I gazed at him mutely. This didn’t sound like the beginning of a proposal. Wasn’t he supposed to fall on his knee and spout avowals of love and other such flummery? “What do you mean?”
He tapped a boot against a clod and folded his arms. “It just seems as though the Winters, my longtime friends and neighbors, are lately all torn up with secrets. There’s Gideon, and now you and Gideon, whispering with the Welds brothers whenever you get the chance to tiptoe off together. Then there’s Matthew…”
I shoved aside the first half of his observations, more concerned with the second. “What about Matthew?” He hesitated, so I offered, “Some weeks ago, I caught him handing over a fat purse to a ne’er-do-well.”
“Isaac Rush.”
I nodded. “Matthew’s not in more trouble, is he?” My oldest brother seemed normal enough lately. I’d been hoping he had gone back to his former self—not that I particularly liked that self, as frequently intoxicated and rude as it was, but it beat a Matthew who gambled for high stakes.
He gave his head a shake, as if banishing a dark thought. “What about you? Gideon and the Welds boys are concocting a scheme, that’s obvious, and whatever it is, it’s got the three of them distracted. Now you’ve joined the fuss.” A small frown creased his brow. “Do you want to tell me about it? May I help in any way?”
I bit my lip. Whether he thought to offer for me or not (perhaps saving his tender words for the fancier Miss Goodrich), Mr. Long had been a good and constant neighbor—to be honest, at times more than that. He deserved a warning of my impending departure, but how could I disclose it when Gid and I hadn’t told our parents, when I hadn’t even come to terms with leaving? “I can’t speak of it,” I finally said. “It’s not my secret to tell.” At least not mine alone.
He nodded slowly. “Just so you know, you can come to me if you need anything. I count you one of my closest friends.” Surprise must have shown in my face, for he smiled, turned, and began to lead us through the maze again. “It’s all well and good to be Mr. Steady and Respectable around here, directing my cousin Jeb in the ways of running a farm, but the role gets tedious. Frankly, it wearies me. Sometimes I feel like I never got my fair share of childhood. I went from playing hoop wars in straightaway races with Luke to figuring out how to fix the well sweep. There are days I loathe my dull duties.” Over his shoulder, he gave me a lopsided smile. “Despite my initials implying otherwise.”
I had the grace to blush.
“Anyway, when everyone else treats me like a stern stick-in-the-mud, you never stand on ceremony with me. You make me laugh and don’t hold back on the teasing.” After a pause, he coughed and said gruffly, “I want you to know I appreciate your friendship.”
This admission, not at all the proposal I’d expected but somehow more endearing and wrenching, left me speechless. I finally stammered, “I—I thank you, Mr. Long. You’re, well, a friend to me, too.” As soon as I said the words, I realized their truth and, more comfortable, confided, “To speak plainly, I always do look forward to devising new ways to tease you.”
He laughed. “You’re very good at that.”
We managed the rest of the maze in a comfortable silence. Nothing was obviously different. I wasn’t Miss Harriet Winter, soon-to-be Mrs. Daniel Long. Nor was I Miss Harriet Winter, the confirmed spinster who’d squandered her chance to be mistress of her own home. I hadn’t told him about my pioneering ambitions, and he hadn’t disclosed the specifics on what he knew about Matthew’s plight.
But when we found the exit to Betsy’s Bower and walked back to the party, with the evening sun looking as heavy as a ripe peach in the sky and the fields awash in warm light and our two lengthened shadows side by side, I felt a change in us, a change between us: a sweetening.
It was a change that required consideration.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next weeks passed in a blur of harvesting and pickling, storing and drying. I saw very little of my brothers, even less of Mr. Long. And if I’d packed fat onto my skinny bones from the Lammas feast, I completely lost it again by shooting up and down the cellar ladder hundreds of times. Hauling and preparing food, then shelving it in the dim coolness of the underground pantry, was the pattern that filled my days.
Across the mountains, the first smudges of red appeared like small wounds on the heads of soft maples. Days shortened. Papa and my brothers cut and shucked the corn, and the crop was so plentiful, they ran out of room for it in the loft and had to build a cratch to stow it in. By the time all the grain was thrashed and the hay stacked, Mama, my sisters, and I had reduced the garden to pickled beans, pickled beets, pickled tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, pickled whatever-doesn’t-poison-you. And I reeked of vinegar.
Apple season arrived to save me from the kitchen. I was happy to relinquish the last of the preserving to Mama and my sisters and spend my time climbing the ladders braced against the fruit trees, plucking maiden’s blushes and Cooper’s russets from the limbs, while all around me, in the tall, browning grass, insects made a chorus with their racket.
Soon the second-best apples would enter the kitchen for drying or go to the mill for cider. The third-best, those poorer apples that had fallen to the ground or hidden themselves in the upper branches of the trees, would become butter, sauce, and yes: more vinegar.
But the fruits I selected first from each variety were the prime eating apples. These I picked cautiously, my cotton gloves protecting them from rough handling. Mama tucked the choice ones, stem up, in straw-packed boxes. They’d wait in the cellar for us, a welcome, raw sweetness to munch on when so much of everything else bore the taste of preserving.
I wondered how many of these apples would yet linger in winter storage when Gideon and I left home.
The first picking was a slow process, requiring meticulous care. I should have been happy to have Rachel Welds as a harvesting companion, for she was a stout worker, worthy of every bushel Papa would give her to share with the Weldses as payment for her assistance, and very gentle, never rendering an apple unfit for packing with rough pulling or heedless squeezes. But the girl created more noise than the insects did.
At first I thought I’d go mad listening to her prattle on and on about her baby cousin’s rash and the pelisse she was sewing and the best way to prepare a potato. Eventually, however, I learned to respond to her talk instinctively without absorbing a single word, murmuring in a vaguely consoling way when her voice turned fretful, obliging her with a surprised grunt when she subjected me to something apparently startling, and laughing absently when her tone tittered into happiness.
But when she described the trip she’d recently taken to Middleton, in the company of her aunt, uncle, and two of her cousins, and the stop they’d made at the Goodrich house after Mr. Welds had finished his business with a merchant, I found myself listening and prompted, “You stopped to see the Goodrich family?”
Rachel might have been silly, but she was also kindhearted, too much so to snub my abrupt interest. After hours of insulting her with ill-masked boredom, I deserved a rebuff, and she had every right to thwart me. However, she enthusiastically nodded, sending her pretty, dark ringlets in a merry dance around her face. “So Auntie Welds could deliver the cloth she’d woven and dyed. Mrs. Goodrich ordered it some time ago. The lady inspected the material; then, gracious as can be, she invited us into the parlor for tea and biscuits. I could hardly believe the sight that met my eyes.”