He smiled humorlessly. “Oh, sure: because with that beaming face of yours and that chipper prance, you definitely strike a person as a deeply grieving orphan. Please. Not even Ed would fall for that one.”
I snickered. He had a point. I didn’t want to have to act depressed, especially when, after weeks and weeks of being out of sorts, at times quite desperately sad, I was finally feeling happy. “Then I’m a foundling, currently on the run, having escaped my indentured apprenticeship to an evil silversmith with a brutally heavy hand. You rescued me from homelessness and certain starvation. Now I’m your loyal servant.”
He didn’t comment on my story, just shook his head. Finally, but very slowly, as if residual shock were hindering his speech, he said, “I hardly recognize you. You look like a stranger. This isn’t right, Harry.”
I bit my lip. Gid was usually easy to bully. I crouched to pet Fancy and, after a moment of quick thinking, suggested mildly, “You know, this situation might actually work better for us. First off, I can help in ways I couldn’t as a girl: clearing, building, and planting right alongside you.”
“I need someone cooking, washing, and cleaning.”
“I can do that, too. And you won’t have to worry about me so much on this trip. A woman you’d need to protect. But who’s going to bother a gawky boy? If a storm threatens and we’re forced to seek tavern accommodations, no one will question if we’re really brother and sister. Let’s be honest here, Gid: I can’t imagine a more brotherly brother than you, but we don’t share blood, and we certainly don’t look a thing alike. Instead of stirring doubt and difficult questions, we’ll just be two boys set on adventure. In fact, if you decide to linger in the barroom to gather news on roads and conditions, I won’t even have to wait in the room for you, worried some seedy blackguard is going to break in and get bold with me. I can just join you.” And perhaps try my hand at faro. And perhaps even sample a bit of the gin my parents had always forbidden me to try.
He gave me a dry look. “You don’t have whiskers, Harry. I doubt the tavern keeper will permit you to get drunk.” He rubbed the fuzz on his chin.
“Then I’ll just sit there quietly and listen, like a good boy.”
“A scrawny bean of a boy. You look about thirteen.”
“See! You can finally be older than me.” It had always perturbed Gid that I surpassed him in age by a month. Granted, I’d used my elder’s status our entire lives to lay first claim to all sorts of privileges.
His face brightened. “So you’ll listen and obey? You’ll act as befits a young subordinate? You’ll mind my rules and orders?”
“Don’t get carried away.”
He smiled. “Maybe it could work. What should I call you?”
I frowned. My nickname would suffice, since Harry already tagged plenty of males, but its connection to my true self would surely stir even the dull Welds brothers’ suspicions. I shrugged. “You decide.”
“Freddy.”
“Freddy?” I hated that name. “Can we make it Frederick?”
“Too much of a mouthful. Freddy works. But for how long?”
“However long we like.”
“I won’t agree to that. What if Mama and Papa travel to visit us or we want to return to Middleton to see them? I’ll give this six months.”
“Eight. Then I can help with the first harvest, if we have one.”
“Fine. Eight months before you’re Harry again.”
“You might miss Frederick.”
“Freddy,” he corrected with a frown. “Doubtful. The little gudgeon’s irritating me already.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When I’d quipped I was bored at the beginning of our journey, Gid had warned me I was tempting trouble. Perhaps he was right, because after leaving the scanty protection of the roadside hovel, we shared a whole day with a contrary wind that seemed intent on shoving us back to Middleton, then endured a subsequent day of heavy snow. We hadn’t broached the wilderness yet, but even with the benefit of packed roads, the weather slowed our progress.
Near Londonbury I forced a further delay, requiring some time to scramble out of the new attire and struggle into the old. I felt the loss of the boys’ clothes immediately. A girl’s dress invited in the chill. Trousers simply didn’t.
Mama had assured my brother that the Hubers’ address would be easy to find, not only by its proximity to town, the biggest homestead on the first south-side road off the main thoroughfare, but also by its features.
“What are we supposed to be looking for?” I asked, pulling the hood of my cape more securely over my head.
“A spacious breezeway”—Gid squinted through the snow—“and an enormous stone icehouse.”
When we finally reached the place that matched our mother’s description and, sleigh bells ringing, swept into the yard, twilight was blurring the falling snow. The house, outbuildings, and scattering of trees cast murky shadows across the seamless white.
The door cracked, then opened wider. A stout woman, holding her shawl together at her throat, appeared.
Gid jumped out of the sleigh. He introduced us, reached into his coat, and presented the letter Mama had asked him to pass along.
Smiling, Mrs. Huber pressed it to her bosom. “Please, come in.”
When my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I glanced around with interest. The Hubers’ house was generously sized, but its openness spread the fire’s warmth thin. Indeed, frost trimmed the door and furred the glass of the single-paned window.
“Will this winter never end?” Mrs. Huber dusted flakes off her dark shawl and gazed at us warmly. “Dear Margaret’s beloved Harriet and Gideon. I’ve heard so much about you—knew about the pioneering, too, just not the precise schedule—and now you’re here and such a coincidence. Only this afternoon I was determined to write your mother a letter, then scolded myself for leaving the stone well in the borning room. Ink froze solid. Well, the loft’s toasty, anyway, and you can spend the night up there.” When we mumbled about not wanting to put anyone out, she exclaimed, “Heavens, of course it’s no bother. Wouldn’t think of sending you off without a good night’s rest and a full stomach. You’ll have plenty of rough sleeping and eating in the coming weeks. We can offer you respite for at least one evening.” She turned. “Come, girls.” She introduced her red-haired daughters, Fran and Kate, younger than me but older than Betsy, and clucked over an absent Sarah, “lately married and now living in your neck of the woods, close to Middleton.” Then, like one saving the best for last, she presented her eldest—“Here’s my Lance”—and, with a meaningful look: “Seventeen years old. Just your age, Harriet.”
The son, shortish like his sisters but with hair more auburn than orange, greeted us cheerfully and gave me a furtive scan.
I automatically returned the look.
Nice but no Daniel Long.
I blinked. The unbidden thought disturbed me. I was supposed to be putting Mr. Long out of mind, not clinging to him like a hoarded treasure.
Lance grinned approvingly at me. After reaching for his coat, he gave my brother a nod. “I can help you put up the cattle.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
The opening door allowed in a billow of snow that settled as soon as Lance pulled it shut behind him and Gid.
Mrs. Huber fluttered her hands. “Let me take your coat, Harriet. We’ll get you closer to the fire. Mr. Huber ought to be back soon. He walked to the stand of maples at the bottom of the hill—has some notion of widening the field that way.” While I unwound my scarf and started on the mittens, she said over her shoulder, “Heat some water, Fran.” Beaming at me: “You must tell me about your plans. The Genesee Valley! All the rage in these parts, too—and so exciting. I want Middleton news, as well. Last I heard from your mother, she was nursing a houseful of invalids. You, especially, suffered, I recall her—” She gasped.
In the process of removing my cape, I had pushed back the hood.
She stared at my cropped hair in horror and even jerked sideways to glance at my back, probably hoping to discover my tresses bound in a tight bun. “Oh, dear!”