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?”
The older women looked at one another. “This afternoon,” Dora Mae replied.
“This evening,” Ruth said in the same instant.
Minnie’s hands swooped in front of her face. “Well, we hadn’t exactly decided when….”
Miss LeClair’s parasol spun to a halt. “This evening, Ah take it. And what will be the occasion? Ah ask because Ah wish to dress appropriately.” She cast a disparaging glance at Lolly’s traveling costume, then lingered on Carrie’s blue check. “Did you make that yourself?” she inquired.
“Why, yes. I sew quite a bit and…”
“Exactly,” came the murmured response. “Ah thought as much.”
That tone of voice, Lolly thought, was like the hiss of a poisonous viper. Rarely had she taken such an instant dislike to another human being, unless it was a braggadocio Rebel soldier exulting over some past victory or attacking her latest newspaper editorial.
Lady or not, Miss Green Eyes from New Orleans was just plain rude. And stuck-up. It would be pure pleasure to take some of the starch out of her no-doubt perfectly stiff petticoats.
Carrie just smiled. “Come on. I calculate it to be ninety-seven degrees in here. Doesn’t a glass of cold lemonade sound just about perfect? It will lower our body temperature at least two degrees.”
Lolly guessed there wasn’t a mean bone in Carrie’s slim, gingham-swathed body or her fact-overloaded brain. She might be a little pedantic, but that was because she was a trained teacher.
Lolly was educated, too. She had read her way through the Baxter Springs library shelves while she struggled to keep the newspaper going so she could care for her mother. Her education might have been a bit sporadic, but who cared if she’d discovered Shakespeare before she stumbled onto Plato?
Besides, she reasoned, there wasn’t one of the occupants in this musty-smelling schoolroom who couldn’t stand to learn something new. Herself included.
Lemonade sounded like a fine place to start.
“Do tell us, Miss Gundersen, Ah mean, Carrie, what do you know of Colonel Macready?” Fleurette swirled another teaspoonful of sugar into her lemonade glass.
Lolly watched Carrie’s heart-shaped face come alive at the mention of the man’s name. With such a pronounced case of hero worship, she wondered how the young woman could stomach having two rivals sipping cold drinks at the same table.
“Oh, the colonel is…well, he is just wonderful. Simply, truly…wonderful.”
“Wonderful,” Fleurette echoed dryly. She tapped her spoon against the edge of her glass and laid it on the tiny pink tea napkin provided. “Wonderful, how?”
“Oh, in every way, I assure you. I’ve known him all my life, you see. He came to live here in Maple Falls when I was four…or was I five? Let’s see, I am nineteen now, and the colonel arrived right after the war. That’s sixty-five subtracted from seventy-nine…. Yes, I was five. I remember it was on my birthday.”
“More to the point, how old is he?”
Carrie giggled. “Oh, I calculate he’s old enough to be my father and then some. But Dora Mae Landsfelter is years younger than her husband, and she said such things don’t matter in the least.”
“Carrie,” Lolly said, her voice gentle. “Could you calculate how old the colonel is exactly.”
Carrie closed her soft brown eyes for a moment. “Forty-three.”
Fleurette lifted her lips away from her lemonade. “Ah do wonder why he has not married in all this time.”
Lolly’s hand stilled on her glass. The question had occurred to her, as well. How had the town’s prize catch remained uncaught for fourteen years?
“Well,” Carrie began, lowering her voice, “some people say he lost a sweetheart in the war and never recovered. Others say he’s stubborn and set in his ways and he never before wanted a wife for fear she’d change him.”
Lolly’s ears burned. Stubborn? Set in his ways? The same had been said of her ever since she turned fourteen.
“He hardly lets anyone female into his house,” Carrie went on, “except for old Mrs. Squires. She’s kept house for him for years, but the colonel does all his own cooking, and Mrs. Squires says he even irons his own shirts. Can you imagine?”
“If he married, he would require servants,” Fleurette murmured. “Ah have had servants all my life.”
Lolly bit her tongue. Slaves, more likely. She squashed down a ripple of anger and decided to change the subject. “What is his home like?”
“It’s a big white house with gray shutters, and it has three whole floors and a music room and a library. I’ve never seen the library, but once I attended a recital in the—”
Fleurette cut her off. “Why would a bachelor purchase such a mansion?”
“Oh, he didn’t purchase it. He inherited it from his great-aunt Henrietta on his father’s side. She married a Northerner and came out west, but she died of the quinsy soon after the war…. Why, what’s the matter, Leora? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Lolly unclenched the fist she hid in her lap. Mama had died of the quinsy a month after Papa had been killed at Chancellorsville. She spoke over a tightened throat. “Nothing is the matter.”
“Do Ah understand that Colonel Macready is a Southerner?” The excitement was evident in Fleurette’s voice.
“Oh, yes, he’s a real Southern gentleman. From Virginia. He has the most courtly manners, when he wants to, that is. And he’s so tall and well formed and…” Carrie blushed and gulped her lemonade.
“Why—” Fleurette paused, pinning her gaze on Carrie “—since you seem obviously smitten with the gentleman, has he never courted you?”
Carrie gaped at her. “Me! Every single female in this town, and even some not so single, are smitten with Colonel Macready. He’s never courted any of us!”
“Perhaps because he is a Southerner, and y’all are Yankees,” Fleurette murmured.
“Or perhaps,” Lolly said in a level tone, “because he wants to be the Smitten and not the Smittee. So to speak.”
Carrie gave a whoop of laughter and clapped her hand over her mouth, then continued. Lolly watched the green-eyed, golden-haired Fleurette straighten her spine and crook her little finger into a dainty arc.
“Ah’m sure that is exactly right, Miss…May-pole. A gentleman’s heart is not easily won.”
“Mayfield. It’s Mayfield.”
“Why, of course it is,” Fleurette purred.
“In this case,” Lolly continued, “the gentleman is willing to donate his heart to finance a schoolhouse. Apparently he doesn’t care one way or the other whether he’s smitten or not.”
Fleurette tipped her head to one side like a curious robin. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”
Carrie’s hand drifted down from her mouth. “It won’t matter, ladies. The colonel has given his word on the matter. He will marry whichever one of us wins the competition. Oh, I do hope it will be me!”
“Why, my dear, Ah’d say you are enamored of the gentleman.”
“Actually,” Carrie said.