When Calls the Heart - Season Two
Synopsis: It's a week after Elizabeth and Jack's first kiss, but not everything is bliss. The trial of the coal mining company has taken place, and Rosemary, Jack's former fiancée, is still in town. A new teacher arrives in town. And Rosemary wants the school children to put on a difficult Shakespeare play instead of attending to their regular lessons. Elizabeth thinks this is a terrible idea. Who will win? Read the next few chapters of fan fiction to find out . . .
Chapter 1: The Day After The Kiss
Two months after arriving in the small frontier town of Coal Valley, Elizabeth Thatcher, the town's schoolteacher, walked to the schoolhouse with mixed feelings. A week ago, Jack Thornton, the handsome Mountie stationed in Coal Valley, had admitted his feelings for Elizabeth and asked her to stay in Coal Valley. Elizabeth had been considering whether to return to her hometown to teach at a prestigious school there rather than the one-room saloon-turned schoolhouse in Coal Valley.
Elizabeth fondly remembered the gift Jack had given her – a sketch he had made of the two of them side-by-side, Jack's dirty blond hair contrasting with Elizabeth's dark curls. Elizabeth had hung the portrait in her room over her bed. More particularly, Elizabeth remembered their first kiss that day, and Jack's strong arms around her, a memory that made Elizabeth's heart beat faster, as it usually did when she thought of Jack.
The day after that first kiss should have been a happy one. Instead, it brought continued heartache to the Coal Valley community. A circuit judge had arrived in Coal Valley to decide whether the town's mining company should be held responsible for the deaths of 46 miners six months earlier.
The one-day trial did not go well. The judge, a curmudgeonly old cur, had ruled that there was not enough evidence to find the company negligent. Elizabeth's good friend and housemate, Abigail Stanton, had been devastated. Abigail's husband and son had been killed in that mining accident. The lead investigator, Bill Avery, vowed to appeal. In the week leading up to the trial, Bill had shown a romantic interest in Abigail, but Bill had left Coal Valley immediately after the trial without saying goodbye to Abigail.
Abigail was thus left with many unanswered questions. The day before the trial, Abigail had seen a photo in Bill's room – next to a wedding ring – of Bill with a woman and young boy, even though Bill had claimed he was not married. Abigail had not had time to ask Bill about those items, and now wondered whether Bill was an honorable man or not.
More painful to Abigail was the hostile reaction of the townsfolk in the aftermath of the trial. The company had blamed Abigail's former husband, Noah, for leading the miners down a damaged shaft that terrible day. The company's claims were unsubstantiated, but the widows could not help questioning Noah's role in the disaster. Elizabeth and Jack had spent many hours the past week praying with Abigail and trying to comfort her at her newly opened café, currently bereft of customers.
The day after that first kiss should have also bolstered Elizabeth's confidence in Jack's feelings for her. Instead, Elizabeth received the startling news that Jack's former fiancée, Rosemary LeVeaux, was staying in Coal Valley to start a theater company. Rosemary had arrived in Coal Valley several weeks earlier proclaiming her renewed love for Jack, even though Rosemary had left Jack two years earlier to pursue an acting career in New York. Jack was emphatic that things were over between him and the ever-dramatic Rosemary, and that Elizabeth was the one he cared for.
Nonetheless, Elizabeth could not help feeling flares of jealousy whenever she thought about Rosemary, a petite, pretty blond. Elizabeth worried that Jack continued to harbor a place in his heart for Rosemary, since their fathers had been Mounties together, and Jack had known Rosemary since childhood. Elizabeth sighed as she thought of Rosemary's ability to command attention wherever she went; even Elizabeth had to acknowledge that Rosemary was a talented singer, piano-player, actress, outdoorswoman . . . the list went on, to Elizabeth's chagrin.
Elizabeth wondered whether her path with Jack would ever be a smooth one, or whether they would always have obstacles, like when they first met. Jack had been upset that he had been assigned to Coal Valley rather than the big port city of Cape Fullerton. When Jack learned that Elizabeth's rich father had probably been the one to order Jack's reassignment to protect Elizabeth while she was in Coal Valley, Jack accused Elizabeth of being a diva unfit for frontier life. In turn, Elizabeth accused Jack of being condescending, arrogant, insensitive . . . Elizabeth chuckled as she realized that her current feelings towards Jack were quite the opposite! Shaking her head to clear her mind, Elizabeth stepped into the schoolhouse to prepare for her class that morning.
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