Heart of Gold (A Gold Rush Romance)

by Ali Olson

  Mr. Lancaster dipped his head again, and her heart went out to the man. “Emily and Joseph traveled out here from St. Louis when little Joe was just a babe-in-arms. They had saved up some and wanted to make a go of it,” he began.

  He looked around at the wide expanse of the room, thoughtful. “Seems they did well for themselves.” After a quick pause, he continued, “Emily was my only sister, all the family I had, and we would write to each other a fair amount. She was happy, in love with her husband. And she thought the world of her son.”

  Alice willed the tears in her eyes not to fall as she heard of the loving parents whose lives were cut short. She waited for him to continue, and after a good long time, he did. “I came out for a visit, and Joe took to me immediately. We had a wonderful time those first three weeks, the four of us. Then the accident happened, and that was when everything changed. I expected him to be sad—I was distressed my own self, of course—but this anger is what has me flummoxed.”

  Alice could not let herself look at the aching man any longer without doing something she would regret. Instead, she retreated into her own thoughts, reviewing the story for something, anything, that might lead to Joe’s behavior. It simply made no sense. The man was right—depressed was to be expected, angry at the world or the situation, possibly, but angry at the one person left to him, his only family? Why?

  She tried to picture the unfolding of events, looking for the hidden clue that would explain Joe’s behavior. He had always been such a steady boy. It simply didn’t make sense.

  “Alice? Are you coming, dear?”

  Alice looked up, startled, at the sound of Mrs. Leach’s voice. Mr. Lancaster and the older woman were near the door, looking back at her. She had not heard the coach arrive or realized the two of them had even risen, she was so lost in her own thoughts. She pushed them all away for the time being and hurried toward the door, relieved the night was over at long last.

  The two women gathered their bonnets and shawls back from the hooks where they had been placed what felt like hours before, and then they stepped out into the night. First Mrs. Leach, then Alice, climbed aboard the carriage in the near-darkness, lit only by a lamp attached to their vehicle and the diffused light seeping from the house’s large windows.

  Alice was so mentally exhausted, she could hardly see straight. The whole evening, Thom—Mr. Lancaster—had been polite and charming, interesting, and even his honesty and pain about his recent troubles endeared him to her. And it was nearly more than she could cope with.

  Being attracted to him physically was one thing—even if it was such a strong attraction that it made it nearly impossible to focus—but becoming fond of him was something very, very different and much more unsettling.

  When he had taken her hand before she walked out the door after Mrs. Leach, she had been curt, almost rude, in her farewell. It was hard enough to keep from closing the gap between them and pressing her lips against his; controlling that urge and being pleasant at the same time seemed impossible. She turned away so abruptly and climbed into the vehicle, almost forgetting to let the driver, Mrs. Leach’s eldest son, help her rather than clambering aboard herself in her haste.

  Now, as the coach rattled away, and the woman beside her chatted about how pleasant he was and her surety that they would find a solution to Joe’s puzzling behavior the next night, Alice was unsure if she felt chagrined at her behavior or hopeful that he would realize it was best to keep his distance when they met again. Possibly some of both. She could not say if he had any feelings for her—he had not said or done anything to outwardly show his thoughts in that regard—but she had a sneaking suspicion he was experiencing the same pull she did. It made the situation no easier to manage.

  Alice awoke the next morning feeling worn and haggard. Her mirror reflected back a sallow face with dark circles under the eyes that showed exactly how little sleep she had gotten. She poured water from the pitcher on her washstand into the large ceramic bowl and washed her face vigorously, trying to rub life into her skin.

  The entire night had been spent tossing and turning, imagining unrealistic scenarios involving Thomas Lancaster, trying to force herself not to think about him. She had devised all sorts of mental acrobatics to try and convince her mind to accept that he was out of reach, and even if he wasn’t, how foolish it would be to trust another man like that. Her body yearned for him, but her mind knew far better what would happen if she acted on those physical wants, even if it continued to conjure up delectable recreations of him that made the desire worse.

  Alice gave her face one more brisk scrub, then looked at herself again. The woman in the mirror looked slightly ill, but resolute. She had come to the conclusion, and rightly so, that even without past experiences that provided very good reasons to stop any possibility of a relationship, physical or otherwise, her employment simply would not allow it. There was nothing more to it.

  She knew that plenty of women taught for a short while, then left the profession in order to get married, but that simply was not an option for her. She loved her employment and had no desire to leave it, which meant even the most casual courtship was out of the question. She either needed to keep her distance completely, or she must resign as the town’s schoolteacher. Those were the rules. There was no in-between.

  She looked away from the mirror, not exactly happy, but determined. She would need to find a way to avoid this man and wait for the storm to pass. After a short time, she was confident she would be able to discover how to overcome her passions, and eventually Thomas Lancaster would lose interest in her and marry someone else, or he would move away.

  Those thoughts were supposed to help strengthen her resolve, but all they did were twist her heart unpleasantly. As she pulled her hair into a bun so tight it was painful, she whispered aloud to her image, “Gather your wits, woman.”

  It helped very little.

  Alice stepped softly down the steps of the still-quiet home that belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Leach and walked into the kitchen as she did every morning, hoping that she would find a salve for her nerves before she left for the schoolhouse. As usual, Mrs. Leach was already there, flour spread for dough-making, the little cooking stove in the corner heating the room.

  “Good morning, dear,” Mrs. Leach called out happily as she bustled to gather the small meal of oats and bread she had prepared for Alice.

  Alice smiled at the motherly treatment. Since she came to the town of Shasta nearly two years ago, and was told the Leaches had offered her a room in their home, Mrs. Leach had treated her with more kindness than she could have ever imagined. “Thank you, Mrs. Leach,” she said as plates were set before her on the small table that sat in the corner of the kitchen. “How are you doing this morning?” Alice asked.

  Mrs. Leach smiled at her, but her eyebrows were knitted with concern. “I’m fine as can be, Alice, but how are you? You seem a bit peaked. Might you need to cancel school today? I am quite sure the students wouldn’t mind a free day.”

  Alice had expected this reaction. Mrs. Leach rarely missed anything. She shook her head. “No, I will be quite fine. I just had difficulty sleeping last night.”

  Mrs. Leach nodded thoughtfully. “Worrying about little Joe and his frightful behavior, the poor boy.”

  Alice simply bent lower over her meal and spooned more into her mouth rather than respond. Mrs. Leach sat at the table beside her and patted Alice’s hand. “Well, dear, don’t you worry. I’m sure we will come up with a solution somehow. I am quite willing to stay at that house all evening if we need to in order to help that poor man.”

  The thought of staying all night in Thomas Lancaster’s home nearly made Alice choke on her food, but she managed to swallow with difficulty. She pushed the bowl away, no longer hungry. “I ought to get going to the schoolhouse,” she said, standing.

  Mrs. Leach nodded and picked up the pail that had been sitting on the corner of the table, handing it to Alice. “Enjoy your day, dear.”

  Wi
th one last thank you and a kindly smile from the older woman, Alice took the lunch pail Mrs. Leach had prepared and left the room before the topic of Joe or Thomas Lancaster could come up again and make her more distraught than she already was.

  As she left the house, Alice breathed in the cool freshness of the morning, holding her shawl tight around her arms. She walked the short distance to the schoolroom, each step so familiar she could walk it with her eyes shut if required. After passing a few clapboard homes similar to that belonging to the Leach family, she turned and walked through the small field that separated the schoolroom from the town. It was lovely in the crisp morning, and Alice tried to gather strength from the calm stillness, but her mind seemed to have a will of its own.

  She unlocked the one-room schoolhouse and began a small fire in the stove to dissipate the morning chill, attempting to prepare herself mentally for the day. Normally, her morning routine was filled with checklists to ensure everything was ready before the students arrived, a calm countdown of steps that were soothing in their predictability. But today her mind was unruly and had difficulty focusing; it was far too absorbed with Joe, his mysterious outburst, his handsome guardian, and a hundred other related thoughts that had nothing to do with the lessons she was expected to teach in only a few minutes.

  She was glad she had several activities already planned for the day—there was a good chance she would be nearly useless as an educator, with her mind so distracted.

  Alice wrote the directions for each grade onto the large blackboard nailed to the wall behind her desk as the students began to trickle in, hanging their coats on the hooks that lined one wall of the room, some setting small metal pails or cloth sacks beneath if they lived too far to return home for lunch. She checked her small pocketwatch for the time and grasped the worn wooden handle of the heavy bell that always sat on her desk.

  She marched to the door and leaned out, swinging her arm up and down in a long arc, the loud clanging calling any last children lingering outside to start the day. As the students, twenty-two in all, took their seats beside others of the same level, she passed the primers out and explained the first lesson of the day—a competition to hunt through their books and complete a variety of tasks based on their grade level group. The grade that completed all the tasks successfully first would get extra play time.

  The students had done similar activities before, and all began with gusto, bent low over their primers and slates, shouting with excitement as they found the answer, discussing the solution with the students around them, and generally keeping themselves occupied. It allowed Alice to sit at her desk and monitor without much thought. She let the noise of productive children wash over her, calming her mind.

  After several minutes, she focused her attention on Joe, who was helping his partner, actively attacking the challenge. What was going on with that boy? She would need to mull over that one, and hopefully have some answer before visiting his house again that night.

  As the day passed and the students moved from one activity to another, Alice felt no nearer to solving the puzzle. It was a struggle to keep her head from sinking onto the desk, heavy with exhaustion and muddled thinking. She knew that using all the activities she had invented in one day would leave her struggling to find new ideas for tomorrow’s lessons, but she simply could not will herself to do anything so complicated as lecturing.

  In the last half hour before the students were freed for the afternoon, Alice was walking around the room, trying to keep her eyes open and brain focused on the children around her, when she passed the window and spied another problem that was sure to make her day even more unsettling: Mr. Wilson, the head of the school board, was sauntering toward the schoolhouse, his demeanor determined. The moment she glimpsed his figure crossing the field, Alice turned to the students, who were all standing and practicing short plays to present to the class. She raised her voice above the din and said, “Children! Mr. Wilson is here! Page fifteen,” as she rushed toward the front of the room.

  The room quieted and twenty-two pairs of eyes turned to gaze at her, but only for a second. Then, in a flash, the small bodies were in their desks, pulling primers close and opening them to page 15, erasing their slates, rushing to copy whatever that page demanded of them.

  Even in her dismay that Mr. Wilson had chosen this particular day to arrive so unexpectedly, Alice had to smile at their instant reaction. Every time an adult came, she was pleased at how well they did their part in the agreement she had settled with them when she first became the teacher: fun lessons only if they kept her out of trouble with the school board.

  She had been worried at first that her artifice would quickly become known and she would be doomed to educate only in the expected manner, but the children had amazed her. Apparently the previous teacher had been something of a stick in the mud, and the students were happy to comply if it would free them from that monotony. Even the youngest children, who had only ever been taught by Alice, had heard the stories of hours of silent memorization and copying from primers, and they jumped to attention with the rest, never breathing a word of the trickery.

  Alice had never found out why the other teacher had left so abruptly months before she arrived in Shasta, but her predecessor’s refusal to budge from the accepted curriculum had certainly made Alice’s life much easier. She secretly thanked the other woman as the classroom descended into silence.

  While the students did their part, Alice hurried to erase all incriminating evidence from the blackboard.

  By the time the door creaked open a few seconds later, Miss Crenshaw was walking slowly through the silent rows, pointing occasionally to a slate or a book as the children worked. She looked up, her face showing only agreeable surprise at the unexpected visit. The sunlight streaming through the door was blocked by the bulky figure of Mr. Wilson. He was portly and well over forty, and his double chins and thinning hair looked out of place in the small classroom filled with the accoutrements of youth.

  The children continued working without looking up as their teacher strode to the back of the room, extending her hand to the man. “Good afternoon, Mr. Wilson. This is quite a surprise.”

  He grasped her hand in his, a cool sweaty grasp that felt remarkably like she had stuck her hand in a bowl of ground meat. She had to force herself not to pull away or wipe her hand on her skirt after he let go. Despite years of tolerating his presence, she still found herself vaguely uncomfortable around him.

  His voice, too loud in the quiet room, was jovial and friendly. “Hello Miss Crenshaw. Just came by to see how everything is going. Please don’t mind me.”

  With that, he took a seat in an empty desk at the back of the room, hardly able to fit his form into the allotted space. Alice turned away with distaste at the turn of events, but she hid her emotions from him and the students. There was something more than just the annoyance of keeping the students quiet or the fear of losing her position that made her feel discomfited when he was in the room, but she was unsure precisely what it was about him that bothered her so. And his barging in without any advance notice was a disagreeable change from the normal pattern of things that she certainly hoped would not be repeated.

  Mr. Wilson sat and watched as the students worked and Alice walked through the schoolhouse, noiseless but for the scratching of chalk on slates and the occasional whispered question. Finally, the end of the school day arrived and she released the students. They quietly stowed away their primers, slates, and chalk and trooped out of the room, attempting to hide the fact that they were as happy as she was the day was finally over.

  It was only when the last of the students had gone that Mr. Wilson moved from his spot, standing up with some difficulty and slowly walking through the maze of desks to join her at the front of the room. The closer he came, the more her dread rose, and she wanted nothing more than to huddle in her bedroom back at the Leaches’ home, away from everyone.

  Mr. Wilson only stopped his forward progression when he was s
tanding so close to her that there were only a few inches between them.

  It unsettled her how near he always stood when he spoke to her, one of his many personality quirks that disconcerted her. As the main voice of the school board, though, he was not someone whose behavior she could correct, so she moved behind the large teacher desk in an attempt to put more distance between them, finding an excuse to do so in a pile of papers on her desk that desperately needed to be straightened.

  In the most sincere voice she could feign, she said, “It is good to see you again, Mr. Wilson. Is there anything I can help you with today?”

  He rested one hand on his belly, which jutted out so far that his stretched vest seemed as if it would burst any second. His thick pink lips split into what she knew was supposed to be a friendly smile, despite the fact that it made her want to grimace in return. “No, nothing today, Miss Crenshaw. I wanted to see how the students are getting along, that’s all. They seem to be very quiet and well-behaved,” he responded.

  He said the last as if it was the true measure of a good education. She responded with a simple, “Thank you, sir,” hoping that would be enough to send him off.

  “You are quite welcome, my dear, quite welcome. We highly appreciate what you are doing with these children. You are certainly an asset to our little town here. Keep up the good work, and I will come again to see you soon!”

  With that, he made his way back through the small room, knocking a few desks out of position, like the wake of a large ship. At the door, he gave her one last friendly wave before disappearing.

  The moment he was gone, Alice flopped into the chair of her desk and dropped her head until her forehead rested on the dark wood, weary from what felt like an interminable day. And it was not over yet—she was still expected to go to Thomas Lancaster’s house and help with his new ward, which made her both anxious and oddly excited. She wasn’t sure which feeling was worse.