued a woman who could speak properly was useless, since most of the men in town—including Dinah’s former beau—were lumberjacks and sawyers with even worse grammar.
One of the wealthier girls snorted and whispered to her pair of friends, doubtless to emphasize Dinah’s lowly estate. The three paying students always managed to separate themselves from the orphans, Dinah and Linore, whose tuition was paid by scholarship. No matter what Louise did to pull the ladies together, they always ended up in two distinct groups.
“Enough chatter!” Louise clapped her hands and stopped before her quarry, a rather sad example of the tall wormwood plant. “This is our specimen today.”
The whispers turned to giggles.
Louise was about to reprimand them when Priscilla, her perfectly curled blond hair on full display beneath a tiny straw hat, pointed past her.
“Now, that is a fine specimen.” Priscilla Bennington gave her two friends, Adeline and Esther, a look that cautioned them she had first claim on whatever she’d spotted.
All five girls sighed as one.
Clearly Priscilla was not talking about the wormwood plant. Like the rest, her attention focused on humans, especially the masculine variety. Louise turned just enough to spot what had quieted the girls’ complaints without letting them out of her peripheral vision.
Heading her way was a giant of a man, surely the tallest man she’d ever seen. Her late husband had been tall at six foot. This man must be well over six feet, perhaps even six and a half. The white shirt and navy blue trousers only accentuated his broad shoulders and muscular limbs. It being an overly warm day, he wore no jacket or coat. In spite of sleeves rolled to his elbows, he managed to look proper and formal. Atop his head sat a navy blue cap, like that worn by Mr. Blackthorn, the lighthouse keeper. Louise had heard there was a new assistant at the lighthouse. This must be the man. Neatly trimmed sandy blond hair peeked from beneath the cap on either side of his rugged, clean-shaven face.
If she’d been the girls’ age, she would have sighed too. This man was exceedingly handsome. He was also storming toward them in a most intimidating manner.
“He’s positively the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen,” Adeline sighed. The sixteen-year-old found every man she saw more handsome than the last.
Louise turned, finger to her lips, to hush such untoward comments. “A lady conducts herself with dignity at all times.”
“Even when hiking across the wilderness?” Priscilla, with her matching hats, bags and gowns, managed to irritate Louise on a daily, if not hourly, basis. “There’s sand in my shoes, and my stockings are ruined. That doesn’t even begin to address the damage to my complexion.” She tilted her parasol so it now shaded her face.
The girl came from wealth and no doubt the Evanses needed the income that such a student brought, but she was a handful. The new school had been blessed with a benefactress in Fiona Evans’s mother-in-law, who had helped to get it started and instituted the scholarships, but she could not support its continuing operation. To survive, the school must turn a profit. That meant accepting and enduring spoiled girls like Priscilla Bennington. In three weeks, the eighteen-year-old had thrown nearly a dozen tantrums and refused to follow direction. Louise suspected Priscilla had been refused by or expelled from every school in Chicago. Here, she headed up the haughty trio.
“This is hardly the wilderness,” Louise pointed out for the benefit of the other students, for whom she still had hope. “We are only a short distance from the school.”
She might as well have been talking to herself, for all five girls bunched together whispering and giggling. Louise’s calm temperament frazzled.
“Then perhaps you should return to that school.” The strong bass voice sent a jolt through Louise and brought a sudden halt to the giggling. This man was not pleased. Not at all.
Louise had endured enough opposition for one day. Though he towered over her, she would not let a perfect stranger determine what she would