Somerset (43 page)

I
n the years immediately following Henri's death, the circle of Howbutker's founders' sons grew even more tightly knit. Thomas, Jeremy Jr., and Armand had turned fifty, Stephen not far behind. Their sons, in their early twenties, were deeply involved in their families' businesses, allowing time for the fathers to spend more time with one another. Members of the clans broke into social groups based on ages. Jessica, Bess, and Jeremy occupied one. Thomas, Armand, Jeremy Jr., and Stephen formed another, and their sons—Vernon and Jeremy III, Brandon, Richard, and Joel Warwick, and Abel and Jean DuMont—comprised the youngest.

Thomas relished his association with his three friends. Without them, he would have been a lonely man. His daughter had married—happily, he was elated to observe—and was expecting her first child next year, in 1887. Accompanied by Jeremy and Bess, his mother was on a round-the-world cruise that would take the better part of a year, and afterwards, the three were to visit Tippy in New York and Sarah Conklin in Boston. She would not be home until the week of Thanksgiving.

Vernon had taken up residence during the week in Jasper's old house, outfitting it with louvered windows and other amenities suitable for the heir apparent to Somerset. He had never been quite the same after David's death and seemed to prefer solitude, throwing all his energies into the cultivation of cotton. It was an exciting and lucrative time to be growing the largest revenue crop in Texas. Even with improvements in the ginning process and the invention of a compress that could reduce 500-pound bales into units half their size for easier shipping by the ever-increasing rail system, planters could hardly satisfy world demand for the fluffy white bolls. Thomas was still engaged in the day-to-day management of his life's work, but not engrossed as he once had been. Thomas envied his friends their continued interest in their vocations even though they had slacked off to enjoy the benefits of their success.

Thomas recognized that a happy home life had a lot to do with a man's enthusiasm for other pursuits, a blessing his friends enjoyed that he did not. As when they were first married, he and Priscilla were strained in the other's presence. They treated each other with painful respect that Thomas believed barely hid the malice his wife felt for him. He'd found her out and now she hated him for discovering her capable of vile acts. She would never regain a high opinion of herself in his eyes, and so she consoled herself by thinking the worst of him. Once his children were no longer at home and his mother had left on her trip, Amy had asked if Thomas wished to take his meals with Priscilla at the small table in the breakfast room, but he declined. The intimacy would have been unbearable. They continued to eat in the dining room, one at each end of the long table. At night they slept as far away from the other as possible in the bed they shared. Thomas longed to sleep apart, but he could not bring himself to suggest an arrangement that would be the final repudiation of his wife.

The four friends formed the habit of lunching together every Wednesday at the Fairfax. Thomas would ride in from the plantation and hitch his horse before the DuMont Department Store. He could have ridden farther on to the hotel's dining room, but he enjoyed collecting Armand and walking with him the one block to its entrance. At least that was the excuse he gave himself when he knew full well the occasion provided him the only opportunity to see Jacqueline Chastain.

In the two years of her employment in the store, she'd become a mainstay. “I don't know what we'd do without her,” Armand said. “Her creativity reminds me of Tippy's.” It had not taken long for Jacqueline's dignity, sincerity, and decorum to cause customers to doubt the inflammatory content of the poisonous letters. At a party in the DuMont home, Thomas heard a matron extolling the expertise of “that fine clerk you hired, Armand,” and finished by declaring that “whoever the villain was that sent those nasty letters maligning Mrs. Chastain ought to be horse whipped.” Thomas had carefully avoided looking in Priscilla's direction.

It was Wednesday again. Thomas stepped inside the chandelier-lit retail edifice with eyes trained to look first at the women's accessory counter. Jacqueline Chastain saw him and smiled. She had been expecting him. Usually he said something like “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chastain,” and lifted his hat slightly. “How goes your day?”

“Perfectly, Mr. Toliver, and yours?”

“Enhanced now, Mrs. Chastain. So nice to see you again.”

“And you as well.”

That was all. Observers looking on would see Thomas barely break stride as he passed the counter over which Jacqueline Chastain presided. They had never exchanged more than a few words. Sometimes she would be assisting customers, and he would merely lift his hat on the way to the staircase.

But always the sight of her and the sound of her voice lifted his heart for those brief seconds before it fell. After a few months working in the store, Jacqueline had moved from the apartment above her former shop to the one Tippy had occupied that was located nearby. It boasted a white fence and small cottage garden beside the front walk. Thomas knew Jacqueline did not possess a conveyance and was glad she had not far to walk after store hours. Today, there were not as many in the store as usual and no customer in the women's accessory department, and Jacqueline stood behind the gleaming glass counter looking like a queen devoid of subjects.

“Mrs. Chastain—” Thomas began, but his voice caught. He was feeling especially melancholic today. Earlier at the plantation he'd had a talk with his son. Lately, Vernon had been squiring a pretty girl about, the daughter of a dairy farmer the Toliver family had known for years.

“Do you love her?” Thomas had asked.

“I…don't know, Daddy. What does love for a woman feel like?”

Thomas could not answer him. He had not had the experience. Thomas said instead, “I can tell you what love doesn't feel like.”

And so, man to man, Thomas had shared his story of how he'd married his mother to produce an heir to Somerset. “I believed we'd grow to love each other, but I was wrong,” he'd concluded.

“Do you regret it?” Vernon asked. He had expressed no surprise at his father's confession. As hard as his parents had tried to hide it, their children had been aware of the disaffection between them. “I mean, was your sacrifice for Somerset worth it?”

“Yes, the plantation was worth it, son. The times dictated what I had to do. Certainly I wonder how my marriage—and your mother's—would have turned out if I hadn't jumped the gun when I did and married for the reason I did. But my solace is that if I hadn't married Priscilla, I would never have fathered my three wonderful children. You will never know how much I love you until you have children of your own, Vernon. And…another comfort, son. I can die knowing my sacrifice for the land of my fathers and my struggle and labor were not in vain.”

Thomas had looked out across the picked fields, the wind stirring the white residue between the stripped plants that resembled drifts of snow, and felt a resurgence of the old pride. “I have but one regret,” he admitted.

“What is that, Daddy?”

“That I will die without ever having been with a woman I love.”

That was Jacqueline Chastain, Thomas thought, taking the rare opportunity to gaze fully into her face. She must be over forty by now, he guessed. Time had not dulled her beauty. Her loveliness had been strengthened by a womanly wisdom detectable in her poise and manner, her smile and eyes and incomparably warm voice.

“Mr. Toliver,” Jacqueline returned, the slight contraction of her eyebrows telling him she wondered what had affected him.

“It will be Thanksgiving soon,” he said, appalled at the inane observation.

“Yes, I hear it's around the corner.”

“My mother will be home from her world cruise.”

“I'm sure you're anticipating her return with great excitement. She'll have worlds”—she smiled at the pun—“to tell you.”

“And I'm to be a grandfather. My daughter is expecting her first child in April next year.”

“How wonderful for you.”

Armand would be waiting for him. He must go, but still he lingered. How was her cat? Thomas asked. Lazy and fat, she said. Her garden? She was seeing a bounty of stocks and sweet Williams this year. Their fragrance was delightful. Had she been keeping up with the scandal brewing in Paris over John Singer Sargent's painting of Madame X? Fascinating what riled people up so, didn't she think? Yes, she agreed. She thought the painting lovely, and the black dress the critics were making such a fuss over very appropriate to the woman's beauty. The French were usually so…embracing of the unorthodox.

Thomas wondered what her life was like when she went home after the store closed. How did she keep busy in her little house? Was she lonely? Had she made many friends? Was she being courted? Armand described her as “fiercely independent,” preferring to do the “man jobs” around the house herself rather than accept the assistance of his maintenance crew.

Thomas perused the display case. “I'd like to buy something to welcome my mother home. What would you suggest?”

“We just got in a collection of beautiful fans, lightweight but quite effective for our summers. Would you like to see them?”

“Most certainly.”

Thomas bought a fan, and then he saw Armand come down the stairs, his gaze lighting instantly on the aisle where he suspected his friend would be. “It's been a pleasure, Mrs. Chastain—Jacqueline,” he said.

“Mine as well, Mr. Toliver—Thomas,” she said.

When he arrived home late in the afternoon, Priscilla was waiting for him.

T
homas, after stabling his horse, always entered his mansion through the kitchen door. In the spotless, savory environs of hanging pots and pans, scrubbed chopping block, cavernous sink, and work surfaces, he could count on being greeted by Petunia when she'd been alive and whom he still missed, and now by Amy and her daughter, Sassie. Amy would inquire about his day and was genuinely interested in his report. Sometimes he'd sit down with a cup of coffee to listen to her share gossip telegraphed through the grapevine always humming from house to house on Houston Avenue. Occasionally, especially since his mother had been gone on her trip, Thomas would unburden himself of worries regarding Somerset and concerns of the city council. He knew his confidences would never go past the screened back door. There was always something delicious to snatch on his way through the kitchen, and today he noticed a heaping plate of his son's favorite pecan cookies. Vernon was coming to supper and would stay through the weekend.

“Mister Thomas, your wife would like to see you in the morning room,” Amy said by way of greeting. Her anxious tone and pointed gaze warned him to be on guard. If Priscilla had her way, she would send Amy with her husband and daughter to the plantation to pick cotton alongside her uncle Jasper's families. Jasper's two sons, Rand and Willie, had returned to Somerset after finding Kansas overcrowded and inhospitable and the farming opportunities not as advertised. Priscilla may be mistress of the house, but the staff answered to Amy, whose first loyalty was to Jessica. Thomas was aware that the domestic situation nettled the hell out of his wife.

“Amy said you wished to see me,” Thomas said, entering the morning room.

He hated what Priscilla had done to a room that had served as a sanctuary to him when he was growing up. Light had spilled everywhere through the window sheers, now darkened by heavy draperies, and there had been comfortable chairs on which to sit. He remained standing. Priscilla got up abruptly from her oversized desk, her clenched jaw giving notice of her anger.

“I have taken much abuse from you, Thomas, but I will not take this,” she said.

Abuse? He had never so much as touched a fingernail of his wife's hand in anger, and she spent money as freely as rice thrown at a wedding. Thomas said, “And what is it that you will not take from me, Priscilla? Enlighten me, please.”

She approached him. Her slightly thicker waist and larger hips betrayed her entry into middle age, but her face still held evidence of her former beauty. It had been a long time since her startlingly pretty looks had quickened his pulse.

“Jacqueline Chastain,” she said through tightly gripped teeth.

Involuntarily, he jerked his head back. “What about her?”

“You're having an affair with her—or at least would like to.”

Thomas let out a little guffaw. “Who told you that?”

“I have my sources, but I don't need them. Any blind idiot can figure out why you stop by the DuMont Department Store every Wednesday to meet Armand.”

Thomas's brow rose. “Because it's his place of business, perhaps?”

“Don't play the innocent with me. You could meet him at the Fairfax for your weekly luncheon session.”

“Diners are requested not to hitch their horses by the restaurant if possible, for obvious reasons. As you know, the windows face the street. Besides, Armand and I enjoy the walk.”

Priscilla's lip twisted. “You can give any excuse you want, but it holds no water with me, Thomas. I know that you stop by Mrs. Chastain's counter every time you enter the store. Your face goes through a metamorphosis. You've been described as looking like a schoolboy bringing his favorite teacher an apple.”

“By whom? And how in the world do you know a word like
metamorphosis
?”

She looked ready to slap him. Her teeth clenched tighter. “Never mind how I know and don't think the rest of Howbutker doesn't know either, but I'll tell you this, Thomas…” Priscilla stepped closer, so near that Thomas could see the fine hair on her lip, the tiny pores on her nose through a thin film of perspiration. “If you make a fool of
me
by consorting with Mrs. Chastain, I will make
you
sorry for the rest of your life. I'll hurt you beyond belief, beyond your endurance. Trust me on that, you hear me?”

Thomas stepped back from her fury. He had not been the husband she'd banked on when she agreed to marry him, he granted her that. He'd tried to make up for it by indulging her spending, tolerating the exalted position she gave herself as the wife of Thomas Toliver, the snob she'd become. He despised snobs, people who thought themselves better than others by luck of birth or marriage, positions they had not earned for themselves. Translated,
snob
meant literally “without nobility” and that applied to Priscilla. He could not tolerate such arrogance even from her and met it with a tongue given to wry taunts.

“You continue to amaze me, Priscilla. First
metamorphosis
and now this. What makes you think
you
have the wherewithal to make good such threats to me?”

She closed the space between them and now he could smell the alcohol on her breath. She had been at the sherry. “I know things about your family that would singe the hair on every single head in this county if they were known.”

Thomas's gaze widened inquiringly. “Really? You've made discoveries in my family's history to provide you that kind of fodder for salacious tittle-tattle? I'd love to hear them. In regard to meaty tales of that sort, I've always thought the Tolivers rather dull fare.”

She moved away from him, fear from the realization that she'd said too much flitting across her face. For the thousandth time, Thomas wondered how he could have been so self-duped to believe this woman the perfect wife for him. He supposed the surprise of her interest in his family's history, especially his ties to English royalty, had convinced him he had proposed to the right woman. No detail of family legend or fact had escaped her curiosity. He'd been delighted when Priscilla jumped on the slightest tidbit of Toliver and Wyndham background dropped innocently at the table, usually resulting in his father diverting the conversation to a history lesson.

Thomas had gone away to war happy that Priscilla was willing to instill in their children knowledge and appreciation of the roots from which he came. Such understanding bound descendants to family and to the land, committed them to continue what their father and his father before him had begun. Whatever was to be his fate, Thomas remembered thinking, Priscilla, under the tutelage of Silas Toliver, would not allow his children to forget who they were and the duty they owed their family name.

What a fool he had been!

“You were saying, my dear?” he inquired politely.

His wife's bluster was like a sea swell whose force has suddenly collapsed. Her Dutch courage had deserted her. She stepped farther away from him, her posture crumpling, and sputtered, “You—you just be careful of your step…that's all I'm saying, Thomas. I will not have you embarrass our children.”

“I would never embarrass my children, Priscilla, and please hear what I'm saying to you. If I ever hear a word of your suspicions of a liaison between Mrs. Chastain and me uttered to anyone else, I will make you wish you hadn't. I am not thinking of myself or you or even our children. I am thinking of Mrs. Chastain, who is totally innocent of your unfounded accusations. Whatever makes you think she would indulge in an affair with a married man? I am, therefore, not likely to be guilty of the charge you've leveled against me.”

Thomas let the icy implication hang in a silence in which Priscilla appeared too stung to speak. “And tell your little spy in the DuMont Department Store that I'll have her fanny fired if I ever get wind of a whisper of slander against Mrs. Chastain,” he went on. “I'll hold her personally responsible.”

A throat cleared behind them. Thomas and Priscilla whirled to the sound. Vernon stood in the doorway. “I've come for supper, Mother and Daddy,” he said.