Somerset (50 page)

I
t had taken Jessica two weeks after the disaster at Galveston to pull herself together to confront Darla. Finished with dressing, she sent Amy to summon her grandson's wife to meet her in the morning room.

“The morning room, Miss Jessica? Not up here in your study?”

“The morning room, Amy.”

Darla swept into the room she'd wasted no time seizing as her command station and looked stunned to see her husband's grandmother sitting in the desk chair she'd assumed as exclusively hers.

“You wish to see me, Jessica?”

“I do. Have a seat, Darla.”

“I'm afraid I can't. I have so much to do—”

“Sit down, Darla!”

Darla sat. Jessica swiveled her chair to address her. “Just so you know, I blame you for my daughter-in-law's death. But for you, she would not have felt compelled to remove herself from your domineering, insufferable presence.”

Darla's mouth dropped open in protest. “I beg your pardon?”

“You don't have my pardon.
Ever!
I am taking back my house. Get your things out of this room this morning. Otherwise, I will have them removed and not in the orderly fashion you would prefer. And in the future, the servants will report to me. Is that clear?”

Darla rose dismissively and drew to an indignant height. “Vernon will have a say about this.”

“Vernon has no say about
anything
concerning this house. This house belongs to me, and I will make the decisions concerning it. If you don't like that arrangement, you and your family are at liberty to move.”

Aghast, Darla said, “You wouldn't dare do that to your grandson and his children.”

Jessica quite deliberately got to her feet and went to stand before Darla. She gazed into the amber eyes, feeling hers like agates in cold water. “You wouldn't dare force me to do it, but be assured that if you are of the courage to do so, Darla, I will carry out my promise. And do not for a moment think you can hold the threat of withdrawing Vernon and the grandchildren from Thomas or me over my head. Vernon would never allow it. You would see a side of your husband you do not wish to know, and he would see a side of you that you've taken great pains to conceal. Have I expressed myself clearly?”

Darla drew back from the piercing gaze, hand clutching her throat. “I believe so.”

“Very good,” Jessica said.

“Here you go, Mrs. Toliver,” a representative of the Hawks Publishing Company of Houston said to Jessica as he handed her a volume bound in wine-colored leather with a title embossed in gold leaf. “First copy of
Roses
hot off the press. Mighty handsome, if I may say so.”

“You may,” Jessica said, thumbing through the pages whose contents had been distilled from the hundreds of journals and diaries she'd edited for the book. “A very handsome volume indeed and just in time for Christmas. Will you see to the delivery of the rest of my order to my home in Howbutker?”

“With pleasure, Mrs. Toliver. This book was a commission of great pride and enjoyment for us here at Hawks. As a Texan, I'm grateful you took the time and effort and trouble to leave us such a legacy.”

“I hope the founders' families will share your appreciation,” Jessica said. “
Roses
is my Christmas present to them.”

Clutching her copy of the book, she wished the man happy holidays and walked out onto the sidewalk suddenly feeling a little crestfallen. Her project had turned out exactly as she'd hoped—better, even. The quality of the publication and the attention to detail showed that it had been in the hands of those who cared. A good firm, Hawks Publishing. But now that she'd completed her year's mission, she felt like a balloon with its air expelled. What did one do with a deflated balloon?

Jessica wished for Jeremy's company. He'd lighten her mood. He would take her to the Townsmen to celebrate, and she might even get a little tipsy on champagne, but he wouldn't mind. She would have asked him to come with her on the train to Houston, but she hadn't wanted to spoil the surprise of her present to him.

It was just as well, Jessica thought, searching the street for a hansom cab to take her to the railway station. She needed to get back to Howbutker anyway. Thomas worried so about her when she was off alone, and she wished to cause him no further distress. He had pleaded with her to wait until a time he could escort her, but that would have been too late for her purpose. It was the middle of November 1900. She would comfort herself with the thrill of accomplishment on the train journey home. It had been no small feat she'd achieved, Jacqueline would have said in praise.

Jacqueline.

Besides Jeremy and Tippy, her last best friend was gone. The pain of Jacqueline's loss pierced through her every morning upon awakening, and Jessica knew from her grief at Silas's death what Thomas must feel upon opening his eyes. Thank God for Mary. That beautiful baby had saved her son from drowning in sorrow.

Darla had arranged for his granddaughter to be made more available to him since Jessica's little talk with her in the morning room. She set aside a period in the evening called “Granddaddy Thomas time” when Mary was placed in his arms to be rocked to sleep, and Miles sat at his knee to tell him about his day. Thomas's recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” led to the whole household, including Darla, referring to the baby as Mary Lamb.

Vernon credited the loosening of the maternal reins to his wife's sensitivity to his father's loss. Jessica couldn't tell whether Darla's charity was due to her husband's appreciation for her thoughtfulness or was simply another strategy to dupe him, but her motives didn't matter. She was nicer to live with. Darla relaxed other rules regarding the children, especially Mary, who had been permitted little contact with people outside of her parents. She turned the child's daily care over to Sassie, who adored her, and did not shoo Miles' friends, Percy Warwick and Ollie DuMont, away from the crib when they came to visit. Percy especially seemed enchanted by the black-haired little sister of his friend. He brought her toys and made funny faces to make her laugh and oftentimes Miles had to call him away to join him and his friends at play. Vernon had lost his bid to have Mary call him “Daddy,” but through no design of Darla's. Mary had emulated her brother's reference to him and gurgled “pa-pa,” which Vernon interpreted as baby language for “Papa.”

The temperature had dropped into the thirties while Jessica had been conducting her business, and she pulled the collar of her coat closer. Rain was threatening. She'd gone off without her umbrella, and naturally, no cab was in sight. She walked to the intersection, where a taxi was more likely to be had, but the rain caught her en route. She was drenched by the time she waved down a cabbie and got another dousing when she was let off at the train station. The conductor, a man of long acquaintance with her family, brought her a towel and a blanket and a cup of hot cocoa to stave off the shivers, but the morning after her arrival on Houston Avenue, Jessica awoke to a chest filled with congestion.

“It's nothing,” she told a worried Thomas and Amy. “I've got lungs tough as a war horse's.”

They believed her. To their recollection, Jessica had never had a cold. The box of her self-published books arrived by train the next evening. The station master was kind enough to have his son deliver them, and during the early hours of the next morning, to the accompaniment of a deep cough, Jessica set to work.

The DuMont Department Store was to introduce in December the lovely innovation of wrapping Christmas gifts in red and green tissue paper rather than in the brown parcel packaging ordinarily used. Jessica had purchased her order for the tissue early, and paper and ribbon were on hand to wrap and label copies of
Roses
for the head of each household of the founding families of Howbutker. There was one for Thomas, Jeremy Sr., and his sons, Jeremy Jr. and Stephen; and Armand and Abel and his bachelor brother, Jean. Two copies were reserved for the city library and state archives housed in Austin, and Jessica would mail one to Tippy.

“Amy,” Jessica said, back in bed and burning with fever, “I want you to see to it that that stack of gifts over there”—she indicated the chair piled with her red-and-green handiwork—“gets under the tree when the families gather for Christmas Eve.”

“Why, Miss Jessica,” Amy said, “you goin' be doin' that yourself jus' the way you like.”

“No, Amy, I won't.” Jessica thought of Tippy, born with only one “air bag” so she called it, still going strong at eighty-three. But then, Tippy had been born in the heart of a star and lived under celestial protection all of her life.

In her last days, delirious, her lungs full of infection beyond the scope of the times to cure, Jessica's mind floated back to the past. She saw Silas again standing beneath the dark green leaves and waxy white blossoms of the magnolia tree in the courtyard of the Winthorp Hotel on the eve of saying good-bye. Joshua stood beside her wearing an oversized buckskin jacket. Those gathered round her bed wondered at her small, distant smile. Jeremy took her hand and held it to his heart. “She sees someone,” he said.

T
he suggestion that I write a prequel to
Roses
came from my husband. I had been beset by readers of my first novel asking if I planned to write a sequel to the story, but I had no inclination to continue the war of the roses. That narrative was done. However, when I heard my husband say that he'd like to know how the Warwicks, Tolivers, and DuMonts came to Texas, that idea intrigued me. How
did
those families get to Texas?

And so, to find an answer to the question, I began my research that took me along the road the family patriarchs must have traveled before Texas was even born. It has been an interesting and exciting journey. To those who went along with me, my thanks. You know who you are, but I will name some of you anyway. There is no particular order in which you offered the comfort of your support, interest, and encouragement, so I will begin with my husband, Arthur Richard Meacham III, who provided all three in abundance. Joining him were my dearest companions, Ann Ferguson Zeigler and Janice J. Thomson, without whom I'd write in a vacuum and my writing days would be lonely. Always, of course, I am thankful for my agent David McCormick, of McCormick and Williams Literary Agency, and Deb Futter, editor-in-chief of Grand Central Publishing, and her assistant, Dianne Choie, who are simply among the kindest and most helpful and knowledgeable in the business. Thanks, too, to my publisher, Jamie Raab, who I understand read the manuscript by flashlight in the midst of Hurricane Sandy and gave the go-ahead to publish. Also, I'd like to acknowledge Leslie Falk of McCormick and Williams whom I've never met but has always been a gentle and constant wind at my back. My gratitude, Leslie.

And to the fans and readers of my literary efforts everywhere, thank you one and all. I am in your debt.

Roses

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