by Holly Bush
“How am I going to get all this stuff to Washington?” Zeb asked.
“Miss Moran told me that you are to be working for a U.S. senator, sir, and instructed me to purchase a trunk and pack all but the light-colored suit since it would be appropriate for travel.”
“Did she really?”
“Yes, and the shoemaker has some ready-to-wear shoes that he will be bringing by shortly for you to try on.”
Zeb shook his head. “No. That’s it. I’m not giving up my boots. I don’t care what anyone thinks.”
The tailor nodded. “Miss Moran said you’d say that and instructed me to have the cobbler bring dark boots for you to try on since the only pair she’s seen of yours are light-colored and those would look ridiculous with evening wear. Her words, not mine.”
“I’m not surprised,” Zeb said. “I suppose I should get a haircut and a trim, too?”
“Miss Moran told me to mention that there was a barber just a few doors down.”
“What did Miss Moran have to say about what all this stuff’s going to cost?” Zeb asked.
“She said you had plenty enough money to begin dressing like a gentleman.”
“She would say that.” Zeb sucked in a breath at the amount on the tally sheet the tailor handed him. It seemed like a huge waste, but then what did he know? He certainly did not want to embarrass Max, and it was better that his sister admonished him than Mrs. Shelby, who would do the same thing that Bella had if she did not think what he was wearing was appropriate.
* * *
“You’ll want to get that breath of air now, Jennifer,” Jeffrey Rothchild said as he stood up from his chair in the Crawford Bank’s box at the Boston Theatre. He held his hand out to help her stand.
Jennifer looked at his hand and then his face. She had not mentioned wanting to leave her seat and was actually quite comfortable as they waited for the second act to begin. She was wary but then chided herself for being suspect of an apparently innocent request. Maybe she had mentioned earlier that she would like to mingle with other guests at some point. Maybe he was trying to make her happy. She placed her gloved hand in his and stood up.
“Thank you, Jeffrey,” she said. “It is somewhat stuffy.”
They walked down the wide circular hallway, greeting those they knew. Suddenly, Jeffrey grabbed her upper arm, lifting her nearly off of her feet, and pushed her through a doorway into a small closet. There was little light except the glow of a gas lamp through the window, and she smelled the odor of cleaning solutions.
“Jeffrey!” she said. “You are hurting my arm. Please!”
He twisted her roughly to face him and held her tightly with his left hand. “Your mother let me know that you are still planning this trip to Washington. I thought we’d settled that.”
“Well,” she said, and swallowed, “Father did say he would make my excuses . . . aaahh.” Jeffrey slammed a closed fist into her ribs, just below her breast on the same side he pummeled before her trip to Texas. She reeled but he held her upright in his embrace.
He stroked her face and she flinched. “There is no need to put yourself through all this pain, my dear.”
“I did not . . . I mean I . . .” she said between gasps.
“You meant to tell me that you won’t be going to Washington, isn’t that right, dear?”
Jennifer closed her eyes and nodded, breathing through her nose, and concentrated on not vomiting.
“Good,” he said, and smiled. He opened the door to the closet and looked at her. “Your hair is mussed, Jennifer. It looks like I’ve just stolen a kiss.”
She preceded him through the door on shaky legs, holding her arm tightly against her side and willing the pain to subside. He took her free arm through his and held her hand. He smiled at her affectionately as they moved down the hall toward her parents’ box. The first person she saw was Evelyn Prentiss, an old friend of her mother’s. Mrs. Prentiss sidled over to Jennifer, and whispered in ear.
“Smile, dear. And smooth your chignon. We don’t want your mother and father to get an idea as to why you were in a cupboard with Mr. Rothchild,” Mrs. Prentiss said with a conspiratorial grin.
Jennifer wobbled a smile and batted her lashes. Not to be coy, but to forestall the tears that were near to running down her face. She reached up to touch her hair and drew a sharp breath from the pain as she did so.
“Do not fret, Jennifer. I will say nothing to Jane,” Mrs. Prentiss said. “Mum’s the word!”
Jennifer watched Mrs. Prentiss rejoin her party. “I believe I am going to faint,” she said.
Jeffrey began leading her down the hallway and leaned close to her. His nearness sent a shiver down her spine.
“Don’t be a ninny, Jennifer. The Crawford box is right there.”
Jeffrey opened the door to the bank’s theatre box and seated her. Her father leaned forward. “Are you unwell, Jennifer? You are ghastly white.”
She looked up at Jeffrey from under her lashes. He was staring at her intensely and nodded as if to prompt her reply. Oh, how she wished she could tell her father! She’d like to scream it on the street that Jeffrey Rothchild was brutal and a bully. But she did not. She could not be so brash and embarrass her father and the bank in such a public way. But she would not marry him, not even with the public announcements of his intentions, or her mother’s cajoling and interfering. She would find a way to end this privately, with no public repercussions and unpleasantness.
“I am fine, Father,” she said. “Perhaps just chilled.”
“Would you like my topcoat, dear?” her father asked. “I will have the usher get it from the checkroom if you would like.”
“No, Father, I’ll be fine,” she said as Jeffrey sat down beside her and leaned close to whisper in her ear.
“Did I tell you you look exceptionally beautiful tonight? I hope you are feeling better after your . . . accident. It worries me greatly that you may be unwell. I am going to send you vases of fresh flowers to brighten your day tomorrow. Would you like that?”
She nodded and turned to her parents seated behind her with as much of a bright smile as she could muster. “The play is beginning again!”
* * *
Jennifer asked a maid she met in the hallway as she went to her bedroom that evening to bring her ice. She had dismissed Eliza immediately upon coming into her room and would not meet her maid’s eyes. When it happened before, the first time, she’d cried in her maid’s arms on her return from Texas, wondering what she’d ever done to deserve such treatment. But when she’d dried her tears that night, she didn’t feel relieved that she’d shared the story with Eliza, but rather humiliated. And while she was at odds as to how to end this relationship, and her mother was not only cruel and unpleasant, but ill as well, and her father was continuously manipulated, and her sisters had left her here, left her to manage the family, with all of that, she still had her pride.
* * *
“There are still teaching positions open here, Zebidiah, and one full professorship, I’ve been told at the Atlanta School. Why don’t you get serious with your life?” Gordon Moran said.
“Father!” Bella admonished.
“What is it, Bella?” her father asked.
Zeb shook his head at his sister and looked at his father. He would soon be getting on the train, and Bella did not need to argue on his behalf and put herself at odds with her father. “I’m not going to teach, Father, anywhere. I’ve told you that as recently as last night. I was never interested in it, as you know.”
“Certainly there is some other means of employment other than working for this . . . fellow,” Father said.
“Senator Maximillian Shelby is his name. You would have me sweeping floors before you’d be happy I was working for a U.S. senator?”
“There’s a godliness about labor, son, if you are not called to academics.”
“And working for a U.S. senator, being involved in the direction our country takes, is a step down?”
Professor Moran turned as the whistle on the approaching train blew. “It’s this man. This Shelby person.” He looked at Zeb with consternation. “He’s from Boston, Zebidiah. He’s a Yankee. What could you possibly be thinking?”
Zeb saw the train slowing, saw passengers picking up their bags, and knew that he would be boarding soon. Leave it, Zebidiah. But he could not after all leave it, as he’d done since forever.
“A Yankee? It’s near thirty years since the War between the States was fought. It is long over.”
Gordon Moran’s face turned red, and he exerted himself enough to shake a finger in his son’s face. “Over? It will never be over for a true Southerner!”
“You’d have colored folk like Melly and Victor slaves again?”
“We lost life with that war, not just honorable men, mind you, but our way of life. The South was stripped of its very essence.”
“Perhaps, Father, if a majority of Southerners had recognized the brutality and evilness of slavery, instead of filling their pockets with the money made from those slaves’ free labor and justifying the rape of the women, they could have begun to dismantle a system that was abhorrent on their own. But they did not. Southerners like you were not only cruel, but shortsighted as well. And to think an educated man like yourself still considers the ashed remnants of this abomination called the Confederacy, losing good men for the sake of whipping others, to be the standard, the bulwark. You’re a sad, twisted old man without the veneer of mother’s kindness.”
Gordon Moran’s face had paled. Bella’s hand covered her mouth. Zeb had said aloud all the things that he’d said privately to himself over the years after clashes with his father. All the reasons he hated Georgia and many Southerners’ reticence to move on to a new day. But this was not the time or the place to deliver this message. Was there ever an appropriate time to reduce a parent’s existence to this? He’d been shouting as well, and although the slowly chugging train masked most of his tirade, some people standing close by were staring at the three of him. He cleared his throat.
“Father. I am sorry to have shouted and said what I did. It was uncalled for.” He turned to his sister. “My apologies, Bella.”
“I’d hoped to have your leave-taking be more pleasant than last time, Zebidiah,” she said. “Not that I don’t completely agree with everything you said.”
His father looked at her and back at him. It struck Zeb then that his father looked old, and forlorn as well, as if his foundations had shifted. The conductors had stepped off the stopped train and were helping passengers board. Zeb knew he must soon leave and that he must right this somehow.
“Your mother would be ashamed of you,” his father said.
Bella slipped her arm through her father’s and smiled. “She would have, not that she’d disagreed with anything Zebidiah has said, but rather that there is never a call to publically air our family squabbles, isn’t that right?”
Zeb smiled. “You are right. It was indecorous of me. My sincere apologies. I love you both,” he said, and kissed his sister’s cheek. He held out his hand to his father.
“Go ahead, Father,” Bella said and winked at Zeb. “Show your son how a true Southern gentleman behaves.”
Gordon Moran straightened and stuck out his hand. Zeb shook it and held on to it for a long minute. “I will see you all soon, God willing. Take care.” He turned and boarded the train as his trunk and cases were being loaded.
Chapter Three
“I feel like a thief, running in the dead of night,” Jennifer said to her maid, Eliza.
“Yes, miss,” Eliza said, as she continued to move furniture in Jennifer’s dressing room to make room for her trunk.
“And this groomsman is reliable?”
“He is, miss. I can attest for Luther myself as his family grew up beside mine. I’ve known him all my life. He reads and writes and can take direction, and he’s always been half in love with me,” Eliza said unashamedly. “’Tis a pity he’s still wet behind the ears as he’s turned out to be a handsome, strapping thing.”
Jennifer smiled. “Eliza! I don’t wish to take advantage of your friendship with him.”
“I have promised him a kiss if he does exactly what I tell him to do.”
Jennifer sat down on the chaise in her dressing room. She looked at her maid. “He hit me again, Eliza.”
“Yes, miss. I know. I wondered when you dismissed me without me helping you change after the theatre last week, and then I saw your face as you lifted your arms so I could drop your day dress over your head the next morning.” Eliza straightened and looked over her shoulder at Jennifer. “Is the rib broken like the last time?”
Jennifer shook her head. “I don’t believe so.”
She closed the lid of the trunk and sat an open valise on top of it. “Almost done here, miss, and then we will decide what you will wear to travel. Have you sent a message to your sister?”
Jennifer stared at her hands and listened to Eliza talk on about whether her leather shoes would go well enough with two of her evening dresses or whether she should pack the satin slippers that had been died to match her gowns. “I didn’t tell you because I’m embarrassed,” she said finally.
Eliza straightened. “I’ve always been too forward for a maid in service, but there’s no changing me now. But I will gladly peel potatoes for the rest of my employment in this house rather than not say my piece about this.”
“Say whatever it is you want to say. I realize I’m a fool.”
Eliza hurried to her and knelt in front of her. She clutched her hands. “No, Miss Jennifer. You must never speak like that. Don’t you see? That is what he wants. He is counting on you blaming yourself. And each time it happens, you’ll blame yourself a little more, until you’re certain that it is your fault and you deserve his fists. Don’t give into it, miss!”
Jennifer wiped her eyes. “I have no idea how I ended up in this situation. When it happened the first time, I was caught so unaware. I didn’t know what to say or who to say it to. And I had convinced myself that it was just that one time and that he was tired and I’d been vexing him.”
“It’s never right to hit another person, my granny would say, and I think it’s true even when you’re tired.”
“Yes. You are right, Eliza,” she said.
“Have you told Mr. Crawford?”
Jennifer shook her head. “I’m not sure what he would do. Mr. Rothchild is an employee of the bank. There’d be talk. And it would make it so awkward between him and Mother. I hate to put him in that position.”
“But you must tell someone, miss. You must. I don’t think Mr. Rothchild will just walk away if you tell him that you do not want to marry him.”
“There is a person I’m going to tell, Eliza. Don’t worry. My sister Jolene will know what to do.”
* * *
“Have you told your mother that you’re leaving today?” Jennifer’s father asked her the following day from where he sat across from her in the dining room at Willow Tree.
“She was not up when I stopped by her rooms. I told Eliza to tell Mildred I was going out.”
Her father stared at her. “Is Eliza going to tell Mildred you’ll be boarding the train for Washington?”
“Not exactly.”
“And do you think your mother will not notice if you are gone for more than one day, perhaps even a month, as you originally planned?”
“I’m sorry, Father. I’m a coward. I don’t want to listen to Mother drone on about Jeffrey and about the Morgans’ party,” Jennifer said, and looked up at him with pleading eyes. “I was hoping you’d tell her.”
“What did Jeffrey say? He was a bit high-handed that night at dinner, I thought.”
Jennifer stood and poured herself a cup of tea. “I have not told him, either.”
“You have not told your intended?”
“He is not my intended,” she said quickly. “I have never said that I would marry him. He and Mother will not decide this for me. I h
ave left him a note, though, that will be delivered tomorrow morning.”
“There is a bank meeting here this morning in my library. Jeffrey will be one of the members. Will he not see your trunks and cases and wonder?”
“My trunks and cases went on yesterday’s train with one of the groomsmen. I checked with Bellings first, of course.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “Quite an elaborate scheme, my dear! Just tell Jeffrey that you have had a change of heart. He is a gentleman. He will be gracious about it, and I believe your mother exaggerates when she says that you and Jeffrey are discussed as a betrothed couple in drawing rooms.”
Jennifer nearly blurted out her fears but did not. What a coward I am! she thought. I cannot even tell my father, who loves me dearly, that I am afraid that Jeffrey would be everything but a gentleman. She rose and kissed his cheek. “I have written a kind but firm letter to him. And if I’m gone for some days then it will be easier when we see each other again at the bank or at a social affair. Some time will have passed and perhaps meeting him won’t be so awkward.”
“You believe Jeffrey’s feelings are more engaged than yours?”
Jennifer hesitated. “I believe Jeffrey is accustomed to having his own way.”
Her father folded his newspaper and touched her hand, although he did not look at her. “Please tell Jolene that I am happy for her and the senator. I do not believe business will allow me to come to Washington for his swearing in but I am thinking of her and him with pride.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You should try and come, father. Jolene has not heard from Julia, but if she and her husband are coming you would have a chance to see Jillian and meet your other grandchildren, Jacob and Mary Lou. I am praying that Julia decides to make the trip. I am anxious to meet her husband and see the children.”
“We will see how your mother is feeling then,” he said with resignation. “Although I would like to speak to Julia and her husband again. I foolishly allowed your mother to convince me to do some things that I’m not proud of. I would like to apologize in person although I have done it by letter.”