She could see the crown of a federal officer’s hat through the fanlight and a series of others bobbing behind him. She opened the door. “Good afternoon. May I help you?” she said.
The officer, a tall man who appeared to be in his early thirties, was in the act of brushing dust from the road off his dark blue, gold-piped jacket. But for his uniform, his boyish looks would have been engaging. Jessica was sympathetically drawn to those cursed with her coloring, but in the major’s case, his red-brick hair and fair skin with its sprinkling of freckles were more favorable to a man and further compensated by regular features and white, even teeth. When he saw Jessica, he tipped his hat and bowed slightly.
“Major Andrew Duncan, madam. Forgive the intrusion and my dusty appearance, but may I come in?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I regret not.”
Pointedly, Jessica glanced down at his boots, and the officer grinned and scraped his feet on the porch mat. “Will that do?”
Jessica stepped back from the open door, and the major motioned that his men were to stay outside. He entered, bringing in the smell of a man who’s spent hard days in the saddle. The officer’s eyes swept around the magnificent, mirror-lit foyer reigned over by the portrait of the Duke of Somerset. “Every bit as beautiful as he described,” he said.
Jessica’s gaze narrowed. “As who described?”
“My cousin,” the major said. “Guy Handley. I’m sure you remember him.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“Guy?” Jessica echoed. “Of course I remember him.”
“I came here myself a number of years ago, but only to your backyard. I came to enlist you to spy for the Union army in case of war, but your maid said you were not home. It was wash day, I remember.”
Jessica thought back, vaguely remembering a sneering reference Stephanie Davis made about the presence of a strange man skulking out the back gate—“not one of us,” she had said, implying that the man was an abolitionist come to engage her in nefarious activities. Jessica had wondered about it for a while afterwards. For once, Stephanie’s suspicions had been on the mark.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Jessica said, feeling a flush of indignation. “My sympathies with the abolitionist cause did not include committing treason against the country I knew my son would sign up to defend.”
“Guy had warned me of such, and that is why I never returned.” The major looked around him. “I would ask to sit, but the condition of my trousers might soil your chairs. Perhaps you could conduct me to a place for a chat where I will do the least damage to your fine fabrics.”
“There are leather chairs in my husband’s study.”
“Lead the way, if you please, and how is your husband?”
“He is dead.”
The click of the major’s boot heels on the polished hall floor came to a halt. “Oh, I am sorry,” he said in a timbre of deep regret. “Guy thought the world of him.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to Ezekiel and his wife?” Jessica asked.
“They live in Massachusetts on a dairy farm. They are proud parents of twin boys.”
“And Guy?”
“A casualty at Bull Run.”
Jessica uttered a cry of sorrow. “Oh, no!” Guy had been killed in the first major battle of the Civil War.
The major took her elbow. “Shall we sit?” he suggested gently.
Jessica led him into the study and gestured to a chair in front of Thomas’s desk that had replaced Silas’s old one and took a seat behind it. The major ran his hand admiringly over the desk’s smooth pine surface. “What fine workmanship,” he said.
“It was made for my son by Robert Warwick, a friend of the family especially gifted in carpentry.”
The major had spotted James Toliver etched discreetly in flowing script on a corner of the desk. “I understood your son’s name to be Thomas.”
“It is,” Jessica said, wondering how the major was acquainted with that fact. “James is my son’s middle name. Robert had the strange propensity to write backwards. He never finished carving the name by which my son is referred.”
“Why not?”
“A Union cavalry officer shot him in the head.”
Major Duncan looked slightly discomfited. “It seems an occasion for exchanging mutual condolences for our war dead.”
“Please tell me what else is the purpose for this occasion, Major.”
Andrew Duncan crossed one leg over the other and set his cavalry hat on his knee. Trail dirt clung to the sole of his boot. “As you undoubtedly know, this is not a social call. My men and I are here to put Howbutker under the guardianship of the United States Army—”
“A euphemism for military rule, I believe,” Jessica interrupted.
The major inclined his head. “If you wish, but in any event we are here to maintain order and in doing so will comply with the established rules governing military occupation. Unless challenged, we will respect all persons and private property. Pillage is prohibited. Severe punishment will be inflicted on any man under my command who abuses the restrictions of his power. You have my word on that.”
Jessica nodded. “That sounds reasonable, and you seem a man whose word is not given or taken lightly, but why do I hear a however?”
“However,” he said, “we expect cooperation from the townspeople—no taunting, spitting, or otherwise outward act of provocation toward my soldiers. They fought as hard and bravely in this war as your soldiers, and…if you’ll forgive the reminder…they won. In other words, Mrs. Toliver, there is to be no undermining of what we have been sent here to do, which is to keep peace and order and to see that the will of Congress is carried out.”
Befuddled, Jessica lifted her shoulders. “I have no intention of taunting, spitting, or otherwise provoking your soldiers, Major Duncan, so why are you telling me this?”
The major uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Not knowing of your husband’s death, I have come to ask that he join his friends”—he consulted a sheet of paper he removed from inside his jacket and read—“Henri DuMont and Jeremy Warwick. Guy told me they are men of great influence in town. I was hoping I could enlist their assistance in convincing certain…recalcitrant groups that their opposition to our presence will only end in more bloodshed.”
“You are speaking about members of the vigilante groups who call themselves citizen patrols.”
“I am.”
“Our son Thomas has taken over his father’s duties, and the sons of the gentlemen you mention are not without their own level of influence. In addition to Jeremy and Henri, I could have them speak with you. I am sure they will agree with your aims for peaceful coexistence.”
“I would be much obliged, Mrs. Toliver,” Andrew said, rising. “And now I’m afraid I must impose further on your goodwill.”
Here it comes, Jessica thought, wincing inwardly. The major intended to ask—demand—that he and his officers be put up in the mansion.
“I’d like my men to bivouac in the pasture behind this street, and I understand you have a room available over the carriage house. I will require that for my own use. Will you see to its preparation?”
Jessica expelled a secret sigh of relief. “If you insist, Major.”
“I’m afraid I do.”
From out in the hall came sounds of Priscilla returning with the baby from the visit to her mother’s. Vernon was crying. He’d been denied his nap. Jessica heard Priscilla call her name urgently—response to the shock of finding a group of Union soldiers lounging on the front verandah.
“I am in the study, Priscilla,” Jessica called.
Priscilla rushed in, and for the blur of a few seconds, Jessica was mesmerized by her beauty. Heat and anxiety had brought a rosy flush to her cheeks and heightened the color of her blue eyes. Blond ringlets of naturally curly hair bounced about her heart-shaped face, setting off skin as flawless as the fresh petal of a Yorkist rose.
“Oh!” Priscilla sa
id, stopping short when she saw the Union officer.
“Priscilla, dear, this is—” Jessica turned to the major and found him staring at her daughter-in-law in hypnotic awe. “Uh, this is Major Duncan,” she said. “He is the commander of the U.S. Army battalion that will be occupying Howbutker. Major, this is my daughter-in-law, the second Mrs. Toliver.”
Priscilla, dandling Vernon, whiney and fretful in his mother’s arms, said, “How do you do?” in a stunned, captivated voice commensurate with the major’s wonder-struck gaze.
Major Duncan recaptured his composure. He stepped forward and extended an upturned palm. Tentatively, Priscilla placed her fingers upon it, and he brought the tips briefly to his lips. “I do well, Mrs. Toliver. My apologies for the interruption in your life.”
Jessica felt a prickle of alarm. Priscilla retrieved her hand and looked at Jessica as if seeking a lifeline from a sudden spill into deep waters. “I must get Vernon down for his nap,” she said in a flustered voice.
“You do that, my girl,” Jessica said. “I’m sure the major will excuse you.”
“With great reluctance,” Major Duncan said with a gallant bow, “but also with understanding. The little boy must have his sleep.”
When Priscilla had left the room, Jessica asked, “Are you married, Major?”
“No, madam. I am a career soldier, and my avocation has not allowed it.” He replaced his hat and Jessica saw him to the door.
“When do you plan to take occupancy of the carriage house?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning, if possible.”
Jessica almost suggested that other lodging would be more comfortable than the one-room apartment but thought better of it. The major might agree and decide that a bedroom in the mansion would suit him better.
Jessica called Petunia to organize a cleaning crew for the carriage house then went back upstairs to sit among the items of Silas’s strewn wardrobe. She felt his presence more when she was surrounded by his possessions. How she could have used his consolation at this moment! The physical current she’d felt between Major Duncan and Priscilla disturbed her. Perhaps, on the major’s part, it was nothing more than a virile man’s natural appreciation of a beautiful woman, and on Priscilla’s, the pleasure of a handsome man’s attraction to her, a thrill no doubt missing in her relationship with her husband.
Their marriage had become a painful thing to observe. Thomas had taken his father’s words to heart, and no husband ever treated a wife with more respect or courtesy than he showed Priscilla, if woodenly, and she responded as stiffly.
Her son and daughter-in-law waltzed around each other like mannequins, playing at the role of husband and wife without warmth or spontaneity, their baby the only connection between them. During their engagement, they had talked of building a manor home for themselves on the plantation, but there had been no further discussion of it. When Jessica asked Thomas why, he replied that Priscilla preferred to live in town to be near her parents and he did not wish to leave his mother alone in the house on Houston Avenue. But for Vernon crawling and gurgling on the parlor floor after supper, entertaining them, Jessica could not have borne the ponderous evenings in their company.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
From her upstairs window, Jessica could watch the comings and goings of Major Andrew Duncan. He clattered down the steps of his apartment at sunrise to join his men in the pasture, where they had pitched tents and built campfires. There she supposed he took his coffee and ate his breakfast. He merely slept in the carriage house. He had taken over a building in town as his company headquarters near where the Freedmen’s Bureau was housed and close to the location he’d selected as the site of a school for the children of freed slaves.
Stories of the major’s fairness, derring-do, and short shrift with lawlessness drifted back to Houston Avenue. By month’s end, merchants and townspeople had grudgingly come to see the presence of his men as a deterrent to the roaming bands of outlaws, deserters, and ne’er-do-wells tempted to vandalize stores, plantations, and homesteads rendered defenseless because of the drain of manpower by the war. The citizens’ patrol remained quiet after a military court found two of their number guilty of dragging a freed slave nearly to death and sentenced them to life in prison in Huntsville, Texas. Horse thieves were chased down and put in stocks under the broiling sun, and convicted poachers of livestock were confined to jail on a diet of bread and water. Meanwhile, the federal soldiers saw to one of their main duties of occupation: the construction of a school for the children of the freed slaves.
Jessica heartily approved of Major Duncan’s dogged efforts to see the school erected and planned to volunteer as its first teacher when the building was completed. Voices would rise in objection—the idea of a white woman filling the heads of black children with learning!—but no one expected less of Jessica Wyndham Toliver.
It was not long before Andrew Duncan was a weekly guest at the Tolivers’ dining room table. Evenings were the only time Thomas was home from the plantation and the Union major free of his duties to discuss public matters and concerns. Sometimes, Jeremy and Henri and their sons joined them for cigars and port after the meal. Their conversation and laughter often followed Jessica upstairs to bed, and she thought conviviality between men who were once enemies a very good thing. A man of culture himself, it was obvious the major found the Toliver mansion with its many objects of beauty a much appreciated retreat from the grime and tension of his days. Jessica also thought it obvious, though not to her son, that he counted Priscilla as one of the many objects of beauty in the house.
During one of these dining occasions, two months into the occupation, Priscilla dropped the surprise that she wished to volunteer as a teacher at the school when it soon opened.
“Why, Priscilla, how wonderful!” Jessica exclaimed. “We can go together. Major, I had planned to volunteer my services, too.”
Priscilla, her flawless brow creasing, turned to Jessica. “If that’s so, who will be here to see after Vernon?”
Surprised at the irritation she heard in her daughter-in-law’s tone, Jessica said, “Why, Petunia and Amy, of course.”
“I do not want my child reared in his early years without a member of his family present. His father is never around during the day. One of us must stay here, and I insist that I need the diversion. You have served your time in community service, Jessica.”
Everyone listened to this near tirade with thunderstruck expressions. It was the first time Priscilla had ever put her foot down on anything, and the set of her face and defiant tone brooked no argument. Thomas said, “She’s right, Mother. You can serve the cause by helping Priscilla collect books and make lesson plans. Let this be her project. It will give her a chance to show the town what she’s made of.”
He spoke as the head of the house and Priscilla its mistress, a change in status Jessica was only too willing to concede and recognize. She would have been pleased to hear Thomas take his wife’s side and delighted in the rare glance of pride he tossed her had it not been for her suspicion that Priscilla’s obstinate desire to teach in the school had little to do with instructing the children of the freed slaves how to read and write.
“Could we not leave Vernon with his other grandmother the hours we would be at the school?” Jessica suggested.
“It is my wish he stays here with you. It’s clear he prefers your company to my mother’s. She is…well, she doesn’t have your way with him.”
“Then that settles it,” Thomas said. He turned to Jessica sitting at his right. Out of diplomacy she had yielded her spot at the head of the table to Priscilla when Thomas took Silas’s place after his death. Her daughter-in-law had never seemed comfortable there until tonight. “Mother, you’ve earned the right to let others take up the torch for the Negro,” Thomas said, his tone softening. “Stay home and enjoy your grandchild.”
Across from Jessica, Major Duncan, glowing from a scrub in the bathhouse he’d had his men build behind the stables and n
ever more handsome than in his dark blue dress uniform with its gold epaulettes, remained silent, seemingly choosing to stay out of a matter skirting close to a family dispute. Jessica wondered if the man had any idea what this was all about. Men were so dense when it came to the wiles of women.
“As you wish, Priscilla,” Jessica acquiesced, “but keep in mind you will be under the scrutiny of the townspeople.”
The veiled admonition sailed over Priscilla’s blond head. “No more than you have always been, Jessica. I shall try to handle it with the grace you’ve shown.”
Thomas chortled, “You would warn Priscilla of the disfavor of the townspeople when you’ve never given a twitch about it, Mother?”
“I was not referring to disapproval, Thomas. I was cautioning your wife not to give cause for an undue wagging of tongues.”
Priscilla said, “She means like teaching the black children things they shouldn’t learn as she would do, right, Jessica? Not to worry. No one will fault me on that score. I shall teach a simple curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
Thomas chuckled. “I believe, Priscilla, that Mother is saying to be careful not to give others the impression you’re becoming like her.”
“I hardly think that’s likely,” Priscilla responded tartly. Her blue eyes flashed with what Jessica now clearly saw as jealousy of her mother-in-law. Consciously or not, Thomas had given his wife the feeling he compared her to his mother and found her wanting. “It’s impossible to copy an original,” Priscilla added.
“Well stated, Mrs. Toliver!” the major said, lifting his wineglass to Priscilla. Thomas, with another proud look at his wife, did the same.
Somerset Page 36
