Page 11 of A Convenient Heart
There was something about the slight hesitation behind his words that unsettled her.
Or maybe it was the man himself.
Suddenly, thinking through all her carefully laid plans made her feel the slightest bit claustrophobic. Should she delay the wedding?
Was she having second thoughts? Or simply nervous that the time had finally come?
She shored up her smile. “That’s right. After we’re married Sunday morning, I’ll have the pageant on Monday evening, but school will be out of session for a week. We’ll have a lot of time to get to know each other after that.”
She’d thought they’d gotten to know each other through the letters they’d exchanged.
But the virile man in front of her was nothing like the dry, fact-filled letters she’d received.
“Look, I need to tell you—” He glanced around. The dining room had emptied some as the evening had worn on, other diners wanting to get home to their warm houses or go to bed. But there were still several couples and a businessman or two sitting nearby. “Do you want to take a walk?”
Take a walk? She’d imagined sitting in the warm dining room for hours, getting to know each other. She had so many questions about his family, his business, his thoughts. Was he already bored?
“We can walk to the boardinghouse,” she said, infusing her words with a smile she didn’t feel.
“I don’t?—”
But Jack’s words were cut off when a shout came from outside. A shadow passed by the window overlooking the street, and then someone burst through the front doors of the hotel lobby.
“Fire!”
The shout was enough to send her heart racing.
Jack jumped up from the table as quickly as she did, and they raced into the lobby. He had the presence of mind to grab his coats and her cape, and as they dashed outside into the icy wind, she was grateful to put her arms through the sleeves and button it up.
“Where?” she asked as she bumped into a man—Will from the livery, rushing down the boardwalk.
Will’s grim expression brought on a shock of terror. “The school, I think.”
No!
She glanced at Jack. “You don’t have to—but I must go.”
She didn’t even know what she meant to say, only knew that she had to reach the school, had to help.
She was dimly aware of him pressing close behind her as she made her way through the crowd toward the school. It was only a block away, around two corners, but time had slowed somehow and she couldn’t breathe…
Everyone in town seemed to have come out. At least, that’s what the press of bodies felt like.
She saw the flicker of orange against the cloudy sky before she was close enough to see the building.
Smoke burned her nose and brought tears to her eyes.
She pushed as close as she could, joined a bucket brigade, and passed bucket after bucket of water with icy fingers. Time seemed to crawl, but she also felt the pressing urgency. Could they save the school? More buckets passed, each one growing heavier and heavier as her arms tired. She bumped shoulders with the man at her side—the doctor, she realized belatedly.
Keep going.
Ash rained down on her bare head, swirling amongst the snowflakes on the breeze as her mind pinwheeled. Her hands were numb from the cold. Her thoughts whirled.
Had she closed the stove’s ash pit after she’d set things in order for tomorrow morning?
Had she doused the two lamps they used when cloudy winter weather blotted out the natural light from the windows?
There was a tin pail full of kindling and twigs near the stove. Had a spark somehow jumped out of the stove when she’d been closing things down?
