Page 2 of A Convenient Heart
The work will get done, she told herself.
But not tonight. Tonight she had an engagement.
“Miss Harding, what’s this?”
Paul held up a folded piece of paper. One crossed with cramped handwriting in even lines. One that she recognized.
Paul must’ve opened the drawer in her desk and found the letter.
“That’s personal?—”
“Are you getting married?”
Her words tumbled over his blurted question. It was too much to hope that no one else had heard.
She felt sixteen pairs of eyes swing in her direction as she hurried toward her desk.
“That’s private,” she snapped.
Paul’s eyes widened as she came to stand beside where he sat in the hard-backed wooden chair.
She rarely used such a tone with the children.
But as she took the letter from his hand and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt, she felt blazing heat in her cheeks and realized she was breathing hard, as if she’d run up here instead of walked.
“You’re gettin’ married?” Harriet asked in the sudden empty silence.
“Course she ain’t.” Bobby Flannery piped up from across the room. “Miss Harding is a spinster and everyone knows it.”
His seatmate must’ve elbowed his side, because Bobby yelped. “What? My ma even said so.”
“That ain’t nice,” Clarissa said. “Miss Harding is pretty enough to get her a man if she wanted one.”
“Children—”
Merritt’s attempt at regaining control of the class went unheeded. Two students began arguing about her looks while Paul said, “I thought you couldn’t be our teacher anymore if you get married.”
Little Samuel looked at her with sad eyes and a now-trembling lower lip. “You don’t want to be our teacher no more?”
“Of course I do,” she told him.
But it was more complicated than that.
“She’s old!” A voice burst out from the middle of the room.
And Merritt felt her temper spark.
“Enough!” She rapped the edge of her desk with her ruler, and the children went silent.
Twenty-five might be a spinster here in the West—most girls married before they were eighteen—but Merritt wasn’told.
She bit back the words to defend herself, knowing that debating a ten-year-old would not be an effective use of her time. Though it was tempting.
“I was not planning to tell you this yet”—her heart pounded as she made her voice loud and clear—“but I am…possibly…considering getting married.”
“To who?” demanded a single voice from the back before Merritt’s raised eyebrow quelled any more noise.
“Ifyou complete today’s work diligently and make it through our rehearsal, I will tell you a bit more.”
