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Tomorrow's Dreams

Page 21

by Heather Cullman


  “Two presents in one day!” cried Minerva in mock amazement. “Aren’t we a spoiled boy!”

  If Penelope had had her way, he’d have had a hundred gifts instead of just two. But, of course, the rabbit and the rattle were the best she could afford with her limited funds.

  Firmly pushing aside her monetary woes, she drew the rattle from the bundle and presented it with a clattering flourish. Both Tommy and Minerva gasped aloud.

  Kneeling next to the chair to put herself at eye level with the baby, Minerva crooned, “Isn’t that just the fanciest rattle you’ve ever seen? I swear it’s fine enough for a prince.”

  Tommy stared wide-eyed at the shiny toy, as if mesmerized.

  Lifting the silver jester to her lips, Penelope lightly blew into his whistle-hat, tooting out a series of shrill notes.

  The baby’s mouth opened and closed several times in rapid succession before he let out a hiccuping squeak.

  “And see here, Tomkins!” Minerva ran her index finger across the gold bells, which twinkled softly beneath her touch. “A rattle, a whistle, and bells. Why, you can be a one-man band!”

  Smiling as the older woman chattered on about a one-man band she’d once seen in Boston, Penelope drew a length of royal blue ribbon from the now almost flat bundle and began to tie the toy to Tommy’s wrist. When the handle was secured, she gently wiggled his arm to demonstrate the sound-producing motion. After several such demonstrations, he gave a tentative jerk on his own. Laughing with pleasure at the discordant results, he repeated the action. And then again. Within the space of a minute, he was shaking the rattle in earnest.

  “There goes the peace and quiet,” Minerva said, chuckling.

  Penelope shot the woman an apologetic look. “How terribly thoughtless of me. I didn’t stop to consider the noise when I got the idea to tie the rattle to his arm.” Glancing wistfully down at her son’s rapturous face, she admitted, “All I wanted was for Tommy to be able to enjoy his new toy.”

  “Which he’s doing,” Minerva observed as she rose to her feet. Giving the younger woman’s shoulder a warm squeeze, she reassured her, “Now, don’t you go bothering yourself any about the racket. It does my heart good to hear it. You know how it worries me the way our Tomkins is so quiet all the time.”

  It worried Penelope, too. Chronically ill since birth, her son had spent most of his short life lying listlessly on his blanket, his frail body often wracked by terrifying seizures. While most two-year-olds ran rather than walked and echoed every word they heard like precocious parrots, Tommy never so much as lifted his head or uttered a sound other than the most rudimentary expressions of pleasure or distress.

  Sighing at her troubling thoughts, Penelope lifted a corner of her son’s blue woolen shawl, and wiped a trail of drool from his chin. Then she glanced back up at Minerva, who was dropping the chopped vegetables into a pot cooking over the hearth fire.

  “Where’s Sam?” she asked.

  “Last time I looked out the window, I saw him and Miles headed up into the woods. Sam had his gun, so I’d guess they’ve gone hunting.”

  “Sam’s become quite a hunter in the last year and a half,” Penelope commented, remembering Minerva’s hilarious accounts of the man’s first few rather comical attempts at procuring game.

  “Yes, he has,” Minerva agreed, her voice touched with pride. “In fact, he killed a deer yesterday morning, so we’ve got fresh venison for supper.” She stabbed at the contents of the pot with the blunt end of a wooden spoon. “Unfortunately, fresh is the best I can say for this meat. It’s as tough as cheap shoe leather. Between you and me, I suspect that the animal was ready to keel over of old age when it was shot.” Grimacing, she placed a lid on the pot and turned from the fire. “Oh, well. I guess the Lord wanted us to be thankful for our teeth this Sabbath.”

  “Speaking of food …” Minerva’s discourse reminded Penelope of her final surprise for Tommy. “I brought the baby some baked custard as a special birthday treat. It’s soft, so he shouldn’t have trouble swallowing it.” She crossed her fingers. Like everything else in his difficult life, eating was a trial for her son, and he more often choked on his food than swallowed it.

  The older woman nodded her approval at the muslin-wrapped parcel Penelope had pulled from the now flat bundle. “You’ll be happy to hear that he’s been doing much better with his eating of late. Why, he only choked on his pap twice this morning.”

  “You’ve done a wonderful job with him,” Penelope commended sincerely. “Perhaps when this is all over, I can find some way to repay you for your kindness.”

  Minerva shook her head as she crossed the room and sat in the chair at Penelope’s left. “Like you, I’m just doing what I must to protect my own son from Adele. Besides, Tommy is a joy.”

  “He is sweet, isn’t he?” Penelope acknowledged, smiling down at her baby with maternal pride. “And what about your son? Have you heard anything from him?”

  “One of his letters caught up with us a couple of weeks ago. He’s doing well in the town council and says that his fellow council members are prompting him to run for mayor.” She rubbed her temples wearily. “He also wants to know when Sam and I are going to stop traipsing around the West and come home to Boston to see our new granddaughter.”

  “A granddaughter,” Penelope echoed softly. “How lovely. Congratulations.”

  Minerva heaved a frustrated sigh. “I hate not having been there when she was born. She’s my first grandchild, you know. What I wouldn’t give to hold her.”

  “You might get your chance soon,” Penelope said, crossing her fingers that her plan to regain Tommy would succeed.

  The other woman snorted. “If you believe that, then you’ve got a lot to learn about Adele du Charme. The woman is a vampire. She doesn’t release anyone—man, woman, or child—until she’s sucked every last bit of usefulness out of them.”

  “Well, in that case, I guess we’re about sucked dry,” Penelope declared. “According to Miles, Adele plans to quit the West within the next few months and settle in Boston. Apparently she’s scheming to catch a rich husband … you know, one of those Beacon Hill types whose wives become instant social aristocracy the second they say ‘I do.’ With those ambitions, I doubt she’ll want to be associated with a third-rate theatrical company.”

  “Perhaps she’ll no longer need the company, but I can’t see her dismissing me and Sam. Not while our son is a member of the town council and a possible mayoral candidate.” Minerva shook her head, her expression troubled. “If she starts demanding favors from the council, well, then I’ll have no choice but to tell Alex the truth.”

  The truth was that the Skolfields’ son, Alexander, was not only a bastard, but one-eighth black as well. And Adele had the papers to prove it. By way of explanation for her and Sam’s participation in Tommy’s kidnapping, Minerva had told Penelope the whole story.

  Like her mother before her, Minerva, the quadroon offspring of a wealthy Creole planter and his mulatto mistress, had been groomed from birth to be placée with the right rich man. With that goal in mind, she’d been presented at the Quadroon Balls held at the infamous Salle d’Orléans in New Orleans.

  It was there that she met handsome Samuel Skolfield. By his father’s decree, he had recently wed the ill-tempered daughter of one of New Orleans’s finest families. As a way of reparation for forcing his son into an unhappy marriage, the elder Mr. Skolfield had offered to set him up with the mistress of his choice.

  And Sam had selected Minerva. As protector and placée, they had expected to be fond of each other, but neither anticipated falling in love. But fall in love they did, passionately so, and the result of that love was their son, Alexander.

  All too aware of the stigma of being colored, and unable to bear the idea of his blue-eyed son being denied opportunity and social position because of the hue of his great-grandmother’s skin, Sam persuaded Minerva to flee north with him. Abandoning everything, including Sam’s shrewish wife and the sizab
le yearly stipend he received from his father, they migrated to Boston, where they passed themselves off as man and wife.

  As the years went by, they prospered, with Sam fighting his way up from the lowly position of clerk to that of full partner at the respected accounting firm of Grossman and Shepard. The only shadow over their otherwise bright life was Sam’s estranged wife’s refusal to grant him a divorce.

  As disturbing as living in adultery was to Sam and Minerva, their real problems didn’t start until fifteen years after leaving New Orleans. That trouble came in the form of a maid named Dorcas Grace Butler.

  At first she was everything they could wish in an employee: reliable, even-tempered, and hardworking. But all that changed with the flick of a feather duster. While cleaning the study one day, or so she claimed, she came across and stole the correspondence between Sam and his wife’s lawyer. Those papers gave Dorcas Butler, now Adele du Charme, the leverage she needed to blackmail the Skolfields. For not only did they damn Sam and Minerva as adulterers, they branded Alexander a bastard of color.

  At first the woman’s demands for silence were small, a hundred dollars here, fifty dollars there. But over the years her demands grew, taking the Skolfields to the brink of bankruptcy.

  Yet, no matter how devastating the price, Sam and Minerva always paid. They were willing to do anything to keep Adele from destroying their son’s future … even be party to kidnapping.

  After hearing the story, Penelope had tried to hate the Skolfields, for weren’t they using her son to insure their own son’s future? Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t find it in her heart to condemn them. After all, who was she to fault parents for loving and wanting to protect their child? If their situations were reversed, wouldn’t she do the same for Tommy?

  Guilt stabbed at Penelope’s conscience as she looked down at her baby, who was still preoccupied with his new rattle. What would happen to the Skolfields when One-eyed Caleb stole Tommy from their care? Would Adele be infuriated enough to ruin Alexander’s life as she had threatened?

  It was a possibility that Penelope found unsettling. After all, Sam and Minerva had not only looked after Tommy, they had taken him into their hearts and nursed him through his frequent illnesses as tenderly as if he’d been their own. Didn’t she owe them some consideration for that?

  Torn apart by conflicting emotions, yet knowing that she must remain resolved for Tommy’s sake, she let her gaze stray to where Minerva sat lost in her own thoughts. She’d become fond of the Skolfields. They were good people who, like herself, were simply trying to make the best of a terrible situation.

  They were also creditors to whom she owed a debt of gratitude. But tragically, the price of repayment was one she couldn’t afford. Not when the price might cost her son his life.

  Surrender, My Heart

  Ah, yes, there is no defying,

  A love beyond denying—

  For love must have its way!

  —Don Giovanni

  Chapter 16

  Penelope was full. Corset-busting, I-couldn’t-swallow-another-crumb-if-my-life-depended-on-it full. The kind of full she hadn’t been since she was six and had eaten an entire pan of gingerbread she’d found cooling on the kitchen windowsill.

  Groaning, she erased the heartburning incident from her mind. Recalling it now only deepened her overstuffed misery.

  Unfortunately clearing her mind left it free to dwell on other matters, namely her corset. She gave the binding undergarment a surreptitious tug through her bodice. The blasted stays were poking into her distended belly with a vengeance that made her feel like a harpooned whale.

  Certain she’d belch if she didn’t relieve the pressure at once, she cautiously eased back until she leaned half reclining against a cottonwood tree. Mercifully her new position did much to ease the potentially disastrous constriction. Too relieved to care that she was crushing her bustle, she lay in glutted languor marveling anew that she had been allowed to come on this picnic.

  Earlier that day, Seth had complained to Adele that Penelope was looking peaked and had demanded that she be allowed some leisure, namely a picnic. After a rather heated discussion during which Seth slyly pointed out that the company would be ruined and thus useless in repaying Miles’s debt if Penelope should fall ill, the woman had grudgingly agreed.

  Sighing her contentment, Penelope drowsily admired her surroundings. The site Seth had selected for their hard-won picnic was unrivaled in beauty by any place she’d ever dined. It was like a little piece of heaven on earth.

  As far as the eye could see, the arms of the Platte River sparkled between islands and banks edged with copses of autumn-flamed foliage. The small grove of cottonwoods where they dined was carpeted with leaves in vivid shades of orange, gold, and scarlet, hues that were echoed in the canopy of branches overheard. Enhancing nature’s ambiance were the gurgling serenade of the river and the smoky aroma of fall.

  Seth, who sat beside her on the faded crazy quilt, his long legs crossed Indian style before him, seemed less enamored with his surroundings than with the food. Right now he was practically inhaling the last of the Saratoga potatoes. When he noticed her watching him, he picked up a cranberry tart and waved it temptingly beneath her nose. “Last one. Want it?”

  Just the sight of the buttery pastry oozing with syrupy red fruit almost made her gag. Motioning it away with the same aversion she’d have shown a plate of the infamous lamb fries, she groaned, “I can’t eat another bite. I’m stuffed.” She was about to add that she doubted if she’d be able to eat for the next year when an obstreperous belch slipped out.

  Mortified, she slapped her hand over her mouth, her face burning with shame. She’d wanted so badly to impress Seth, to advance in her stratagem to recapture his heart, and here she was making noises reminiscent of a barnyard scuffle.

  Seth merely chuckled and plopped the rejected tart down on his own plate. Grinning good-naturedly, he teased, “I always say that there’s nothing more enticing than a woman with a healthy appreciation for food. Especially one who knows how to express it with such eloquence.”

  Despite her humiliation, Penelope smiled. Leave it to Seth to make light of what most men would view as an unpardonable act of vulgarity. But then, she reminded herself as she watched him make short work of the remaining tart, he isn’t like most men.

  Unlike the other men she knew, Seth had never felt it necessary to adhere to the rigid dictates of society. Instead he viewed them only as loose guidelines to be bent, broken, or eliminated to suit his own purposes. As her sister-in-law had pointed out more than once, Seth Tyler was a charming renegade, always refreshingly candid and delightfully witty.

  Oddly enough, his flaunting of convention hadn’t made him an outcast, as one would expect. It had endeared him to hostesses, and gained him the respect of powerful men who openly admired his daring. In truth, he was more received than anyone else she knew.

  Right now, society’s darling was licking his fingers with gusto. Smiling at his expression of gastronomic ecstasy, she teased, “It’s a wonder you’re not as big as a barn the way you eat.”

  He laughed at that. “Never fear, Princess. I’m hardly in danger of becoming one of those men who’s bigger around than he is tall. In truth, if I didn’t eat as much as I did, I’d be as skinny as an over-whittled broomstick.”

  She eyed his muscular physique dubiously. “You? Skinny?”

  “As a string bean,” he confirmed blithely. “You should have seen me when I was a youth. I was all gangly arms and legs with a bony backside and ribs to match.”

  Penelope stared at Seth, trying to visualize him as a spindly boy. Odd, but she’d never stopped to wonder what kind of child, or even youth, he’d been. In truth, she’d never considered the fact that he’d ever been anything other than what he was now: a strong, fiercely independent man who had the world by its tail. And since he’d never brought up the subject of his childhood, or willingly volunteered information about his life prior to his part
nership with her brother, it had never seemed important.

  But suddenly it seemed very important indeed. His waving that tidbit of information in front of her was like waving a meaty bone in front of a dog’s nose: it made her crave more.

  She watched in silence as he finished the tart. The question was, how should she broach the subject of his past? Even when their relationship had been at its closest, he’d been an intensely private person.

  Granted, he’d told her the little, superficial things about himself. Like that his favorite color was red, his favorite food was pineapple ice-cream pudding, and that he particularly enjoyed naughty stories. Yet what did she really know about him?

  She searched her mind for an answer. She knew that he was born in New York and had spent his childhood in Massachusetts; a childhood that, if his unpolished manners and poor grammar when she’d first met him were any indicator, appeared to have been less than privileged. But of his family she knew nothing.

  The single time she’d asked him about them, he’d turned as taciturn as a Southerner on the topic of the War Between the States, so she’d assumed they were dead and had never asked again.

  But what of the other details? The seemingly unimportant ones that would give her a picture of who he’d been? Like who was his boyhood best friend, what games had he liked best, and had he had a pet? Those were things she’d either never bothered to ask, or that he’d avoided telling her by guiding every conversation to the subject nearest and dearest to her heart … herself.

  She grimaced at the remembrance of her own selfishness. How had he stood her? Looking back, it was a wonder that she’d been able to tolerate herself.

  She eyed him speculatively as he set aside the plate and lay back upon the quilt with a satiated grunt. The early afternoon sun speckled through the barren gaps left by the fallen leaves, burnishing his outspread hair until it gleamed like fire-lit gold. His eyes were closed, and he looked supremely contented as he bathed his face in a ray of sunshine.

 

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