The Gifted

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “Then what are you doubting?” Abigail asked.

  “My path. Where I belong. I am not sure I can learn the ways of the world.”

  When Jessamine kept her eyes downcast, Abigail scooted around to lean over and study Jessamine’s face. After a moment, she said, “Ahh! It’s not the sister’s letter that has you sighing so much as Tristan Cooper.”

  Jessamine admitted the truth of that with yet another sigh. “The prince who loves another.”

  “Maybe. But I’m thinking from the gossip I hear among the servants that the mother has more to do with him courting that Laura than his heart.” Abigail stood up and went back to arranging Jessamine’s hair. “You are going to look so lovely tonight in your fairy-tale dream of a dress it could be he will forget his mother and follow his heart.”

  “But even if you’re right, would that be the right thing to happen? Would I want it to happen?”

  “Those are answers you must find on your own, Jessamine.” Abigail pressed her lips into a firm line as she stared at Jessamine in the mirror a moment before going on. “But I do know this. You can’t be afraid to look for those answers.”

  “I’m not afraid. I’ve never been afraid. Well, maybe except when Granny stopped breathing.”

  “And now.” Abigail stuck another pin into the elaborate twist of hair on the back of Jessamine’s head.

  Jessamine watched Abigail’s hands in the mirror as she kept her eyes away from her own face. She didn’t want to see the stranger she’d become. Instead she fingered Sister Sophrena’s letter and knew Abigail was right. She was afraid. Afraid to leap into the world and open her heart to pain. At Harmony Hill, she’d been like a little mouse sticking its nose out into the open to watch things of the world scurry past it but without leaving the safety of its burrow. Her curiosity about love as the world knew it had been no more than the memory of her grandmother’s stories tiptoeing through her thoughts. It was fun to consider the prince her granny said would come for her, but it was never anything other than an echo of a fairy tale that she knew had little chance of ever coming true. Until she’d found the man in the woods. Until Tristan Cooper.

  The prince who loved another. It didn’t matter what Abigail said. Jessamine knew what he had told his mother. Nothing has changed.

  Dinner that evening was a rushed affair, served early so the ladies could change into their party frocks. Many of the women didn’t show up to eat at all, including Laura and Mrs. Cooper. Jessamine was relieved to see Mrs. Cleveland there so that she wasn’t alone with the men at the table. Everything in the world was so upside down to how she had lived so many years with the Shakers. Talk and no prayer at mealtime. Sitting side by side with her father with no distance between to keep them from touching. At Harmony Hill many pains were taken to keep such touching from happening. Even from one’s own natural father or brothers of the world. Such relationships were to be given up to walk the Shaker way.

  A few words of a song she had often labored in meeting ran through her mind. Love not flesh, nor fleshly kin. The fleshly kin would be her father. The flesh would be Tristan Cooper. Her heart did a fast, skipping beat whenever she looked across the table at him. She tried to keep her gaze on her food or Mrs. Cleveland, but her eyes were drawn to him like a moth to the candle flame. And each time his eyes seemed to be waiting to capture hers. Something she feared Mrs. Cleveland and her father noticed. The lawyer and Mr. Cleveland noticed nothing except their fury of words.

  She was relieved when the food had been eaten and she could excuse herself to return to her room. If not for the beautiful dress awaiting her there, she would have begged her father to allow her to stay in her room by the window to fill more pages with words. But he had gone to great trouble and expense to see that she had the proper attire for the dance. She could hardly refuse to wear it even if the princess dresses became less appealing each time Abigail buttoned her into one of them. They poked and squeezed and revealed entirely too much of her female shape.

  Mrs. Cleveland excused herself as well and walked with Jessamine back toward the stairs that led to their rooms. “Last year when we were here, this midsummer dance was quite the event.” She smiled over at Jessamine. “Laura has been trying on this or that dress all afternoon. She does want to look her best.”

  Jessamine managed a smile back. “I’m sure she will look like a princess.”

  “A princess.” Mrs. Cleveland blew out a little puff of breath as if the word was disturbing. “Yes, well, I’ve always thought being a princess overrated.”

  “The prince always comes and they live happily ever after.”

  Mrs. Cleveland laughed. “So the stories go, but happily ever after is not so easily achieved on the other side of the kiss as the storytellers would have you believe. Have you always wanted to be a princess, my dear?”

  “Nay.” Jessamine shook her head a bit. “I mean no. But my grandmother used to tell me fairy tales before I went to live with the Shakers.”

  “And there you became a sister instead of a princess.” They walked in silence for a moment before she went on. “They tell me in the Shaker villages a woman’s abilities are respected and the sisters share posts of leadership with the brethren. Is that true?”

  “Yea.” This time Jessamine didn’t bother to correct the Shaker word with the worldly word. “Mother Ann taught that all are equal in the eyes of Creator God. He does not distinguish blessings by sex or race.”

  “If only all would be so forward thinking. Not that I could accept all the teachings. The separation of families appears to go against the words I read in the Bible.”

  “There is Scripture that suggests the purity of life without the sin of marriage.” Jessamine thought of the verses Sister Sophrena had written to her. “It is the hope of the Believers that they can live a perfect life in their villages apart from the world as the angels do in heaven.”

  “And what is your hope, my dear?” She put her hand on Jessamine’s arm and stopped her beside a window in the lobby. “Do you want to be a princess seeking her prince or do you want to be a sister seeking a life of purity?”

  When Jessamine just looked at her without an answer, Mrs. Cleveland smiled sadly and said, “Some questions require much thought to answer, and even then it is hard to know if the answer we find is the proper one.”

  “I lived long among the Believers and I must admit the world is very mystifying to me.”

  Again Mrs. Cleveland laughed. A short, intense sound before she said, “It mystifies me at times too, my girl.”

  As they turned toward the stairs, a rumble of thunder tickled the windowpanes behind them. “Oh, I do hope the storms hold off until after the gala. Rain would spoil the garden proposals. I hear there are to be several this evening.”

  “I have heard the same.” Jessamine watched the tips of her shoes peek out from under her full skirt as she walked.

  “And are you hoping for a proposal so soon into the world where such could be a possibility for you?” Mrs. Cleveland asked.

  “Oh nay.” Again she let the Shaker word stand. It didn’t seem to matter to Mrs. Cleveland how she talked. “I have never even wondered of such a thing.”

  “But you have wondered of princes and love.”

  “Wondering does not seem to me to be a sin.” Jessamine almost whispered the words.

  “No indeed. Nor is love, but it can be troubling at times. Very troubling.”

  “Why is that?” Jessamine asked as they climbed the steps to the second floor of the hotel. She knew it was true, but she wanted to know why.

  “People,” Mrs. Cleveland said as though the answer was plain. “It’s as simple as that. People.”

  “Simple,” Jessamine echoed. “We sing a song at Harmony Hill that it’s a gift to be simple. A gift to be free.”

  “And so it surely is,” Mrs. Cleveland agreed. “But it is not a gift we often embrace. We twist and turn and complicate everything and especially love. I tell my Laura it would seem so much better
to simply follow one’s heart, but she does not.” The woman sighed as she stopped at the door to her room. “Some things aren’t as simple or as free as they seem, but it is this mother’s wish for the simple gift of happiness to overtake my daughter and I wish the same for you, my dear.”

  Her words along with the echo of the Shaker song followed Jessamine to her room where Abigail was waiting to disguise Jessamine as a princess. And outside the window the thunder continued to rumble with no concern of spoiling the night.

  29

  Tristan readied himself for the dance without the assistance of a servant in spite of his mother’s worries that not having a manservant would make him appear to be impoverished. He told her they were impoverished. Besides, he had managed to tend to his own needs in the dust and death of the Mexican battlefields. There the only things he’d worried about being clean were his gun and his feet. Both needed to be dry and in working order.

  As he combed back his hair and tied his cravat, he thought again of his father’s gun with regret. Dr. Hargrove had supplied him with a firearm Saturday at the shooting range. He had capably aimed and fired at the targets with his left hand. Calvin Green had not taken defeat gracefully, blaming the target, the sun in his eyes, the noise of the onlookers who broke his concentration. Tristan hadn’t bothered to listen to the man after a while. He was no more than the irritating whine of a mosquito in his ear. Nothing of real concern.

  No, the real concern was going down on his knee to speak his proposal to Laura that night as he had promised. Calvin Green’s veiled threats wouldn’t stop that from happening. Tristan wasn’t through with the man. If Green knew anything about Tristan getting shot in the woods, he’d find out. Not that the man knowing Tristan was rescued by the Shaker sisters meant anything. Anybody at the Springs could know Jessamine and her friend had come to Tristan’s aid. He’d told the story here. Stories got repeated. Often.

  Green, by his own admission, was the kind of man ready to use whatever might fall in his lap to get what he wanted. He wanted Laura. He’d probably already told Laura about Tristan walking with Jessamine in the garden. More than walking with her. Kissing her.

  The memory of the kiss stabbed through Tristan as thoughts of Jessamine filled his mind and pushed aside Green and his spying eyes. He wanted to take her arm and walk with her through the garden again. He wanted to go down on his knee in front of her instead of Laura. That’s where the dream stopped and reality stepped in. A man kept his promises. He didn’t throw over his duty for a girl he’d known a bare two weeks. No matter how much he wanted to.

  It wouldn’t matter to Laura what Green whispered in her ear. She wouldn’t care who Tristan kissed. She was doing her duty every bit as reluctantly as he was. While love between them didn’t seem likely, they would make a life. Jessamine would make a life too. Her father would show her the world. There would be another man in another garden. Another man to go down on his knee and beg her to be his.

  Tristan stared at the mirror. He wanted to slam his hand into the glass and shatter the image of his face. He couldn’t stand the sight of himself. He shut his eyes and with deliberate moves lay the comb down on the chest and moved away from the mirror. He had been a soldier. He knew discipline. He knew how to deny himself and do the things he must.

  He stepped to the open window and peered out at the sky. The storm clouds were definitely sweeping closer. Already the wind was ruffling the leaves of the trees, promising rain. Promising to spoil his garden proposal. His heart lifted at the thought. That would give him yet another night, another day to be free to look at Jessamine with hope.

  At the dinner table, she had been so lovely he was unable to keep his eyes off her even with Laura’s mother watching him much too closely. None of the three of them had paid the first bit of attention to the ongoing argument between Ridenour and Cleveland. Jessamine’s father had also seemed preoccupied. So much so, he had actually apologized and blamed the story he was writing for failing to be a properly attentive dinner companion. That could perhaps be true, but Tristan had doubts a made-up story could make a man look to be wrestling with demons the same as Tristan was.

  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 sleepi
ng 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.