“You came for me,” she said, her voice weak with relief.
“Of course I came,” Luke said, standing to hold his arms wide.
She dropped the toolbox and raced into them. He held her close, and it felt like coming home. This was where she belonged. No words were necessary as she clung to him and he gently rocked her from side to side.
She pulled back for a kiss, but to her surprise, Luke disentangled himself and walked down the aisle to greet her uncle. “Are you Joseph Greenleaf?”
“I am.”
Luke’s grin was hearty. “I went to the church you built in Amarillo. What a place! They welcomed me with open arms but said you’d long gone and pointed me to your next church in Santa Fe.”
Joseph’s smile turned skeptical. “Were those folks decent to you? Some of them got a little squirrelly after I left.”
“No fear of that,” Luke said. “They couldn’t have been nicer and had only fine things to say about you and your wife. They gave me your current location here in Carson City, but I was curious about what else you’ve built, so I stopped to see your churches in Grand Junction and Flagstaff on my way here. Well done, sir!”
Joseph laughed and returned Luke’s handshake with vigor. The two men seemed like instant best friends as they swapped stories about the crazy people at the Santa Fe congregation. Joseph wanted to know if the Flagstaff roof was holding up and if Mrs. Mulroney made Luke one of her famous rhubarb pies. How easily they laughed and traded quips. Luke showered Joseph with praise for the craftsmanship he saw in each church and the fine people he met along the way.
Marianne fidgeted. “I’m beginning to feel a little left out.”
Luke’s rich, irreverent laugh rumbled. “We can’t have that!” he said, drawing her into his arms and kissing her deeply. He bent her over his arm, and his hands were everywhere.
She hoped Luke wouldn’t drop her as she tore her mouth away to risk a glance at Joseph. “My uncle is very strict,” she cautioned.
Joseph rolled his eyes. “You two go out in the east field. I’ve got no interest in watching you spooning with your Romeo, and he’s proven himself a decent man. Plus, I’ll be able to keep my eye on you the whole time.”
Luke grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”
They ran down the aisle and outside to the yarrow field. The sun was rising, birdsong sounded in the distance, and Luke’s embrace had never been more passionate.
“I can’t believe you found me,” she said breathlessly between his frantic kisses.
“I’d have searched to the ends of the earth.”
His lips trailed up the side of her jaw and behind her ear, and she squeezed him tight, still amazed that he was here and cared enough to come for her. She hadn’t broken her word to her father. Luke sought her out, not the other way around.
“Why did you run away?” he asked.
There were a million reasons, but the main one was that she couldn’t bear knowing he might languish in prison for months or years because of her.
“I cut a deal with my father,” she said, still clasped in his arms. “I promised I would leave Washington and not contact you. I figured a good spy like you would find me eventually.”
“You know who else is a good spy?”
She shook her head.
He didn’t take his eyes off her, gazing down with love and affection blazing in his warm face. “Your uncle. He’s been watching us from the top of that half-finished bell tower since we got out here.”
She didn’t care. She was proud of Luke and wanted no more secrets, no more hiding or waiting. She tightened her arms around his back and squeezed. “There are no more barriers between us.”
“Good. I fully intend to marry you. If you’ll have me, that is.”
Was there any doubt? Luke was the beginning, middle, and end of all her girlhood dreams. “Uncle Joseph could marry us. Then we can get on a train and be in San Francisco in a few hours. It will be like we both imagined.”
“We could,” he said, but there was a note of hesitation in his voice.
She pulled back a few inches. His smile was gone as he cupped the side of her face.
“I take it back,” he said, his expression serious. “We can’t run away, Marianne. We need to go back to Washington and ask your father’s permission to marry.”
“What?” she screeched. A squirrel startled, scrambling for cover as her shout echoed off the mountainside. “He’ll never agree. Never!”
The idea of Luke walking up to her father, hat in hand, and obediently asking for her hand in marriage was absurd.
As if he sensed her confusion, he rubbed his hands up and down her arms, squeezing gently. “Despite my long and colorful history of breaking the rules, I’m trying to be a better man. A better Christian. And one of the few direct commands ordained by God is to honor your mother and your father. It’s right there as the fifth commandment. There’s no other way to read that one. I wish there was.”
She drifted a few steps away to plop down on a boulder. “In that case, we’ll never get married. It will never happen.”
Luke hunkered down beside her and reached for her hand. “We have to at least ask,” he said passionately. “The commandment doesn’t order us to mindlessly obey your parents, it orders us to honor them. Which means no running away to San Francisco or getting married behind their backs. We will give them the respect they are owed.” He swallowed hard, as if bracing for the battle ahead. “That means I’m going to approach Clyde in a civil manner and humbly ask permission to join his family. He may call down fire and brimstone on my head. The last time we saw each other, he punched me in the face and threw me off his property, but I’ll do my best to forge a truce.”
Her gaze trailed into the distance, seeing nothing but problems ahead. She had already consigned herself to walking away from her family and living like Aunt Stella with a new family created from scratch. After all, it would be Clyde, not she, who made it impossible to remain in the family.
But she was the one who bought the ticket out west. She was the one who ran away rather than confront the challenging tangle of family drama at home. The fact that she doubted they could have made much progress was no excuse for not giving her parents the opportunity. Even now, she was certain Luke was heading straight toward a buzz saw in asking Clyde’s permission, but Luke was right.
As was Uncle Joseph, who preached that a life guided by the Christian virtues of love, humility, charity, and forgiveness would be more successful than her intemperate actions of the past. They needed to make this final overture to her parents, even though Marianne feared it was going to be hopeless.
Thirty-Five
It was going to take four days to travel by train to Washington, and Luke spent most of that time sweating bullets. Despite the confident air he tried to project, he was terrified of showing up at the Magruder household on bended knee, but he was going to do it. Marianne would carry a lifelong scar if she turned her back on her parents, and that meant Luke had to reconcile with them.
The long train ride gave them plenty of time to discuss what had happened over the past month. As anticipated, the reviews for Don Quixote were savage. Up until the date of publication, Luke had harbored a tiny hope it would be hailed as a masterpiece, but reality came crashing in with the first review.