With each passing moment, and with every new man who sat in the armchair across from Mercy, Joseph’s stomach had clinched tighter with desperation. If only he’d been able to read her expression to know what she was thinking—to see for himself if this parade of men was what she wanted or not. Then he could be on his way and would never bother her again.

Unfortunately, Mercy was positioned in the parlor so that her back faced the window, leaving Joseph with nothing but his intuition to determine her state of mind. And his intuition warned him that something wasn’t right, that he needed to see Mercy and find out the truth about what she really wanted for her future.

Even now, he still couldn’t reconcile the fact that she was meeting with men and planning to choose a husband by this evening. Why?

As he had on the ship, he wondered if he was like Jonah in the belly of the fish? Certainly Jonah had been confused, frustrated, and a little hopeless. Nothing felt right anymore, not the journey to Vancouver Island, not his doctoring, not his relationship with Mercy, and not his plans to continue on to the Hawaiian Islands.

He sat up in the bed, untangled from his covers, and slid to the floor to his knees. “What do you want from me, God?” Bowing his head in his hands, the empty ache in his soul reminded him of the day Dr. Bates had come to him with the news that his family was dead. His old friend had laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, his eyes brimming with tears behind his spectacles.

A storm had raged to life inside Joseph, one that threatened to tear him apart. But instead of letting the storm take its natural course, instead of grieving his losses, he ran from his room and didn’t stop until he’d reached the cricket field. Once there, he threw himself into a game and had played so hard that eventually he had to force himself to leave.

Ever since that day, Joseph hadn’t stopped running. Though he didn’t want to admit that Bates and Aunt Pen had been right, he could no longer deny he’d been running away from home so he could escape the painful memories that haunted him there.

Perhaps he was running away from Mercy too. Despite his excuses for not talking to her all day, maybe he was simply afraid of the finality of her rejection—of learning that she wasn’t opposed to marriage, just marriage to him.

Even worse was the possibility that he’d easily accepted her rejection to his proposal on the Tynemouth because he was afraid. If he didn’t allow himself to love Mercy, then he wouldn’t have to worry about losing her the same way he’d lost his family.