by Grace Walton
“Why is Sister Berta disturbed?” she asked pleasantly.
Father Thomas scowled at the ceiling for several long minutes before answering, “Sister Berta felt that she saw a vision of the Virgin this morning and Jessamine, well Jessamine crushed her.”
“She did?”
“Yes, she did.”
“How?”
“Pardon?” Father Thomas cleared his throat.
“Just how, exactly, did Jess crush poor Sister Berta?”
“Well...” Thomas cast about for a way to explain. “Well, Sister Berta saw the Holy Virgin in the chapel rain barrel when she came out of Mass this morning.”
Mother Marguerite Marie’s laugh started again. “In a rain barrel this time? Last week she saw the Holy Mother in a bowl of hominy.”
“Can I please finish?” he asked sourly.
“Oh yes, certainly.” She nodded. “Please do.”
“Well, Sister Berta told Jessamine. And Jessamine was rude.”
“Rude?”
“Well, unkind.” He softened his stand.
“Unkind?”
“Blunt, yes, she was definitely blunt.” He thought that an excellent word to describe Jessamine.
“Blunt?” the old nun challenged him again.
“Yes.” On this he could positively remain firm. “She was very, very blunt. Jessamine told Sister Berta that not only did she not see the Holy Mother in the rain barrel, but that she was sure the Virgin had better things to do than show up in slimy rain water.”
Mother Marguerite Marie actually clapped her hands in glee. “Did she really?”
Thomas nodded glumly. “She did.”
“I’ve wanted to say much the same thing, many times, to poor Sister Berta,” she admitted with a tiny smile.
“Mother Marguerite Marie!” He was obviously scandalized.
“I’m awful, I know.” She giggled like a young girl. “But I did say I was very much like Jessamine as a girl. Did I not?”
He nodded, but the scowl on his face remained firmly fixed.
She bowed her head in surrender, although her shoulders shook suspiciously. After she’d gained her composure, the old lady said repentantly, “Could you perhaps consider that my confession for today?” It was meekly and humbly requested.
His face cleared instantly. “Of course, Reverend Mother. But you must admit we have a problem.”
She smiled and shook her head slowly. “No, Father Thomas. We do not have a problem. We have an opportunity. A wonderful opportunity to mold Jessamine’s life towards God’s will.”
He shrugged his shoulders. He crossed one leg over the other. “Problem, opportunity, whatever you choose to call it. We have to do something and soon. She can’t be allowed to stay here. The local men are showing up on the convent grounds more and more often. And they are not here to listen to me preach. They follow her every move like a pack of lovesick puppies. Catastrophes erupt around the girl like freckles on a farm lad’s face. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word diplomacy.”
“Thomas, catch your breath and settle your feathers. God never sends us more than we can bear. He’ll help us with a solution to this dilemma, if we calmly seek His counsel.” She placed both hands on the top of the rough desk. “As a matter of fact, I think I know what He would have us do.”
“You hear from God that quickly.” There was awe and a slight irritation in his tone. God never spoke to him that swiftly. In point of fact, there were things he’d been praying over for years. Petitions he still waited to hear about from the Almighty.
“This is no instant answer, Father Thomas.” Her voice was tinged with censure. “Contrary to your belief, I’ve been praying for Jessamine for the entire year she’s been with us. Haven’t you?”
“Of course, I have.” he answered adamantly, asking forgiveness for the lie at the same time. Truthfully, he’d been so taken with Jessamine in the beginning. He hadn’t noticed she wasn’t meant for a nun’s life. It was only in the past months that he’d fully come to the understanding that her spirit was much too bold and her maternal instincts too strong for her to ever be happy in a convent. What Jessamine needed was a man, an exceedingly strong man.
“What do you feel God would have us do with Jessamine?” he asked.
“Send her to London,” Marguerite Marie said.
“What?” The surprised word launched across the desk toward the woman.
“Father Thomas, pay attention if you please.” She frowned. “I said, I will send her to London.”
“Why London?” He was all for sending the girl away. But he’d thought to send her back to Richmond. “It seems so far away.”
“I know Thomas. And I hate the idea that we may never see Jessamine again.” Marguerite Marie loved the girl as the granddaughter she’d never had. “I’m so old. I could go on to our Master before she ever comes back.” She sighed. “If she comes back at all.”
“Then why don’t we just send her to her kin?” It seemed like a logical plan to Thomas.
“Connor St. John is in the wilderness somewhere with a band of Indians. Griffin St. John is at sea. And although she doesn’t know it yet, Jess’s oldest brother Dylan, is on his way here to fetch her. His intention is to take her back to Savannah. But she is the sister of a duke, Thomas. She must be presented to the king. And, as far as matrimonial prospects go, London is surely the best place for her.”
“Mother, I respect your ability to hear from God. But if you try to tell me you know all about Jessamine’s brothers through divine inspiration, I respectfully refuse to believe you.” The corners of his mouth turned down.
A sweet smile molded her lips. “No Thomas, I don’t claim such exalted spirituality. Notwithstanding their terrible reputations, those rascal brothers of hers love Jessamine a great deal. I get a concerned letter from one of them at least weekly. I can’t keep up with the correspondence. I find myself constantly answering filial letters.”
“Well, if the oldest lad wants to give her a home in Georgia, I wonder why you’d want to go to all the trouble of sending her to London? Surely there are eligible men in Savannah? It is a very cosmopolitan place, or so I’ve heard.”
“Jessamine’s oldest brother in no mere boy, Thomas. He’s the new Duke of MacAllister.”
“Yes, and he’s certainly the one to take charge of Jessamine,” he answered smugly.
“I’m not sending her to him.”
“Mother Marguerite Marie, I am very confused,” he said.
She rose and shook out the folds of her black habit. Father Thomas automatically got to his feet. She calmly answered, “Thomas, first I’m sending Jessamine on a personal errand. One only she can complete in London. And I believe while she completes this task, God’s will for her shall be revealed in a way she cannot ignore.”
“Mother Marguerite Marie, what are you plotting?”
He didn’t like the sound of this whole business. What sort of personal errand was the Reverend Mother alluding to? He could understand if she meant to send the St. John chit to London, for the child’s own good. He understood the old lady’s convoluted reasoning on that topic. But he didn’t like it. London was the most pagan place in the entire world. What troubled him the most was this mysterious talk of an errand to be run in that city.
Her pale eyes met his, in perfect innocence. “Plotting, Thomas?”
“Mother.” It was a gentle warning.
“I’m asking her to deliver a message to an old friend. Don’t worry. God has assured me she will be safe. In the end, she will be safe.”
A choking sound issued from the priest’s throat. “In the end?” he questioned bleakly.
She made her way around the desk. The Mother Superior laid a comforting hand on his arm. With kind determination, she pushed him toward the door. “Don’t worry Thomas, it will be all right.”
Shaking his head, he let himself be shown out. Marguerite Marie closed the door. She leaned back against it, saying, “God, please make her journey a sa
fe one. And please Lord, let her get the message to Arthur Bassett before it’s too late. And please, send her a strong warrior, a protector. One who will keep her safe as she makes her way through the hell I’m sending her into.” Her eyes looked heavenward as she prayed for Jessamine St. John.
Chapter 2
Jessamine stood in front of the tiny mirror. It was the only ornament in an otherwise simple chamber. The room was actually the major part of a guest cottage. A place visitors to the convent could stay for a short amount of time. Jess and her aunt had stayed there longer than anyone ever had. Twenty-five years earlier, when the little outpost of Catholicism was first established out in the Virginian wilderness, it had been just a log cabin. But time and Mother Marguerite Marie had styled it into a cottage. It was a picturesque word for what was living at its most bare. There was a door, there was a rough fireplace with no mantel, there were two narrow rope beds, and one straight-back chair that needed its seat caned, and there was a mirror. The little mirror was the only symbol of luxury. It had been willed to St Cecelia’s by a wealthy planter’s wife. Tobacco to sell would have been more practical, even a cow would have been nice. But no, the convent had gotten the old woman’s cast-off mirror.
Not even framed, it hung by a length of twine fastened in some way to its back. Someone, a long time ago, had nailed the small oval mirror on the whitewashed wall of the room. As she stood there, Jess frowned at her wavy reflection. She’d spent the last fifteen minutes fighting with the taffy-colored hair that refused to stay neatly tucked under her wimple. All her brothers refused to let her cut the curly mess. Though she secretly swore if she ever found them all gone from home at the same time, she’d take a pair of scissors to the thick unruly mass. But that never happened. Her brothers had some kind of paternal agreement between the three of them. She wasn’t quite sure what it entailed. They were all older than she. Consequently, they acted like a trio of fathers. Most girls only had to put up with one guardian, Jess had three. This past year was the first time in her life that one of the blasted St John brothers wasn’t with her, at all times. Dylan was the sternest, because he was the oldest. Connor was the most fun. And Griffin, well… the less said about him the better. In the mirror, she watched her wimple slide perilously to one side of her head. “Blast, blast, blast,” she whispered softly.
“Speech like that and you’re wanting to be a nun, girlie?” There was a chuckle in the rich Irish brogue. Dorcas Moore sat on her narrow bed in the sparsely furnished room, she shared with her niece. “I’m thinking you’ll never make a nun, if you don’t stop all that heathen cursing.”
Jessamine jammed the last lock under the tight band, straightened the wimple, and then turned triumphantly to face her aunt. “I absolutely will be a nun.”
The plump gray-headed woman rolled her eyes. “So you’ve told me. At least daily this whole last year. I’d like to get a hold of that rascally brother of yours, and that’s the God’s truth.”
“Which rascally brother would that be, Aunt Dorcas?” teased the girl as she plopped down on her own bed across the room.
“Connor, of course.” The old woman frowned. “Though you’ve a wealth of rascals for brothers, that’s the God’s own truth. What in the name of all that’s holy possessed the man to put you in a nunnery?” She had been asking that question, or one very like it, for the whole year they’d been at the convent. “In my day, a girl had to do something really scandalous to be put away, mind you. Really scandalous.”
“Like sailing on a pirate’s ship?” Jessamine rolled over. The girl stared up at the watermarked ceiling. She might as well humor her aunt. Because Jess couldn’t actually give a rational explanation for why she was here. And it wasn’t Connor’s fault. No, she’d begged and wheedled until he’d been forced to relent. He hadn’t understood either. No one had. Try as she might, there was no explaining her reason for being here. Lord knows, she’d spent a perfectly good year trying to make Aunt Dorcas understand, without any success.
“Pish, posh.” Dorcas sniffed in dismissal. “Are you talking about that wee holiday you took with your brother Griffin? That was not even mischievous. Besides, going on his boat was family business. And he’s got a license, dear. That makes him a privateer, not a pirate,” she said primly.
“Ship, Aunt, ship,” Jessamine corrected absently. Those marks up on the ceiling were beginning to take on a shape. “You know how Griffin hates for you to call it a boat.”
“Boat, ship, who cares? I’ll call it whatever I like. He’s not here, and he’s got too much arrogance as it is. Someone needs to take him down a peg or two. It comes from looking like he does and being so big. My sister Mariah was a normal sized woman, mind you. Why did she have such giants for children? I ask you, why?” She was getting agitated.
“Dylan says Papa was a tall man. That’s where my brothers get their height, I imagine.” Yes, she thought abstractly, those stains on the ceiling remind me of something.
“Well, thank God above, you take after the right side of the family. You’re the spitting image of Mariah.” She looked at her niece and smiled. The child really was a beauty. Griffin said she had an angel’s face, but eyes that could bewitch old Nick himself. Those came from Mariah too, those tilted, emerald cat’s eyes. “The boys, poor things, they all take after that English devil she married.”
“Papa was Scottish not English,” the girl said.
“Scottish, English, they’re all the same. Why couldn’t she have married a normal sized man from the Auld Sod? Lord knows she had the chance. But does Mariah choose a civilized Irishman? No child, she casts her heart after the devil himself.” Dorcas’s glare challenged her niece to dispute the statement.
“Papa was not a devil,” Jessamine took her eyes off the ceiling to argue. “I finally asked Dylan when I was ten because I was frightened. You said it all the time and I was getting worried. Nobody wants to have a devil for a father. I was afraid I’d wake up one morning with two tiny horns sprouting out of my head.”
“What did Dylan tell you, Jess?” Dorcas used the girl’s nickname. She’d never thought the child paid any attention to her remarks about David St. John. They were a camouflage for her true feelings for the long dead man. For all her bluster, she’d never do or say anything that would hurt Jess or the boys.
Jess rolled back over to study the ceiling some more before speaking, “He said Papa was a man who loved too much. And that I must guard against doing the same.”
An inelegant snort from the older woman sitting on the opposite bed was the start of her answer. “Dylan would say something as asinine as that. That boy had a heart of stone. Though I think his pert wife has softened it a bit now. David St. John didn’t love my sister too much. They were made to love each other, child. I used to envy her. The look in his eyes when he caught sight of her coming into a room could send hot shivers up an old maid’s spine. It was a beautiful thing to watch, the way they cherished each other.”
“I thought you said he was the devil,” Jess argued.
“Oh aye, he was that, girlie.” She cackled. “Before he married your sainted mother, he was a rake of prodigious proportions on both sides of the Atlantic. I heard it said he’d sampled the charms of every woman between sixteen and sixty in London and then came to America to see what could be found here. Being the second son of a duke didn’t hurt. Of course, Mariah wouldn’t have cared if his father had been a beggar. David St. John was as handsome as homemade sin with all his parts put together just as God intended. Lord Jessamine, his shoulders would fill a whole doorway. And his tight breeches left little to the imagination.”
“Aunt Dorcas!”
“Well darlin’, I’m a woman and no saint. That’s God’s own truth. He was a magnificent man.” She clucked her tongue remembering. “They were so happy, Mariah and David, and then they were gone.”
“And it was my fault,” Jess said painfully. She laid a delicate long-fingered hand across her eyes.
“I know that rascal
Dylan didn’t tell you such a whopping great lie.” There was concern in her aunt’s voice.
“No, he didn’t tell me.” The sad voice was muffled. “I heard the housemaids talking when I was little. They said I’d killed Mama, and Papa had died from unbearable grief. I didn’t know what unbearable meant at the time, but it wasn’t hard to figure out they’d both died because of me.”
“Well, you figured wrong, you daft child,” Dorcas said tenderly. “Your mother was a tiny thing, much smaller than you. And she’d had those strapping big boys every few years just like stair steps. So, after Griffin, the doctor told her not to have any more wee ones.”
“You can control that?” Jess moved her hand away from her eyes. She turned to face her aunt, suddenly intensely interested.
“Jessamine, do not change the subject,” Dorcas’s voice warned. “You have pestered me upon this topic ever since you were twelve years old and my answer has always been the same…”
“You will tell me everything I need to know on the night before I’m wed, I know, I know,” the girl said. “I give you fair warning. I may not have to bother you on the night before my wedding. I’ve just about got the whole process figured out.”
Dorcas snorted again. “Just like you ‘figured out’ that you were responsible for your parents’ deaths, I’ve no doubt? Well, at any rate, Mariah had been told not to risk another pregnancy. She and David were taking the necessary steps to prevent that from happening. But something went wrong.”
“What?” Jess asked bluntly.
“When you’ve a practical need for that information, girlie, I’ll give it to you.”
“I know, you’ll tell me the night before my wedding.” A low musical laugh filled the room. “That’s a nice fairy tale about Mama and Papa, Aunt Dorcas, but it doesn’t change the fact that I was an accident. If it wasn’t for me, she’d still be alive.”
“You were no accident, Jessamine St. John.” The older woman huffed. “Your mother and father were so pleased and excited about the prospect of having another child they couldn’t contain their joy. Mariah told me you were worth the risk, any risk. She loved you before you were born. So did David. It’s not your fault she died in childbed. You believe you killed her? Well, your poor da believed he alone had caused her demise. I tried to convince him otherwise. But he wouldn’t believe me, curse him. He wouldn’t believe me.” A tear ran down her withered cheek. She wiped it away impatiently. “It was no one’s fault, child. It was God’s will.”
