Robert tilted up his beaver cap. “Morning, neighbors.” His face, pale and with a sickly greenish hue, contrasted vividly with his red eyes. Even his smile had an unhealthy twist to it, more grimace than grin. He turned to examine the cabin and winced violently, as the motion brought his fiery eyes in the path of the early sunbeams. “Place is coming along just fine. And—heavens—devilish fast, too.” His smile slipped as he squinted at the readied field. “Ed and I seem a mite behind schedule this spring.”
Ed acknowledged this with a nod that he terminated abruptly. His hands flew to his bare head. He groaned.
Gid’s frown deepened. “Care to come in for some coffee? Help wake you.”
Or sober them up: whichever was necessary. I glanced at Rachel to see if she was thinking the same thing, but she was staring straight ahead, grim-faced and apparently lost in her thoughts.
Robert sucked in his upper lip and turned questioningly to his brother.
Ed didn’t notice. He poked his pinky in his right ear and commenced scraping out wax.
“Not sure if we have time,” Robert said. “We’re heading a ways down Oak Orchard Road.”
“For what?” Daniel asked.
“A big gathering,” Ed answered, suddenly alert, “to celebrate the mill going up in those parts.”
“We thought we’d invite our cousin along—fear we’ve been neglecting her.” Robert rubbed his brow and peeked at Gid, maybe recollecting the dressing-down my brother had given him the last time they saw each other. He continued in a rush, “Ought to be fun. Wanted to see if you boys could come, too.”
“No, thank you,” my brother said tersely.
I sighed. How much more ridiculous could the Welds brothers get? They clearly hadn’t understood the gist of Gid’s recent lecture. He wanted his old friends to get sober and recognize their duties to their farm and family. He didn’t want them dragging Rachel along to a frolic so she could watch them drink themselves to unconsciousness and act stupid along the way.
“You can surely visit for a few minutes,” I said. “Go in and have some coffee. Gid made biscuits.”
Perking up a little, my brother nodded. “They’re very good.”
I snorted. Ever since he’d taken over the morning bread making, Gid had formed the notion that his biscuits were lighter and more delicious than any he’d ever tasted. To Rachel, I said, “Would you like to see the mushrooms I spotted growing by the creek? Couldn’t believe my eyes—it’s so early in the season.”
“Must be the warm spell,” she answered absently.
“I thought they might be a kind of morel but don’t like chancing adding them to my famous fritters lest they poison us. Come tell me what you think.”
“All right.”
I led her through a thick stand of swamp maples. We passed Gid’s wet shirt. It sagged from the branch like a flag of surrender. Without talking, we walked along the stream’s rushing length. The shimmering water gurgled between rocks and splashed over stones. When we reached the conical-capped mushrooms, I stopped and glanced behind us. I could just make out a bit of the cabin’s roof in the distance.
Rachel crouched by the patch and steadied herself with a hand on the damp ground. “These are witch’s caps.”
“Yes. Deadly poisonous but pretty. Back home we sometimes called them yellow unicorns.” With my boot I tapped a felled oak, where a fungus was growing like rippled shelves out of the rot. “I’ll stick with these instead.” I broke off the brown clumps.
“Chicken of the woods.”
“Ever try them?”
“Of course. They actually do taste a lot like chicken.” She rose and whisked the bottom of her dress to free the hem of a dead leaf. “Why are we here, if not to identify mysterious mushrooms?”
“You looked troubled. I thought you might want to talk.”
She folded her arms and studied the stream. “You and Daniel are leaving soon.”
Though she made her words a statement, I treated them like a question. “On Monday. We were planning on coming by to see you and the others this morning … to say good-bye and gather any letters you might want us to mail.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets, feeling uncomfortable, unsettled, insensitive: a person abandoning friends to their fates. “I’ll miss you, Rachel. And the others, certainly, but especially you.” I swallowed. “We’ll be back to visit. Hopefully as early as next year.”
Her gaze was sad. “I’d like to leave, too.”
I stared. “With us?” This didn’t displease me. I’d give up a romantic journey alone with Daniel to secure Rachel’s companionship. Middleton would be a happier place with her there.
She shook her head. “No … just run away.” She sighed. “Of course, running away implies you have a home you’re escaping. I don’t have that. Middleton’s not home. This isn’t, either.” She waved a hand, as if to clear away the gloom, and said with forced briskness, “I reckoned you were ready to go. Straight to Middleton?”
“After we marry in Batavia,” I said distractedly. Her sorrow pierced me. She seemed lost, and why wouldn’t she? It was true: She had no close family, no home. While I tripped along in my pretense, casually killing off my parents, playing a foundling, inventing stories of enslavement and abuse, Rachel was facing—or had faced—much of what I had invented. For real. How oblivious I’d been to this fact. The realization smote me.
“Marry,” she repeated, her tone hollow, face morose. “Last night, Phineas asked me to marry him. Kind of.”
I jerked upright. “He did?”
She bristled. “You needn’t sound so surprised.”
“Friend.” I gazed at her steadily. “You know I think one Rachel Welds is worth a thousand Phineas Standens. It’s just … Phin? He’s different. Paints himself into the picture of the Confirmed Bachelor. Teasing or not, all his verbal jabs at ‘the weaker sex’ made me think he’d rather disdain a woman than, well, you know…” I shrugged, not sure where the unlikely couple stood.
“Marry her,” she finished dully. “You’re absolutely right. In fact, you should have heard his proposal. For a man who prizes himself on his fancy speech and cleverness, he sounded like a perfect idiot.” With a clap of her hands, she killed a hovering mosquito, then wiped her palms on her skirt. “I never saw a person so racked with agony and dread, wrenching at his hair, ending each of his croaked avowals of love with a misguided attempt at humor, a not-so-funny joke that—as you can imagine—suggested quite the opposite of love.” She sighed, a long exhalation that rattled, like there were tears caught in her throat.
I gave her a sympathetic look. “He made a cake of himself.”
She threw up her hands. “He’s a fool. Since I met him, a day hasn’t gone by that he’s failed to make some stupid remark. Then, out of the blue, he springs a proposal on me! Not once has he ever sat down and talked to me like an adult.”
I nodded. He was like a boy who couldn’t think of a better way to express interest in a girl than pulling her braid and calling her a name.
“And the proposal, Harry.” She groaned a laugh. “What kind of person wants to hear a proposal that makes her out to sound like a jailer, like—like a walking, talking manacle?”
I bit my lip. Poor Rachel.
She slowly shook her head, as if still dumbfounded by the experience.
“So what did you say?”
“No, of course.” She straightened, fists balling at her sides, eyes flashing. “I told him that since my evil, tormenting temptress of a person was such a bugbear to his delicate masculine sensibilities, such a horrible blight to his happiness, I wouldn’t think of trapping him in the misery of marriage. Then I told him that until he learned to talk to me with a modicum of respect, I couldn’t even consider him a friend, let alone a lover. Then I told him to go away.”
I eyed her with grave respect. Certainly, I was sorry for her hurt feelings, even a tad sorry for Phineas, who, for all his witty intelligence, was obviously an idiot when it came to women. Rachel’s response, however … well, I was impressed. That must have been quite a scene. “So you told him to go away, just like that?”
She cleared her throat. “Actually, I told him to mount his precious little donkey and get the hell away from me.”
I whistled low and long. “Precious. Little. Donkey. That couldn’t have gone over well.”
She sniffed. “I’d say it again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE