Swept Away. Gwynne Forster

You’d better come with me.”

      Go with this stranger? She didn’t think so. She smiled her best I’m-in-charge smile. “Thanks, but I’ll get there okay.”

      She didn’t fool him. “By morning you could be covered with snow. You don’t know these mountains, miss. You’d better come with me.”

      He started to walk away and tendrils of fear unfurled through every molecule of her body. Suppose he was right. “Wait. Where are you—?”

      His piercing eyes, as blue as the clearest sky, didn’t smile when he said, “Home. My parents will put you up. There’s no moon tonight, so I have to get there before dark. Nothing to fear. So come.”

      He walked on, so she followed him, and followed, and followed until she thought her knees would crack.

      “How…how much farther is it? I’m winded.”

      He pointed to a distant light, the only other sign of life for as far as she could see. “Another couple of kilometers or so. Come along now.”

      Another two miles. She stifled a groan and geared up her strength. When at last she stumbled into the two-story, unpainted chalet with its sloping roof and windows lined with boxes of blooming geraniums, she felt as if she hadn’t an ounce of energy left.

      “Papa,” her rescuer told the older man who greeted them at the door, “she’s lost, so she’s staying the night.”

      Words were exchanged in German, and for a while she wondered if the old man would let her stay. But he smiled, shook hands with her, and switching to French, asked her name. When she told him, he welcomed her and called his wife, from whom she received another welcome. Veronica followed the woman up the rustic stairs to a cheerful room. She’d never seen so many handmade quilts, hand-embroidered sheets and pillowcases as were stacked on shelving in the room. She thanked the woman and dropped into the nearest chair.

      “Nous prendrons le dîner dans quelque minutes,” the woman said, as though anyone who didn’t speak German would speak French. “We eat in a few minutes.” Veronica followed the woman to the bathroom, which was clearly the only one in the house, for a woman’s shower cap hung on the same hook as a man’s razor strop and razor. She hadn’t known that men still used them. Glad for the chance to refresh herself, she did so as best she could. She went back to her room, and a short time later, heard a knock on her door.

      “Miss Overton, we’re ready to eat.”

      She opened the door, and he stared down at her. “My name is Kurt.”

      He left her standing there and headed down the stairs, giving her no choice but to follow. As soon as she got to a bookstore that carried English titles, she intended to read about the Swiss culture. Unless she was missing a beat, the status of Swiss women was not too high. In the dining room, whose centerpiece was an enormous stone fireplace over which hung a rifle, several oil-filled lanterns and a large, noisy cuckoo clock, Kurt’s parents and a man she assumed was his brother sat at the table waiting for them. Kurt’s father said grace, a long soulful-sounding supplication in German. Then he introduced her to his other son, Jon. The family ate without conversation of any kind, limited their words to requests for the meat, or the bread or whatever else was wanted. They drank wine with their dinner, but she declined, thinking it best to face the night with a clear head. After the meal, the woman of the house refused Veronica’s offer to help clean up, but Veronica wasn’t certain that she was expected to sit around the fire with the men.

      Kurt’s father lit his pipe and cleared his throat. “You understand French perfectly?” he asked her in French.

      She told him she knew what was being said.

      “Good,” he replied in French, “my son Kurt needs a woman, and he likes you. Not many women want to live out here, because it’s too harsh. But we have a good farm, and we live well. We want you to stay.”

      Her heart landed in the pit of her stomach. When she could close her mouth, she said the first words that came to her mind. “I wouldn’t think of living with a man I wasn’t married to.”

      Since the old man didn’t understand English, Kurt replied. “I’d take you for my wife, if that’s what you want.”

      Stunned, she felt as if her brain had shut down. He couldn’t be serious. She looked at him. He meant what he’d said. They had already entered the twenty-first century, and this guy spoke of getting married as if that were the same as shelling a peanut. One thing was certain: she’d better not laugh.

      “I’m sorry,” she managed at last, “but I can’t do that.”

      She couldn’t believe the disappointment that registered on his face. “You’re already married?”

      “I’m not married, Kurt, but where I come from, we treat marriage differently. I’m sorry. Please thank your mother for the dinner.” She asked to be excused and was glad she remembered how to say it in French.

      Her nerves rioted throughout her body when she realized that Kurt was following her. She stopped at the top of the stairs and confronted him.

      “Why are you following me up here, Kurt?”

      “You won’t marry me, and you will leave tomorrow morning. Will you at least spend the night with me?”

      She’d have panicked if he hadn’t spoken so gently, without belligerence.

      “I don’t believe in casual…er…sex, Kurt.”

      He studied her for a minute, and a look of pure pleasure settled on his face. “You needn’t worry. I assure you there’ll be nothing casual about it.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      He released a long breath. “I’m sorry, too. What time do you want to leave tomorrow morning? We eat breakfast at six-thirty.”

      She stifled a smile of relief because she didn’t want to encourage him. “As soon after breakfast as possible. The hotel must have worried that I didn’t get back there last night.”

      From his facial expression, you’d have thought he saw a Martian. “They don’t care, as long as you or somebody pays the bill. We’ll leave here at seven-thirty. If you don’t mind riding in the truck, I’ll drive you down to Interlaken.”

      “Thank you, Kurt. For…for everything.”

      He shrugged. “Maybe next time I’ll get lucky.”

      Veronica walked into her room at the Hotel Europa in Interlaken, so-called because of its position between two lakes. Excited about her adventure but relieved that it had ended without mishap, she got the notebook she’d bought in the hotel’s small store and began to write. Kurt hadn’t interested her, but during their ride down the mountain and through a narrow pass to Interlaken, she’d developed compassion for him. Eligible though he was—and handsome, if your taste ran to his type—he couldn’t find a woman he wanted who would agree to live with his family in the home whose foundation his great-grandfather had built and that he refused to leave. The worst of it, to Kurt’s way of thinking, was that his brother couldn’t marry until he did. She recorded the events of the previous two days and put the tablet aside.

      Time to move on. She walked out on her tiny balcony and looked at Lake Thunersee nestled in the bosom of an endless flower-filled meadow beneath the Jungfraujoch Mountain on which she’d skied. Why couldn’t she have shared it with Schyler? Here, in the most beautiful place she’d ever been, she was alone. She shrugged it off, as she’d always done, packed, paid her bill and took a taxi to the station. The taxi driver assured her that if the United States was full of women who looked like her, it must be paradise for a man. She took that with the proverbial grain of salt, not bothering to disabuse him of his assumption; she was already learning that it wasn’t the place but the person who counted most.

      Her hotel in Geneva faced the train station. She dropped her bags inside her room door, went to the phone and called American Express.

      “Yes,