I prodded my head and winced. “Probably,” I said reluctantly. I’d rather have stayed with him. But my head did hurt like hell. Plus, a day or two at Phin and Marian’s place would give me a chance to talk to Rachel.
We decided it was too late to travel. The trip would have to wait until morning. I didn’t mind. I liked the idea of spending the night in the woods, warmed by the campfire and with the stars overhead, while Daniel and I savored our reunion.
In the end, I didn’t stay awake long enough to eat supper. While Gid started going on about his homesteading plans to Daniel, Fancy pranced my way. I turned on my side to pet her, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. I woke at dawn in a different location—the lean-to—with a sore crown and a breathless curiosity. Had Daniel carried me here?
The trip to the Standen-Gale homestead held none of the tedious discomforts of the previous travel. Even with an aching head, I couldn’t help but enjoy the eastward journey. I rode behind Daniel and of course had to wrap my arms around his waist (how else was I to keep from falling?), and of course I rode astride (why not, when I wore britches and didn’t have to worry about my skirts scrunching up to my thighs?), and of course I rested my cheek on Daniel’s broad back (I had a bruised brain, for heaven’s sake).
When we were almost there but not quite, Daniel (whose heart and breathing, so easily discernible under my nuzzling face, had been picking up tempo until both sped at a spanking pace) suddenly reined in his horse.
He twisted and muttered an apology and something about head injuries and taking care but not being able to wait a blasted second longer: all of this crammed fast into a frantic moment. Before he kissed me.
And I kissed him back.
And then, for some time, we kissed each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Perhaps it was for the best that we reached our destination during the noontime meal, when the three children were making a ruckus at the table and Phineas had returned to the cabin to dine and tease Rachel, and Rachel, slapping food onto his plate and stomping back to the hearth for the children’s soup, was retorting with vehement sass.
Mrs. Gale was obviously too harassed by a houseful of shenanigans to notice on Daniel and me the evidence of yet more naughtiness: flushed faces, bruised lips, mussed hair.
She had her hands full. I doubted the fairness of adding myself to her worries. But after our exchange of greetings and Daniel’s account of my concussion (delivered with averted eyes and a blush, probably because he had recently forgotten all about my injury), she said, “You were right to bring Freddy here,” then ordered, “Molly, move over next to Adam. Make room for our guests.” A moment later, her fingers were gently parting my hair. “Ouch,” she breathed over my head. “That’s a good-sized bump. You oughtn’t to be sitting up, Freddy. Let’s get you into Phin’s bed.”
This was a berth in the wall opposite the door. Phineas observed my appropriation of his sleeping quarters with a complacent nod, then, peeking at Rachel out of the corners of his eyes, asked, “Are you sure you didn’t bump your head on purpose, Freddy? You must be missing your beloved something awful to go whacking your head with a tree limb.”
Daniel frowned. I realized I hadn’t explained this recent development, sham though it was, in young Freddy’s life.
Mrs. Gale sighed. “Could you please, for two blasted seconds, keep your trap shut, Phin?”
I added my own glare in the direction of the troublemaker, then glanced at Rachel, fully expecting her to counter his teasing with a flattening comment.
What happened next, I didn’t expect. If his expression was any indication, neither did Phineas. Nor Daniel, nor Mrs. Gale, for that matter.
Rachel, as sweet as honey, gazed at me lovingly, set aside the soup ladle, flowed my way, fluttered open the quilt that had been neatly folded at the bottom of the bed, swooped it above me, and as soon as it settled, leaned down to tuck it entirely around my person. I felt like a swaddled infant, and a panicking one, at that, for throughout these tender ministrations she was murmuring, “I’ve missed you terribly, Freddy. It was a real trial, watching you leave, and though it pains me—fairly tortures me—to know your poor head’s aching, I can’t help but be glad you’re back, and I promise I’ll make your convalescence a pleasant one.”
I gaped, Phineas scowled, Mrs. Gale smiled and turned back to the table, Daniel shook his head in bewilderment—and Rachel, after patting my cheek and pecking my forehead with a kiss, twirled back to the hearth, delivering a triumphant smile to Phineas on her way.
* * *
“Use this one.” I tapped Ephraim’s forefinger. “From the ground now. Good. See? You’re getting the hang of it.”
Ephraim, Marian Gale’s oldest, examined his marble’s promising new position. Besides playing with the baked clay balls, there wasn’t much to do. Not today. The April wind had picked up during the night, my fifth one with the family, and swept in an early morning thunderstorm. Rain continued to pelt the roof. I was grateful that Phineas, long before my arrival, had finished the walls. Unchinked, the cabin would have filled like a leaky boat.
A wind coursed down the chimney and split the flames with a hiss. Wood crackled, and the earthy scent of roasting potatoes wafted through the room.
“Would you show me how to hoist again?” Six-year-old Ephraim’s blond head gleamed in the firelight. Adam, Marian’s four-year-old second child, and Molly, for a while longer the youngest at two, nodded into the little hands propping up their chins. They were splayed on their bellies across the floor.
Marian stood at the table, stirring the big bowl’s contents with one hand while rubbing her lower back with the other. “Don’t let him pester you, Freddy.”
Phineas’s sister liked me. I could tell. It wasn’t hard to fathom why. Minding my sisters for most of my life had taught me well. Here, as in Middleton, I’d taken over some of the childcare, playing marbles with the three little ones, trimming their hair just the previous day, telling stories, and making a kite and showing them how to fly it.
“You’re better at occupying them than Phin is,” Marian had told me during the washing, my third day here. We had all moved outside to work under the cloudy sky, with Phineas building a fence, Marian finishing the wash, Rachel scouring the edge of the woods for wild asparagus fronds, and Ephraim and me hanging damp clothes on the line. After adjusting the laundry basket to the side of her burgeoning stomach, Marian had glanced in the direction of the field where her brother was dragging a pile of rocks on a stoneboat toward the beginnings of the new fence. “Come suppertime, he starts teasing and gets them so wild they can’t fall asleep. Then he complains they’re keeping him up.”
Matthew and Luke had done much the same with my sisters. “Typical of a man to roughhouse, then whine when the children won’t settle the second he’s tired of the games.” I’d cleared my throat. “Most men, anyway.”
She’d eyed me for a moment, then headed for the stream, saying without turning, “But not you, Freddy. You’re not at all like most men.”
A crack of thunder brought me back to the present and our game of marbles. “I don’t mind,” I answered. “Watch, Ephraim. It goes like this.” Kneeling, I flipped a marble from knee level. The children and I followed the not-quite-round object as it traveled an erratic route across the floor.
A damp gust blasted the room. Rachel hurriedly shut the door behind her and shrugged off her cape. She hung it on a peg, shivered, and patted her damp hair. As she unlaced her boots, she said, “I took him his dinner, but he complained it’d take more than a few hot potatoes to warm him up.” She straightened and beamed a satisfied smile. “He’s soaked to the skin and looks just like a drowned rat.” On her way to the fire, she added airily, “Ah, well, we all warned him this wasn’t the day to go traipsing outside. Now he’ll probably catch cold and die.”
Marian raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
She shrugged. “He didn’t have to be so stupid.”
I drew up my legs. Rachel sat on the floor beside me and held her hands to the fire. I eyed her curiously. She and Phineas were always fighting, fighting, fighting. Seemed like Phin went out of his way to instigate the squabbles. I wondered why. Was he trying to divert her thoughts from what she’d been through? Or was there a less noble motivation behind his troublemaking? Skittishness, for instance. After all, if he kept the mood light, he could avoid confronting a heavy topic.
Phineas’s sister added mildly, “He wants to get ahead in his chores so we’re ready for Friday.”
“What’s happening Friday?” I gave a marble an underhand troll.
Marian twinkled a smile over her shoulder. “We’re having a welcoming party for our newcomers.”
Rachel looked up. “A party for us?”
I considered what I knew about this place: trees, trees, and more trees. “Who will come?”
“You’ll be surprised,” Marian said. “We’re not the only pioneers around here. We’ll whip together a decent showing and have fiddling and dancing, to boot.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You mean Phineas actually plays that instrument he cradles?”
“Wait and see.”
I turned to share my smile with Rachel.
Her entire demeanor had changed. She was staring, aghast, at the floor. “You won’t invite everyone in these parts, though, will you?”
“No, definitely not everyone,” Marian said. “Don’t fret, dear. Certain folks will never step foot in my house.” She went back to stirring and muttered something under her breath about louses and jail being too good for some people.
Rachel and I shared a somber glance. Phineas had obviously told Marian about Linton. We didn’t want him at the gathering.
“What about the Welds brothers?” I asked, finding my friend’s hand and giving it a squeeze. And what about Daniel? My spirits lifted at the thought of seeing him soon.
“They’re better, so I’m sure they’ll be here. Phin said Mr. Long hasn’t even stayed with them the better part of the week.” At my curious look, Marian explained, “He’s been working day and night with Mr. Winter, finishing widening the trail.”
I grunted. I should have known Mr. Helpful wouldn’t linger at the Weldses’ any longer than he had to. The man had a bad case of the good neighbor.
Marian rinsed her hands in the basin. “Phin rode out to help them yesterday and couldn’t believe what they’ve done already. The Monday after the party, weather permitting, we’ll have a logging bee there and help clear some semblance of a field. Then it’s the cabin.” She gave me a pensive smile.
Rachel pinched my cheek. (Around Phineas she was my passionate lover. She’d apparently decided that rather than permit him to tease her about the engagement farce, she would goad him with it. The strategy seemed to be working. In Phin’s absence, however, she turned into my big sister.) “Marian’s missing you already.”
“Of course.” Marian dried her hands on her apron. “Freddy’s the only boy I know who’s as comfortable throwing together a chicken stew as he is chopping up firewood.”
She ought to see what I can do with a needle and thread. “An apprentice picks up a lot of this and that,” I explained vaguely before asking a question about the food preparations for Friday.
I barely attended to her answer, too busy thinking about what would happen after Friday’s gathering. It was time for me to leave. The swelling on my head had gone down, and it was generally agreed I would be able to rejoin Gid at the beginning of next week. And I wanted to. Rejoining Gid meant seeing Daniel. I missed him.
But I still hadn’t accomplished what I wanted to do here. Rachel and I needed time to talk, and we needed to talk alone.
* * *
Phineas didn’t sicken from his rainy-day labors. Instead, the following morning, it was Adam who woke ill, not with a cold but with a stomach ailment that brought the usual assortment of ugly symptoms. The small cabin didn’t leave many places to steer clear of the contagion, but Rachel and I insisted Marian let us handle the patient. It wouldn’t do for her to risk infection, not in her condition.
We squirreled Adam in the bed I’d lately used. (Phineas, the good sport, had been sharing the loft with the children every night.) The poor boy couldn’t find comfort in the feather mattress or our ministrations. All morning and afternoon, he moaned and shivered and vomited on the hour, so regularly we could have set a clock by his heaving. He didn’t keep down a drop of broth until nightfall. Fortunately, the sickness proved as fast as it was frightful. The next day, he was weak but otherwise recovered. I escaped the house to help Rachel prepare Marian’s kitchen garden for the spring planting.
The brook was high. A warm breeze carried the sound of gurgling water to our moist plot of soil, and the sun shone across the fields and glinted off the rain that had collected in the lowest dips and furrows. Everywhere, puddles winked like silver coins.
I wrenched out a clump of weeds and tossed it onto the grass. Rachel followed suit with a large rock and, smiling suddenly, pointed. “Bluebird.”
“Pretty.” I frowned distractedly at the creature. Worries swirled in my head, but broaching the gravest one was proving harder than I expected.
“Well? What’s first?”
I shoved back my bangs with a sweaty arm. “Peas?”
“Not for sowing. Talking. There’s Daniel the evil silversmith, Freddy the foundling, the strange fate of Harriet of Middleton. Speak.”
“The most pressing subject is you.”
She glanced up warily.
When she didn’t say anything, I tugged on my ear and blurted, “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, bringing up anything hurtful. But I also don’t want you to think I haven’t asked you about what happened for my sake, like I’d be too disturbed to handle the details.” Leaning on the shovel, I gazed at her steadily. “If you want to talk, I’m here for you.” In the distance, Phineas was manuring the field. I indicated him with a jerk of my chin. “He suggested I should avoid mentioning the Lintons, said whatever happened there is over and done with and fit for nothing but forgetting.”
“He did, did he?” She flicked him a dark look. “Easy for him to say.”
“Yes,” I murmured, but then conceded, “At least he was being serious for once.”
“Phineas and his foolery.” She sniffed. “He means well, I suppose—wants to distract me, make me laugh so I don’t cry.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Phineas Standen will do whatever it takes to stop a person from weeping.” Her gaze turned in his direction. “I should be more grateful. You, Marian, even Phineas … good friends with good intentions. But what you’re all kindly setting out to do for me doesn’t change the fact that there’s a man in this area who is a dangerous threat. I don’t need to be patted and coddled. I don’t want to laugh along with Phin like everything is fine now. What I crave is justice. Linton should pay for his wrongs.”
“Absolutely he should.” But what was the chance of that? Civilization in these parts was too new to sport sheriffs. Even if it weren’t, who was to say a court would intervene? The law gave a man the right to inflict corporal punishment on those in his household, to treat the very people he should have wanted to protect as his property, playthings, slaves. “Mr. Linton—”
“Is a monster.” She kicked at a clump of dirt. “His family would be better off without him.”
“The whole world would be better off without him.”
She nodded shortly and tackled a pocket of mangy green with grim determination. “I’m not ready to talk about that nightmare. Not sure if I’ll ever be.” The roots came loose with a ripping sound. She tossed the weed aside. Like one anxious to change the subject, she asked briskly, “What about you? Tell me. I want to hear the story.”
While we worked, I shared it, starting with that long-ago January afternoon of spinning when Matthew’s habit of whistling the family’s meager funds down the wind came to full light, plodding hot-faced through my reactions, the ugly outbur
sts and consequences that urged my flight and transformation, and, more easily, touching on the journey’s escapades that culminated in Daniel discovering me hammered to the ground.
At the end of the recital, she shook her head, bemused.
I poked at the ground with the shovel’s blade. “You must think I’m a loose screw, dressing up like a boy and diving into so much ridiculousness.”
“After such an adventure?” A disbelieving sound escaped her. “Only imagine if you’d stayed in Middleton and gone along with the usual routine: baking, ironing, knitting, washing, sewing. You never would have known what it was like to get away from so many spools and reels and knots of flax. You never would have tasted freedom. Heavens, Harriet, I don’t wonder at all you came up with this masquerade. The real miracle is that we don’t all chop off our hair and call ourselves Freddy.”
I chewed on my lower lip. Then, abruptly: “You know, I’ll be returning to that world eventually.”
“With Daniel?”
“Do you think I’m making a mistake?” I didn’t. Not anymore. Daniel was proving to be unusually flexible in his thinking. I expected our marriage to be unusual as well. But I wondered what she thought.
“Only you can decide that”—she shrugged—“but I have to admit, back in Middleton I was jealous of what you had with Mr. Long.” When I stared in surprise, she added hurriedly, “Not that I wanted him for myself. I simply wished for that kind of affection—the way he cared for you.”
“Despite my nature?” Headstrong, outspoken, rash … the list could go on and on.
“Oh, no. That’s just it. He loves you because of your nature.” She sighed. “A rare thing, that.”
This sank in, and I recognized its truth with a nod. Perhaps our brand of love was special. Yet how bittersweet to acknowledge its uniqueness. We should all be loved for who we are.
* * *
Rachel stirred the contents of the boiling kettle, then stepped coolly to the side as Phineas and I neared with buckets of sap.
Phineas made a face. “I don’t carry any diseases, Miss Welds.”
The Beloved Wild Page 18