The Schoolmarm's Surprising Suitor: Poppy Valley Series, #1

By Beverly Bernard

If you're looking for sweet, clean romance that will warm your heart, look no further! 

Poppy Valley, California, is a Gold Rush town in need of a school teacher, and Clara Beth Green is a woman seeking her future. Clara is a kind, loving young lady, but she is taller than almost all of the men she meets and most of them find her intimidating. Convinced she would have better luck finding a husband in the male-dominated West, she throws caution to the wind and heads for Poppy Valley. 

Henry Fordham goes to Poppy Valley to find his fortune, and instead he finds Clara. There is nothing about her he doesn't find appealing, even her height. At first it looks as though she's unwilling to settle for a lowly prospector, but Henry has a few surprises up his sleeve that are bound to convince Clara that he's the one for her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beverly Bernard
• Release date: Jul 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513041704

Beverly Bernard

Beverly Bernard was born in the midwestern United States and currently makes her home in the Windy City. She has been a writer since childhood and enjoys crafting complex characters and stories that capture a reader's heart. She is mother to three kids and is owned by two cats and two dogs. When she isn't writing, she likes to knit and crochet, build websites, and play too many video games.

Book preview

One

A HOT, DUSTY BREEZE blew across Clara’s face as she peered out the open window of the stagecoach. She was tired and dirty and more than anything she wanted to get away from the endless rolling of the wheels beneath her. If it weren’t for the diary entries written in her own meticulous script, she would likely have lost track of how many days she had been traveling.

She drew in a breath and got a mouthful of dust for her trouble, but she didn’t notice. In the distance—yes far, but still there—were buildings. The town was in sight! The stagecoach slowed as the horses adjusted their footing to the downhill terrain, and the sharp angle afforded Clara an even better view of her new home. Spread out in the lowland ahead was Poppy Valley, California, one of the dozens of towns that had sprung up from the scrub-covered mountains in the past decade. It was a town that existed for one reason only—gold.

There was gold in the mountains and gold in the rivers and streams, although the days of stumbling across a fortune in a babbling brook were in the past. Nowadays the only gold was found by digging, and some of the fortune seekers were forming mining companies to increase their chances of striking it rich. Poppy Valley was at the base of a range that was rumored to be rich with ore, and in the last year its population had quadrupled. Although the residents of the town were still overwhelmingly male, there were enough men who had sent for their wives and children, or brought them along on their quest for riches, that the town was in need of a school. That’s where Clara came in.

Despite her mama’s best efforts Clara had yet to find a husband, and believing that the pool of suitors to choose from had been completely exhausted in Virginia, the decision was made for Clara to go West. She thought back to the conversation she’d had with her mother as they waited together for the stagecoach to arrive a fortnight ago.

You’ll be sure to find a husband there, Mama said. There are twenty men to every woman, and some of those women are harlots no man would marry.

Mama! Clara exclaimed. We are in public.

Well, tsk, tsk. You know what I mean. There are plenty of nice young men who would be happy to have a girl like you for a wife.

Clara was jolted from her daydream as one of the wheels of the coach hit a rut in the dirt.

I can’t believe we’re almost there, she said under her breath.

Really? A woman in a black dress with a too-tight bodice sat across from Clara. Thank you, Lord! she shouted.

Clara lowered her eyes. Despite the close quarters, she had not made an attempt to befriend her fellow passengers. This lady in particular, if she could be called a lady at all, was not the type of person Clara wanted to associate herself with. With a dress that barely skimmed her ankles, her high feathered hat, and her boisterous manner it was clear that she was heading to Poppy Valley for a completely different type of employment than Clara. Like most of the mining towns, there were more saloons and dance halls than any other type of establishment, and there were always jobs for young ladies of low breeding and no morals. Mama had warned Clara to stay away from girls like that.

In addition to Miss Feathered Hat, whose name was actually Stella Ruth, there were two men on the stagecoach. One young man, barely out of his teens, had spent most of the trip staring at the hundreds of miles of wilderness outside the windows of the coach. His name was John and he kept to himself, despite the efforts of Stella Ruth to engage him in conversation or, heaven forbid, in some other activity.

To Clara’s left was a fellow dressed in a smart waistcoat and hat. He had introduced himself at the beginning of the journey as Arthur Billings, an accountant from Virginia. He had tired of the East, he told her, and he was heading West to run a bank in San Francisco. He had assured her that he was respectful of ladies traveling alone and she could expect no untoward advances from him. She had smiled wryly at this declaration. She wasn’t the kind of