By noon, the Weldses had long since left, Robert and Ed fidgety with loads of coffee but still cringing from the ill effects of their night of drinking, Rachel glum.
As I flipped the mushroom fritters in the hot skillet, I listened to Daniel and Gid mutter about our plans. It didn’t seem sensible to go visiting today, not when Bob and Ed wouldn’t be around to give us their letters for home, Rachel also would be absent, and the rejected Phineas (yes, I’d told them about the botched proposal) was probably out of sorts and licking his wounds.
This conversation came to a midsentence halt, immediately after Gid’s “Phineas, the poor sap,” when a disturbance outside inspired Fancy’s fierce barking and announced no other than the unsuccessful suitor.
“Is she still here?” Phineas asked in answer to our quiet greetings, his hands gripping the doorframe and his gaze darting all around the cabin, as if Rachel might be crouching under the table or hiding in the loft.
I shook my head. Gid covered his embarrassment with a fake cough. Daniel invited Phineas inside.
Our guest fell onto the only seat, a stool we’d transported all the way from Middleton, and immediately slumped forward, elbows planted on his thighs, head in his hands. Not a pretty sight, and practically an aberration: His neckcloth hung, untied, wrinkled, and damp over his shoulders, and his shirt collar gaped, as though he’d clawed it open.
Knowing Phineas Standen as I did, these details, along with the crumpled coat, wild hair, and smudged pantaloons, would have been sufficient to disturb me. But the well-fitted boots brought me to a shocked standstill. They were absolutely plastered with mud, straight up to the tassels.
“I’m sorry, Phin,” Gid mumbled, his eyes also fixed on the soiled footwear.
Daniel sighed. “Wish it had turned out differently for you.”
Phineas covered his face. “It’s my own stupid fault. I made a muck of it. Must be queer in my attic.” He groaned into his palms. “Stayed out all night beating myself up. When I went back this morning, Marian told me Rachel had left before breakfast, gone with her cousins to a gathering on Oak Orchard. She said they were stopping here first to invite you along. I came straightaway—hoped maybe she’d decided to stay with you for the day instead of going with those brainless gudgeons.…” He raised his head and absently patted his coat pocket, apparently looking for a handkerchief that was no longer there. After the abortive search, he grabbed one limp end of his neckcloth and mopped his eyes.
“Heavens,” I breathed. When the fritters started smoking, I started and hurriedly removed them from the skillet. “Here.” I thrust the plate in front of him. “Have some fritters.”
He shook his lowered head. “I couldn’t eat a bite.”
“You’ve got to keep up your strength. You have a trip ahead of you. You’d better go after her.”
Daniel and Gid readily agreed, my brother recommending some pretty things to say, and my beau responding to Phineas’s “Oh, what’s the use—she made her refusal loud and clear” with “Follow her. That’s what I did—went after Harriet, and it worked for me.”
Phin’s eyes regained a hopeful gleam. “You think I should propose again?”
“Yes,” Daniel and Gid said together. They turned to me expectantly.
“Well…” I winced. “No.”
Phin slumped.
Daniel frowned. “No?”
Gid scratched his head. “Huh?”
“Phin does need to go after her, but mostly to apologize.” I sighed. “Rachel’s situation has never been easy. She’s been forced to cling to the fringes of distant family and acquaintances and pay for their support with good-natured usefulness and hard work. Then Mr. Linton happened, and her situation got much, much worse.” I looked at Phin soberly. “What she needs now is a friend.”
Friendship, kinship, love matches. What a mess we made of relationships—all because of our personal insecurities, fears, and prejudices. At one time, I’d been so critical of Daniel for not speaking plainly about his intentions, yet I could have been the frank one. Instead, I’d hidden my cowardice behind the excuse that coming forward with the heart on the sleeve was the man’s job. Daniel, of course, had played his own game to incite my jealousy. How many poor Middleton girls had had their expectations raised as a result? And though I criticized Phineas and Gid for behaving nonsensically around Rachel, I hadn’t been a friend to her in the beginning, either.
And now I was leaving. I briefly closed my eyes.
“If you truly care for Rachel, be there for her, talk to her—even better, listen to her.” I turned back to the fritters in the skillet. “And, for the love of God, Phin, quit joking.”
*
We found ourselves at loose ends after Phineas left.
Arms crossed, Daniel stood in the doorway, his shoulder holding back the oilcloth. “It’s Friday. We’ll have to figure out next week, Harriet.”
I started slipping on my boots. “Yes.” But I was shaking my head. I didn’t have any suggestions to offer. Frankly, a Monday departure wasn’t just unlikely. It was impossible. If his frustrated expression was any indication, Daniel suspected the same. Too many circumstances were precariously undecided and dangerously unraveling.
My brother, meanwhile, remained keen on our original plan to visit the Standen-Gale place this afternoon.
That made no sense. “If you want to see Marian Gale, go see her.” On the way out of the cabin, I flared my eyes at him. “You don’t need us to accompany you.”
He sighed and shuffled behind Daniel and me.
In the end, we all trudged across the clearing to do what we could to rid the field of rocks, but we worked slowly. Our quandaries demanded so much energy, we had little to spare for chores. My gravest concern was Rachel. She’d seemed so troubled this morning, so terribly sad.
Clouds filled the sky, snuffing out the sun, and the wind picked up. Leaving the men behind, I headed for the cabin to collect my coat and had just reached the doorway when, for the third time that day, our road was enlivened with the clatter of another’s approach.
It was Phineas and the Welds brothers. In the lead, the former charged into the scant clearing on Sweetheart; the latter drove their yoke of oxen, hell-for-leather. They arrived in the spit and crunch of pounded rocks. Beside me, Fancy barked like mad.
When the dust settled, my pulse leaped. Where was Rachel?
As if I’d voiced my worry aloud, a ghastly white Ed leaped from the wagon, ran forward with his hands flapping the air, and screeched, “She’s missing! Lord help us, we lost her. There one second, gone the next.” He sent up a terrible howl before falling to his knees in the small yard and blubbering into his hands.
I stared. “You lost her?”
Phineas and Robert reached us. Daniel and Gid had started hurrying our way, too.
Drying his perspiring face with his coat sleeve, Robert booted Ed in the back. “Get up.”
Instead, his brother pitched forward until he was flat on the ground, facedown. “I want to go home,” he cried into the dirt. “I miss Mother. I hate it here.”
Heart pounding, I raised my eyes to Phineas. “What does Ed mean, they lost her?”
He gazed blindly past me.
I slapped my forehead. “Phin! What happened to Rachel?”
Appearing beside me, Daniel gripped Phineas’s arm, a contact that had the promising effect of jolting Phineas into speech. “I don’t know what happened. Just that she’s missing.” He plowed his hands through his hair. “I encountered the brothers on Oak Orchard. They were heading here.”
Pouring sweat, Gid joined us and asked breathlessly, “What happened?”
“We lost Rachel at the sociable,” Robert said crossly, as if he was tired of repeating himself. “Figured we’d better get you. We need to form a search party.”
“What? Lost…?” Gid breathed a disbelieving sound. “What were you thinking, Bob? You’ve wasted valuable time. You had an entire gathering of folks who could be searching as we speak.”
I held my head. Rachel’s missing. Rachel’s missing. This information repeated but eluded me. I couldn’t grasp the thought. It was inconceivable.