Lydia got to her feet quickly. “We’d better go too, Nathan, and see if Matthew has finally gotten the children to sleep.”
Jessica was still standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen. She straightened. “Before you go there’s something I need to say.”
They all turned in surprise. There was a fleeting smile, then she gave a deprecating little laugh, looking at Melissa and Lydia. “Maybe you ought to sit down again.”
As Lydia and Melissa sat back down, Lydia shot Nathan a questioning look. He shrugged. This had caught him by surprise as much as anyone. Nathan’s mind flashed back to the first day he had seen Jessica. It had been in a little sod hut in Kaw Township, in Jackson County, Missouri. He had been shocked by her appearance: a left eye badly discolored, lower lip cracked and puffy, the whole side of her jaw swollen and dark—all the marks of Joshua’s fury at her refusal to aid his scheme to cheat in a game of poker. But Nathan had been almost as surprised at her plainness. He hadn’t consciously thought about it much; he just assumed Joshua would have chosen a handsome woman. And Jessica Roundy was not a handsome woman. She was
plain
—that had been the first word that came to Nathan’s mind that day. Her hair was straight and cut square across the back at the neck. The slimness of her body was hidden beneath the folds of a heavy, homespun dress. Her eyes were unusually large and perhaps her best feature, but they had been so filled with sadness, they were almost haunting.
Now, as he watched her move across the room to stand where she could better see them all, Nathan marveled a little that he had once thought she was plain.
Handsome
was probably still not the best word for her, but somehow over the past five years she had become a lovely woman. She had an inner serenity that seemed to soften her features and fill her with grace. And she had grown very close to her adopted family.
But there was little serenity in her deportment now. Her hands were nearly fluttering as she faced them. She took a deep breath. Her shoulders lifted, then fell again as she expelled the air slowly. “I . . .” She shook her head, blinking rapidly.
Nathan stared. She was on the verge of tears! He had to fight not to outright gape at her. Nathan had seen her cry only once, when he had blessed her and promised her she would have children. Jessica just never showed emotion. Not even in the toughest of circumstances.
Mary Ann leaned forward. “What is it, Jessie?” she asked gently.
She took another deep breath, then her head came up. “I don’t want you to take this wrong. You have been wonderful to me and Rachel.”
Benjamin’s head came up slowly. Nathan heard Lydia’s intake of breath next to him. Melissa and Rebecca were both staring. “
Have been
?” Benjamin echoed.
Now it came out in a rush, her words tumbling over each other, those large dark eyes pleading for their understanding. “Ever since the temple dedication last week I’ve not been able to get it out of my mind. It just keeps coming back and coming back. I can hardly sleep at night for thinkin’ about it.”
“Thinkin’ about what?” Lydia asked.
Jessica seemed not to hear. “I’ve tried to tell myself it’s crazy. But it won’t leave me be. Not until I made up my mind last night. Now I know it’s right. I don’t necessarily like it, but I
know
it’s right.”
“Know
what
is right?” Benjamin exploded. “What are you talkin’ about, Jessie?”
Her chin came up. Her eyes were shining now, and she bit softly on her lower lip. “I’m talkin’ about my decision to go back to Missouri.”
Chapter Three
That there’s the Tybee Island lighthouse. Way off there.”
Joshua Steed turned, looking in the direction the young man indicated. For a moment there was nothing in the thick darkness, then two or three miles to the right of the ship—the starboard side, Joshua reminded himself—he saw a thin beam of light swing slowly toward them. It flashed directly at them for a moment, then disappeared again.
“That means we’re almost to the mouth of the river.”
Joshua stifled an involuntary yawn. “So how much longer?”
The lad was not yet sixteen, maybe a year or two less. He spoke with a heavy British accent, as did most of the crew. “Savannah’s another fifteen, maybe twenty miles upriver.” He squinted at the eastern sky, where the first streaks of dawn were just starting to lighten the sky. It was going to be a beautiful April day along the Atlantic seaboard. “Three hours, maybe four. Be there by ten o’clock sure, mate.”
“Good.” Joshua stretched, working out the kinks in his body. In addition to getting back on solid ground again, he looked forward to sleeping in a man-size bed. Even the first-class cabins on the big packet ship were a full two handspans shorter than Joshua’s six-foot height. He had not had a decent night’s sleep since he had boarded four days earlier.
It had surprised Joshua a little when they sailed from New Orleans with him as the only passenger, but this was a British packet ship. Up until 1818, ships waited in port for a full load of cargo and passengers and generally refused to sail until good weather prevailed. Then one of the British lines had come up with the idea of the packet ships. Running on regular schedules, the packets sailed empty or full, good weather and bad. The service had become so popular that there were now several shipping lines regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic and hopping between the islands of the Caribbean.
Joshua moved away, threading his way between the barrels and crates lashed down to the deck. He went all the way back to the stern before he stopped. He had come here often during the voyage. It was his favorite spot. He liked to hear the soft hiss of the water slipping past the wooden hull and to watch the soft phosphorescence of the ship’s wake in the darkness.
He reached in his coat pocket and took out a cigar. Without thinking, he got his knife out, cut off the end, and stuck the cigar in his mouth. There was nothing out here with which to light it, but he didn’t really care. His mind was already focusing on the day ahead. He was a little surprised at the eagerness in him. He didn’t know one thing about cotton, and yet before the week was out, if all went right, he would be purchasing a shipload of it, maybe more. He took the cigar from his mouth and laughed inwardly. If things turned out as planned, he could very likely end up a really wealthy man, and not just by Jackson County standards either. For a man who would turn twenty-nine in another week, that wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.
He found the prospect exhilarating. He liked nice things. He liked the look in men’s eyes when he passed by. He liked the power that accompanied wealth. Most of all, he liked knowing life had not beaten him. Considering that he had lost more than ninety percent of his freight business in a poker game nearly five years earlier, the fact that he was about to start negotiations for an entire shipload of Georgia cotton proved it without a doubt: Life had not beaten him. Jessica had not beaten him.
He jammed the cigar back in his mouth and chomped down hard on it.
Fool woman!
It still sent his blood boiling when he thought about how close he had come to taking the slick gambler from Pittsburgh for the whole pile of money on the table. Instead, his wife had brought him within a muskrat’s whisker of losing everything he owned, everything he had worked for. All he had asked of her was to stand behind the bedroom door and signal him as to who had the better hand, Joshua or the Pittsburgh man. But she had walked away. If she had even let him know she was leaving . . . But she hadn’t. And he had lost.
But he had brought his business back, inch by sweat-fought inch. Half of America was on the move. Independence was the trailhead for both the Oregon and the Santa Fe trails. The population along America’s western frontier was burgeoning and needed increasing numbers of goods from the East. More and more the East was becoming a lucrative market for the wheat, corn, and furs of the West. And Joshua’s natural aggressiveness and growing shrewdness gave him a larger and larger share of the wheels that kept the merchandise moving in both directions.
And for a time the freight business had kept him satisfied. He paid off his gambling debts, bought new stock and equipment—more than thirty wagons now had his name stenciled on their sides. But then the restlessness had started. Things took on a stultifying sameness—bale the furs, crate the goods, load the wagons, crack the whip over the teams, tote up the returns in the big ledger books. He began to crave something more, like a man satiated with food but still hungering for some elusive dish.
Frowning, he took the cigar out of his mouth and fished for a fleck of tobacco that had stuck on the tip of his tongue. He knew it wasn’t just business that brought him here. This last-minute decision to come to Savannah was just one more manifestation of the growing sense of discontent he had been feeling for the past couple of years.
Eighteen months ago he had opened a second stable and warehouse center in St. Louis. It prospered quickly, and soon he tired of it too. He had more and more money and less and less satisfaction. When four St. Louis businessmen approached him, he was ripe for listening. They were thinking of bringing a textile mill to St. Louis. The expanding West was paying a premium price for cloth goods exported from the East. It was time to break the tight monopoly on textiles held by the New En-gland mills. They were looking for a partner. One with capital. One who could freight in the heavy machinery from Pittsburgh. Someone who could keep a supply of cotton coming up the Mississippi so that the machines wouldn’t stay idle. Someone who could then get the finished cloth to widely scattered markets.
Joshua had agreed almost instantly.
He could have bought the cotton in New Orleans. That had been the original plan. But there had been a friendly poker game during the riverboat trip to that city. One of the cotton brokers let it slip that he got the best of his cotton from Savannah. At the mention of Savannah, another man burst into rapturous praise of the city’s beauty and charm. He told of huge plantations with cotton fields stretching farther than a man could walk in half a day. That night Joshua sent off a quick letter to his partners. Two days later he was on a ship headed for Great Britain, with intermediate stops at Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and New York City.
Joshua looked around. Sunrise was still a half hour away, but on either side of the ship, flat marshlands and tidal waterways were discernible now—Georgia on the left, South Carolina on the right. He straightened. It was time to get some breakfast and pack. Long before the sun reached its zenith, he would be in Savannah.
* * *
The ceiling was just a little lower than six feet high, and Joshua had to keep his head bent as he moved about. That was another thing he looked forward to with relish—more room. For a man used to crossing half a continent in an open wagon, even the best and biggest of the first-class cabins on the ship was cramped and terribly confining.
He finished cleaning up the breakfast he had cooked for himself over the small brass pot filled with hot coals, then he set about to do his packing. It felt funny, not having the constant rolling and pitching of the ship beneath his feet. Surprisingly, he had gotten his sea legs quickly and experienced no more than some temporary seasickness when they ran through a squall off the Florida Keys. Now it seemed strange to have the ship steady and level in the river’s current.
He took down his clothes and folded them neatly on his bunk. Next came his toilet articles. He moved about the cabin, his eyes moving back and forth to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Finally satisfied he had everything, he dropped to one knee by the side of his bunk. Below it was a purchase he had made in New Orleans, a large leather valise with three sturdy buckles.
He placed it on the fold-down table used for meals and started to undo the buckles. Slowly he lifted the top of the valise. For a long moment he just looked at the plain brown package in the case. He was filled with a curious mixture of emotions now. Part of him felt faintly disgusted. Joshua Steed was not a man given to impulse, and yet he had bought this on impulse. Another part of him was puzzled. Sentiment was not part of his disposition either, and yet even the sight of the package filled him with a strange sense of sadness, of longing for what now would not and could not ever be.
He reached down and lifted the package. Slowly he untied the string. He let it fall back into the valise, followed by the outer paper, then the rolls of soft cotton fabric that the saleswoman had used to pack it. When he was finished he set it down carefully on the table and stepped back.
The doll was made of the finest German porcelain. It was a young girl, about seventeen or eighteen. In one hand was a bouquet of flowers. She was studying them intently, her eyes showing pleasure, her mouth half smiling. Her other hand held a parasol, which lay on her shoulder. Counting the parasol, she stood nearly twelve inches high. Her face was exquisite. Dark black curls fell in abundance from beneath a pale blue bonnet. The hands were finely crafted with long, slender fingers. The dress was also pale blue and full length. It was crisscrossed with real satin ribbons. The flowers in the bouquet were tiny, some of the blossoms no larger than the tip of a horseshoe nail, and yet every petal was formed to perfection.
When he had seen it in the store window, he had stood there for nearly five minutes, transfixed. Twice the saleswoman came to the window and smiled her encouragement to him. Finally he went in. He had gasped at the price. Fifty-five dollars! For a doll! That was six months’ wages for a working man. Then, going against every rational part of him, he bought it.
He crossed the room and pulled out a chair. He sat down, his eyes still on the doll but his thoughts turning back. At the store he had told himself he would give it to the daughter he had not seen since about five months after her birth. She would be four years old now. And he was surprised how often he thought of her lately. What did she look like? Did she have any of his features? On two different occasions Joshua had ferried across the river, waited until nightfall, then made his way to the settlement of the Mormons in the Missouri River bottoms. From the trees he had watched, hoping to catch even a glimpse of Rachel. Both times he had failed. Twice he had sent money over anonymously so that his daughter would not starve.