The Gifted (43 page)

Then Jessamine had appeared no longer in her Shaker dress. So beautiful that his heart had leaped into his throat with his first sight of her. Something his mother noted right away. He had never been able to hide anything from her. She knew him the way she knew the back of her own hand. That’s why she was waiting to confront him in the garden. To make sure he didn’t do anything foolish. And so he’d told her nothing had changed.

His mother had believed him. Or perhaps more likely she knew he lied, but she believed he would do as she said. Hadn’t he always? She accepted his lie, found her smile, and hurried back inside to entertain her lawyer friend before one of the other unattached women of a certain age latched onto him. Tristan followed her, steeling himself to practice more pretense when what he wanted to do was find Jessamine and beg her never to run away from him again.

She wasn’t in her seat by the door. He didn’t see her anywhere, and in spite of his lies to his mother, he might have turned back to the garden to be sure she hadn’t lost her way if Laura hadn’t slipped her arm through his to claim his attention. Laura was merely trying to keep Calvin Green at bay by claiming Tristan and giving credence to the rumors of their pending engagement.

Green obviously wasn’t ready to accept that as he hovered in the background ready to pounce if Tristan happened to step away from Laura. She had no intention of letting that happen. What choice did Tristan have but to play the part of her admiring fiancé-to-be even after the beautiful Jessamine came in from the garden to reclaim her seat by the open doors? When other men approached her with a word of welcome, Tristan wanted to rush across the room and push them aside, but he could hardly shake off Laura’s claiming hand. Not after the promises he’d made that very day. Not even if the only reason for her hold was her dislike of Calvin Green.

Tristan wished Laura was in love with Calvin Green. If so, he would have joined their hands together with gladness. But that wasn’t the man Laura was pining after. Tristan had no idea who that man might be. Perhaps someone in Boston. Someone without the pretense of a socially acceptable name. Someone without pretense.

That’s all he and Laura had. Pretense.

That afternoon as they strolled around the lake, he had thought of ridding himself of pretense. Ridding both of them. She could go chase her true love whoever he might be and he could go chase Jessamine. He’d seen Jessamine earlier on the veranda, her head bent over a pad of paper in front of her. Drawing or writing, he couldn’t tell which.

She had taken no notice of him at all. Perhaps he had been nothing more than an answer to her curiosity of how a kiss would feel. If it had been more, she would surely glance his way. Allow him to capture her eyes if only for the brief flash of a second.

Now, here at the evening meal, when Tristan had thought their close proximity would mean she would have to notice him, she passed her eyes across his face quickly with a polite greeting as though they had never shared those garden moments. Perhaps the kiss had not lived up to her expectations. Perhaps she wanted simply to forget it ever happened.

He watched her covertly in hopes she would let down her guard and allow him at least a smile. She did not. She smiled at her father, easily and often. She smiled at Viola Cleveland as she copied her every move in eating her bread and salad and drinking her tea. Nobody clanged a spoon against a glass on this evening. Not even Robert Cleveland. He was too intent on being sure the lawyer from Atlanta knew the truth of things.

Mr. Ridenour had found his tongue during the day. The two men were ready to right the wrongs of the country, but the only thing they managed to agree on was that the country was in need of saving. While their words were civil, they were also loud enough to dominate the table conversation.

With eyes wide with fright or perhaps amazement, Jessamine watched them argue. The Shakers surely didn’t have such disagreements, especially at the dinner table. Then he remembered Sister Lettie telling him they made no conversation at all as they tended to the serious business of supplying their bodies with the fuel for work. Pleasant or angry. The unaccustomed noise in the dining room had to be pounding against Jessamine’s ears. She did seem distracted, perhaps overcome by all the differences of life away from the Shakers.

But then Laura seemed distracted too. She hardly spoke to Jessamine even though Mrs. Cleveland was continually offering the girl special kindness. He wondered if that was because she saw her own diffidence mirrored in Jessamine. But what was it Laura had told him? That most people misjudged her mother and mistook reserved politeness for timidity. He caught the woman watching him across the table a time or two after that, and wondered if perhaps his mother was mistaken about which of Laura’s parents he needed most to impress.

Tristan let his gaze slide around the table. Was Viola Cleveland only pretending to kowtow to her husband’s thinking? Was Robert Cleveland’s bluster a noisy cover-up of his own insecurities? And what of Tristan’s own mother with the blush coloring her cheeks while she pretended interest in the lawyer’s political talk? Was the blush from worry that Cleveland would be offended by the other man’s opposite views or was the warmth in her cheeks the result of Ridenour’s obvious admiration? While Tristan had difficulty imagining his mother being swept away by romantic thoughts, when he really looked at her as a person other than his mother, he realized she was not too old to enjoy engaging in a bit of harmless flirtation at a place like White Oak Springs. And what of Sheldon Brady who made his livelihood penning romantic stories that were nothing but make-believe? Was he only pretending to be a devoted father because it was amusing him? Then again, who was Tristan to look down at anybody else’s posturing? Heaven only knew, he and Laura were pretending to be what they were not. Perhaps the only person sitting at their table honest enough to simply be herself was Jessamine. What was it Sister Lettie had told him? That the Shakers valued the gift to be simple over all others.

The gift to be simple. To do what was right. To stop the pretense. But the Shakers pretended. If they believed they could conquer the need for love between a man and woman, they were fooling themselves, without doubt. But weren’t he and Laura denying that same need? Denying romantic love the same as the Shakers. And so his thoughts went around until he felt as dizzy as one of those Shaker sisters he’d watched stagger and fall after being overtaken by a whirling ecstasy in their worship meeting.

Tristan was relieved when Laura claimed exhaustion and stated she planned to retire to her room after the evening meal. There was no dancing in the ballroom, but the band was playing on the piazza and luminaries traced the pathways around the lake.

Mosquitoes. There would be mosquitoes. Tristan made himself think of the whining pests so he could mash down the desire to be out there strolling around the lake with Jessamine. He leaned against one of the porch pillars and peered out at the ladies’ light-colored gowns glimmering in the moonlight. One of them might be Jessamine keeping in step with another man and perhaps wondering about a kiss from lips other than Tristan’s. The thought stabbed through him, and though he knew he had no right, he stepped off the porch to go find Jessamine. To see with his own eyes who she was with. To keep her from stepping into the shadows with the wrong man. Any man would be the wrong man.

“Looking for someone?” Calvin Green stepped up beside him. The man must have been in the shadows watching him. For what purpose, Tristan couldn’t imagine.

“Simply enjoying the night air. How about you?” Tristan kept his voice cool. He hadn’t liked the man from their first meeting when Green had bragged about perfecting his shooting eye by using his aunt’s cats as targets.

Now Green had the look of a man with a secret up his sleeve he thought gave him a winning hand. “I’ve always got my eyes open. You never know what or who you might see. Things that might be interesting to others, if you know what I mean.”

There was something vaguely threatening in the man’s tone. Something that Tristan saw no reason to ignore. He stared straight at him as he spoke. “No, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Some people like living in the dark.” The man made a sound that might have been a laugh as he slid his eyes away from Tristan and out toward the couples around the lake. “I don’t think our Laura is one of those people.”

Tristan could have told Green how in the dark he was if he thought Laura would ever look favorably on his courtship, but he kept back the words. He had no wish to goad the man into fisticuffs. Especially with his right arm still tethered in a sling. How long had Sister Lettie told him to leave it bandaged? Three weeks or was it four? It had been two. Two short weeks since he’d been shot and left for dead in the woods. Perhaps he owed his very breath to Jessamine.

“Our Laura?” Tristan kept his voice light. “I don’t think either of us can claim ownership.”

“Rumor has it you think you can, but you should know that I intend to marry Laura Cleveland. Whatever it takes.” Green continued to look out toward the lake as though he were talking about nothing more important than how pleasant the night air felt after the heat of the day.

“Whatever it takes. Strong words,” Tristan said.

“But words you can be sure I mean.” The man slowly turned his eyes from the lake back to Tristan. “I’m a man who gets what he wants. And I want Laura Cleveland.”

Tristan couldn’t keep from smiling at the man’s delusional thinking. “Don’t you think Laura might have something to say about that?”

“Women.” Green threw up his hand as though waving away the thought like a pesky mosquito. “They don’t know what they want. Her father will decide for her and he had about made up his mind in my favor before your mother began talking you up like the second coming. As though riding off to fight in Mexico made you some kind of hero.” His voice carried a tone of ridicule.

“No hero here,” Tristan said evenly. “At least we can agree on that, but I think you’d better cast your eye in some direction other than Laura.”

Green let a smile slip across his face. “Oh, you mean like that writer’s daughter. The Shaker girl. She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she? And so innocent any man probably could lead her down some interesting paths with a few fancy words.”

Tristan curled his good hand up into a fist. The thought of this man even looking at Jessamine was enough to make him want to knock the smile off his face. The man’s smile got wider. It was evident he was doing his best to goad Tristan, but if Tristan had learned nothing else in Mexico, he’d learned not to fight foolish men. Tristan pulled in a slow breath and straightened out his fingers one by one before he said, “I’m sure her father will watch after her.”

“He wasn’t paying much attention last night.” The man’s smile was more of a smirk now. “At least not as much attention as you were.”

“What are you trying to say, Green?” Tristan had no intention of playing games with the man.

“It could be you and your sweet little Shaker girl weren’t having as private a stroll through the garden last evening as you may have thought. And you can be sure I’m a man who doesn’t mind using what he knows if it gets me what I want. If I were you, I’d keep in mind that people who get in Calvin Green’s way tend to get knocked to the side.” He leaned a bit closer to Tristan. “And maybe trampled down into the ground.”

Tristan didn’t back away from the man. “I’ve run straight into cannon fire, Green. So if you’re trying to scare me, you’ve got to know it’s not working.”

Green laughed. “Survived cannon fire and then almost didn’t survive a little ride in the woods.” He poked Tristan’s bandaged arm. “A man never knows when he might stumble into a hole he can’t climb out of.”

“What do you know about that?” Tristan narrowed his eyes on the man.

“I know that the next time there might not be any pretty little Shaker girls around to pull a man out of that hole.”

The man started to turn away, but Tristan grabbed the front of his ruffled shirt in his good hand and yanked him back. “Are you saying you had something to do with shoving me in that hole?”

Green’s eyes flashed open wider as if realizing he might have stumbled into a hole of his own making that was deeper than he expected.

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Dr. Hargrove stepped up behind them. “I see you might be having some disagreement here, but we really can’t allow fisticuffs on the veranda. We must consider the tender sensibilities of our ladies.”

Tristan released his hold on the man reluctantly. Green stepped back and laughed a little, as though making Tristan angry had been his intent and he was pleased with his success.

He smoothed down his shirt as he said, “You’re right, Doctor. Fact is, Mr. Cooper here was doubting the trueness of my aim. I’m sure you could settle that for us.”

Dr. Hargrove smiled along with Green. “Well, I can attest that while Calvin may not be the sharpshooter I am, he does manage to hit the bull’s eye more times than not.” He turned to eye Tristan. “But I don’t think we’ve seen you out at the shooting range, have we, Tristan?”

“I’ve been busy,” Tristan said.

“So you have.” The doctor laughed again. “In fact, I rather thought you’d be busy tonight. I just saw a beautiful lady slipping through the garden. Surprised me to see her so alone.”

“Jessamine?” The name was out before Tristan could stop it.

A flicker of a frown chased across the doctor’s face while Green’s smile got wider. “No, no. I think our young Shaker sister is a bit overwhelmed by our world here at the Springs. I spotted her father escorting her back to her room some time ago. I was speaking of Laura.”

Now it was Tristan’s turn to frown. “Laura? She told me she was retiring early.”

“Then perhaps I was mistaken,” the doctor said. “I only caught a glimpse and it may have been another of our fair ladies slipping out to the garden to shake free of her chaperone. Could be I didn’t see a thing.” Dr. Hargrove was smiling again. “Yes, I think my eyesight must have been faulty. I didn’t see a thing. Such a blind eye serves me well here at the Springs. You can be sure of that.”