“We’re not much of an audience.” Rachel turned to me. “Didn’t Gid invite my cousins?”
I attempted a casual shrug. “They couldn’t come.” Too drunk. Determined not to ruin the evening with worrying, I gave my head a shake and stuck a smile on my face. “So what do you have in mind for us, Phin?”
“A little night music.” With a pounce of his bow, he shot into Mozart’s Eine kleine Nacht, followed that with a movement from one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, lingered over a piece by Haydn, then drifted into “something newer,” a dreamy work by Beethoven. Though his playing engaged me completely (so much so, I forgot all about poor Gid), I wouldn’t have known each piece’s composer or title if he hadn’t murmured the information between songs.
By the end of Phineas’s last selection, Rachel was drooping, her head in her hand.
He tapped her on the knee with his bow. “You’re insulting my performance, falling asleep like that.”
She yawned and stretched. “It’s all lovely, but I’m tired, and that last one was as good as a lullaby.”
“Play something for her to sing along to,” Daniel said. “That’ll wake her.”
“Pff. She never sings.”
Still not singing? I frowned at Rachel.
She turned an unsmiling face to the crackling fire.
My hands trembled. I clasped them in my lap. Poor Rachel. What Mr. Linton had done to her wouldn’t fade as quickly as her bruises had. If only he could be made to pay for his crimes. How unjust the world was. Rachel’s sadness, her sufferings—they demanded I not leave the Genesee Valley yet. How could I disappear when she needed me most? “That’s because you’re not playing what she likes,” I finally said, desperate to bring back my former singing pal. “She’s an old-fashioned girl. Give her one of the traditional ditties.”
Holding his instrument like a mandolin, Phineas played pizzicato on the strings and grinned at Rachel. “I have a good tune for you, then, one I know you’ll appreciate. It’s all about a female’s fickleness, scorn, and cruelty.”
She gave him a look. “I can tell already I won’t like it.”
“Everyone likes it.” Observing her the whole while, he tucked his fiddle under his chin and began to play.
I recognized the song immediately. He was right: Everyone probably did love “Barbara Allan.” They certainly would if they heard him play it, slowly, poignantly, beautifully. By the end, we all looked affected.
“That one deserves a second playing,” Daniel said.
So Phineas started it again, and this time my betrothed lent his handsome, low voice to the arrangement, singing after the introduction, “‘It came upon a Martinmas day when the green leaves were a-falling. Sir James the Graham of the West Country fell in love with Barbara Allan.’”
Leaning forward intently, with eyes suspiciously bright and an expression that could only be called painfully enthralled, Rachel suddenly added her lilting soprano to the music, joining in with “‘He sent his men down through the town to the place where she was dwelling…’”
It was the only time I’d ever heard Phineas fumble in his performance. His bow tripped over the strings, but after a missed few beats, he resumed, playing even more passionately than before and now smiling, a smile of pure wonder.
Rachel Welds possessed precisely the kind of voice to warrant that smile.
The two foes married their talents, watching each other with probably just as much aching desire as the legendary Sir James felt when he looked upon Barbara Allan. After a few verses, Daniel joined in again. And I felt my own sensibilities caught, so much so that when Phineas neared the tragic end, I heard myself contributing with “‘Oh, Mother, Mother, make my bed, oh, make it soft and narrow! Since my love died for me today, I’ll die for him tomorrow!’”
Carried away thus, I didn’t realize until I reached the last word of the pitiful promise that I’d been given the chance for a solo.
Daniel bit back a smile and trained his gaze on the ground.
Phineas had stilled the bow in the air. He gaped. “Pretty voice,” he said after a lull, and abruptly lowered the bow. “You could sing in a boys’ choir.”
Pretty, indeed. From neck to ears, I felt a burning flush.
A sound escaped Rachel. She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. But again, the sound repeated: a muffled grunt. She wagged her head furiously, and all of her shook—visibly shook.
She lost it. On a roar of laughter, she choked out, “Harry, Harry.”
Conspicuously bewildered, Phineas laughed weakly. “You mean Freddy. Hairy? Not hardly. The boy doesn’t even have his whiskers.…”
Rachel swiped at the tears streaming from her eyes, slapped her hands together, and fell sideways against me. “The evil silversmith,” she gasped through her mirth, “the engagement to me, a perfect stranger—oh, how, how can you be so stupid, Phin?”
Like one suddenly struck in the cheek, he whipped his head in my direction and jerked forward, as if to more closely examine me in the firelight. “Wait a minute. Are you—”
“Not Freddy,” Rachel laughed, then shocked the breath out of me by toppling me backward with the force of an unexpected embrace. “Harriet!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The three youngsters in the loft had had years to grow accustomed to their uncle’s fiddling and so slept through his entire concert. Rachel squealing my name, however, was not a habitual thing, and plucked them from slumber. It took all of her and my cuddling to settle them again. In the end, with her on one side of the children and me on the other, this endeavor lulled everyone. Sleep overtook us before Phineas could badger me about my disguise.
I didn’t start explaining the next morning, either. My brother’s continued absence at dawn eclipsed the Freddy’s-not-a-boy revelation. Where was Gid? That was the question on my lips as I peered around the foggy camp, then shook awake Daniel and our visitors, thrusting cups of coffee in their hands and urging their haste. Gid wouldn’t let his friends wallow in worry over him, not without an excellent reason. Rachel agreed, and even joking Phineas and practical Daniel couldn’t quite disguise their dismay. If something hadn’t happened to Gid, something might have happened to Marian. She was close enough to the end of her pregnancy to elicit concern.
Since Gid had taken his vehicle, the seven of us piled into Phineas’s wagon to investigate, and besides my divulged secret hanging over our plodding party like a curious cloud, nothing seemed changed from the day before. Along the newly widened road, we made our eastward way through wisps of mist, looking as we had twenty-four hours earlier. Every member of our entourage but the children now knew my true gender, but I still dressed as a boy.
The other great experience—that magical moment when Rachel succumbed to Phineas’s masterful playing and Phineas discovered Rachel’s equally masterful voice—might also not have happened. Neither said a word about it. If anything, they looked uncomfortable around each other. Maybe they didn’t know how to incorporate this development into their usual contentious exchange.
As we traveled, the sun began to shine through the fog like a fire beyond a veil, setting the woods aglow. The soft red light turned brilliant whenever it grazed the dewdrops that pearled bark and young leaves.
Soon, a brisk wind muscled up the fog. It was a good air to breathe, alive with rich soil, pitch, and growing things. I liked watching Daniel peer around him and take in the ancient woods: the impossibly thick trunks of trees and the wonderfully varied species of plants and animals. How many intricate ways so much life surely converged near our path, driven by need, fear, and hunger.
Daniel caught my gaze. “I’ll never see the like again.”
“No.” We wouldn’t in Middleton—and not here, either, not for long.
As soon as we rumbled into our friends’ yard, Gideon came to the cabin doorway, holding carefully (and definitely a little dazedly) a swaddled bundle against his chest.