by Lorin Grace
He stayed near the door, not wanting to encourage other flirtations she might have in mind. “Miss Garrett, I suggest you retire to your room and repair yourself.” His harsh words echoed in the kitchen.
Elizabeth’s face fell, and her hands stilled, but she made no attempt to leave the room.
Gideon used his best preacher voice to address her. “I warned you to be cautious with your flirtations this morning. Some men would believe such an obviously planned disaster as an invitation, not a flirtation. Why you choose to try such a game with me is beyond comprehension. I suggest you save such trickery to use on your husband once you are wed, as he is the only one who should appreciate your lovely tresses.”
Elizabeth’s face turned as red as the apples in the pudding he would not be eating. No words escaped her open mouth before she closed it. Her hands dropped to her sides, and her gaze fell to the floor.
“Hurry and repair the damage before your aunt comes in.” Gideon folded his arms and gave her what he hoped was a very solemn face. It must have been because Elizabeth flew up the stairs, the quiet click of her door his only answer.
With long strides, Gideon walked to the parlor. Mina was not there. Her bedroom door was closed. That explained part of Elizabeth’s boldness. Mina must be napping. A door opened above, and Gideon sprinted for the back door. His talk with Mina could wait.
The back door shut just as Elizabeth reached the bottom step. Completely rebuffed. Instead of admiration, disgust had marred the features of Mr. Frost’s face as she’d let her hair fall. Worse, he’d recognized the deliberate flirtation. What if he tells Aunt Mina?
She crossed to the back door and opened it. Gideon was leading Jordan out of the barn. “Mr. Frost!” She raised a hand to hail him as he moved to mount his horse.
Gideon mounted, but he stilled Jordan to stand in place and waited as Elizabeth approached.
“Mr. Frost, I want to apologize for my behavior. I should have been more circumspect in my conduct. I don’t know what I was thinking to behave in such a manner.”
“I believe you know exactly what you were thinking, and I happened to be a convenient target for your flirtations. I believe you have had too much time to do as you please for too long and wasted it on things of no consequence. I implore you to cease not only for your own sake but for your aunt’s as well.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms and tilted her chin up. “Are you trying to tell me, Mr. Preacher, that my soul is in mortal danger?”
“Nothing of the sort. I am trying to tell you as a friend that your actions could be easily misconstrued by the wrong man and that the consequences might be dire. I would not wish that upon you or your aunt.”
“A friend?” What an odd notion. The word did not apply to men.
“I consider myself not only Mina’s employee but a friend as well. I thought we were also headed into a friendship, but I will not be used in your little entertainments. Friends behave honestly one with another. So yes, I have been honest today and therefore acted as your friend.”
Jordan pranced his impatience.
Elizabeth took a step back, her brow furrowed. “Why would you want to be my friend?”
Gideon stilled Jordan again. “Miss Garrett, I find friendship with many people enhances my life. As yet, I have no reason to deny a chance for friendship.”
“Even after today?”
“Even after today. I hold high hopes that you will find your way and moderate your behavior.”
Elizabeth took another step back and lowered her face.
Gideon tipped his hat. “Good day, Miss Garrett. Tell your aunt I shall return about suppertime.” He gave Jordan the command to move.
Elizabeth stood frozen in place as they rounded the house. Friend? What a peculiar notion for a man to wish to be a friend to a woman. When Aunt Mina woke, Elizabeth realized she had forgotten to ask Gideon not to tell her about the incident.
Elizabeth set the soup on the table in front of Aunt Mina’s plate. It smelled edible, but aromas could be deceiving. The flat bread she’d baked on the hearth looked passable. Aunt called it ashcake. But since she’d made it on the hot bricks instead of in the ashes, it had picked up few ashes. It was not light and airy like the biscuits Cook made in the pan at home, but it wasn’t hard like the brickish bread she’d made Monday last. Aunt Mina told her the little cakes could be baked directly on the ashes of an open fire and was, therefore, an important recipe to know.
Elizabeth doubted she would ever need to cook on a fire out of doors. A cold gust hit her back as Gideon entered the kitchen. She didn’t turn to face him. Instead, she bit her lip and willed him not to tell her aunt of this afternoon’s folly.
“Mrs. Richards, Miss Garrett.”
Aunt Mina tapped his chair with her cane. “About time. This supper promises to be the best meal of the week.”
Elizabeth took her seat at the table.
Aunt Mina addressed Gideon. “Preacher Boy, it’s your turn.”
The prayer was given, and first bites taken, followed by second and third. Elizabeth exhaled a long breath. She had done it. The meal didn’t garner any excuses to be abandoned after a bite or two.
Aunt Mina smiled. “I think, child, we shall not starve after all.”
Elizabeth looked to Gideon, who shoved another bite of the ashcake into his mouth. He nodded.
Something welled up deep inside of Elizabeth. She hadn’t failed. Suddenly ravenous, she finished her food, ignoring the conversation as she planned her next meal.
Her aunt’s words cut through her musings. “Gideon, would you like some apple pudding?”
“Yes, please.”
Elizabeth cleared the table and brought out the pudding, passable only because her aunt had hovered over her the entire process.
When the dishes were ready to be washed, Aunt Mina extended her hand. “Preacher Boy, will you help an old woman to the parlor? I seem to have mislaid my cane.”
Elizabeth studied her aunt. The cane had been in her hand before the meal started—the mysterious disappearance likely an excuse to talk with Mr. Frost alone. Unsure that it was proper to pray the almost-minister didn’t reveal her afternoon’s indiscretion, she hoped very hard. As she washed the dishes, the muted voices in the other room rose and fell. Her temptation to eavesdrop was quelled by the knowledge that silence in the kitchen would lead to sure discovery.
She placed the last bowl in the cupboard as Gideon came into the room. “I came to empty the slop bucket and dishwater for you.”
“Thank you, Gid—Mr. Frost.”
“With your aunt calling us by our first names and nicknames, it’s hard to think of each other more formally, isn’t it?”
Elizabeth nodded and wiped up the drips of water that fell into the dry sink.
Gideon shifted his weight. “Would you mind very much if we were on a first-name basis, at least around the house?”
Elizabeth hoped no shock showed on her face as she turned to address him. “It would be easier, but you are a minister. I don’t know that it would be proper.”
The corners of Gideon’s mouth turned down. “You know I am not really a minister anymore, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I was, and I may be again. But for now I help out where Mr. Porter asks, as a volunteer. So it is not improper on account of my position in the clergy.”
“Is that why Aunt sometimes calls you Preacher Boy?”
“Most likely. I think she does it to remind me I need to choose what I will do come midsummer. She has some opinions on the matter.” Gideon gave a wry smile and lifted both the dirty water and slop buckets. “Will you get the door?”
Elizabeth hurried to comply.
As Gideon passed her, he said in a low voice. “Come out on the porch for a moment.”
Elizabeth grabbed
a knit shawl off the hook and followed him out the door.
As soon as the door shut, Gideon inclined his head, indicating she should follow him. He dumped the water bucket, then turned toward the pigsty. Elizabeth hurried to keep up with his long strides.
“I didn’t tell Mina about this afternoon.”
“Oh, thank you, I prom—”
Gideon held up a hand to stop her. “I don’t want you to make promises you don’t intend to keep. But I do think you should tell Mina yourself.”
“Tell Aunt Mina? What if she sends me away? Father will find something far worse. I know it.”
“Do you really think she will send you away?”
Elizabeth bit her bottom lip and thought for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. “I am not sure. My grandmother would have. But Aunt Mina—”
“I believe she can give you a woman’s perspective on your behavior and perhaps guide you so that in the future when you are genuinely interested in a man, you can better express yourself.”
Tears threatened, but she blinked them back before answering. “I won’t do it again, but I don’t … I can’t … I just can’t tell her.”
“Elizabeth,” his voice was firm, “if you really desire to reform yourself, you need to face your foibles and learn from them. Your aunt wants to help you.”
“Are you sure she won’t send me away?”
“I don’t think she will. And if she threatens to, I’ll intervene.”
Confess? It was too hard. More challenging than learning how to cook. She looked away from him. He would make an excellent preacher. Her heart almost wanted to follow his advice. Was this what friendship was like?
“You’d better go in. Mina will wonder where you went.” He handed her the empty buckets.
Elizabeth walked toward the back door but stopped at the sound of his voice. “Difficult things help us become better people. It might be hard now, but it will only be harder tomorrow.”
A tear fell down her cheek. She didn’t reply but continued to the door.
Aunt Mina stood near the fire when she entered the kitchen. Elizabeth set down the buckets and brushed the tears from her face, hoping her aunt hadn’t noticed. No such luck.
“Why the tears? Sit by the fire and tell me.”
Gideon was right. Aunt Mina did not send her home.
Eleven
Elizabeth crumpled the paper. Mother’s hand had penned the words, but it was as if Father had dictated every word. Father had not bothered to write, had not apologized for dumping her trunk in the mud, or even muttered a good-bye when he’d left her here. Now he dictated mother’s letters. Not a single bit of gossip, not even a mention of deaths and births broke up the lecture laid to paper. Why doesn’t Father just correspond with me himself?
She paced her little room, but it was so confining. As she passed the window, she spied a small ridge beyond the fields where the ice-blue sky rose high above the bare trees. The spot beckoned to her.
Elizabeth rushed down the stairs and grabbed her cloak “I’ll be back soon!” The door slammed behind her.
Choosing the road running in the general direction of the ridge, she searched for the spot. Emotions she’d tried to hide began to force their way out of her eyes. She wiped at them as the ridge blurred.
The road curved to go around the hill. Carefully, she picked her way across the fallow field. The ground was soft but not particularly muddy. As she neared the ridge, the ground rose in a gentle slope. The gray rocks at the top reached up like a citadel wall. A dozen trees, stiff as soldiers, stood guard. Their uniforms, once green and vibrant, now littered the ground. The cracks in the stones were barely discernible from the mud. A rock wall indicated the border of the field and kept the trees from invading. Ten feet inside the wall and surrounded by furrowed earth sat a lone boulder, belonging to neither the ridge nor the field.
Elizabeth walked around the stone worn smooth by time and weather. She tried to climb on top from the south side, then from the north. On her third attempt, she decided to forgo being ladylike. Hiking up her skirt, she scrambled up the west side and sat looking downhill.
In the distance, she saw the houses in little Curtis Corner belting out cook smoke, wagons riding by, and a few boys waving to each other as they left the school. Aunt Mina’s house looked smaller than it did when she swept it. Cleaning the house made it ever so much larger. No wonder the poor maids her mother employed looked so tired.
Elizabeth reached into her pocket and pulled out her mother’s letter. The tone was harsh and alienating, like a sentence her father handed down to a criminal. As she reread the letter, she realized it wouldn’t matter what she did. Her father seemed determined that she could never change enough for him.
Standing on the boulder, she faced the rocky ridge and yelled into the wind. “Ebenezer Garrett, you don’t know me, and you do not control me. You say it is impossible for me to improve. You do not know me. I will prove you wrong!” She shook her fist and uttered a primal scream, raw with emotion.
Never had she allowed herself to scream in such a manner. A tightness inside loosened.
She yelled again. “Do you hear me, Father? I will prove you wrong!”
Gideon tightened his scarf. What had the fool girl been thinking to run out of the house like that? Mina’s worried expression drove him faster. Elizabeth had left over an hour ago. Heavy clouds had moved in from the coast. She’d given no indication of where she was going. He doubted she was making any social calls as she rarely spoke to anyone after Sunday meetings.
Mina said she’d run out the back door, so he followed her footprints around the house and back out to the lane, but there was no sign of her.
He returned to saddle Jordan. While he doubted Mina’s fears of panthers or bears would come to fruition, Elizabeth wandering into the forest and getting herself lost was a very real possibility. He’d met few women possessing a decent sense of direction. Most women, like his Ruth, couldn’t find east at sunrise.
He headed northwest along the lane searching for more of Elizabeth’s footprints. As he got to the edge of town, he thought about turning around and going back, but movement in the far field caught his eye and he urged Jordan on across the field.
The movement became a form, and the form became a person, and the person was yelling.
Elizabeth shook her fist at the ridge, the wind catching her words and carrying them to him. “You are wrong! Do you hear me? Sitting up there, judging me?” Elizabeth raged at the rock wall as the wind whipped her cloak around her. She tossed her head back, the cloak’s hood slipping, the wind ripping her hair free.
She opened her fist, revealing a crumpled paper, and ripped it end to end. “This is what I think of your letter. You never knew me! You never cared until I threatened your reputation. You are wrong. Wrong! Do you hear me?”
“Rather well.”
Elizabeth spun toward him and lost her footing. Gideon reached for her, but on horseback, he was not close enough to catch more than the fluttering cloak, and she landed in a heap in the center of the boulder, her hair tumbling around her and obscuring her face.
Gideon pulled his hand back, letting the cloak fall to cover her ankles.
She swiped the hair out of her face, her blinking turning into a glare. A trail of tears lined her face, heavy enough to have preceded the fall. They were not a result of injury. Color flamed her face as she opened her mouth.
Gideon thought it better to speak before a shrewish remark escaped her lips. “Mina is worried. A storm is coming.” The wind confirmed his words by gusting and sending Elizabeth’s hair into her face and open mouth.
As she sputtered and grabbed at her hair, the wind ripped the papers she held from her hand and carried them to the ridge wall. She wrapped her hair around one hand and stuffed it in her hood. “T
his wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t mean to—”
“I didn’t think you did. Time to go back to Mina’s.”
Elizabeth scowled up at him. “You’ve delivered your message. Tell her I will be home shortly.”
“Get on. Jordan can carry both of us.”
“I will walk.” Elizabeth searched the boulder.
From his perch atop his horse, Gideon saw she could not escape the boulder without hiking up her skirts.
He extended his hand. “Come, we can be back at Mina’s in a few moments.”
“The reverend and the strumpet? Go while you still have a reputation.” Elizabeth used the cloak to wipe her eyes and laughed a bitter laugh.
Strumpet? What an odd thing to call herself. Elizabeth proved herself an accomplished flirt, but the behavior was far from that of a common streetwalker.
“Better hurry, Reverend, before my father finds out.” Tears streamed down her face. “Go! Just go!”
Gideon furrowed his brow. He’d thought her a fool, but she was unsound. Poor Mina. Not only had they sent her a useless helper but one given to irrational behavior.
“No. Come, let us get to Mina’s.”
Elizabeth’s gaze continued to roam over the boulder. “Please, I’ll come straight away.”
Gideon would have refused her again, but the fresh tears gave him pause. She didn’t want to get down in front of him. He tipped his hat and nudged Jordan into a walk, his back to her.
He waited a moment, then turned to offer a ride, but she was running across the field toward Mina’s barn, avoiding the road.
The fire in the tiny stove did its best to battle the cold of the attic. Gideon smoothed the papers on his desk. After spending an hour arguing with his conscience, he’d won, telling himself it was for Mina’s sake, that he needed to protect her from her niece.
