“And you have followed your own advice?” Jessica asked. Though the Warwicks would never dream of alluding to the success of Jeremy’s financial ventures, it was no secret they had become the wealthiest family in the county, among the richest in Texas. Jeremy was of that rare breed of investor: a visionary with an astute head for business.
“It’s the reason I’m going to New York at this time,” he said, replacing his hat for departure. “Just a thought. Forget I said anything if the suggestion goes against your grain.”
The suggestion did not go against her grain, Jessica reflected after Jeremy had left. She’d needed reminding of the property rights women had enjoyed in Texas since 1840, when a state statute was enacted giving women sole rights to property they possessed at the time of their marriage as well as any acquired during it. Not that Silas would have, but after 1840 Tippy was no longer his to sell.
Thinking hard, Jessica slipped the letter into her pocket and got up from the swing to go into the garden to collect Amy. It was time for the child’s midmorning treat, and, partner in crime that Jessica was in encouraging the mud pies, she picked up the little girl and carried her inside to make her presentable for her mother’s prune cake and milk. As she washed Amy’s face and hands, Jessica pondered the practicality of Jeremy’s advice.
It made good sense to leave her aunt’s money—her money, now—in Aunt Elfie’s bank, but she dreaded an argument from Silas. The plantation was prosperous, but they often lived from crop to crop. Silas could not resist the urge to purchase more land as it became available, more work animals and the latest farm equipment, to build more barns, sheds, and fences. They were sometimes short of cash, never to pay their bills and see after their slaves properly, but enough to cause worry if the cotton didn’t make it. Last summer’s drought had wiped out their cash reserve, an all-too-common example of how easily their pockets could be emptied. After the war, the labor force uncertain, their money worthless and their land valueless, how would they keep the plantation going without Aunt Elfie’s money?
Jessica sent Amy off to her mother in the kitchen and went into her morning room to better analyze the astonishing direction of her thoughts. If the money from her inheritance were deposited locally, it would soon be gone in the way of all their extra resources. After twenty-five years of marriage, she knew her husband’s proclivities well—and hers, also. Silas would not be able to avoid the temptation to spend the money on the plantation, and she would not be able to refuse him the use of it. Jessica believed in Silas’s plan to save Somerset after the war, but all sorts of problems could thwart it, and they would have no financial means to sustain the land that must be held for Thomas.
Jessica removed the letter from her pocket and slipped it into a secret compartment of her secretary. Then she pulled the bell to summon Jeremiah and, after sending him on his way, drew forth a sheet of stationery and dipped her writing quill into a pot of ink.
Jeremy arrived soon after she’d finished composing her letter. “Jeremiah caught me with your message just in time, Jess,” he said strolling into her morning room. “I was on the way to the office. I’m assuming this is about my proposal?”
Jessica handed him the letter she’d written, sealed with a daub of dark green wax embossed with a rose, emblem of the Toliver coat of arms. “I have decided to take you up on your kind offer to act on my behalf, Jeremy. Your authority is there in writing. The letter is to Aunt Elfie’s attorney empowering you to act in my name to dispose of her house and belongings.”
“And what do you want me to do with the money?”
“The letter also authorizes you to open an account in my name at Aunt Elfie’s bank.”
Jeremy’s golden brow rose questioningly. “Silas has agreed to leaving your money in Boston?”
Jessica ducked her chin and cast an upward look at Jeremy.
“I’ve seen that look on my boxer after he’s eaten a whole cake off the tea table,” Jeremy said. “What’s going on, Jess?”
Jessica gestured that Jeremy take a seat and returned to her chair at the writing desk in a puff of hoop skirt. “Silas doesn’t know of Aunt Elfie’s death or of her leaving me her estate. He hasn’t seen her lawyer’s letter. He was gone this morning before I could show it to him.”
“As I told you, I’m not leaving for a few days. You have plenty of time to show it to him and discuss what you want to do with the money,” Jeremy said.
Jessica’s face grew mutinous. “I don’t want to discuss it with him. I don’t want him to know about the money. I have my reasons, Jeremy, so don’t look at me like that. I realize I’m deceiving Silas, but it’s for his own good and that of our son—and for Somerset. Silas will run through the money if it’s deposited here, may I be forgiven my disloyalty in saying so, but you and I both know that’s the truth. The Tolivers have never been as…well, as prudent in business matters as you Warwicks.” Jessica raised her chin and added loftily, “If the burden of my deception is too much for his closest friend to bear, I will certainly understand.”
Jeremy remained silent for a moment before answering. He had not yet pocketed the letter. “If I don’t do this for you, what will be your recourse?”
“I will go to Boston and handle the matter myself. If I’m detained by the war, I will stay in Aunt Elfie’s house under Sarah Conklin’s protection.”
Jeremy stood up. “I see you’ve thought this out.” He turned away as if needing privacy to think, rubbing his clean-shaven chin. Neither he nor Silas sported beards, the fashion of the day for men. After a moment, he swung back around. “For Somerset, you say?”
“And Silas and Thomas.”
“Same thing.” Jeremy approached Jessica still sitting before her desk and stared down hard into her eyes. “You know what will happen if Silas finds out I’ve gone behind his back on this?”
“I am aware of the risk, Jeremy, and despise myself for asking it of you. I know the value you men place on your friendship, but I know no other way to save Silas’s dream for Somerset. He’ll need money when the war is over, and we won’t have any.”
“I have been longer acquainted with Silas’s dream for Somerset than even you, my dear,” Jeremy said softly. “All right, I’ll do it with the cherished hope that Silas never discovers the hand I had in the matter.”
Jessica rose with a swish of silk and stepped toward him. She placed a hand on the lapel of his finely tailored frock coat. “He will never hear it from me, Jeremy. I give you my word along with my deepest gratitude.”
“A forceful combination that will win my obedience to your wishes every time,” Jeremy said and sealed the pact with a brief press of her hand. “And I suppose you’ll want me to look in on Tippy while I’m in New York?”
“If it would not be too much of an imposition.”
“And to make contact with Sarah Conklin while I’m in Boston?”
“I do not dare ask,” Jessica said, her eyes widening hopefully.
Jeremy chuckled and inserted the letter into an inner coat pocket. “You would dare anything, Jessica Wyndham Toliver,” he said. “I’ll collect the addresses before I leave.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
The night of April 12, 1861, just before dawn, Silas cried out in his sleep from a nightmare in which he heard his mother’s prediction again. “No!” he howled, startling Jessica awake beside him. She glanced at the large-faced clock on the mantel made visible by the moonlight streaming through the open window. It was 4:30.
“Silas, wake up! You’re having a bad dream!” she said, shaking his bare shoulder. She jerked her hand away. “My goodness, it’s cold in here, and you’re perspiring.”
Silas opened his eyes, the clutch of his nightmare releasing him in the semidarkness chilled by the last breath of a long winter. “I was having that dream again,” he said.
“What dream?”
Silas pushed himself up against the headboard and ran his hand through his damp hair. He reached for a glass of water on his bedsid
e table and took a long swallow to relieve his drought-dry mouth. He had never told Jessica of the curse his mother had predicted would fall on Somerset or of his terror that it meant to manifest itself by taking the life of his last surviving child. On and off the past anxious year, his mother had come to him in a dream with her dire threat, and he’d jerk awake with his heartbeat pounding in his ears and his skin clammy from a fear so deep he would rise from his bed for the rest of the night so as not to return to the dream again.
But never before had his imagined horror come to reality in his nightmares. Tonight in his dream he saw his mother pointing to something hidden by tall stands of cotton in the fields of Somerset. See! she cried. I told you your land was cursed! and the sprawled figure between the burgeoning rows toward which she aimed her finger was the body of Thomas.
Before reason—and his usual caution—could prevent him, he blurted, “Jessica, do you believe in curses?”
There was no immediate response, and Silas turned his blurred gaze to her, alarmed by his outburst and her thoughtful silence. Was she remembering her words at the time they discovered Joshua’s still body? Had he disturbed old coals that had lain quietly burning beneath layers of ashes all these years?
“I believe that…what we call a curse is really a withholding of natural blessings,” Jessica said. “Like rain that should fall at the proper season, but it does not.”
Like women made to be wonderful mothers who cannot conceive or hold their babies in their wombs, Silas thought. “You do not think a curse is punishment administered by God for past sins?” he asked.
He hoped for a breezy dismissal of the subject as nonsense. He did not know if his wife believed in a divine being. Jessica attended church to go along with his belief in Sunday tradition and to expose Thomas to the teachings of the Christian faith their son was at liberty to accept or reject, but she seemed to have no interest in established religion. Silas had never heard her call upon the name of God, even in times of great despair, or seen her read from the Bible. To his knowledge, the King James Version upon which she’d laid her hand at the exchange of their wedding vows had never been moved from whatever shelf it had been assigned.
“I’ve never thought about it,” Jessica said. She cuddled closer to him and laid her head on his bare chest. “Tell me about this persistent dream of yours, beloved. I’m assuming it has something to do with a curse.”
Beloved…an endearment soft with solace and the willingness to listen and understand. Silas was surprised by a sensation of tears. Jessica called their son “sweetheart” occasionally, but Silas could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d addressed him by a similar term of affection. She was not the type of woman, like Camellia and Bess, and, Lord have mercy, Stephanie Davis, to drop intimate expressions of address willy-nilly, and so they carried more value. Comforted, he kissed the top of her head. Did he dare tell her of his mother’s prediction that had haunted him since he’d dropped the first seeds into the soil of Somerset? Should he tell her of the drastic solution he was contemplating to eliminate the greatest fear of his life—of their lives?
It was not a course to decide alone.
“My mother prophesied a curse would fall upon Somerset for the sacrifice I made to fulfill my ambition of having a plantation of my own,” Silas began. “I paid no attention to it. It was the prediction of an angry and disappointed woman for my not marrying the girl she wanted as a daughter-in-law, I thought. But then our first child miscarried, the child conceived in such passion and joy, and there was another miscarriage after the birth of Thomas, and after that…you…seemed unable to conceive. And then when we lost Joshua….”
Jessica stirred abruptly in his arms, and he held her tighter to prevent her from moving away in hurt and pain. He continued. “And you said to me, “‘Silas, we are cursed.’ Do you remember?”
A nod of her head on his chest indicated acknowledgment. “I remember.”
“The possibility possessed me like a demon that perhaps we were cursed. I and my innocent wife were being punished for the deal I made with the devil back in South Carolina, the injury I caused to Lettie, the selfish and willful trades I made for the sake of the land.”
Jessica lay still, and Silas realized she may have taken his words wrongly. How could she not? He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “Not that I regret a second of the decision I made to marry you, Jessica. Tell me you are sure of that.”
She removed herself from his arms and adjusted pillows at her back to sit up beside him. “I am sure of that, Silas. Where is this discussion leading?”
“I don’t think the curse is through with us yet,” he said flatly. “I believe it intends a final stoke of vengeance.” He threw back his covers and got out of bed wearing only drawers. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked, wrapping a robe around him.
“Not if it will clear your head of this foolishness,” Jessica said.
Silas lit a cheroot and drew in deeply. “Is it foolishness, Jessica?”
“Silas Toliver!” Jessica scowled at him, her tone sharp. “I was insane with grief when Joshua died and would have said anything. At the time I did feel we were cursed with our inability to have and keep children, but I later realized that such were the quirks of nature. Joshua’s death was an accident that could have befallen any inquisitive, adventuresome twelve-year-old boy. Let’s be grateful that we’ve been blessed with a healthy, intelligent, industrious son—a perfect heir to your Somerset. Our only concern should be his survival.”
“Exactly!” Silas jabbed the air with the cheroot. “For our son to live—that’s what we both want if we could ask for anything in the world. His life is the most important thing on earth—more important than Somerset.”
Jessica turned an ear to him as if she had not heard him clearly. “What are you getting at, Silas?”
He placed the smoking cheroot in an ashtray and came to sit beside her on the bed. Jessica drew back uncertainly, doubt of his sanity clouding her dark eyes.
“What if…because of my obsession with Somerset…the curse takes Thomas?” he said. “What if God, as final punishment for the deal I struck with your father, means to leave no heir to possess the plantation?”
Jessica smacked his arm in rebuke. “Ridiculous!” she said. “Absurd. If—if Thomas perishes, a curse will have nothing to do with it. The stupid men who make war will be responsible!”
“But to make sure, I…Jessica…I…” His voice sounded raspy as a saw cutting wood. “I’m…I’m thinking of giving up Somerset—selling it—taking it out of Toliver hands, anything to get out from under the curse and bring our boy safely home.”
Jessica, pale as the bed pillows, clutched him by both arms. “Silas, do you hear yourself? You are talking superstitious nonsense. There is no such thing as a curse. God couldn’t give a fig whether you give up Somerset or not. Honestly, do you really believe that forfeiting the plantation will guarantee Thomas’s safety?” She shook him. “Do you?”
Her voice had risen on a note of incredulity and panic. Silas pulled out of her grasp and got up from the bed, putting a finger to his mouth. Their son’s room was next to theirs. “Lower your tone,” he said. “The window’s open, and I don’t want Thomas to hear this.”
“I should say not,” Jessica snapped. “Now answer my question. Do you really believe such a sacrifice will bring Thomas back?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “In my dream tonight, I saw Thomas lying dead between the cotton rows of Somerset. I saw his body clear as day.”
That silenced her. Jessica pressed her lips together, and he could tell she was envisioning the scene. Silas picked up the cheroot and inhaled until he could feel the smoke burn his lungs.
“It was just a dream,” Jessica said finally. “Only that, Silas, nothing more. If you sell Somerset, you will be selling Thomas’s heart. Whether he survives or not, either way he cannot live without his heart.”
“He’ll be alive,” Silas said.
r /> “But will he live?” Jessica pushed away the covers, drew on night slippers, and went to slide her arms up around his neck. “Silas, if you hadn’t, as you say, ‘made the deal with the devil,’ look at what you would have saved yourself from. You wouldn’t have married me. I’d be growing old in a convent in England, never having known what it was like to love and be loved, to have been a wife and mother. You wouldn’t be the father of Thomas. You wouldn’t be the master of a land that is yours by right of courage and hard work and perseverance. You would never have fulfilled the calling of your heritage, nor enjoyed the prosperity, respect, and happiness you’ve earned. You would have been spared all that to live the life prescribed for you at Queenscrown. Tell me truthfully, my darling. As it’s all turned out—Lettie apparently happy, your mother surrounded by grandchildren, you and I meant to be—where is the curse in all that? Rather than a vengeful God, can you not believe that Providence was looking after you when you made the deal with the devil?”
Tears seared Silas’s eyes. He could feel Jessica’s recital of all that never would have been—the logic of it—working to release him from the demons that bound him. Could it be that he was guilty of nothing but pursuing the destiny set for him? God knew, the burden of being a Toliver was sentence enough. He laid aside the cheroot and folded his arms around his wife.
“I have never loved you more than at this moment,” he said, his voice cracking on the wonder of his shackles falling free.
“Then you may prove it to me,” Jessica said, leading him back to bed.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Thomas stole quietly away from the open window of his parents’ bedroom, awed and shocked. He had heard every word of his mother and father’s conversation. Unable to sleep, he had gone out onto the verandah and taken a chair by his room to watch the sun rise on another uncertain day when he’d heard his father cry out. He’d jumped up to go to them, but his mother’s voice had stopped him. Apparently, his father had been in the throes of a bad dream.