Jack jogged to catch up with Donovan, matching his long stride with her own. "So, what brings you to Irvington, Mr. Donovan?" she asked, wondering if she could discover his purpose for coming to such a small town.

A ghost of a smile appeared on his troubled face as he looked away from her. "Just visiting some old friends. And please, don't call me mister. I hope I'm not that old yet."

Jack's face ignited with shame. "Oh, I didn't mean to imply you were old--of course you're not. And anyways, I'm quite aged myself, so I would be in no position to offer judgment."

Jack's words elicited another laugh and she touched her cheeks, wondering just how red they were. "Just call me Donovan," he said.

"Then call me Jack," she responded. "Not Miss Harrison or any of that ladylike nonsense."

"I did just see you scale a tree to fetch a one-legged chicken," he teased, the soft summer wind disturbing a loose strand of black hair from its place behind his ear. "Ladylike wasn't the first word that came to mind upon our acquaintance."

Jack laughed heartily, and the sound echoed into the Bookers' brick house, alerting them to their guest's arrival. Minnie stuck her head through the door, her dark hair in a knot on top of her head.

"It's about time you got here! Quit lollygagging outside."

Jack smiled at her friend and greeted Minnie with a warm hug around her narrow shoulders. "I'm sorry I'm late, Minnie. Martha got stuck in a tree and I had to fetch her."

Minnie clucked, motioning both Jack and Donovan in side. "You and that confounded chicken, Jack. You should have just let Julius put her down when she lost that leg."

Jack's jaw dropped, aghast. "Of course I couldn't let her die! She's one of my best layers!"

Minnie shook her head, saying nothing else. Despite Jack's tough demeanor, everyone knew of her soft heart towards creatures, especially those of the non-human variety.

"Come on in, we're having baked potatoes and asparagus for dinner," Minnie said, welcoming Jack and Donovan into their home, dimly lit with a few gas lanterns.

Their broad oak-hewn table was decorated with a handful of wildflowers and a heaping bowl of asparagus with baked potatoes. Jack's stomach grumbled at the sight of the cuisine--she had only eaten a meager breakfast of porridge and an apple plucked from her tree all day, and the fight with the delinquent goat and climb up the poplar had given her a voracious appetite.

"I see you've met our visitor?" Minnie said, eyes jumping from Jack to Donovan. There was something hidden and defensive in the look, and Jack felt curious questions aching to pester her friend.

"Indeed I have," Jack answered. "We met just a few minutes ago."

"What happened to your shirt?" Minnie asked, looking to Donovan's now stained linen shirt.

Jack and Donovan both burst out laughing at the idiocy and effectiveness of Jack's defense technique. "I had a run in with a few errant eggs."

Minnie's dark eyes widened and she spun towards Jack, her apron wishing. "Jack, you didn't!"

"I didn't know who he was!" Jack declared, trying to vindicate herself despite Donovan's withheld laughter. "For all I knew, he'd come to pillage my farm and murder me!"

"You didn't remember I told you we had a visitor?"

"He caught me halfway up a tree chasing a chicken! I didn't have time to think!" Jack protested.

Donovan's laughter broke through Minnie's interrogation of Jack, and Jack herself couldn't resist a mischievous smile. Minnie just rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in the air, seating herself at one end of the table.

"Julius! If you don't get out here, we'll eat without you!" Minnie yelled.

The door to their bedroom opened and Julius appeared, a towering man with a pair of wide brown spectacles perched on his bold nose. "I'm here, I'm here," he said, wiping ink-stained hands on his dark jacket. "I was finishing up an article for tomorrow."

"Anything going on in the world that I should know about?" Jack asked the knowledgeable newspaperman as she took her seat at the table next to Minnie.

"Well, hello, Jack," he said, turning his sharp eyes to her. Though he appeared to be something of an absent-minded professor with his studious glasses and distracted demeanor, his hickory eyes were sharp and held an inner strength, the source of which Jack couldn't identify. "I'm glad you're joining us. Shall we eat?"

"Of course," Minnie said, one hand on her hip. "We've been waiting for you, honey."

Julius just smiled at his wife and sat down next to her, Donovan situating himself betwixt Jack and Julius. "Shall we pray?" he asked, and they held hands as he blessed the flood.

Jack squirmed a little as Donovan's warm hand enveloped hers, and before she could halt the runaway train of thought, she found herself contemplating the smoothness of his skin, unmarked by the manual labor with which Jack was familiar. Stop this foolishness right now, Jack Harrison, she ordered herself. She had no time to indulge in ridiculous fancies about men she'd just met, even this particularly intriguing man.

At the close of Julius's prayer, Minnie doled out generous portions of potatoes and asparagus onto the plain tin plates, the smell wafting to Jack's nose and inciting a mutinous rumble in her stomach. Before sating her appetite, however, Jack's curiosity demanded further investigation.

"So how do you two know each other?" Jack asked, gesturing with her fork to Donovan and Julius.

"From our time in Boston," Julius answers as Donovan continues to eat, evading Jack's gaze for the moment. "We moved from Alabama to Boston so I could go to college, and I met Donovan there in my classes."

Jack tilted her head, the query giving her time to examine Donovan. "Were you a journalist as well?"

He shook his head, a stray strand of black hair falling over his broad forehead. "No. I'm a lawyer."

Jack's eyebrows shot up at the revelation--a lawyer? The man was more than just clever and mysterious. He was obviously quite intelligent to be able to succeed in such a field especially with the pervasive prejudice against anyone who wasn't white, even in the north of the country. Her astonishment and interest multiplied at the thought and she forced herself to ask another question to cover her surprise.

"A lawyer? You don't say! And are you from Boston, Donovan?"

A ghost of a smile slipped over his face and his dark eyes flashed towards her. "I'm not, Miss Jack."

When he said no more, Jack leaned towards him, spreading her hands on the edge of the table. "Then where are you from?"

"Don't be so nosy, Jack," Minnie reprimanded, tapping her knuckles with the tarnished pewter spoon. "He's a guest."

"It's alright, Minnie, I don't mind," Donovan said with a sigh, lounging back in the chair. He ran his hands along the armrests of the chair for a long moment, his fingers long as they traced the scarred wood. "I'm from here in VIrginia, Miss Jack, just west of here in King William."

Jack closed her eyes for a moment, mentally scanning the paper map her brother-in-law kept in his living room. King William was close to Irvington, inland and to the south, and Jack's curiosity grew.

"Why did you leave for Boston?" Jack asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. "Richmond has some fine colleges!"

"Jack! That's enough!" Minnie said, her eyes gleaming furiously.

Minne did say that he was in some kind of trouble, Jack thought, but that only made her even more inquisitive.

"Not for Indians, Miss Jack," Donovan said, and her eyes caught on his.

His eyes were a dark, obsidian brown that pierced her for a moment, and his relaxed stance had grown tense. His fingernails dug into the arms of the chair and his body rippled with nervous energy. His eyes never left hers, judging, assessing, and expecting something from her.

But where Donovan anticipated disgust or revulsion, he found enthusiasm and interest. Jack clapped her hands together and a delighted smile covered her face. "So you are an Indian!"

Julius and Minnie both looked aghast at Jack's lack of decorum, appalling even for her. Donovan, however, laughed at Jack's response, a rumbling sound that came out of his chest through his mouth. A wide smile, teeth gleaming white, rewarded Jack for her candor.

"That I am. Powhatan, actually."

Jack's eagerness burst out of her lips in one of the few words she knew from the Algonquin language. "Oh, quinties!" she cried.

Donovan's eyebrows shot up, and Jack laughed with smug satisfaction. No one expected the white woman to know anything about American Indian languages or culture, but Jack liked to surprise people.

"You know Algonquin?" he asked, obviously pleased.

"Only a little. I spent a year traveling along the coast and visiting as many reservations as would let me enter. I tried to learn a little of the language wherever I went."

It was now Donovan's turn to study her in greater detail. Jack wasn't much to look at--a broad-shouldered, scrawny-legged spinster who often got herself into more trouble than she could bear. But Jack had lived her life fully and few knew the full extent of her broad experiences, one of which involved a year spent with many different American Indian tribes along the East Coast.

Donovan's eyes ran over Jack's features, freckled from hours spent out of doors and wrinkled by years and laughter, and he finally smiled. "I'm impressed, Miss Jack. What engendered such an interest?"

Jack felt heat rush into her face and she shrugged her shoulders. She thought back to the years she spent traipsing across several different states, learning herbal lore from the acclaimed healers of the various tribes she encountered. Jack had always been interested in medicine and herbal remedies, but her lack of income, social standing, and gender made it nearly impossible for her to pursue such a career professionally, so she found other ways of pursuing the interest.

"My garden," Jack explained. "I've always been interested in herbal medicine, not to mention other cultures and such, so one day I decided I had nothing better to do than travel for a while and see what I could discover."

Many had thought Jack's trek foolhardy and ill-advised, and it had only worsened her standing in the eyes of many Irvington residents, but Jack had never regretted the trip. If it weren't for her dear nieces and her lack of funds, Jack might have traveled for the rest of her days, never settling in one location for so long.

"That's quite a journey," Donovan said, pulling up the sleeves of his tan shirt, now stained with egg yolk, and resting his elbows on the table. He leaned towards her, almost disregarding the presence of the Bookers. "And you visited my people?"

Jack couldn't identify the unfamiliar twinge in his voice, a tone that bespoke some unarticulated emotion. It wasn't quite pride; in fact, Jack couldn't identify what it was, and she yearned to know. Confounded curiosity, always getting me into trouble.

"Not exactly," Jack admitted. "I stayed with the Lenape for a while; that's where I learned Algonquin. I'd love to learn about the Powhatan, though," she hurried on, hoping he would share more about his past. "I'm afraid I have an insatiable curiosity for everything I don't yet know."

Donovan chuckled softly as the candle flickered, casting shadows over his sharp cheekbones and broad forehead. "I quite understand."

"Well, I didn't expect you two to have so much in common," Julius interrupted, reminding Jack that she and the stranger were not the only ones in the room. Julius had his thin arms crossed over his chest and a bemused smile on his face. "If I'd known, I would have made the proper introductions much earlier."

"Then maybe I wouldn't have to clean egg yolk out of this man's shirt," Minnie said, her arms also crossed but her expression not quite as amused.

Jack shoved Minnie gently in the arm, the adrenaline in her bloodstream slowly fading away as Donovan's attention to her faded. "Oh, stop your grousing. I'll make it up to you; perhaps I'll convince the factory to give you a raise!"

Minnie snorted and slapped her hand on the scarred table, the silverware and plates rattling from the impact of the shaking table. "I'll believe that when pigs fly."

Jack joined Minnie's infectious laughter, throwing her head back and letting the sound flow from her lungs. Even Julius offered a chuckle. But as Jack rose to return home, knowing the Bookers must be tired from another long week of work, Jack noticed from the corner of her eye that Donovan no longer laughed; rather, he watched her with the eyes of a hawk, dark and assessing and inquisitive, and Jack burned under his gaze.

What secrets is Donovan hiding? Any suspicions? Do you find him as intriguing as Jack does? Let me know in the comments! Fun fact: quinties means hello in Algonquian, the language of many Native American groups in Canada and northern coastal sections of the United States, including the Powhatan. When Europeans came to North America, there were an estimate of 70k-100k Algonquian Indians in New England alone!