The Gifted (38 page)

“Nay?” Tristan’s mother said. “Is that some kind of Shaker talk?”

Jessamine looked down at her hands again and Tristan frowned at his mother, who merely glared back at him before she turned a smile toward Mr. Ridenour next to her. “Well, really, it would be clearer if everyone would just speak yes or no when asked a question, don’t you think?”

“Dear Wyneta, I beg you to show a bit of patience for my daughter.” Sheldon Brady smiled as he spoke up. He’d been sitting back watching the scene unfold as though taking mental notes for one of his romance stories. “The Shakers say yea and nay instead of yes and no as we do, and since my daughter has been with the Shakers for almost ten years, such habits of speech are not quickly broken.”

Jessamine looked up at Tristan’s mother. “My father speaks the truth. I know very little of the ways of the world.”

“I’m sure you’ll learn quickly,” Laura said. “With your father to help you.” She looked from Jessamine to Sheldon Brady, her polite smile firmly in place.

“And so you found your long lost daughter,” Robert Cleveland boomed. “Good for you, Sheldon. She looks to be a fine asset.” Then he picked up his spoon and banged it against his glass. “Where are those waiters? A man could starve at this place.”

Jessamine watched him a few seconds before she picked up her spoon and hit it against her glass the same as he had. “Is this the way you begin dinners in the world? With much noise instead of silent prayer? That is much different than the Believers.”

Everybody at the table stared at her. Even Sheldon Brady looked surprised, but then Viola Cleveland laughed and picked up her spoon and clanked it against her glass too. Brady’s laughter joined hers as he followed suit.

Laura did the same as she poked Tristan with her elbow. “Come, come, Tristan. You do want dinner, don’t you?”

So he picked up his spoon and joined in. Robert Cleveland seemed taken aback a moment, but then he let out a booming laugh. Even the serious Mr. Ridenour was smiling.

Tristan’s mother was not as she stared at them as though they had all lost their minds. “For mercy’s sake, they will ask us to leave if you all don’t stop this outlandish behavior.”

“Oh, don’t get all in a stir, Wyneta,” Robert Cleveland said before hitting his glass again. “Nobody’s going to ask paying customers to leave. Not when we’re just having a little fun. And look. Here comes our food.” He pointed with his spoon toward two waiters hurrying toward their table with loaded trays. He smiled over toward Jessamine. “I guess we can put our spoons down now, Miss Brady.”

She laid her spoon back beside her plate as she gave him a shy smile, aware the laughter had been because of her, but not appearing to be upset about it. “I do beg your forgiveness if I did something wrong. I have much to learn about the world.”

“Don’t worry about it, my dear.” Viola reached across the table to touch Jessamine’s hand. “Your innocence is quite charming.”

“Quite,” Laura echoed. “Enchantedly charming.”

“Is that good?” Jessamine looked at Laura. “To be charming? It would not be considered so at Harmony Hill. There one is to think of her duties, not of how others might see her.”

“You are no longer at Harmony Hill,” Laura said.

Jessamine looked from Laura all around the room and then back down to her own dress. “Yea, that is a truth. I am no longer at Harmony Hill.”

Tristan heard an echo of sadness in her words, but then she was smiling again and looking at everything as though she couldn’t see enough. It was certainly true that Tristan couldn’t see enough of her. Somehow before the night was over, he would have to steal a few moments alone with her. Somehow. Perhaps in a garden.

24

It was more, much more, than Jessamine had ever thought to imagine. Things of the world kept flying at her as though she were running through a strange meadow of wonders. Here a bright-colored flower, there a sharp stone. Then a bird taking wing in front of her or a snake in the grass to startle her. One minute she couldn’t see enough. The next minute she was afraid to look.

But she couldn’t keep her eyes from sliding to wherever Tristan Cooper was. He looked different here in this place of the world. Very different. Not the man needing help in the woods. Not someone she might seek out in a garden to talk to about his world. Her world too now, she supposed, although she felt very much like a visitor who wouldn’t be able to stay.

Of course, she looked different too. Even more different than Tristan did. Much more. She had seen her reflection in a large oval mirror swinging free in a wooden frame back in the room her father had arranged for her. He had moved his things to the room adjacent to it so he would be close should she have need of something. The owner of the Springs, a Mr. Hargrove, had been very accommodating, but Jessamine was relieved to escape his eyes. He’d kept looking at her as though she were some sort of new specimen of female never before seen.

Her father laughed when she told him that. “You’d best get used to it, my daughter. There are going to be many eyes on you this night.” Then he had left her to go get dressed for dinner.

Later when he came back to escort her downstairs to the dining room, the thought of more people of the world staring at her made her hesitant to go with him. Instead, she suggested, “Perhaps it would be best if I stayed in my room this evening. I’ll be quite content here.”

The room her father said was for her and her alone was lovelier than anything she had ever seen, with a bed as big as three of the beds back at Harmony Hill. When she first came into the room, she had stared at the bed in wonder and barely constrained the impulse to fall upon it to see if it was as soft as it looked. The white lace coverlet topping the bed seemed to have little purpose other than beauty. Pink and green scarves spread over the table and on top the bureau. Scarves that would surely make cleaning the tables much more difficult, especially with the glass bowls and vases scattered here and there on them. Morning chores would not be quick, with the way everything sat on the floor or the furniture with not even one peg on the wall to hang them out of the way of a dusting brush or broom.

“But you look so lovely in your new dress and I do so want my friends to meet you.” He studied her a moment before going on. “I know this place is much different from what you knew at Harmony Hill, my dear, but you have nothing to fear. I will stay right beside you through dinner. However, if the thought of going down to dinner is too daunting, I can have our meals brought up here.”

“Oh nay, I would not want you to miss dinner on my account,” Jessamine said quickly.

“But, my dear,” he said with a gentle smile. “I won’t leave you alone while you’re feeling lonely and afraid.”

“I don’t know that I’m afraid, but it is true the ways of the world are very strange to me. I won’t know what to do.”

Her eyes caught on her reflection in the mirror, and for a moment, it was as if a stranger was in the room with her. A person she did not know. A person she could not even imagine knowing. And yet her eyes stared out of the face.

“Just watch those around you,” her father assured her as he put his arm around her to turn her toward the door. “It will come easily. The ways of the world are not difficult.”

But she’d found out soon enough that worldly ways weren’t simple like the Believers’ ways. She had done as her father said and watched the others at the dining table. But it had been wrong when she had followed the lead of the man named Robert Cleveland, a stern man who might have made her think of hiding behind her father, except that he made her think of Elder Hobart who often wore the same unhappy glower but was forever kind. A person couldn’t always judge by the looks of a face. Actions mattered more. And so she had tapped on her glass the same as Mr. Cleveland had and realized almost right away that such was not common behavior. The lady introduced as Tristan’s natural mother was quite distressed by Jessamine’s blunder. It seemed to upset her even more when the others at the table copied Jessamine with great amusement. Not because she was concerned for Jessamine’s feelings, but because she feared being thought an embarrassment.

Jessamine had asked forgiveness with no hesitation. Confession of wrongs, especially such silly wrongs, was as natural as breathing to her. Oddly enough, that made her feel more comfortable in the strange dining room where nobody prayed, everybody talked, and much food was left on plates carried away by servers who didn’t seem to notice, much less mind, that perfectly good food was being wasted.

She tried not to make any more mistakes at the table, but she had to remove her odd summertime gloves in order to eat. She thought nothing of it until she noticed the young woman named Laura staring at her hands. Jessamine’s nails were still stained with the berry juice from the morning, even though that seemed weeks ago now. And there were angry red scratches from her too enthusiastic pursuit of the berries. In contrast, Laura’s creamy white hands had long slender fingers with oval-shaped nails that didn’t look as if they had ever picked anything except perhaps a berry from a bowl placed before her. The way a princess would.

After that, Jessamine hid her hands as much as possible between bites. It was obvious putting on a dress of silk and ruffles wasn’t enough to turn her into a princess as Cinderella had been in her granny’s fairy tales. Perhaps the fairy godmother had magically transformed the poor girl’s ashes-stained hands along with giving her the beautiful dress and glass slippers. But that was no more than a story. In real life, hands were not so easily transformed from the hands of a worker into those of a princess.

At any rate, it was almost impossible to properly eat with all the talk swirling around the table. And not only around the table where she sat, but around every table in the large dining room until the voices were a din of noise as loud as when the Believers stomped out the devil back at the meetinghouse. Jessamine wondered if they were thinking of places such as this when they were laboring to keep Satan from their hearts and minds. She had no problem imagining Sister Edna’s woeful cries and stomps if she were there beside Jessamine. And perhaps Sister Sophrena’s as well.

Before tears could climb into her eyes, she pushed away thoughts of Sister Sophrena and dug her fork into a piece of yellow cake that was so dry it made her wish for two glasses of water. But she diligently ate every bite even while thinking of the delicious raspberry pies her sisters and brothers would be enjoying back at Harmony Hill. It was a relief when her plate was empty, the meal was over, and Mr. Cleveland stood up and eased back his wife’s chair for her to stand as well. Jessamine didn’t follow his lead. She’d learned her lesson there, but then everybody else at the table did stand. The ways of the world were a puzzle.

Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland led the way out of the dining area followed by Tristan’s mother and her dour-looking gentleman friend. Jessamine couldn’t remember the man’s name. In front of Jessamine and her father, Tristan escorted the princess. A prince and a princess. They split the air as they walked with no need to keep stumbling over all the wonders that kept drawing Jessamine’s eyes.

None of it was a wonder to them, but the expected. Opulence. Food nibbled at and sent away. Roses in huge vases in every corner of the huge room her father called a ballroom for dancing. Women in every color of dress with skirts so wide they could surely sweep half the floor at a time with their skirt tails. Flowers carried in the women’s hands for no purpose other than the sweet scent.

“This room can get very warm when the dances start up,” her father warned her as he led her to a chair near a veranda door. “So if the air begins to feel too close for you, don’t hesitate to step out into the gardens for a cooling break.”

“Yea,” she agreed. “But I know nothing of gardens of the world.”

“Don’t worry. Gardens everywhere are much the same. Although I’m sure it’s very likely that the gardens here at the Springs are the setting for more marriage proposals than those at your Shaker village.” He smiled at her. “I proposed to your mother in a garden where yellow jessamine bloomed. A beautiful flower. That’s why your mother chose your name. She knew you were going to be a girl long before you were born.”

“How could she know?”

Her father smiled with a tinge of sadness stealing into his eyes. “I asked her that myself. She said you talked to her. Spirit to spirit.”

Jessamine closed her eyes and tried to bring forth her mother’s spirit that she might have once communed with. Nothing was there in her imagination. She had no vision of the woman her father had loved enough to give a child. She opened her eyes and looked at the prince who had loved her mother. “I have no memory of her at all.”

“The memory may be there, but buried by too many years.”

“What did she look like?”

“That’s easy.” He looked around and then pointed toward the nearest mirror on the wall opposite them. “Just go look in a mirror and there is Issandra. You look very much like her.”

“Now? Or this morning before I . . .” She hesitated and looked down at her dress. “Before I changed.”