As soon as I finished planting what was seasonably permissible, I set aside the watering can and got to work digging the storage pit for Gid’s hay and corn. I’d never encountered such a mean soil: rich but so laden with clay and rocks I could barely shovel it. My progress was disappointingly gradual, and at the end of every day, I had very little to show for all my scraping and heaving. I did, however, acquire a great many aches and pains, not to mention blisters.
The completion of the cabin meant we were sleeping indoors now, a circumstance that protected us from the night’s chill but also kept Daniel and me from romantic pursuits. How could we do much of anything with Gid practically in arm’s reach? It was awkward. Plus, my brother obviously disapproved.
Exhaustion partly reconciled me to the restriction. We were working so hard, come nightfall we fell asleep quickly. The labor hastened the time, and the week’s end beckoned me: the impending travel by horseback with Daniel, a quick service in Batavia to clinch our partnership, and on our journey toward Middleton, plenty of spring evenings under the stars.
Yet reservations plagued me. I felt torn, half thrilled with newlywed fantasies, half anxious about who and what I was abandoning here: Rachel, Gid, and freedom, the unquestionable liberties that came with being Freddy. Like a cage trapping canaries, my stomach reacted to my confusion by remaining perpetually aquiver.
Daniel was impatient. I could tell. He broke the news of our departure to Gid over Thursday’s supper.
“Monday? Leaving? So soon?” At my nod, he stared at us for a long moment, then looked despondently around his cabin, as if he was trying to picture it without our company.
My uneasiness stirred. “We’ll return for visits.”
“And I don’t think this place will stay empty for long,” Daniel said, smiling gently.
My brother’s cheeks reddened. He shrugged, lowered his eyes, and plugged his spoon disinterestedly into his potatoes.
I gazed at him in frustration. Maybe his opinion of Marian Gale was a bit too reverent. Was he planting her on a pedestal like he had Rachel? If so, this was becoming a bad habit.
I doubted the efficacy of worshipfulness in courtship. It established unreasonable expectations and invited failure. To be the object of adulation? Well, no one was perfect. Better to love the fact of the person rather than an idealized version. And better to be loved for oneself. Rachel had said as much not too long ago.
* * *
For all that its fertile soil promised good crops, the inland location of the Genesee Valley not only complicated transporting produce (abundant or otherwise) to market, it made communication with families back in the old states a challenge. A person here had to travel hours just to reach a postmaster.
Gid and I had dispatched only two letters to our folks since leaving Middleton, one in Canandaigua, right before we met Phineas at that horrible tavern, and one in Batavia, after my brother had signed the Holland Land Company papers and secured his property.
Since Daniel and I would be returning to that latter town in four days, we told Gid to prepare whatever messages he wanted mailed. We would post his along with our own. The carriers who served the post offices rode quickly and would get the letters to Middleton days before we’d reach home.
We wanted to offer to post our friends’ letters as well. Paying visits and collecting their messages would give us the opportunity to bid farewell. I dreaded the visit to Phin’s. How could I possibly say good-bye to Rachel? It was too soon and didn’t feel right—didn’t feel kind.
On Friday, the very day I planned to call on Rachel, she surprised me with an appearance. I was washing clothes when I heard the sound of wheels clomping and creaking over the uneven road. Before investigating, I hung my brother’s shirt from a branch by the stream and left it dripping there.
Daniel and Gid already waited in the yard and stood side by side, one tall, one short, but both frowning and their arms similarly folded.
Rachel arrived with her cousins. In the wagon, the three Weldses sat combed, scrubbed, dressed in their Sunday best, and looking about as cheerful as mourners on their way to a funeral.
I didn’t care to see the brothers—they annoyed me—but I was glad to welcome Rachel.
Her answering smile was decidedly strained.
Robert tilted up his beaver cap. “Morning, neighbors.” His face, pale and with a sickly greenish hue, contrasted vividly with his red eyes. Even his smile had an unhealthy twist to it, more grimace than grin. He turned to examine the cabin and winced violently, as the motion brought his fiery eyes in the path of the early sunbeams. “Place is coming along just fine. And—heavens—devilish fast, too.” His smile slipped as he squinted at the readied field. “Ed and I seem a mite behind schedule this spring.”
Ed acknowledged this with a nod that he terminated abruptly. His hands flew to his bare head. He groaned.
Gid’s frown deepened. “Care to come in for some coffee? Help wake you.”
Or sober them up: whichever was necessary. I glanced at Rachel to see if she was thinking the same thing, but she was staring straight ahead, grim-faced and apparently lost in her thoughts.
Robert sucked in his upper lip and turned questioningly to his brother.
Ed didn’t notice. He poked his pinky in his right ear and commenced scraping out wax.
“Not sure if we have time,” Robert said. “We’re heading a ways down Oak Orchard Road.”
“For what?” Daniel asked.
“A big gathering,” Ed answered, suddenly alert, “to celebrate the mill going up in those parts.”
“We thought we’d invite our cousin along—fear we’ve been neglecting her.” Robert rubbed his brow and peeked at Gid, maybe recollecting the dressing-down my brother had given him the last time they saw each other. He continued in a rush, “Ought to be fun. Wanted to see if you boys could come, too.”
“No, thank you,” my brother said tersely.
I sighed. How much more ridiculous could the Welds brothers get? They clearly hadn’t understood the gist of Gid’s recent lecture. He wanted his old friends to get sober and recognize their duties to their farm and family. He didn’t want them dragging Rachel along to a frolic so she could watch them drink themselves to unconsciousness and act stupid along the way.
“You can surely visit for a few minutes,” I said. “Go in and have some coffee. Gid made biscuits.”
Perking up a little, my brother nodded. “They’re very good.”
I snorted. Ever since he’d taken over the morning bread making, Gid had formed the notion that his biscuits were lighter and more delicious than any he’d ever tasted. To Rachel, I said, “Would you like to see the mushrooms I spotted growing by the creek? Couldn’t believe my eyes—it’s so early in the season.”
“Must be the warm spell,” she answered absently.
“I thought they might be a kind of morel but don’t like chancing adding them to my famous fritters lest they poison us. Come tell me what you think.”
“All right.”
I led her through a thick stand of swamp maples. We passed Gid’s wet shirt. It sagged from the branch like a flag of surrender. Without talking, we walked along the stream’s rushing length. The shimmering water gurgled between rocks and splashed over stones. When we reached the conical-capped mushrooms, I stopped and glanced behind us. I could just make out a bit of the cabin’s roof in the distance.
Rachel crouched by the patch and steadied herself with a hand on the damp ground. “These are witch’s caps.”
“Yes. Deadly poisonous but pretty. Back home we sometimes called them yellow unicorns.” With my boot I tapped a felled oak, where a fungus was growing like rippled shelves out of the rot. “I’ll stick with these instead.” I broke off the brown clumps.
“Chicken of the woods.”
“Ever try them?”
“Of course. They actually do taste a lot like chicken.” She rose and whisked the bottom of her dress to free the hem of a dead leaf. “Why are we her
e, if not to identify mysterious mushrooms?”
“You looked troubled. I thought you might want to talk.”
She folded her arms and studied the stream. “You and Daniel are leaving soon.”
Though she made her words a statement, I treated them like a question. “On Monday. We were planning on coming by to see you and the others this morning … to say good-bye and gather any letters you might want us to mail.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets, feeling uncomfortable, unsettled, insensitive: a person abandoning friends to their fates. “I’ll miss you, Rachel. And the others, certainly, but especially you.” I swallowed. “We’ll be back to visit. Hopefully as early as next year.”
Her gaze was sad. “I’d like to leave, too.”
I stared. “With us?” This didn’t displease me. I’d give up a romantic journey alone with Daniel to secure Rachel’s companionship. Middleton would be a happier place with her there.
She shook her head. “No … just run away.” She sighed. “Of course, running away implies you have a home you’re escaping. I don’t have that. Middleton’s not home. This isn’t, either.” She waved a hand, as if to clear away the gloom, and said with forced briskness, “I reckoned you were ready to go. Straight to Middleton?”
“After we marry in Batavia,” I said distractedly. Her sorrow pierced me. She seemed lost, and why wouldn’t she? It was true: She had no close family, no home. While I tripped along in my pretense, casually killing off my parents, playing a foundling, inventing stories of enslavement and abuse, Rachel was facing—or had faced—much of what I had invented. For real. How oblivious I’d been to this fact. The realization smote me.
“Marry,” she repeated, her tone hollow, face morose. “Last night, Phineas asked me to marry him. Kind of.”
I jerked upright. “He did?”
She bristled. “You needn’t sound so surprised.”
“Friend.” I gazed at her steadily. “You know I think one Rachel Welds is worth a thousand Phineas Standens. It’s just … Phin? He’s different. Paints himself into the picture of the Confirmed Bachelor. Teasing or not, all his verbal jabs at ‘the weaker sex’ made me think he’d rather disdain a woman than, well, you know…” I shrugged, not sure where the unlikely couple stood.
“Marry her,” she finished dully. “You’re absolutely right. In fact, you should have heard his proposal. For a man who prizes himself on his fancy speech and cleverness, he sounded like a perfect idiot.” With a clap of her hands, she killed a hovering mosquito, then wiped her palms on her skirt. “I never saw a person so racked with agony and dread, wrenching at his hair, ending each of his croaked avowals of love with a misguided attempt at humor, a not-so-funny joke that—as you can imagine—suggested quite the opposite of love.” She sighed, a long exhalation that rattled, like there were tears caught in her throat.
I gave her a sympathetic look. “He made a cake of himself.”
She threw up her hands. “He’s a fool. Since I met him, a day hasn’t gone by that he’s failed to make some stupid remark. Then, out of the blue, he springs a proposal on me! Not once has he ever sat down and talked to me like an adult.”
I nodded. He was like a boy who couldn’t think of a better way to express interest in a girl than pulling her braid and calling her a name.
“And the proposal, Harry.” She groaned a laugh. “What kind of person wants to hear a proposal that makes her out to sound like a jailer, like—like a walking, talking manacle?”
I bit my lip. Poor Rachel.
She slowly shook her head, as if still dumbfounded by the experience.
“So what did you say?”
“No, of course.” She straightened, fists balling at her sides, eyes flashing. “I told him that since my evil, tormenting temptress of a person was such a bugbear to his delicate masculine sensibilities, such a horrible blight to his happiness, I wouldn’t think of trapping him in the misery of marriage. Then I told him that until he learned to talk to me with a modicum of respect, I couldn’t even consider him a friend, let alone a lover. Then I told him to go away.”
I eyed her with grave respect. Certainly, I was sorry for her hurt feelings, even a tad sorry for Phineas, who, for all his witty intelligence, was obviously an idiot when it came to women. Rachel’s response, however … well, I was impressed. That must have been quite a scene. “So you told him to go away, just like that?”
She cleared her throat. “Actually, I told him to mount his precious little donkey and get the hell away from me.”
I whistled low and long. “Precious. Little. Donkey. That couldn’t have gone over well.”
She sniffed. “I’d say it again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
By noon, the Weldses had long since left, Robert and Ed fidgety with loads of coffee but still cringing from the ill effects of their night of drinking, Rachel glum.
As I flipped the mushroom fritters in the hot skillet, I listened to Daniel and Gid mutter about our plans. It didn’t seem sensible to go visiting today, not when Bob and Ed wouldn’t be around to give us their letters for home, Rachel also would be absent, and the rejected Phineas (yes, I’d told them about the botched proposal) was probably out of sorts and licking his wounds.
This conversation came to a midsentence halt, immediately after Gid’s “Phineas, the poor sap,” when a disturbance outside inspired Fancy’s fierce barking and announced no other than the unsuccessful suitor.
“Is she still here?” Phineas asked in answer to our quiet greetings, his hands gripping the doorframe and his gaze darting all around the cabin, as if Rachel might be crouching under the table or hiding in the loft.
I shook my head. Gid covered his embarrassment with a fake cough. Daniel invited Phineas inside.
Our guest fell onto the only seat, a stool we’d transported all the way from Middleton, and immediately slumped forward, elbows planted on his thighs, head in his hands. Not a pretty sight, and practically an aberration: His neckcloth hung, untied, wrinkled, and damp over his shoulders, and his shirt collar gaped, as though he’d clawed it open.
Knowing Phineas Standen as I did, these details, along with the crumpled coat, wild hair, and smudged pantaloons, would have been sufficient to disturb me. But the well-fitted boots brought me to a shocked standstill. They were absolutely plastered with mud, straight up to the tassels.
“I’m sorry, Phin,” Gid mumbled, his eyes also fixed on the soiled footwear.
Daniel sighed. “Wish it had turned out differently for you.”
Phineas covered his face. “It’s my own stupid fault. I made a muck of it. Must be queer in my attic.” He groaned into his palms. “Stayed out all night beating myself up. When I went back this morning, Marian told me Rachel had left before breakfast, gone with her cousins to a gathering on Oak Orchard. She said they were stopping here first to invite you along. I came straightaway—hoped maybe she’d decided to stay with you for the day instead of going with those brainless gudgeons.…” He raised his head and absently patted his coat pocket, apparently looking for a handkerchief that was no longer there. After the abortive search, he grabbed one limp end of his neckcloth and mopped his eyes.
“Heavens,” I breathed. When the fritters started smoking, I started and hurriedly removed them from the skillet. “Here.” I thrust the plate in front of him. “Have some fritters.”
He shook his lowered head. “I couldn’t eat a bite.”
“You’ve got to keep up your strength. You have a trip ahead of you. You’d better go after her.”
Daniel and Gid readily agreed, my brother recommending some pretty things to say, and my beau responding to Phineas’s “Oh, what’s the use—she made her refusal loud and clear” with “Follow her. That’s what I did—went after Harriet, and it worked for me.”
Phin’s eyes regained a hopeful gleam. “You think I should propose again?”
“Yes,” Daniel and Gid said together. They turned to me expectantly.
“Well…” I winced. “No.”
Phin slumped.
Daniel frowned. “No?”
Gid scratched his head. “Huh?”
“Phin does need to go after her, but mostly to apologize.” I sighed. “Rachel’s situation has never been easy. She’s been forced to cling to the fringes of distant family and acquaintances and pay for their support with good-natured usefulness and hard work. Then Mr. Linton happened, and her situation got much, much worse.” I looked at Phin soberly. “What she needs now is a friend.”
Friendship, kinship, love matches. What a mess we made of relationships—all because of our personal insecurities, fears, and prejudices. At one time, I’d been so critical of Daniel for not speaking plainly about his intentions, yet I could have been the frank one. Instead, I’d hidden my cowardice behind the excuse that coming forward with the heart on the sleeve was the man’s job. Daniel, of course, had played his own game to incite my jealousy. How many poor Middleton girls had had their expectations raised as a result? And though I criticized Phineas and Gid for behaving nonsensically around Rachel, I hadn’t been a friend to her in the beginning, either.
And now I was leaving. I briefly closed my eyes.
“If you truly care for Rachel, be there for her, talk to her—even better, listen to her.” I turned back to the fritters in the skillet. “And, for the love of God, Phin, quit joking.”
* * *
We found ourselves at loose ends after Phineas left.
Arms crossed, Daniel stood in the doorway, his shoulder holding back the oilcloth. “It’s Friday. We’ll have to figure out next week, Harriet.”
I started slipping on my boots. “Yes.” But I was shaking my head. I didn’t have any suggestions to offer. Frankly, a Monday departure wasn’t just unlikely. It was impossible. If his frustrated expression was any indication, Daniel suspected the same. Too many circumstances were precariously undecided and dangerously unraveling.
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