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banker’syoung daughter, came to mind. The institution only brought misery. Let weaker, foolish men stumble into it.
    Gerard would not allow his cousin to fall for a woman just because she had a pretty face and a clever mind.
    Blessing Brightman’s lively expression and pert questions flitted through his memory. He inhaled deeply and brushed her out of his thoughts. Women.

CINCINNATI
    AUGUST 31, 1848
    Restless and aggravated, Gerard stepped off the riverboat in bustling Cincinnati weeks later than he’d originally intended. Both parents had disrupted his plan. His mother had delayed him and his father had retaliated, as promised, against his defiance.
    After staying several weeks in Connecticut with his mother and conveying her back to Boston, Gerard had checked at the bank and found that his father had indeed cut off his allowance. His mother had discreetly given him a sum of money for his trip here, but now he would have to come up with a way to earn his own income. That was the price for refusing to consider the pretty Miss Mason as bride, for refusing a position in the family business.
    And for going to help a friend.
    Had he come too late? Had Stoddard already become publicly engaged to that suffragist? Or perhaps Stoddard had already come to his senses and would be more than ready to leave this dismal-looking river city that smelled like a packing plant.
    Swallowing these questions, Gerard scanned the teeming, shabby wharf for his cousin. Had Stoddard received his letter?
    Just then a familiar, tall, red-haired figure moved out of the crowd on the dock. “Gerard!” Stoddard waved as if they were still schoolboys, meeting at the train station after a summer apart.
    His spirits lifted and Gerard couldn’t suppress a smile. He strode along the gangplank and clapped Stoddard on the shoulder. “Cousin!” A sudden urge to tell Stoddard of how weak his mother had become bubbled up in his throat. He forced it down. No need to discuss that now. Or perhaps ever. Maybe he’d just imagined it.
    “So you spent the rest of the summer at your mother’s family’s country place?”
    “Yes. Too bad you didn’t come. I was able to do some really good trout fishing.” Gerard studied his cousin, looking for any sign that he regretted moving so far west and was ready to go home. “How did you stand the dog days of August here, so far from the coast?”
    Stoddard shrugged. “I might as well get used to the summers here.”
    Gerard didn’t like the sound of that.
    Interrupting them, one of the porters set down Gerard’s trunk and valises.
    Stoddard’s eyes widened. “You’ve come for more than a brief stay.”
    Gerard awaited his cousin’s reaction.
    “Excellent!”
    Relief buzzed through Gerard. Even though it sounded like Stoddard still intended to settle here, he hadn’t altered in any discernible way. This prompted Gerard to ask, “How’s your friend, the pretty blonde suffragist?” He watched for evidence that Stoddard was still smitten.
    Stoddard ignored his question and reached down to grip the handle of one of the valises. “Drayman!” He hailed one of the many small wagons along the pier. “Here!”
    Stoddard’s avoidance ratcheted up Gerard’s tension. Then he glimpsed another figure he thought he recognized. In the distance he saw a woman dressed in gray Quaker garb.
    For a moment the memory of the disturbing widow he’d met in Seneca Falls came to mind—once again. He took a step forward but then checked himself. Even if this person were the same woman, he had nothing to say to her. Whether or not she had been the most original, most outrageous woman he’d ever met.
    Then another familiar figure slipped around the rear of the crowd and disappeared. “Kennan?” Gerard called out uncertainly.
    Stoddard halted and glanced around to where Gerard was staring. “Kennan?”
    Gerard blinked rapidly. “Thought I saw him but . . .” He regarded Stoddard, who sent him an odd look.
    Gerard chuckled to