Somerset (31 page)

“H
e doesn't love her, you know.”

Jeremy's sandy brows lifted. “What makes you say that, Jess?”

“It's something a mother knows about her son. The bud is there, but not the bloom.”

“Perhaps it will blossom to full glory as happened with you and Silas.”

“Perhaps. He's marrying her to produce an heir for Somerset.”

“You're sure of that?”

“I'm sure of that.”

“Is Priscilla aware of that?”

Jessica shrugged. “I cannot tell.”

“Does she love him?”

“I believe she thinks she does. The girl is such a romantic. In her eyes, Thomas is quite a catch—handsome, of a prominent family, connected to royal blood, a subject that enamors her. She sees Thomas as her knight on a white charger, come to deliver her from the yeoman she most likely would marry if he didn't rescue her, but she says she's eager for children, too, and of course that pleases Thomas. Mutual respect and liking and the bond of children can go a long way in making a happy marriage.”

Jeremy lit a flame to his cheroot. “Indeed,” he murmured.

“And in some ways, her blond beauty aside,” Jessica continued, “Priscilla reminds me of Lettie. The other day she said to Thomas, ‘Failure is only experience for success.' Doesn't that sound like Lettie?”

“The way she once was,” Jeremy said. “Do you think Silas has noticed the comparison?”

“Silas notices only cotton, as does his son.”

It was three weeks after war had been declared. Jeremy, wishing to see his brothers before the Union blockade of southern ports made a visit to the family plantation in South Carolina impossible, had returned with news from Plantation Alley. Today, he had brought a report of Jessica's family to her. In dismay, she'd heard that her father was ill from heart disease and her mother in declining health. Michael had taken the exemption offered to males of draft age whose services were essential to the war effort. Their wily father had anticipated the blockade as a move to disrupt the exportation of cotton, and much of Willowshire was now under crops to sell to the Confederate troops.

“They all sent their love, Jess,” Jeremy said.

Jessica's throat throbbed from painful recall of happier days with her parents. She'd had no desire to return to the home of her birth. Her parents' last and only visit and her mother's willful neglect to inform Tippy of Willie May's death had sealed her interest in seeing them. Now she never would. Michael, perhaps, if he survived the war.

“What of the Toliver family?” she asked.

“Not the best news to report there, either,” Jeremy said. “Elizabeth is in frail health as you'd expect at eighty-one. Morris has aged, too, and become somewhat of a lay preacher. He spends much of his time ‘about the Lord's work,' he says. Silas would be distressed to see the condition of the plantation.”

“Are not the sons a help in that quarter?”

“I gather they share their father's lack of management skills and have put their faith in their overseers, a lazy bunch according to my brothers. At the first shot the Toliver boys were off to join General Lee's army in Richmond.”

“The daughter?”

“Sweet like her mother but unfortunately looks like Morris with no beau in sight. She's destined for old maidenhood.”

“And…Lettie?”

“Lettie has…lost her sparkle. I was shocked at how worn she looked, tell you the truth. Her duties and worries are many. Elizabeth requires constant care, and the servants are little assistance in the household because Morris refuses to discipline them. The management of the plantation has fallen to her. The house is in disrepair, and there's no money to reclaim its former glory. Morris has gotten them into a hole of debt with no way to climb out, and of course, Lettie is worried sick about her sons.”

Jeremy paused, seeing Jessica wince as if from a sudden pinch. “Shall I go on?”

“You mean there is more?”

“I'm afraid so. Her West Point brother that she idolized has elected to stay in the Union army. He has become the enemy.”

Jessica shook her head sadly. “I am heartsick for her. What of her father? Is he still living?”

“He died last year from a long struggle with tuberculosis.”

“Oh dear.” Jessica sipped her iced tea. As deeply as she regretted Lettie's grim circumstances, Silas must never hear of them. He would feel responsible—as indeed he was—and his guilt would stir his belief in that absurd curse again and a vengeful God bent on punishing him. She spread her accordion fan, her mind working. No breeze wafted through the open louvered shutters. The summer's heat was upon them. They were sitting in her morning room, where she had persuaded Jeremy to be her ally in deceiving her husband. He had fulfilled his secret mission nobly. Jeremy had seen to the selling of her aunt's house and belongings and deposited a small fortune in a Boston bank under her name. He had brought back news of Tippy's happy entrenchment in New York and Sarah Conklin's continued abolitionist activities in Boston.

“You were in Boston?” Silas had commented to Jeremy in surprise when he returned. “What for? I thought you went to New York.”

“I had a friend's business to attend there,” he had told him.

Jessica carefully set down her tea glass. “Jeremy, my friend, apart from the report of Elizabeth's health, must you tell Silas all you've told me?”

Jeremy eyed her skeptically. “What are you asking me to do, Jess?”

“You are a man of remarkable insight and understanding. Do I have to explain what news of Lettie's plight will do to Silas?”

“Are you suggesting I not tell him of the situation at Queens­crown? He's bound to ask, and I must relay the truth.”

“
All
of it?”

“What part do you suggest I leave out? Even if I don't mention Lettie, he'll deduce the toll Morris's mismanagement and foolishness has taken on her.”

“Must you tell him you visited Queenscrown?”

“Are you asking that I
lie
?”

“No. I'm asking that you don't volunteer all the truth.”

“Why, Jess? It's been over twenty-five years since Silas and Lettie were…close. She made her bed with Morris. For better or worse, she must lie in it.”

A light tap on the door interrupted them. Jessica called to come in, and Petunia stuck her head in. “Pardon me, Miss Jessica, but which china do you want to use tonight?”

“The Chelsea,” Jessica answered.

“And where do you wish to seat Dr. and Mrs. Woodward?”

“Dr. Woodward will be to my right and Mrs. Woodward to Mister Silas's left.”

“And Mister Thomas and Miss Priscilla?”

“Across from each other. It won't matter which side of the table as long as they have the other in sight.”

Petunia chuckled. “Yes, ma'am,” she said and withdrew.

Jessica explained. “We're having Priscilla's parents for supper tonight to formalize our children's engagement. Silas is beside himself over the fact that Thomas is getting married. He hopes to be a grandfather this time next year.”

“Ah. And have in place that heir to Somerset.”

Jessica sighed. “In case Thomas doesn't make it back from the war, you see. I only hope such a design does not carry future regrets.”

As usual these days when reflecting on Thomas's motive for marrying, Jessica was reminded of her mother's little toast to her and Silas back in the library at Willowshire when she expressed her hope that they could find something to love in the other that would keep them together besides the commitments of a contract. They had found it. Something told Jessica that Thomas and Priscilla would not.

She rose, too fidgety and warm in her wide-skirted morning dress to sit. Whoever had designed the double-layer pagoda sleeves women were wearing these days should be shot, she thought irritably, wondering if she should divulge Silas's secret fear of a Toliver curse to Jeremy.

“Don't take this wrong, Jess, but people have married for less noble reason than to beget children to inherit the results of their parents' hard work,” he said.

Jessica fanned rapidly. “Oh, I have no quarrel with either of their reasons for marrying each other. I'm just less optimistic for their happiness. I'm thinking especially of the girl. She may never know the thrill of setting her husband's heart on fire.” She glanced at Jeremy with a small smile. “It's one of the most wonderful experiences a woman could ever know.”

Avoiding Jessica's gaze, Jeremy swiped at a curl of ash that had fallen from his cigarillo onto his knee. If asked, his flower-like wife would say that her world was perfect. She was married to a rich, handsome husband and was the mother of three equally handsome, intelligent, responsible sons. Her men treated her like a queen. She lived in a magnificent home with servants to attend her every wish and wanted for nothing. But had she ever had the thrill of setting her husband's heart on fire? Jeremy thought not. Only the small, neat woman standing in the light of the louvered morning sunshine would have had the power to do that—still to this day. Jeremy shook his head. It had never been beauty that had attracted him to her—Jessica was a plain-faced woman—though time in its capriciously merciful way had added a certain loveliness to her unconventional allure. The freckles had faded and her skin had acquired the luminescence of fine china, a porcelain setting for dark eyes as lively at forty-six as they had been at eighteen. She'd maintained a figure that did not require a corset to achieve a slim waist, and the first silver had toned her bright, frizzy hair, worn in a voluptuous bun on her neck, to the tawny hue of red oak leaves in the fall. Her temple still bore a faint scar from her fall off the wagon train over a quarter of a century ago.

“You're shaking your head, Jeremy,” Jessica said. “What are you thinking?”

“I'm thinking that once again you're going to talk me into deceiving Silas.”

Voluminous skirts swaying, she swirled to his chair. “Not deceive him, Jeremy—
protect
him.”

“Then go sit yourself down and explain to me the difference.”

Jessica took her seat again. It was absolutely ridiculous, she thought, but Silas's revelation following his predawn nightmare had planted a seed in her mind, usually unreceptive to idiocy. It must not be allowed to germinate. She'd tried to talk it out in her diary with little success, but discussing it with Jeremy might grind the preposterous little kernel to dust. She looked across the room at him, so assured of himself in the world and his place in it. “Jeremy, do you believe in curses?” she asked.

T
hey had agreed from the first telegraphed report of the firing on Fort Sumter that they would sign up together—Thomas, Jeremy Jr., Stephen, and Armand—and that they would join the military unit designated to defend the borders of their home state from invasion and the coast from siege. The northern and eastern rims of Texas were especially vulnerable to enemy incursions from the free territories of Oklahoma and New Mexico, as well as from Louisiana, should that state fall into Union hands. There were reliable reports that the Federals had plans to force Texas to supply beef to the Union army and that they possessed detailed routes of ingress. There was also the fear that homesteads would be open to devastating destruction and savagery by the Comanche once the U.S. Cavalry and Texas Rangers, guardians of the frontier, pulled out of the state to join the armies of their respective persuasions. The United States Navy was making its way down the Atlantic blockading southern ports to prevent the exportation of cotton and passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms to the Confederacy. It was only a matter of time before the Union fleet arrived in the Gulf of Mexico and sailed down to the ports of Texas with a like mission in mind. Maintaining a clear waterway to transport Texas's cash crop to Europe and Mexico in exchange for desperately needed munitions was absolutely essential. To meet these concerns, Edward Clark, the state's acting governor, sent a battle-seasoned captain in the Texas Rangers to East Texas to form a home guard unit and named Howbutker as its mustering site.

Captain Jethro Burleson had joined the legendary Texas Rangers at twenty years of age and had spent the last twenty-two protecting the Texas frontier against outlaws, Mexican bandits, and marauding Indians. General Zachary Taylor, under whom he served in the Mexican-American War, called him Wind Rider because he could ride the fleetest mount with the expert horsemanship of a Comanche warrior.

Jessica hated him on sight because he had distinguished himself in the Cherokee War in East Texas in 1839 in which Chief Bowles, the tribe's wise and venerable eighty-three-year-old leader, had been killed. Jessica had championed Chief Bowles's decades-long fight to secure land rights for his people in Texas.

But if anybody could bring her son safely home from the conflict, she thought, gazing at the grizzled veteran holding forth as a guest at her dinner table, it was Captain Jethro Burleson.

Thomas caught her eye and winked. She returned a small smile that did not lighten the visible worry on her face. At the head of the table, his father sat as somberly, flanked by the no less dour men of the DuMont and Warwick households and Jake Davis, who would not allow his family's falling-out with the Tolivers to interfere with his friendship with his childhood friend.

The only women present were Jessica and Priscilla, neither of whom added to the glow cast by the candle chandelier. Thomas was well aware of the grim nature of his mother's thoughts as Captain Burleson spoke of his expectation that the war would be “much longer than those fools in the legislature realize,” and of his wife's meditations as well. Priscilla was probably hoping the evening would never end, for that would mean she and Thomas would adjourn upstairs to the room prepared for the newly married couple before he reported to duty, and there she would be expected to perform her marital responsibility.

Their wedding night had been a disaster. Thomas had anticipated Priscilla looking forward to the marriage act, wanting a child as quickly as he, but she had been nervous, afraid, tense in his arms, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth as if she expected a fist in her face. She had screamed out at the first hint of penetration. “I'm not ready,” she cried, pushing him off her. “Please stop!”

He had felt like a monster. “What's wrong? What did I do?”

“You're…it's so…big, so…” Her lips had twisted in distaste, and she'd turned away from him and drawn her body into a rigid ball.

Priscilla had, of course, never seen a man's appendage before, but Thomas would have thought her mother would have informed her of what to expect on her wedding night. Or maybe she had, he'd thought. Ima Woodward was a Puritanical woman. She had probably put the fear of God into her daughter.

“Well, sweetheart,” he'd said, “it's normal for a man's…genital organ to…enlarge when he desires a woman.”

She'd peeped at him over her shoulder. “You desire me? It's not just to impregnate me?”

“Of course not,” he'd lied.

The second night had not been much better. Priscilla had been willing, but he might as well have tried to coax a flame from wet kindling. The third night they had achieved copulation, but it had not been the loving, joyous consummation Thomas had envisioned. Lying afterwards on her side of the bed, he in a fume of disappointment on his, he'd asked, “What is wrong, Priscilla? Can you explain the reason for your reluctance? Don't you love me?”

“Of course I do,” she'd said, her voice plaintive, sounding like the cry of a kitten lost from its mother. “It's just that it's all so…frightening.”

Frightening? He had known numerous women, and none of them had complained that he frightened them. They'd all loved the way he made love.

He had turned to her, moved by the fragile outline of her body beneath the sheet, the lustrous tangle of her blond hair on the pillow, and caressed her face. It was oval-shaped and sweet as a rose. “It will be all right, Priscilla,” he'd said. “It will just take time and patience.”

But in the two weeks they'd been married, he was out of both. In a few days, at the beginning of June, his company would deploy to join another group in Galveston to defend the coast, and so far, Thomas had no reason to hope he'd leave his wife pregnant.

From her side of the table, Priscilla suddenly brightened and launched into a subject that had come to fascinate her. “Captain Burleson, be aware that you are carrying off the sons of aristocrats whose forebears acquitted themselves with famous bravery on English battlefields,” she informed him.

It was the wine, an anesthetic to dull her dread of the coming night, Thomas thought, only then realizing his wife was tipsy. Priscilla was a fastidiously decorous woman—girl, for she had no claim to the realm of his mother. It was not like her to burst forth with a line of conversation that held no interest to the captain and would have embarrassed his parents and guests if pursued, but Priscilla had an inordinate interest in his family's and their best friends' ties to a royal past.

“How is that, Mrs. Toliver?” Captain Burleson asked, raising shaggy eyebrows in a polite show of interest.

“It doesn't bear telling,” Jessica said promptly and rang the small silver bell at her plate to summon Petunia. “Gentlemen, port and cigars await you in the drawing room.”

Priscilla looked rebuffed, and Thomas felt sorry for her. He went around to draw back her chair and whispered in her ear, “Another time, sweet, when we're all in a mood for your enthusiasm.”

“I was only trying to change the subject, and I'm so proud of your family history,” Priscilla said, pouting.

“I know, Priscilla, but nobody cares about it but us. Take the wine up with you. It might help you to relax.”

“That would be good,” she said, lifting the decanter a little desperately to pour more wine into her glass.

Thomas sighed and left her to join the men.

All through the port and cigars, the war talk, Thomas's thoughts were on the girl he had married. He could not understand it. When a woman loved a man, wasn't it the most natural, normal desire in the world to want to be close to him, to feel him in her body, to possess and hold him? Priscilla said she loved him. Was it that she sensed he did not return her feelings that she could not give herself totally to the marriage act? Or was it because she was simply repulsed by everything associated with sexual intercourse—the sweat and fluids and animalistic coupling, the feeling of personal violation and…pain.

Heat surged to his face as he thought with shame of her pain during penetration long before he could conclude his objective, let alone his enjoyment. What was he to do? He would not force himself on his wife. He had tried to be gentle and considerate, but his patience was running out with the time he had left at home. Had he made a terrible mistake? Had he been wrong about Priscilla's feelings for him? Had it been mere infatuation with his looks, his family's prominence, and the Tolivers' connection to royalty that she'd mistaken as love for him? Had she lied to him when she said she wanted children as much as he?

Thomas looked across the room at his father, still stalwart and handsome at his age, still so attractive to his mother who had adored him long before he came to feel the same for her, if Thomas had correctly interpreted the secrets he'd heard at their bedroom window in the early dawn hours of last year. Henri and Bess, Jeremy and Camellia had enjoyed long and happy marriages as far as he could tell. How he wanted the same for him and Priscilla!

But—he had to remember—those couples had married for love.

He excused himself while the wine was still at play in his wife's bloodstream. Perhaps the alcohol would free her inhibitions, and tonight they would achieve—he admitted it!—the only purpose for which he had married the girl upstairs who waited for him with the sheet drawn to her chin.