He frowned. “My cousin can handle the farm easily enough for a few weeks.”
As if he hadn’t spoken, I went on, gasping, a little wildly: “—and dropping everything to do the neighborly thing and track down the irascible daughter of the Winters. I can’t imagine why Mama didn’t send Matthew or Luke, especially Matthew, since she could have killed two birds with a single stone, learning what happened to me while keeping Matt from the gaming tables.”
“I offered to come here,” he repeated, now scowling. “Besides, Matthew’s hardly around the farm anymore. He’s working for Mr. Goodrich at the mill.”
I was brought up short by this. “Paying back Papa?”
“And courting Miss Goodrich.”
“Lydia Goodrich?”
“That’s the one.”
I scanned his face, looking for clues, afraid to find them. Tentatively: “And how does that make you feel?”
“Happy for them.” He shrugged. “Glad she found a deserving beau. Hopeful for their future.” Gently, he took hold of my hand. I’d clenched it against the ground, and he very carefully loosened my fist with his thumb.
I let him. And I stopped breathing again.
“I said there were two reasons, Harriet. The second one…” He shook his head. “That last time we saw each other, I—I behaved poorly.”
“You did?”
He smiled ruefully. “I guess we both did. But I had no right, even jokingly, to lecture you, especially when you were already lashing yourself, and I should have known better than to mind what you were saying, how you…”
Rejected me.
I briefly closed my eyes, a pain in my heart joining the pain in my head. “I didn’t mean what I said. I never meant it.”
He nodded once and went on gruffly: “I shouldn’t have taken it so personally. I shouldn’t have retaliated. And I definitely should have stopped smarting long before you left. But I couldn’t help but believe that perhaps you did mean it.” He pressed my hand between his wide palms and studied the effect. It looked like he’d found a way to make me part of his praying. “I would have come after you, whether your mother wanted me to or not, even if it was just to see you again.”
I inhaled quickly. “You would have?”
“Yes. I hated the way we’d left things. Your departure sickened me. It felt so final. I dreaded you’d grown to loathe me. And when I discovered you probably purposely avoided me in Batavia, I almost gave up and went home.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “But when I returned to the inn, I found this.”
He reached into his shirt pocket, took out the sugaring spout he’d carved for me more than a year ago, and placed it on my palm.
I brought it to my heart. “My spile.”
His mouth came up in a corner. “Expected you to toss it when you saw how I’d teased you with the initials.”
“Never. This is my good-luck charm.”
His eyes flashed, and he said fiercely, “I’m glad. When I found it and realized you’d been carrying it with you, I thought maybe…” His face turned wistful. “Our situation hasn’t been easy for you. You would have liked me better if we’d met later—at a strawberry festival or the Independence Day ball. The fact is I can’t remember a time when we didn’t know each other. For me, especially in these last few years, that familiarity’s been a gift, in the way a fiery sunset or a mighty storm is. The sun always sets, and storms are nothing new, but they seem extraordinary whenever they happen. That’s what you’ve been for me, every time I see you.”
Heavens. I closed my mouth. After a moment, I asked, “It is?”
“Couldn’t you tell?” He was flushed, his expression, interestingly, suddenly more irritated than embarrassed or enamored. “It was different for you. I think our proximity made me seem dreadful: a tepid, tired sort of fate.” I shook my head, but he overrode me with a resigned nod. “Your family, maybe the entire town, knew I wanted you and hoped to make you my wife. I’m not much of an actor, and they could tell, easily enough, which way the wind blew. But I wish they had kept this to themselves. I’m sure their expectations annoyed you to no end. It didn’t help that I always came across as kind, capable Mr. Long, the boring, old farmer next door, even though I’m not even as old as Matthew, not even much older than you, Harriet. I’m not. Not at all.”
His disgruntlement made him look so like a boy, I couldn’t help but laugh.
He gave me an abashed smile and turned his eyes to the branches overhead. The sky wore its peculiar drenched look, when the slipping sun, like an overfull cup, spilled light lavishly. He blew a sigh. “I made a muck of things, being perhaps a little too capable and helpful and”—he winced—“prosy and brotherly, confirming what you already thought of me.”
“Don’t say that.” I gripped the hand gently holding mine. “I—I never thought of you as a brother.”
“Good,” he exhaled. “Because I definitely never thought of you as a sister—just as someone who never fails to amaze me. You’re skilled and learned and honest and, well, very funny.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What about pretty?”
He shrugged, like looks were beside the point, but conceded, “Pretty, too.”
“As pretty as Miss Goodrich?”
His mouth quirked. “Did my playing the eligible beau about town improve my prospects?”
“It made me want to kill you.”
His smile widened, and for a moment we grinned foolishly at each other.
Then his eyes swept over my person. “What do we do about Freddy?”
I chewed my lip. I wasn’t ready to go home, partly because of Rachel. She needed me. I wanted to be here for her. I was also dogged by my promise to Gid to help get him settled.
But mostly, there was Freddy. I had invented him. I wanted to see what he could do. “People here think I’m a boy.”
“Do you … want to be?”
I laughed at his hesitant expression. “Not forever.” Maybe not even for long. I missed Harriet, perhaps not the former Harriet but the one I felt I could be: the Harriet who took risks and had adventures and enjoyed the desire of a man who’d leave everything—everything—just to find her. I mentally repeated that last part. I savored it.
But Harriet would have to wait.
“If you can spare the time to linger here, I want to stay on as Freddy for a while. That is, if it suits you … Daniel.” Uttering his first name, I felt heat sting my face. Yet it was mine to use freely. He’d given me that right. I smiled. “Then Freddy can quietly slip away.” So long, Freddy. Godspeed. Harriet, accompanied by her handsome husband, would most definitely show up in the future to visit her favorite brother, Gid, and friend, Rachel. Before that, however, Freddy would have left the area with Daniel Long and disappeared forever.
No embarrassing unmasking, shocking revelations, or muddled explanations necessary.
Daniel nodded reluctantly. And though his mouth remained unsmiling, his eyes gleamed with mischief. “That will make my objective an interesting challenge.”
“What would that be?”
“Courtship. I’m here to court you, Harriet-Freddy.”
*
Not a minute after Daniel made this intention explicit, Gid returned. Between the recent amorous avowals and the effects of getting knocked senseless, I couldn’t muster more than a nod as greeting.
Daniel gave him a condensed version of his story, leaving out the romantic parts but eyeing me teasingly from time to time to remind me that, spoken or not, they were still there.