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“Any questions about homework?” Grace glanced at the clock. “Or anything else? We have a few minutes before the bell rings.”
“Hey, can you do the Robin Hood song?” Liam called.
Grace shifted her gaze to Lincoln. He felt an energy arc through the air between them, like a current of electricity. She quickly looked away.
“No, we really don’t have enough time,” she mumbled.
He was intrigued by her reluctance.
“Aw, come on.” A chorus of pleas rose from the entire class.
Two spots of color appeared on Grace’s cheeks. She picked up the ukulele again. “Just a few verses.”
She strummed a lively, upbeat tune and began singing.
There chanced to be a peddler bold,
A peddler bold there chanced to be;
He put his pack all on his back,
And merrily trudged over the lea.
By chance he met two troublesome men,
Two troublesome men they chanced to be,
The one of them was bold Robin Hood,
And the other was little John so free.
Lincoln couldn’t take his eyes off Grace. She was sitting on her desk, her legs crossed under her skirt and her sunset hair curling in those flyaway tendrils around her face. Her voice was clear and lovely, and for an instant he had no trouble picturing her as a Renaissance lady singing as she strolled through her garden.
The class sat riveted as she sang about the peddler’s encounter with John and the arrival of Robin Hood. Even Todd seemed to sit up a little straighter.
When the bell rang, interrupting her line about Robin Hood laughing, a chorus of groans signaled the class’s disappointment.
“We’ll finish up tomorrow before the weekend.” Grace set the ukulele down and stood. “I’ll be around tonight if you have any last-minute questions about your papers. Have a good rest of the day.”
After the students had shuffled out, Lincoln approached her. “You’re a woman of many hidden talents.”
“Not really.” She smiled with a touch of embarrassment as she sat in her desk chair. “I found out early in my teaching career that the kids respond well to music, and it adds a nice contextual touch for our curriculum, so I kept it in.”
“Where’d you learn to play?”
“College.” She opened a desk drawer and took out an insulated lunch bag. “I was going out with a guy who was into Renaissance fairs, and my major was Renaissance and Elizabethan Studies, so we had a lot in common. Since the ukulele is similar to a lute, I decided to start taking lessons just to see what it was like. I ended up loving it. I broke up with the guy, but I took music lessons for the next two years.”
“Do you play at Renaissance fairs?”
“Oh, no.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I went to a few fairs back then, but I prefer to study the Renaissance rather than live it. I also like to talk to the students about music since it was such a big part of Renaissance and Elizabethan plays.”
“Like that poemThe Willing Mistressyou were talking about?”
She smiled. “Points for paying attention in class, Mr. Atwood. And yes. That poem was originally a song in Aphra Behn’s playThe Dutch Lover.”
“I’d never heard of her until now.”
“Not many people have. I started teaching her work a few years ago. I think it’s important to discuss literature in a wider context and to bring in other voices.”
