Somerset

by Leila Meacham

  “That must mean you want to talk to me.”

  “It’s been a while.”

  His son had not mentioned the confrontation between his parents he’d happened upon that afternoon last November. It was like him not to. Vernon never minded anybody’s business but his own. Thomas and Priscilla had both stood frozen, wondering how much their son had overheard. Priscilla had tried to smile. “We…weren’t expecting you this early,” she’d stammered.

  “Apparently not,” Vernon had said and simply turned and gone up to his room. They’d had supper together, a strained affair, and the next morning Vernon was gone before Thomas came down for coffee. But today he meant to broach the subject of Jacqueline Chastain and clear the air of any thought his son might have of his father having an affair with her.

  After that terrible afternoon, Thomas had reconsidered the circumspection of even the brief trade of words he enjoyed with Mrs. Chastain. Others, besides Priscilla’s spy, might notice and speculations would fly. He must think of her reputation, but he simply could not discontinue their Wednesday exchanges without a word of explanation. He considered one last stop by her counter or a note sent to her house, but what if he said or wrote something that made more of their conversation than she’d intended? He had presumed she felt as he did, but what if he was wrong? He had no talent to finesse the truth of her feelings, and what could they do about them if hers were the same as his? He was a married man and Jacqueline Chastain a vulnerable woman alone in a town all too willing to pounce on her for the slightest suspected impropriety.

  So he’d done nothing. He’d started meeting Armand at the Fairfax, and he had not seen Mrs. Chastain since.

  With Jessica, Jeremy, Bess, and Priscilla ensconced in the carriage, Barnabas driving, Thomas and Vernon on horseback in the rear, they set off. It was an impressive little cavalcade. At Priscilla’s insistence, Barnabas wore livery, a red uniform piped in black and set off with a cravat of fluffy white lace. Two high-tailed, head-tossing black stallions pulled the shiny black coach trimmed in gold. Again, due to another of Priscilla’s unyielding proposals, its doors bore the Toliver coat of arms, a red rose intertwined with instruments of war imposed on a dark green background.

  It was a fine Sunday afternoon. They’d attended church services together that morning and Thomas was remembering the minister’s reading from Proverbs: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

  Vernon was proof of the Scriptures. All the ills of farming—the back-breaking work, crop failures, worry over weather and money—were not enough to make his son consider another occupation like so many other sons of the area’s farmers. Many had been unwilling to work the land of their fathers and had given in to the lure of jobs in the cities or gone off to college to pursue professional careers. But in some ways, Thomas did not wish his example to instruct his son. He must caution Vernon to be careful of the sacrifices he made for the plantation. Vernon must do nothing to tempt the shadow his grandfather—and even Thomas, in weak moments as he’d gotten older—believed hovered over Somerset.

  But that was a subject for another time. This afternoon, Thomas wanted to sound Vernon out on the topic of how much of his mother’s tirade he’d overheard and if he were curious about her threats. Priscilla had been drunk, but not so much that her harangue had not carried the weight of belief in what she was saying. Her warnings had left Thomas puzzled. He would not dignify them by demanding Priscilla explain herself, but what things did she know about his family that would singe the hair on every single head in the county? In what way could she hurt him beyond belief, beyond his endurance?

  Vernon smiled over at him. “So, shall we talk?” he invited.

  Thomas drew his horse out of hearing range of those in the coach. “Son, about that argument you overheard between your mother and me…”

  “None of my business, Daddy.”

  “It’s your business to know that your father—”

  The rapid approach of hooves behind them interrupted his speech. Their horses registered the disturbance and attempted to rear, and Barnabas directed his team a little over to the side of the road.

  “What in thunder is their hurry on a Sunday afternoon?” Thomas exclaimed. Nearing them at top speed on their horses were a man and a woman riding abreast. Thomas recognized them as the late Dr. Woodward’s replacement and a local midwife.

  The doctor identified the coach and reined to a sharp stop while the midwife thundered on by. “Mr. Toliver, you might want to come with me,” he said, “but hurry.”

  “Why?” Thomas asked, suddenly gripped by a terrifying premonition.

  “It’s your daughter. The McCords sent word she’s having her baby and a hard time of it. I’m on my way to their ranch now.” Without waiting for a response, the doctor flicked his reins over his horse’s shoulders and sped off in a cloud of dust.

  Priscilla had poked her head out of the coach, blue eyes dilated in alarm. “Thomas, did I hear right? It’s Regina?”

  “You heard right,” Thomas said, his tone clipped. “Vernon, stay with your mother. Barnabas, be careful of the road in your haste.” He gave the sides of his horse a swift kick and raced off after the doctor, a rush of foreboding like a great wind filling his ears.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  He arrived minutes behind the doctor. The McCord men—Tyler, his twin brothers, and their father—were standing in a group on the wraparound porch of the main house, heads down and shoulders slumped. As Thomas leaped to the ground, his frantic stare lit upon Curtis McCord first. The rancher’s hand was clamped around his lower jaw, the pose of a man in great despair, and a jab of terror struck Thomas in his gut. Seeing him, Curtis cut through his brood and hurried down the steps.

  “Thank God you’re here, man. You’re in time—”

  “For what?”

  “You better hurry,” Curtis said. “I’m sorry to have to say it, but you better hurry.”

  Thomas pushed by him. He had a glimpse of Tyler’s tear-washed face as he ran up the steps and into the house, the guilt heavy in his son-in-law’s red-rimmed gaze that dropped the instant he made eye contact with his wife’s father.

  A servant, recognizing him, merely pointed up the stairs to a room at the far end of the hall. Even before Thomas reached it, his stomach heaved at the warm, astringent stench of blood and body fluids, an odor he had not smelled since his days in the midst of the wounded and dying on the battlefields of Texas in the Civil War. He charged toward the open door and was met by the tall, taciturn Mexican woman that ran the house with an implacable hand. She moved to stand in front of him. “You cannot go in, Señor. Doctor here now. No men allowed.”

  “The hell you say. I’m her father.” Thomas shoved the housekeeper out of the way and tore into the room. A cry ripped from his throat. On the bed, his daughter lay under a sheet whose bottom half was soaked in blood. Her eerily pale face, framed by a mass of sweat-darkened hair and her freckles standing out like a sprinkling of cinnamon on a white empty plate, appeared to float from the pillow. She moved her head at hearing him, but her eyes stayed closed.

  “Daddy…” Regina acknowledged his presence with a weak lift of her hand, and Thomas rushed to clasp it, the figures of Anne McCord and the doctor and midwife blurs on the other side of the bed.

  “I’m here, Poppy. I’m here,” Thomas said. He knelt by the bed, his throat clutching. “What can Daddy do for his little girl?”

  “Keep…holding…my hand,” Regina murmured, her eyes still closed, her slight breathing labored. The doctor moved to lift and peer beneath the sheet.

  “Forever if you wish, sweetheart,” Thomas said, stroking her cold, clammy forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “The baby…was…born dead,” Regina whispered. “A boy…”

  “Sssh, rest now, sweetheart. It will be all right.”

  “Mother?”

  “On the way. Granmama and Vernon, too.”

  He he
ard Priscilla’s hysterical voice from the floor below, followed by a rush of anxious footsteps up the stairs. When Thomas glanced toward the door, he saw the doctor shake his head at the midwife and felt the earth drop from beneath his knees. Seconds later, Priscilla burst into the room, his mother behind her, but they had come too late. Thomas turned back to his daughter and observed her chest fall in its final breath.

  Beginning to keen, Priscilla shoved Thomas out of the way, toppling him, and gathered her daughter to her bosom to rock her as she had when Regina was a child. Thomas hauled himself to his feet and fell into a nearby chair, covering his face with his hands as tears began to stream. He heard Anne and the doctor say something to his mother before they and the midwife slipped from the room, and then Jessica came to stand beside him and place a hand on his shoulder. He felt its gentle weight like a crushing stone. Its significance reached beyond commiseration, beyond mere understanding of his grief. He lifted his tear-streaked face. “Are we Tolivers cursed, Mother?”

  She closed her eyes against his interrogation. Her face sagged, and Thomas was suddenly reminded of how old she was—seventy in October, the month another of his children had died.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I do!” Priscilla suddenly shrieked. She whirled to them, still clutching her daughter, loathing in her streaming eyes, the contortion of her mouth. “You Tolivers are cursed, cursed, cursed!” she screamed. “And my baby boy and now my daughter are dead because of it. God, I wish I’d never married into this family! I wish I’d never laid eyes on any of you, God damn you!”

  Vernon would be arriving soon. He must not hear his mother carry on so. Thomas forced sound from his throat. “Priscilla…please. You’re distraught. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “The hell I don’t!” Carefully, Priscilla laid her daughter down and levered herself up to face them. Her hat was askew, the front of her beribboned bodice soiled with the sweat of her daughter’s ordeal. Her eyes gleamed maniacally. Her lips twisted obscenely as she continued in a screech mindless of the rain of consequences to fall.

  “Jessica’s father paid Silas Toliver to jilt the woman he loved to marry your mother, Thomas. Did you know that? The price was the money to buy Somerset—that holy altar before which you Tolivers worship.”

  Priscilla had flounced to Thomas’s chair to speak directly into his face. “Your grandmother predicted a curse would fall on the land because of what he did, and your father came to believe her when he lost his son and the other children he would have had if he’d not betrayed the woman he was supposed to marry. Until the day he died, your father believed his children—the heirs to Somerset—were born to die because of the jinx he’d incurred when he made his deal with the devil.”

  Riveted to his chair, Thomas asked aghast, “How do you know all this?”

  “She read my diaries,” Jessica answered calmly.

  Priscilla blinked and regarded Jessica as if only then realizing she was in the room. Thomas saw rage give way to befuddlement in his wife’s sudden notice of his mother.

  “You read my mother’s diaries?” he croaked.

  Priscilla backed away unsteadily, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her fingers to her temples as if unsure of where she was. “No! I’ve heard rumors, that’s all.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Jessica said. She stepped to the bed and trailed the back of her hand down her granddaughter’s cheek. Bending, she kissed the ash-pale brow. “Sleep well, dearly beloved child.” Straightening, she regarded Thomas and Priscilla with a face as stolid as a marble bust. “Be careful of what you say. Vernon is in the hall.”

  “Keep him out there for a little while, Mother, and shut the door,” Thomas said as she turned to leave.

  Priscilla had cowered away from him. When the door closed, he asked, “Is it true, Priscilla? Did you read my mother’s diaries?”

  “No! And why should that be important anyway? Our daughter is dead.” Priscilla clamped her hands to her face and began to wail again. Heavily, Thomas pushed up from the chair. He wished he had the stomach to fold the mother of his daughter in his arms, but he did not. His feelings for his wife were as dead as the body under the blood-soaked sheet.

  “We must speak with Tyler to ask permission to take our daughter home,” he said.

  Four days later, on the afternoon of the burial when the mourners of Regina Elizabeth Toliver McCord had seen her interred in the family cemetery with her stillborn son, the members of the Toliver family gathered listlessly in the parlor of the mansion. They sat sprawled in the stiff, horsehair chairs and couches, too emotionally drained to move or speak. Priscilla and Jessica had not removed their hats or Thomas and Vernon their stiff cravats. Amy entered silently bearing a tray of tea and specially baked scones and left the room.

  Thomas and Priscilla had not spoken a word beyond necessity since the evening the little procession returned to Houston Avenue pulling the wagon that carried their daughter’s body home to be bathed and dressed for viewing. Stiff-lipped and dry-eyed, they had met the flood of visitors to the mansion from opposite sides of the room. The evening of their return, Thomas had slept in one of the guest rooms. The next day, he instructed members of the household staff to remove his things from the room he shared with Priscilla to his new quarters.

  “Somebody needs to say something,” Vernon said.

  Jessica poured the tea. “One lump or two?” she said, sugar tongs raised.

  “Neither,” Vernon said, standing. “I need to get out to the plantation.”

  “I am going to have a rest,” Jessica said. “Perhaps you should, too, Priscilla.”

  “Yes,” she agreed listlessly.

  “Thomas?” His mother cast an eye in his direction.

  Thomas drew up his legs to stand. “I will not be home for supper,” he said.

  Priscilla threw him a wild-eyed look. “Where will you be?”

  “Out,” he answered.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  “You’ve been seeing her, haven’t you?” said a voice from the shadows of an alcove opposite Thomas’s room.

  Thomas spun around. The alcove was a deep utility space with shelves for setting tea and coffee trays. As children, David and Regina had played hide-and-seek there, the first place they’d look for the other. “You’ve taken to spying on me, Priscilla?” Thomas asked, inserting his key into the lock.

  Priscilla emerged from the shadows into the hall lit by a wall sconce. It was nearly midnight. Thomas found something sinister about the rustle and glow of her shiny dressing gown in the light cast by the single candle. She’d lost weight in the two months after their daughter’s death, and her face had a haunted quality about it. Thomas sympathized with her pain, but only as a parent sharing the grief for the death of a mutual child. He could not bring himself to comfort her as a husband. Priscilla’s mourning was compounded by her regret that she’d let the cat out of the bag about reading his mother’s diaries. Thomas no longer wondered where she’d learned the hair-singeing things about his family he had never known. He no longer cared that she could hurt him beyond belief and his endurance. He was already there.

  “I’m not spying,” Priscilla said. “I feel I must hang around my husband’s door on the off chance of speaking with him. I would have waited inside your room, but you feel the necessity to lock it.”

  “I’ve sufficient reason, wouldn’t you say?” Thomas said. “We’ll talk in the morning. It’s late and I’m tired. Go to bed.”

  A flush darkened Priscilla’s cheeks, but she set her jaw. “We’ll talk now. I want to know if it’s the truth.”

  “If what’s the truth?”

  “That you’ve been seeing Jacqueline Chastain.”

  “If by seeing, you mean if I happen to catch a glimpse of her in town?”

  “I heard you gave her a ride in the carriage last Sunday.”

  “I offered her a ride as she was on her way to her church and I mine. It was too hot to walk.”
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  “How very convenient that you happened along on the very Sunday I was too depressed to go to church.”

  “Think what you will, Priscilla.” Thomas opened his door. He’d had enough of this conversation.

  “Don’t you care what people are saying?” she demanded.

  Thomas stepped into his room and pulled her in after him. He did not wish his wife’s strident voice carrying to his mother’s suite at the other end of the hall. He shut the door. “What are they saying, Priscilla, or is this simply another one of your unfounded speculations?”

  “Where have you been tonight?”

  “Playing cards with Jeremy Jr. and Armand and Philippe. Philippe is home on furlough.”

  “You weren’t with her?”

  “I’ve never been with her.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, that’s your prerogative.”

  “Where do you go when you’re not home or at the plantation or about your council duties?”

  “Well, let’s see what’s left. I suppose I would be at one of my lifelong friends’ homes.”

  “You seem to be spending a lot of time with them.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Why do you spend so much time at the plantation? I thought Vernon was running things now.”

  “He is, but he needs me.”

  “You’ve turned him against me.”

  “You have turned him against you, Priscilla. He was outside the door at the McCords and heard every word of your tirade.”

  As usual, Priscilla’s belligerent stance crumbled. She wrapped her arms around her thinner girth as if to hold herself together. “Thomas—I…I…was, as you said, distraught. Why wouldn’t I be? My daughter had just died. I couldn’t have known what I was saying. I shouldn’t be held responsible.”

  “Did you read my mother’s diaries?”

  “No!” Priscilla said, her vehement denial flushing her face. “Everything I said was based on rumors. The families are fodder for gossip. You ought to know that.”