Note: This story is rated Teen for mild adult content of a sexual nature.

“Thou should churn her butter,” Jedidiah Smitt whispered to his brother. The boys were sitting on the stairs of the schoolhouse, baking in the hot summer sun while their father talked with the school marm.

They’d been silently watching Ezekiel Price’s daughter, Hester, go about her chores. All the boys watched Hester.

“Matthias said she showed him her ankle last Saturday at the barn raising,” the other boy, James, whispered back. “Her bare ankle!”

“Matthias is a liar,” Jedidiah snapped.

John sunk his spade deep in the fertile, dark earth and pulled up another shovel full. The hot sun beat down on his back, heating the muscles through the plain cotton shirt he wore. The boys sat before the school building and whispered about Hester and the way her body moved when she churned butter.

Hester was a pretty girl, but she was only a girl and John had more rounded interests.

Livonia Merryweather was a fine, city woman, educated in some school back east. She’d come with the most stellar references, according to the deacon, and most of the children loved her. Or at least preferred her to Ms. Slat, the previous school mistress.

Ms. Slat had been kidnaped by Indians. Nobody blamed the Indians. Ms. Slat kept going on their land to civilize them, she should count herself lucky they’d only tied her up and dumped her off at the train depot in Silverville.

The rumors that the boys spread about Hester were nothing compared to the way their parents speculated about Ms. Merryweather. John understood why Ms. Merryweather captured the town’s interest. She had a fine, pale face with perfect yellow hair and a small upturned nose. Her lips were soft and bowed, and the color of perfectly ripe berries in the summer. She carried herself straight and proud, but under all those pretty perfect frocks he bet she had a body to put a dancing girl to shame.

The wind kicked up high, and something white and frilly bounced across the ground in front of him. John reached out quickly and stopped it with the handle on his spade. It danced around in the dark soil, fluttering and rolling as if it wanted to entice him and he got so lost in the movement it took him a moment to realize what it was.

John slowly looked over to the living quarters behind the school house. Where Ms. Merryweather had hung her wash out to dry.

I wonder if she has a butter churn, he thought to himself. His pants tightened as he imagined her, ranged behind the wooden bucket, slim milk-white arms raising and falling, hips moving in small motions as she worked away at the sloshing liquid. A soft dew of sweat would bead along her spun-gold hair as she worked, up and down, up and down.

Did she wear a corset? Would he be able to see the soft jiggle of her breasts as she worked? She would look up at him, and whet that perfect raspberry lip with her tongue before she said his name. She would watch him through honey-brown eyes that begged him to come closer, to use his large work roughened hands to steady her hips because she was churning butter and that movement should be reserved for something else. For something they would do alone, just the two of them, in the soft sweet new hay of the barn on a warm summer night while a soft patter of rain fell on the outside world. He would push her skirts up slowly—

“John?”

He blinked, and instinctively shifted so the long handle of the spade covered his crotch. It wasn’t much protection, but if she didn’t look he’d at least seem outwardly decent. “Yes, Miss?”

One slightly darker brow lifted, and Ms. Merryweather held her hand out. “I believe that is my garment you are holding.” The words were steady and sure, and she looked him directly in the eye, but there was the slightest blush to her cheeks he’d never seen before.

“I’m sorry, Miss.” John held it out to her on a finger. “Wind must have caught it.”

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Well…um…have a nice day.”

Livonia Merryweather turned smartly on her laced boot, skirt swinging around her ankles, and marched back to the school house.

Oh yes. I’ll definitely churn her butter, John mused, swallowing past his dry throat. He still had another month before the rainy season started.