The Gifted (46 page)

Demons. The word jarred in Tristan’s thoughts. If he was wrestling with demons, they were of his own invention. He stared out at the horizon where streaks of lightning reached down for the ground. Still so distant that the thunder following the flashes was a mere rumble. But the sound made him think of the battlefield again. The guns on the shooting range had done the same. Was that a sound he would never get out of his head? A sound of death in the offing.

He had heard it on the battlefield while fear rose inside him as he waited for the order to charge forward. But the fear wasn’t as bad as the overpowering regret that settled deep within him at the thought of not seeing another dawn. He wanted more days, more time. Time to love and be loved. To hold his firstborn child. He wanted to ride a horse across a field he owned and to feel a dog’s wet tongue on his face again. He wanted to bite into an apple and hear the pop while apple juice sprayed his face.

Sometimes to take his mind off the very real possibility of dying, he drew pictures with a stick in the sandy dirt. Pictures that only lasted a few moments before a foot tromped through them or the wind shifted the dust. And he wondered if that was his life. Just a few moments of duty and discipline and then death.

But he had lived through the war. He had come home to do some of those things he’d imagined doing to keep from losing his sanity while fighting in Mexico. But he had not loved and been loved. At least not until now, and now he was refusing that chance. Embracing instead the duty and discipline.

Was this God’s punishment on him for turning his back on belief? To put the opportunity for the love Tristan had always dreamed of right in front of him but to make it impossible for him to reach for the opportunity.
For with God all things are possible.
The Bible words slid through his mind. He’d heard them often from the men in the army who were more preachers than soldiers. Words meant to encourage the men when facing a charge into the face of cannons. Or when burning with fever with no hope for the morrow.

Hope, it was such a tenuous thing when mixed with the need for love. His mother said he didn’t need love. Laura said they could marry without love. Robert Cleveland would laugh at his yearning for love. But what would Jessamine say?

A gust of air pushed through the window, carrying the hint of rain. Its cool touch on his cheek was like a caress. Perhaps from God. To his surprise, prayer words bubbled up inside him. He tried to shove them aside. God wouldn’t help him. Why would he? Tristan had never done anything to deserve the Lord’s favor. And yet standing there with the breeze wrapping around him, Tristan felt favored. A bit of another Scripture came to his mind. Something about God being a help in trouble.

Tristan couldn’t deny he’d been helped in trouble. He’d come through the war, still breathing. Jessamine had found him in the woods. That had to be the Lord’s providence. A gift. Jessamine was a gift. Even if Tristan was never able to declare his love for her, she was a gift who would live in his heart. He’d never forget their kiss. But was that enough? Couldn’t he beg for the blessing of more? The need to pray rose inside him again, even though no proper words surfaced with it. Nothing but the thought of Jessamine.

But this time he didn’t try to push it away. He just stared out at the storm moving closer and whispered, “Please, God!”

Then embarrassed by his weakness, he slammed the window down and turned toward the door to go face his future.

The rain did come dashing down before the band struck up the first song. Laura wasn’t bothered by it. She claimed his arm as soon as he entered the ballroom and turned an amused smile on him when he worried the rain might make a problem with the promised proposal.

“Honestly, Tristan, I don’t see the need of us going through that charade. We made our deal. We can let the world imagine the romantic words.” Her smile disappeared and she looked suddenly weary as though she hadn’t been sleeping well. “I think there’s little need of that between us. We both know the reason for our union.”

“But it seems so . . .” Tristan couldn’t come up with the proper word.

“Businesslike. My father says marriage should be a business decision.”

“And what does your mother say?” Tristan looked from Laura to her mother watching them from the other side of the room. She was not smiling.

“My mother does not always think with her head.” Laura too looked toward her mother before she whispered a small sigh. “But never fear, Tristan. She likes you and she is quite happy to welcome you into our family. She says she can see your generous heart, and I think she rather looks forward to trying to be a northern influence on some of your southern thinking.”

“My thoughts are as malleable as a ball of wet clay,” Tristan said with a smile. “But she might have more of a challenge with Mother.”

Laura narrowed her eyes on his face then. “It’s only the outer edges of your thoughts that you reveal to anyone, Tristan. Your heart you keep secret.”

A stir at the other end of the room kept him from having to come up with an answer as Jessamine was escorted into the room by her father. And while his heart might be a secret from Laura, it spilled every bit of its feelings out inside him. The sight of Jessamine grabbed his breath as though someone had slammed a fist into his midsection.

“There’s your beautiful little Shaker friend,” Laura said.

Tristan was glad Laura was watching Jessamine and her father so intently. Glad he had time to compose his face and shove his heart back down in his chest. Jessamine seemed to almost float across the floor to the chair she’d claimed as her spot at the last dance. She was a vision in a silky blue dress the color of her eyes. He wasn’t near enough to see the blue of those eyes, but his memory had no problem bringing them up before him.

Even though she didn’t look his way, he had the feeling she was aware of him standing there with Laura. Her father did look toward them and let his gaze linger a moment on them as a frown etched a deep line between his eyes. Jessamine was smiling, an uncertain smile as she carefully arranged her skirts. It was as though the storms brewing outside were coming into the ballroom to mash down on them all. Then the band struck up a new song.

Across the room, Ridenour took his mother’s hand and led her out on the dance floor. She looked completely smitten. In fact, Tristan didn’t remember her even glancing his way as if her infatuation with the lawyer had made her forget the object of their visit to the Springs. Or maybe she had been so reassured last week by his promise that nothing had changed that she no longer thought she needed to police his every moment.

He was turning to see if Laura wanted to try a dance, awkward though it was with his arm still in the sling, but Sheldon Brady had come up to them while Tristan’s attention was on his mother to ask Laura for the dance.

“You don’t mind, do you, Tristan?” Laura said with a quick glance toward him before she took Brady’s hand. “We’ll have so many years to dance. When your arm has healed.”

He pushed a bland smile across his face as he watched them glide away to the music and wondered if he and Laura would ever be in perfect step like that. He watched all the couples spinning around the floor in front of him, his eyes going from one smiling face to another and knew there was only one face he wished to see smiling at him.

He looked toward the chair by the veranda doors but it was empty now. Jessamine must have stepped out into the garden in spite of the approaching storm. He imagined her standing there, the wind pushing against her skirt and undoing all the elaborate curls her maid had surely spent hours arranging. Turning away from the pretense of the ballroom and embracing the freedom of wind sweeping through the garden.

Without conscious thought, he took a step toward the doors, but a servant stepped up to hand him a folded bit of paper. He turned his back on the dancers and unfolded the note.

Meet me at the far end of the lake.

There was nothing to indicate who might have written the note. While the words were printed with no flair, the letters were so small and neat they had surely been written by a female hand. Who else could it be but Jessamine? She wouldn’t put curls and frills on her letters. The Shakers would have taught her economy in writing as well as everything else she did. But why would she summon him with a note instead of moving across the room to speak to him face-to-face? What message did she have for him that she feared others overhearing?

He looked at her empty chair. A sudden flash of lightning lit up the garden followed a few seconds later by a booming crash of thunder. A few ladies let out startled shrieks, but the music continued.

She surely hadn’t gone out into the threatening storm to wait for him, but she wasn’t in her seat. She wasn’t standing outside the doors in the garden. He would have spotted her there when the lightning flashed. He had to go after her. He had to be sure she was safe. It wouldn’t change anything, but he owed her that much.

Across the room, Dr. Hargrove was signaling his musicians to keep playing as other servants scurried around pushing down windows. The party must go on. Tristan spotted his mother. From the look on her face, she had all but forgotten she was a mother. And Laura and Sheldon Brady were still gliding effortlessly to the music. No one would miss him.

30

“Jessamine. Jessamine!”

Jessamine looked around, but no one seemed to be paying the first bit of attention to her. No one calling her name. The silk and satin skirts of the dancers must have fooled her ears with their whispers as they whirled past her. Her father had escorted her to the same seat near the veranda doors. Then with an odd look, almost of guilt to be leaving her alone, he was off to dance with the princess. He had promised Laura a dance that morning at breakfast, and he claimed to be anxious to get the fulfillment of his promise out of the way in order to free the rest of the evening for Jessamine. To teach her some of the dance steps.

“You danced the Shaker dances. These steps will be simple compared to those,” he said.

Then he left her attempting to contain the bothersome billowing skirts and petticoats as she sat down. Across the room, her father took Laura from Tristan’s side.

Jessamine had spotted Tristan the very instant she came into the room. Just as she could not keep her thoughts from circling to him, so it was the same with her eyes. She was ever aware of his presence. Even after she shifted her gaze to the others in the room, she was still seeing only Tristan Cooper. Now he stood stiffly watching her father and the princess gliding away from him as though they were on ice. She tried to read his thoughts. Was he angry at her father for stealing away the princess? Or simply envious his broken arm kept him from being the one to whirl his love around the floor?

Jessamine had no envy of the dancers or resentment for her father abandoning her so soon. She was rather relieved to be quietly sitting. She had not the least desire to step into the rush of dancers, who as far as she could tell moved with little discipline. While she had always enjoyed laboring the dances at Harmony Hill, there she knew the other dancers would march in order. At least until some Believers began receiving whirling or shaking gifts.

She had never received a whirling gift. Not during meeting, anyway. She had known plenty of times when she did a few twirls simply for the pure joy of movement. The joy of life in the sun. Or in the garden.

As her eyes slid back over toward Tristan, she remembered how he had looked watching the Shaker dances last Sunday. Now their situations were reversed. She was the one watching the world’s dance. Not a dance with any thought of worship, to be sure. Here at this place everything was pointed toward romance. Jessamine knew as little about the ways of romance as Tristan had about the ways of the Believers.

She’d seen him watching her that day at meeting. Before he’d been caught in his lie by the visitor from the world. If he could lie so easily about who he was, then there could be much else about which he might not tell the truth. Like a kiss in the garden. That had not felt like a lie, but it surely was. When a man was in love and ready to marry, he should not slip off in a garden with another and encourage a wayward kiss. Even in the world that could not be right. For a certainty, it was not right for a Believer. The kiss she’d given to Tristan, whatever the reason, whatever the motive, was a sin of the first order. If she went back to Harmony Hill, she would have to confess as much.

The thought of confession brought Sister Sophrena to mind. What would the good sister think of her sitting there in a gown of silk with her neck bare and her bosom squeezed and pushed up by the tight bodice of the dress? And with curls lapping down beside her ears and tickling her neck. What would she think of Jessamine’s heart leaping at the sight of Tristan Cooper? Jessamine had told Sister Sophrena in her letter that the man was no temptation to her. She had not told the truth. It mattered not that he loved another. That didn’t change who she loved.

“Jessamine!”

The dancers were still swirling by her, but the skirts weren’t what was whispering her name. A pebble slid across the floor from the veranda door and landed against her skirt. Pitched to get her attention. Jessamine looked around to see if anyone else noticed, but all eyes were on the dancers. No one was paying the first bit of mind to her even after she stood up and moved toward the doors. The music continued on.