Somerset (39 page)

I
t had been a morning of visits with her grandchildren. Vernon first, who tapped on her door as Jessica was dressing. “Granmama, will you help me decide what David and I can get Poppy for her birthday?” and later, at breakfast, when everyone else had eaten and gone, David, her favorite, had stayed behind. Jessica was the only one in the household with whom her younger grandson could discuss his passion of baseball. It seemed that John “Monte” Ward had become the first pitcher to hit two home runs in a game when his New York Gothams defeated the Boston Beaneaters 10 to 9 in May.

“Wouldn't that have been something to see, Granmama?” he'd asked.

“It sure would have,” she'd agreed.

“Maybe you and I can go see a game together one of these days.”

“I'll count on it,” Jessica said.

Now Regina had come to call. From the gazebo, Jessica watched her granddaughter let herself out the screened back door of the house. “I thought I'd find you out here,” she called to her grandmother.

Nothing much to think about, Jessica thought, but fondly as she watched Regina pick up her skirts and daintily make her way down the back steps to the brick walk leading to the gazebo. Weather permitting, Jessica always sat in the swing this time of day to have her midmorning tea. Regina had a little of her mother's vacuity in her, but it added an endearing quality to her sweetness of nature denied Priscilla. It was impossible not to adore her.

“I brought an extra cup,” Regina said. “You don't mind sharing your pot with me, do you?”

“I'm delighted with the company as always,” Jessica said, making room on the swing. “What do you have there? Is that the package of long-awaited patterns from Tippy?”

Regina giggled. “I think it's darling the way you call one of the most famous fashion designers in America Tippy when everybody else calls her Isabel.”

“She wasn't always Isabel. Which pattern did you choose?”

“Well, that's what I'd like to talk to you about.” Regina removed three envelopes from a glued paper sack, the new type of packaging material for mailing lightweight goods. “I need to enlist your help with Daddy.”

Jessica poured Regina a cup of tea. “I can't imagine why you'd need my help with your father. You have only to ask, and he will do your bidding.”

Regina smiled. “Not about something like this,” she said. “I want Armand's tailor to make the dress for my birthday party from this design”—she handed Jessica one of the three colorfully illustrated envelopes—“but Mother and I agree Daddy will think it's too daring. She'd like me to choose one of the more modest ones, but I want you to convince Daddy that this is the one for me.”

Jessica drew her spectacles from her dress pocket to study the illustration on the envelope containing tissue pattern pieces cut approximately to Priscilla's dress measurements. The evening gown was billed as an “Isabel” design, created for the E. Butterick Company in New York. Tippy had been working for the company since 1876 when Ebenezer Butterick offered her the position as head designer of his pattern empire. Since his revolutionary introduction of graded patterns for home use in 1867, it had grown to include one hundred branch offices and one thousand agencies throughout the United States and Canada, Paris, London, Vienna, and Berlin. The gown featured a low neckline and a waist the circumference of a wasp's middle. Jessica could understand why Thomas would object. At almost sixteen, Regina's figure was voluptuous—“another attraction we all agree to blame on you, Mother,” her son accused with a father's sigh and roll of his eyes.

“I'm going to be sixteen, Granmama,” Regina said. “It's time Daddy realized that I'm not a little girl anymore.”

“Fathers never realize their daughters are not little girls anymore,” Jessica said. She squinted at the pattern. “What if the seamstress raised the neckline just a little and dropped the shoulders a bit more? That way you still have the right amount of flesh showing for the same effect.”

“Oh, Granmama, you're a genius,” Regina cried, throwing her arms around Jessica's shoulders. “Thank you for not suggesting
lace
, like Mother did. Can you imagine
lace
on the neckline of a dress like this? It would simply
ruin
the effect I'm trying to achieve.”

“And what effect is that? To slay the heart of every boy in the room?”

Regina settled herself comfortably beside Jessica on the swing. “Not every boy,” she said. “Only one. Tyler McCord.”

“The rancher's son.”

“The same. Oh, Granmama, he's…beautiful. So tall and strong—like Daddy.”

“Yes, he's quite a handsome fellow,” Jessica agreed.

“And even nicer than he is handsome. Granmama, how old were you when you married?”

Uh-oh, Jessica thought. She could guess the reason behind the question. “Eighteen,” she answered.

“You're going to tell me that eighteen when you married is different than being eighteen now, aren't you?” Regina tilted her head and gave Jessica an arch look. On days when her mother did not have her “receiving,” Regina wore her abundance of brick-red hair loose and flowing, refusing to sit for the hour it took Amy to tether her crowning glory into a french twist on top of her head. An April breeze stirred her tresses, lifting strands away from her pale, freckle-sprinkled face. Jessica never looked into her granddaughter's green-flecked hazel eyes but that she tried to recall Major Duncan's. After a few weeks of his acquaintance, she'd never looked into them again.

“Not at all,” she answered Regina's assumption. “Eighteen is eighteen in any generation, though years do not always reflect one's age.”

Regina took a sip of tea and gazed at Jessica over its rim. “Were you eighteen when you reached eighteen?”

“In some ways, but not in all.”

“Were you ready for marriage?”

Jessica hesitated, then smiled. “I was not ready for Silas Toliver.”

“Really?” Regina's eyes grew larger. Jessica knew she loved these moments alone with her when she could pry memories of her youth out of her grandmother. “Was he ready for you?”

“I believe I can truthfully say he wasn't.”

Regina's laughter pealed across the yard, the sound young and pure and happy a week from her sixteenth birthday. When it subsided, she said, her tone serious, “Tyler is definitely ready for me.”

“That's what's worrying your father. At sixteen he believes you're definitely not ready for him.”

“But I will be at eighteen. Granmama, I want to marry Tyler. Daddy, of course, is having a fit. He doesn't think Tyler is good enough for me.”

“Well, now,” Jessica said, “that brings up another father principle when it comes to daughters. Fathers think no man is good enough for their little girls.”

“Did your father think Grandfather Silas wasn't good enough for you?”

Jessica took a moment to sip her tea. Regina waited, her gaze anticipatory of her answer. “I'm sure he didn't,” Jessica said, patting her lips with her napkin, “but your grandfather surprised him by making me happy. What color and fabric do you think you'll choose for the dress?”

“Oh, I'll have to consult with Armand on that,” Regina said, her attention instantly diverted to the pattern. “I think a dramatic color in satin, don't you, with elbow-length gloves in the same fabric…”

Jessica heard without listening. Her thoughts were on Jeremy Sr. He had hoped that one of his grandsons, Jeremy III or Brandon, would win the heart of Regina—“a mingling of our families' blood, Jess. What could be a sweeter twist of fate?” The twinkle in his eye had made clear his wish that in a great-grandchild he would have a part of Jessica Toliver to have and to hold.

Camellia had died in the spring of 1880, three years ago. Jeremy's sons had homes of their own, and their father rambled around in his baronial mansion by himself with only a cook and housekeeper to see to his domestic needs. When he wasn't working twelve-hour days, and his children and friends weren't allaying as many of his empty hours as he'd permit, he filled his time at home reading voraciously. Of all the families, he was the best informed. It was from Jeremy that Jessica learned of the experiments of a Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, whose research in cross-breeding garden peas had led to the discovery that the basic principles of heredity governing color, shape, and height in plants can apply to traits in people and animals. Jeremy showed her a chapter in a book that explained how certain traits in human beings, termed dominant and recessive and relating to everything from hair color to temperament, could disappear in the second generation but reappear in the next.

“So now we have an explanation for Regina's red hair and freckles and winsome figure,” Jeremy said.

Jessica was usually uncomfortable with any reference comparing her granddaughter's physical features to hers. It was only a skip and hop to Major Andrew Duncan in the memory of anyone who remembered him. But Jeremy had given her even more of a red herring to throw the dogs off the scent. She'd borrowed the book and showed it to Thomas. “I think you'll find this interesting,” she said. “The marked chapter explains how I'm to blame.”

In a rare display of affection, though Jessica loved the girl dearly, she placed her arm around her granddaughter's shoulders and hugged her to her. In a week, Regina would be sixteen. In another two years she would be married. She would leave her family to go live with her husband on his ranch. She would have her own family. As she grew older, enmeshed in the duties of wife and mother, time would assert its will on her face and figure. The simple passing of the years would eliminate any sudden connection to the Union major who came to Howbutker long ago. What could possibly spark it? Regina had only to get through the next two years, and Jessica could foresee no situation or occasion that would bring up the question of her paternity.

“I'll put in a good word for the dress with your father,” she said.

T
homas regarded his wife in frustration. “You are asking
me
to pick up a hat for you at the milliner's? That ladies' shop? What if I don't know what it looks like?”

“The hat or the shop?”

“The hat. The shop is at the end of the first spoke street off Circle, isn't it?”

“That's the one. And it's not a hat, dear. It's a
headband,
and you don't have to know what it looks like. Mrs. Chastain, the milliner, will know.

“Can't you send a servant?”

“They are all busy helping me with the party. Thomas, please—I
need
that headpiece today so Regina can try it on before tomorrow and adjustments made if it doesn't fit. It's a surprise. I ordered it last month to complement her dress. It will be the perfect touch.”

“It's for Regina? Why didn't you say so?”

Priscilla sighed in frustration. “All I have to do is say it's for Regina, and my will is done. I didn't tell you because you can never keep secrets from the girl.”

“She worms them out of me.”

“Only because you hint that you know something she'd like to know.”

“Mrs. Chastain, you say? She's the woman I'm to speak with?”

“She's the owner of the shop. She's expecting someone to pick up the band. She'll have it ready, and you won't have to linger.”

“What color is it? The band.”

“A light summer green over a rather goldish haze.”

“Sounds pretty. It will bring out Regina's hazel eyes.”

Priscilla rose hastily from her desk in the morning room, a large, ornate replacement for Jessica's slim Queen Anne secretary. “Darling, if you don't mind, I need that headpiece as soon as possible. I've got a dozen things to do today to finish preparations for the party, and I'd like to check that item off when Regina returns from her piano lesson.
Everybody
on the guest list is coming.
Nobody
would miss it.”

“As long as everybody is coming to celebrate our daughter's birthday and not out of curiosity about the house,” Thomas said.

Priscilla pressed a hand to her heart to express horror at the idea. “Of
course
everyone is coming to celebrate Regina's birthday. I've done no more to redecorate the house than anyone else has on Houston Avenue,” she said. “No one is coming to be impressed.”

“Uh-huh,” Thomas said, uncrossing his legs and rising. “And all I have to do is simply walk in and pick up the piece?”

“It will be wrapped and ready to go.”

“I hope the woman doesn't have undergarments on display.”

“It's a
hat
shop, Thomas.”

It was a nice day for a canter into town, and Thomas was glad to get out of the house that no longer seemed like his boyhood home. With the exception of his mother's suite, his wife had completely redecorated the place, upstairs, downstairs, even his study when he'd been on a business trip to Galveston. Nearly every feature of the sunny house of his childhood with its deep white moldings, Wedgwood blue walls, cream-colored sofas and chairs, and silk draperies in garden pastels had been replaced with the heavy colors of the Victorian period. Their very names—“blood burgundy,” “moss green,” “ash rose,” “shadow gray,” “autumn brown”—depressed Thomas. Massive, ornate furniture, dark woods, heavily stained glass, damask-covered walls, weighty fabrics embellished with tassels, cording, fringe, beads, and spangles had supplanted his mother's slimmer, lighter, more graceful décor. “The place has been turned into a damned museum,” Thomas had complained to Armand when his decorator's work was finished.

“It was what your wife wanted, my friend,” Armand said.

Still, it had been almost twenty-seven years since the house had been refurbished, and Thomas had not wanted to stir up a hornet's nest by refusing Priscilla's request to “redo a few things.” When he'd gone to ask his mother's permission, she had said, “Let her have her way, Thomas, and do not think of me. You'll be living here long after I'm gone.”

Her observation had induced a sadness he'd not been able to put aside. His mother was sixty-seven. Every day of his life, he missed his father. Jeremy and Henri, his father surrogates, were aging. How destitute he would feel when they were gone. He had his friends—Jeremy Jr. and Stephen and Armand, the best—and his children, of course, but his darling daughter would marry soon, and Vernon and David in time. They would leave his home, and then he would be left with Priscilla.

These thoughts were on his mind when he entered the small establishment to which he'd been dispatched, simply named the Millinery Shop. The place had not been in business long. What he knew of it came from Armand, who was now running the department store. The Millinery Shop was a competitor to his friend's line of women's hats, but Armand waved away the challenge as one would shoo a fly. “There's enough business for all, and Mrs. Chastain features certain styles I don't carry. The proprietor is a war widow. Her husband was killed at Manassas. No children. Quite a lovely woman, actually. I wish her well.”

A silver doorbell announced his presence. Thomas had only a few seconds to register the pleasant fragrance and utter femininity of the place before a woman emerged from a lace curtain drawn across an opening to the rear of the shop.

“Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?”

She spoke in a deep contralto, her voice the most beautiful he'd ever heard. To his complete astonishment, Thomas felt his skin tingle. “Uh, Mrs. Chastain?”

“Yes.”

“I'm…Thomas Toliver, and…I've been sent to pick up a package for my wife.”

The woman smiled. Thomas felt pressure mount beneath his rib cage.

“I know who you are, Mr. Toliver.” She reached under the counter and withdrew a small package. “I believe this is for you. It's already paid for. I hope your daughter will be pleased.”

“Oh, I'm—I'm quite sure she'll be very pleased.” He could not believe himself. He had conversed easily with the richest and most powerful, the venerable and erudite, the famous and notorious, and yet here he stood tongue-tied in the presence of a millinery shop owner of no more consequence to the world than a feather in the plumage of one of her hats.

“Would you like to see the item your wife purchased for your daughter? I understand it's to be a surprise.”

“That's what her mother says, and yes, I'd like very much to see it.”

“Let's unwrap it, then.”

She set the package on the counter and with light, deft strokes, untied the ribbon. “What do you think?” she said, holding up the wired confection of satin rosettes in the green and gold color his wife had described.

Thomas took the exquisite design in his hands. “It's the color of my daughter's eyes.”

“Hazel, so I'm told.”

“Yes, hazel.”

“Not as pure green as yours, then.”

“No, no…They are her own.”

“I understand she has red hair.”

“Yes, like my mother.”

“This color should complement her red hair beautifully.”

He should give the piece back, allow her to rewrap it again, Thomas thought. “How does it…work?” he asked.

The woman took back the arched creation. “Like this,” she said, and gave a mock demonstration. “The piece is designed to hold the hair back and serve as a frame for the face. It should be lovely on your daughter. Shall I rewrap it?”

“Yes, please.”

Thomas watched her hands at work, the bone structure delicate as bone china. She still wore a gold band on her wedding ring finger. She handed the package to him. “There,” she said with a smile that turned his heart over. “I look forward to seeing a picture of your daughter wearing her surprise in the social section of the Sunday paper.”

“I have a better idea,” Thomas said. “Why don't you come to my daughter's party and see your handiwork for yourself? It's tomorrow evening at seven. I'm sure my daughter would love to have you there to thank you in person.”

“That is very kind of you, but…what would Mrs. Toliver say?”

“My mother?”

“No. Your wife.”

“Oh. Why, she would be delighted as well.”

“May I…consider the invitation, Mr. Toliver?”

“Yes, of course.” Thomas picked up the rewrapped package. “And it's, uh, Thomas, by the way.”

She held out her hand. “Jacqueline,” she said.

He pressed it gently. “Jacqueline. Perhaps you will give serious thought to the invitation?”

“Perhaps. Good-bye…Thomas.”

Thomas tipped his hat. “Until tomorrow evening, I hope.”