“Oh, Rachel, we have much to discuss.” First and foremost, her ordeal. I desperately wanted to help—be a support, a listener, if she wanted to talk. Would she? Would talking about what had happened make things better or worse?
She wearily shook her head and scanned my clothes. “Why are you dressed like that?”
I glanced at Phineas ahead of us. He was too near for detailed divulgences.
“He doesn’t know who you are?”
“No one does but you and Gid.” I squeezed her hand. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
She nodded and slipped her hand from under mine.
The withdrawal disturbed me. She wanted distance, and the implications of that desire saddened me, utterly overrode my concerns regarding Daniel. What had Rachel endured in that horrible household? The imaginings weighed heavily on my mind. Gid looked preoccupied, too. And Rachel sat silently beside me, her expression broken, like a shipwreck an ocean away from home. Even Phineas rode quietly in front of us without tossing his typical teasing comments over his shoulder.
Off and on until suppertime, I made a mess of comforting my friend. Caught up in a dismal reflection, I’d automatically reach for her folded hands. She’d freeze, then draw her fingers into the folds of her ragged skirt. An hour would pass. I’d get lost in depressing thoughts, forget myself again, and offer her back a pat. She’d jerk away. With a wince and an apology, I finally brought Fancy onto my lap, just to keep my hands busy, so I wouldn’t indulge my instinct to mother my friend.
Gid’s words proved just as ineffectual as my caresses: “Are you chilled, Miss Welds? Shall I dig out a blanket for you?” And later: “We’ll be stopping for supper soon, but we keep some nuts handy for munching. Would you, ah … like some?”
He earned mute headshakes for his efforts.
I couldn’t blame Rachel for shunning his advances. He’d treated her miserably.
As soon as we stopped to make camp for the evening, while Phineas tended to his horse and Rachel hurried to the stream to wash up, I found a moment to speak to Gid in private and took him to task for his behavior at the Lintons’, finishing with “and then, after never saying a word, you give her—her—the grimace of disgust. Why, I was never so amazed and so ashamed of you. Do you assume she asked for the mistreatments of that house? What were you thinking?”
He raked his hair. “I know, I know; I can’t say why. It was just a shock seeing her like that, mired in filthy sordidness, when I was so used to thinking of her…” He fluttered a hand over his head before resuming his hair gripping.
“Like a princess in a tower?”
He nodded glumly.
I crossed my arms. “Rachel was never a princess, Gid.” For a moment, I dwelled on the exuberant duets and the number of ribald ballads she and I had belted out together. The recollection made me wistful. What had happened to those carefree girls? “But she isn’t a slattern, either, no matter what came to pass in that awful house. To become that, she would have had to make some bad decisions. I doubt she was given the right to decide a damn thing.”
“I know. I feel awful. I didn’t mean it. And I’m really sorry.”
I was so disgusted, it was impossible to even listen to his apology. I threw up my hands, turned on my heel, and stomped back toward the wagon. My brother had his work cut out for him if he planned to make up for his despicable reaction.
Frankly, I didn’t think he could.
Gideon trudged behind me, and we joined the others. By the road, the oxen were browsing, Sweetheart was nosing her owner’s bowed head, and Rachel was sitting in the wagon. She absently scratched Fancy behind the ears and watched Phineas in bemusement.
He was worth watching. Seated on a supine log, slumped and swaying, he was moaning piteously and staring gravely at the ground. I’d never seen him look less like his sophisticated self. Water dripped to his shoulders; damp splotches bloomed across his coat and pantaloons. He must have dunked his whole head in the water, for his hair stuck up in wet points, like spines on a hedgehog. He was muttering, “A shame, a shame, such a crying shame.”
Gid rushed to his side. “What’s wrong?”
Phineas raised anguished eyes. “Where do I begin?” He made a helpless gesture toward the ground. After a lull, one he filled with awful groaning, he blurted out, “I have some grievances and feel compelled to air them. It’s about those horrible Lintons.”
Oh, heavens, Phineas wasn’t going to talk about the Lintons already, was he? It was too soon, the pain too fresh, for Rachel to be forced to discuss those people. I violently shook my head, but if Phineas noticed, he ignored me. Gid and I exchanged a horrified glance, then, in unison, turned to Rachel. She had paled and dropped her eyes.
“First of all: this.” Phineas thrust his hands toward the ground.
“What?” I impatiently scanned the place where he sat.
“My boots. My beautiful, expensive, nearly-as-fine-as-any-Bond-Street-beau’s polished, tasseled Hessian boots.” He shook his fist at the sky and, with the passion and fervency of a knight announcing a holy pledge, declared, “I will never forgive the Lintons for what they did to my boots. Never.”
My mouth dropped open. His boots did look bad; that was true enough. But soiled footwear? Seriously? That was what filled him with anguish? My breath left me in a growl. I wanted to whip off one of his silly boots and hit him in the head with it. How dare he reduce this debacle to such a frivolous complaint?
I was about to try to quell Phineas’s rant (he obviously, in his vanity, couldn’t conceive how anyone might have suffered worse than him) when he stopped me with another anguished groan and added, “Then there’s the recollection of those ghastly children: in particular, the nose picker.” He shuddered and added a few gagging noises to dramatize his sentiments. “Why, Miss Welds, you’d ever want to sally forth into the wilderness to become a support to a woman who clearly has no better sense than a hen—truly, how could she have even that much sense, marrying a brute, then decorating their entire parcel of land with disgusting children and all their filth? Well, I just don’t know. It’s got me questioning your sense. Can’t help but think you must be either a drunk, too, or completely unhinged.”
I gasped.
Eyes bulging, Gid slapped his forehead.
Rachel, sitting ramrod straight in the wagon and as white as a ghost, retorted with icy asperity, “Obviously, sir, the Lintons hadn’t yet succumbed to inebriated despair when I arrived; otherwise, my cousins never would have left me with them.”
“That gross deterioration happened in only two months?” He eyed her skeptically. “Sounds dashed smoky to me. Now don’t go flying onto your high ropes. Chances are your cousins, in their rush to start pioneering, didn’t poke around or linger long to assess the situation before bolting. Besides, we all know those boys aren’t precisely the investigative types.”
That was the understatement of the evening. I couldn’t resist flashing Gid a look, but not even my brother, always so loyal to his pals despite their remarkable idiocy, appeared ready to defend them. It was one thing to be stupid; it was another to be neglectful. Robert and Ed Welds should have taken better care of Rachel.
He sighed. “Ah, well, it’s done now, and when the soup’s gone, there’s no sense in licking the empty bowl. All I’ll say is—and I say this mostly to you, Freddy, since you’re young and still face plenty of opportunities to ruin your life—the Linton household is a living example of what I’ve previously warned you against: too much liquor and too many children. Both will kill you, and very often, one leads to the other.”
I glared at him. Mr. Linton was more than a drunkard with one too many children. He was an abusive terror, and if I hadn’t been trying to shield Rachel from the subject, I would have said as much. Though Linton certainly qualified as the worst male of my acquaintance, I couldn’t like many of the others right now, either—Gid, the Welds brothers, Phineas. The latter’s latest buffoonery goaded me into snapping, “Married people do tend
to bear children. That’s hardly aberrant behavior.”
“But do they have to have so many?”
“You get as many as God wills, clodpoll.”
He burst out laughing. “God doesn’t have a thing to do with it. A couple can enjoy their pleasures without turning out a passel of nose pickers.”
I stared at him in unblinking incomprehension.
With indulgent contempt, he smiled, sauntered my way, and threw a friendly arm around my shoulders. “Freddy, Freddy, Freddy, don’t you know anything? How are you going to marry Miss Welds here without understanding a few important matters about the matrimonial bed?” Then, with Gid and Rachel looking on in embarrassed fascination, Phineas shortly explained the matter, in a few words detailing how the mathematical equation of one plus one shouldn’t equal three.
I yanked away from him and, to hide my mortification, muttered, “What a hypocrite you are, Phineas. You act as pure and wise as a priestly philosopher, but what about your household, the one you’re always complaining about?”
He acknowledged the dig with a nod. “’Tis true, I’ve got my own share of nefarious nestlings underfoot.” Then, with a meaningful look: “And another abomination roasting in the oven, if you know what I mean.” Shaking his head, he sighed, “But it’s not like I asked for them. Marian simply thrust them on me.”
This audacious declaration left me speechless. Finally, I blurted, “Thrust them on you? So she’s the one who bears all the blame? Of all the cold, callous—oh, I feel so sorry for Marian. What an ill-natured misogynist you are.” Playing the victim. Blaming the wife. Hogwash! It took two to twirl around a ballroom.
My heated reaction seemed to startle him, and this further infuriated me.
Just as he opened his mouth, no doubt to defend his ridiculous position, Rachel asked, “Who is Marian?”
“His wife,” I answered.
At the same time, Phineas said, “My sister.”
He and I stared at each other.
Then he laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Fell down to his log perch and laughed, keeled forward and laughed, pitched sideways and laughed, rolled onto his back and laughed, and off and on between guffaws, breathlessly, gaspingly repeated, “My wife? My wife?”
Fancy responded with excited yips and tail-wagging leaps. Sweetheart whinnied. Gid, eyeing me with amusement, chuckled. I scowled and tried to shove and kick Phineas into silence.
But for the first time that day, Rachel smiled.
* * *
Rachel spent the night in the wagon; the rest of us slept on the hard ground under it. And the next morning, we fed and watered the animals, ate a hurried breakfast comprised of cold biscuits from the previous night, restored to the wagon the few provisions we’d unpacked, and resumed our trip.
One traveling day left: I couldn’t wait to finish it.
A pink sunrise threaded through the trees and sifted a rosy glow over the dew-slick branches. Rachel’s face, in this warm light, appeared somber. But she didn’t pull away when I unthinkingly patted her hand.
It would take time—months, maybe even years—for her to recover from what had happened at the Lintons’ place, but I would be Rachel’s gentle, careful, loving friend and help her through what was sure to be an agonizing healing process.
I was mentally avowing this noble intention when Phineas, ahead of us, circled the reins around his wrists, slowed Sweetheart from a trot to a walk, and peered over his shoulder. His mouth quirked when he took in our clasped hands. “Mr. Freddy: Mighty Champion of the Fair Sex. Ha.” He turned to face forward. “Well, Miss Welds, I won’t bother asking for your betrothed’s view—he’s a regular activist—but I’m curious about yours. What are your thoughts on book learning among females?”
She shrugged. “I don’t have a strong opinion.”
“And that’s exactly as it should be. Women with strong opinions offend me. Wait until you meet my sister.” He grunted. “No wonder my poor brother-in-law succumbed to the fever. With all her unfeminine ways and unfeminine notions, she likely sapped his will to live.” He shook his head and added disdainfully, “Marian’s a great one for book learning. This is what I think: If women deserve to improve their minds at all, their education should be exclusively designed to enhance their matrimonial worth. Let a woman learn about housekeeping, child-rearing, and etiquette. Make her an example of female submissiveness and piety—a tender paragon of domesticity.”
He slid me a sly peep over his shoulder, obviously hoping to provoke my temper. I refused to give him the satisfaction and merely dug a couple of apples out of the satchel under my seat, handed one to Rachel, and said curtly, “Housekeeping, child-rearing, and etiquette? That’s it? Sounds deadly dull to me.”
As if I hadn’t spoken, Phineas went on, “But please, Lord, save us from those god-awful female scholars, intent on poking into the sciences and ancient languages and all sundry of masculine matters, the sorts of subjects their fragile, weak minds simply weren’t made to comprehend and appreciate. Female scholars. Bah!”
I stiffened but still refused to bite the bait. I bit into my apple instead.
Gid wore a small smile and dry expression.
Rachel, however, was nettled. “Certainly, efficient housekeeping benefits a woman and her family, but I would never advocate for limiting a female’s learning to empty gentility. After all, how can a mother raise intelligent children capable of competing for advancement in our free nation if she, herself, can’t benefit from a rigorous education and therefore grow her mind?” She drew herself up to her full sitting height, squeezed the apple so hard her knuckles whitened, and glared at Phineas’s back. “Pretty picture of family life you’d paint, Mr. Standen, if you made every mother a silly gudgeon with nothing to her credit besides a quick needle. What chance would the children have to succeed if all the maternal instruction they received was limited to the banal advice dear Mama crammed into her embroidered samplers?” She harrumphed.
Vividly recollecting my first encounter with Rachel over Mr. Long’s maple-syrup kettle, when she’d announced her passion for stitchery, I stared at her in faint surprise.
Ahead, Phineas’s shoulders trembled. He didn’t turn around but managed to say in a quavering voice, “Why, Miss Welds, I didn’t think you had a strong opinion on the matter.”
She ground out, “I changed my mind.”
The apple hit Phineas squarely on the back of his neck and with enough force to kill his laughter.
“Nice shot,” I said.
Rachel sniffed. “Thank you.”
* * *
Phineas’s troublemaking continued the entire length of the sloppy, bumpy road. His conversation irked me. I found myself wishing for Daniel Long’s quiet teasing and subtle wit.
Phineas, in comparison, was pure obnoxiousness.
Rachel—unused to his ways and also the object of most of his comments—responded even more strongly than I did. She bristled. She flung back sarcastic retorts. She huffed and growled in angry irritation. Then, just as she teetered close to clobbering him, he’d say something so silly, she’d gasp a laugh. I barely recognized the person he was dragging out of her with his infuriating verbal pokes and prods. My easy-natured chum had pluck. A lot of it.
When we reached Ridge Road and stopped to eat before heading west, I thought I’d better have a talk with Phineas. After encouraging Gid to try to net some fish in the stream and leaving Rachel to cook what she could from our remaining journey-allotted pantry supplies, I cornered Phineas in a stand of hickories, where he was sitting on a rock and cleaning his boots.
His favorite pastime.
He smiled at me tolerantly as I lectured him. When I finished, he said, “A person can make a religion out of misfortune, Freddy. With you and Gid tiptoeing around Rachel, moping and moaning, acting like she’s fatally ill, she might well decide she ought to die for whatever happened in that hellish hovel. Is Linton, the idiot, worth killing herself over? I don’t think so. Better for her to put her f
oot on the suffering.”
“And your utter lack of sensibility will help her do that?”
“Of course.”
“I simply don’t see this as an appropriate time for jokes. What happened to her was not a joke.”
“I’m not laughing at her,” he said sharply. “I’m inviting her to laugh at me. And it beats what you and Gid are doing—basically everything you can, short of sewing Rachel a shroud and handing her a shovel—to suggest her life’s over. Well, it’s not. A couple of horrible months don’t need to define a whole life. A person’s got to check the suffering. Grind it into the ground.”
“The way you do? More like dance on it.”
He shrugged—then, indeed, stood and did a little jig.
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Thank you kindly.” He jigged his way toward the wagon, singing a bawdy tune to go with his fancy footwork.
* * *
I stared after him, fuming. I wasn’t trying to show Rachel her life was over. I was taking seriously a serious situation. And if I did happen to own a shovel, I wouldn’t hand it to Rachel. I’d whack Phineas with it—or better yet, Mr. Linton. That man was a menace. He deserved a prison sentence.
Perturbed, I trudged toward the streamside fire, mentally replaying Phin’s shroud-and-shovel remark. When the trees thinned and exposed the ribbon of smoke threading through the boughs, I stopped short.
Gid and Rachel tarried there.
His face almost bilious in its sickly hue, my brother appeared to be apologizing—probably for his unconscionable reaction at the Lintons’—though clearly not to good effect.
Rachel stood very still, arms folded, frown lowered to the flames. At her feet, beside two silver trout, a handful of yellow flowers was strewn—dogtooth violets, I guessed.
With a flap of his hands, Gid asked, “May I at least be your friend?”
So more than an apology. For the love of God! I covered my mouth with my hands. To propose now—after everything she’d just been through? What a fool.
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