“What else would you have asked for?”
He glanced at Olivia, his face seeming to close up. “Not pies and lace
tablecloths,” he said and pulled his boots on.
Olivia grimaced. Was he thinking about the embroidered tablecloth she had
put on the table, when what he’d wanted was to sit outside and eat with his fingers? Good Lord, what if she had shown up at his door bearing a pie? That
picture almost made her laugh.
“To be left in peace. Allowed to find my own way. To find someone who is
my intellectual equal.” He looked up at the sun and said, “We’ve got to get going,” and got to his feet.
Olivia hurriedly tied her shoe laces. She expected Jeremy to offer a hand to help her up, but he didn’t. “But you have to tell me what happened. How come
you’re not married to Francie Everman?”
“I ran off like a dog, a month before the wedding.”
“The poor thing!”
He stepped off the rock onto the river bank and turned to give Olivia a
tolerant smile, as if she were a small child first learning the ways of the world. “I
never did worry my mind much about old Francie. Figured I’d done her a big favor. I was right, too. It wasn’t six months before she got herself wed to someone respectable and well-fixed. Bit of a dullard, but I’m sure she’s far happier with him than she would have been trying to keep up with me.”
“Have you seen your family since then?”
“Yes.” He started walking and talked over his shoulder. “About a year after I
left. I wanted to set things square with them. You see, when I ran away I helped
myself to some of their money. I had inherited a little from my grandmother, but
I also walked off with the cash my father was keeping in his top bureau drawer,
for my next year’s college tuition. It wasn’t a large sum, but stealing is stealing. I
tried to pay him back, but he refused to take it. I thought he’d be furious, but it
turned out he wasn’t the least bit angry. He even slipped some more coins into
my pocket and said it had all been for the best.”
“I guess parents can forgive their children for just about anything.”
“Well, yes, I suppose they can, but I think it was more than that. That was the
first time I’d ever thought much about his life, and I think he might have been more envious than indignant about what I’d done.”
“What on earth would he be jealous of?”
“He’d probably spent his own life regretting not having the nerve to run out
on my mother, when her mother started talking about when would be the best date for them to get married.”
Olivia couldn’t hide the look of dismay on her face. Mourning was right;
Jeremy seemed to consider all women a dreadful fate, to be avoided at all cost.
Well, I can’t complain, she thought. I keep telling myself it would be differentif I only knew what he felt and thought. So now I know.
“We do have to get going.” Jeremy started up the trail. “Won’t be time for coffee. Just enough to show you where I live.”
“Have you had any jobs since you left home?” she asked.
“A few. First one was up in the northern peninsula, looking for copper. But working in a mine is no life for a man. Certainly not for a man like me. Then I
worked for a while as a guide for tourists. After that I –”
“Tourists? What tourists?”
“Silly rich people who come out here from New York and pay a lot of money
to dress up as Daniel Boone and shoot a buck or a bear. Some of those fools are
