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 foot 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.
Rachel nudged the scattered bouquet with the toe of her boot. The gaze she raised to Gid was cold. Before turning away from him, she said tersely, “You can try.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Here, Marian, we have Gideon Winter of Middleton, New Hampshire.” Phineas introduced my brother with a nod in his direction. After Gid bowed in greeting, Phineas continued, “And this is Miss Rachel Welds, recently a companion to Mrs. Linton of Barre, but on account of her pending nuptials, currently our guest. I invited her”—he slid me a twinkling smile to acknowledge this rapper—“for she’ll be better situated living with us, closer to her betrothed, until the happy day she commences her wedded bliss.”
Rachel bobbed a curtsy. She kept her gaze on the floor. I could tell by the hands she folded tightly in front of her and by the way she chewed on her bottom lip that she was worried, probably fretting that her arrival would discompose the other woman. My heart went out to Rachel. How awful to live so uncertainly, with no place to call home.
Marian Gale, Phineas’s sister, apparently as no-nonsense as Phineas was nonsensical, took this news in stride and nodded. “I’d appreciate the company. It’s been a lonely winter.” She smiled at her, then included Gid in that smile. “Congratulations on your engagement.”
With an embarrassed glance at Rachel, my brother turned a deep shade of red and shook his head.
Phineas laughed. “Not him. She’s marrying Freddy here.”
I shot him a dark look. He knew perfectly well the engagement was a farce I’d concocted to get Rachel away from the Lintons. But ever since she’d joined our company, he’d insisted on referring to her as my Betrothed, Beloved, Conquest, and Wife-to-Be, once even using the title Future Mother of Freddy’s Brats.
Mrs. Gale was staring at me in surprise, and her brother couldn’t resist chuckling. “Hasn’t even cut his eyetooth yet, has he? Ah, well, love can blossom in the greenest heart. He’ll get his whiskers in time, and Miss Welds will be ready and waiting to shave them off for him.”
His sister rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Phin.”
I liked Marian Gale already. Perhaps she and I would become friends. Despite her having three small children, she didn’t appear much older than me. She must have married very young.
Her expression turned curious. “Are you and Mr. Winter related, then?”
“Nope,” Phineas answered for me. “This is Mr. Freddy of Nowhere in Particular.” I stood, hot-faced and squirming, as he continued with theatrical gravity: “Halfway through his journey, Gid discovered this poor boy on the roadside. Young Freddy had disguised himself as a female in an attempt to escape his apprenticeship to an evil silversmith. He couldn’t return home, for he has none. You see, he’s a foundling, his parents having been the unfortunate victims of violent bandits. So he joined Gid, resumed his boyish gender, and at some point (don’t ask me when or how) became betrothed to Miss Welds—a sensible engagement, despite his youth, once you understand Freddy’s commitment to public reform. The lad has a profound respect for women. I once had the pleasure of witnessing him climb a pulpit and deliver a scathing lecture on the mistreatment of the fair sex. Got quite the reaction, let me tell you, almost incited a brawl, but Freddy got away with nary a scratch and with a generous slice of apple pie, to boot—one he, alas, deemed too small to share with his comrades. Then his safety was nearly compromised a second time when the evil silversmith followed our trail to Skunk’s Misery in Batavia, but Gid here—a good sport, I have to say—put on the old girly costume and pulled off a decent performance as my wife. We completely confounded the silversmith and hopefully have seen the last of him, for if there’s one thing I can’t like, it’s an evil silversmith, no matter how talented he may be in selecting beautiful horseflesh. Thus: All’s well that ends well.”
He flourished a hand to present the interior of the cabin, softly aglow with firelight at one end and, at the other, brightened by the vestiges of daylight warmly filling the single window. “Welcome to my humble abode.” He tapped the bottom of a ladder with his boot. “The children sleep in the loft. I’ll introduce you to the squeakers in the morning. No point in waking them. Enjoy the quiet while you can. They banish all peace the second they stir.”
Following this (admittedly ridiculous) summary of my history, I must have looked as mortified as I felt, for Phineas’s sister, when she recovered from her blatant astonishment, whisked the air with her hand and said, “Don’t mind my brother, Mr., er, Freddy. I assure you: I don’t. He prattles on so, I listen to his silly noisemaking with as much attention as I’d pay to a buzzing bee.”