Chapter Two
Silas could feel his mother’s despair, layered with her widow’s grief, waft to him on the crisp, autumn breeze, but it couldn’t be helped. He was going to Texas and taking his son and bride with him. Theirs was an age-old argument. Family was all to his mother. Land, a man’s inherent connection to his very being, was everything to him. Without his own land to till and sow, a man was nothing, no matter who his family was. His mother had mounted every reason against her younger son leaving the comfort, security, and safety of his home to set out with his family to the territory of Texas on the verge of revolution. Reports had filtered back that the Texas colonists were organizing to declare their newly settled land independent of Mexico, a move that would undoubtedly lead to war with that country.
“What am I to do, Mother? Stay here under the boot of my brother where my son, like his father, will never be master of his own house?”
“Don’t put this off on what you want for Joshua,” his mother had argued. “This is what you want for yourself—what you’ve always wanted—but now you have Lettie and your little son to consider.” She had covered her face with her hands at the monstrous images she’d warned him about: terrible diseases (there had been a cholera outbreak in Stephen F. Austin’s colony in 1834), savage Indians, wild animals and snakes, bloodthirsty Mexicans, dangerous water crossings, exposure to extremes of weather. The list of horrors went on and on, the most horrible being the possibility that she’d never see her son and Joshua and Lettie again.
“And don’t you put this off on them, Mother. If I were offered acreage anywhere else in the South where it’s safe, you’d still want me to remain at Queenscrown, all of us together as a family, never mind that my father practically disowned me and my brother loathes me.”
“You exaggerate. Your father did what he thought best for Queenscrown, and your brother does not loathe you. He simply doesn’t understand you.”
“And I will do what I think is best for Somerset.”
“Somerset?”
“The name I’m calling my plantation in Texas in honor of the Tolivers’ forebear, the Duke of Somerset.”
His mother had fallen mute, her arguments futile against so powerful an ambition.
She had her husband’s last will and testament to thank for her sorrow, Silas had reminded her, but it didn’t pardon his brusque behavior toward her these past weeks, and he felt ashamed. He loved his mother and would miss her sorely, but he could not rid himself of the feeling that she had intentionally failed to foresee and therefore prevent the unfair dispensations of his father’s estate. If Benjamin Toliver had divided his property equally, Silas would have forever abandoned his dream. He had promised himself to do everything in his power to live peaceably with his brother. Morris, a bachelor, loved his nephew and was fond of his sister-in-law-to-be and her sweet, gentle ways. Lettie and his mother got along gloriously. Elizabeth regarded Lettie as the daughter she’d never had, and his fiancée considered his mother the surrogate for the one she’d lost as a child. They would have made a tranquil household.
Even Morris now realized what he stood to lose by his gain. “We’ll work something out,” he’d said, but for Silas, nothing his brother could offer would make up for the deficit of his father’s affection so hurtfully demonstrated by the terms of the will. He would not take from his brother what their father had not meant for him to have.
So he was going to Texas.
As Jeremy dismounted, Silas looked gratefully down at the man who would be pulling up stakes with him, the stallion still prancing. Jeremy Warwick rarely refused his horse his head, as he was not in the habit of denying his own. Silas prized that quality in him, for while his friend’s head was known for its uncommon common sense, it was not averse to risk, and never would his boyhood companion enter a more risky venture than the one on which they were planning to embark.
Before securing his horse’s reins, Jeremy tossed Silas the mail pouch he’d ridden to Charleston to collect. Silas unbuckled the straps eagerly and was reading a letter from Stephen F. Austin, well-known empresario of Texas, before his friend’s polished boots struck the floor of the verandah.
“Some disturbing reading in there,” Jeremy said, lowering his voice so that Elizabeth wouldn’t hear. “Mr. Austin is willing to sell us as many of his bonus acres as we can buy so long as we agree to live in Texas, but he warns that war is coming. There’s a newspaper, too, describing the growing dissatisfaction among the settlements with the policies of the government in Mexico City, and there’s a letter from Lucas Tanner. He says the area is all he could have hoped for—good virgin soil, plentiful timber and water, fine weather—but he may have to fight to hold it. He’s already had a few scrapes with the Indians and Mexican militia.”
“Since we’re not leaving until next spring, maybe the conflict with the Mexican government will be settled at least, but I have to share this news with the rest who are going with us,” Silas said. “Let them know the additional risk.”
Jeremy asked quietly, “Does that include Lettie?”
The sharp snipping of the rose clippers ceased, the silence carried to the verandah in the pause that followed. Elizabeth had been listening, her ears perked for his answer. Yes, do tell, Silas. Does that include Lettie? Her son was saved from responding by Lazarus elbowing the front door open to deliver the coffee. Silas reached forward to open it wider for him.
“Thank you, Mister Silas,” the gray-haired Negro said, and set the tray on the table where generations of Tolivers had been served their mint juleps and afternoon tea. “Shall I pour the coffee, suh?”
“No, Lazarus. I’ll do it. Tell Cassandra the pie looks delicious.”
Lazarus and his wife, Cassandra, would be going with him to Texas. They belonged to him, an inheritance from Mamie Toliver, Silas’s grandmother. She had left nothing to her other grandson. Lately, Silas had noticed a heaviness to Lazarus’s walk, and his wife no longer sang over her bread kneading.
“That will include Lettie,” Silas answered, handing Jeremy his dessert plate. He poured them each a steaming cup of coffee. “When I’m inclined to tell her,” he added.
“Ah,” Jeremy said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That the pie is delicious,” Jeremy said, taking a big bite. “Will you and Lettie be going to Jessica Wyndham’s party?”
“Lettie wouldn’t miss it. She tutored Jessica before the girl left for boarding school and really liked her. There are only four years’ difference in their ages. I can’t say I remember her. Do you?”
“Barely. All I recalled until today was a serious-faced little girl with eyes big and brown as chestnuts, but I recognized her at the docks in Charleston this morning when she arrived from Boston. Her mother and brother were there to pick her up. There was quite a scene when Jessica went to the aid of a Negro porter being mistreated by a passenger.”
“A white man?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Her father will have something to say about that.”
“I hope his displeasure won’t put a damper on the party. I’m told the Wyndhams are sparing no expense to celebrate Jessica’s eighteenth birthday and homecoming from that finishing school in Boston. They’re entertaining relatives from England as well—Lord and Lady DeWitt.”
“The Wyndhams can afford it,” Silas said, drawing out a map from the mail pouch.
“The Courier lists Carson Wyndham as the wealthiest man in South Carolina,” Jeremy said, cutting into his pie.
“The poor man will be busy staving off every fortune hunter in the state.”
“Maybe Morris will marry her and save him the trouble.”
Silas snorted. “Morris wouldn’t know a waltz from a polka or a lady’s handkerchief from a cleaning rag, so there’s no chance of him winning the girl’s hand. Why don’t you marry her, Jeremy, and save her father the trouble. A handsome devil like you should have a clear field.”
Jeremy laughed. “No offense to Lettie, but I don’t think I could interest a young lady of Jessica Wyndham’s background and refinement into marrying a man with plans to settle in Texas. Lettie’s besotted over you. She’d let you take her to hell.”
Silas spread out the map enclosed with Stephen F. Austin’s letter and frowned over the route the empresario had marked in dark ink. The distance was formidable; the terrain beyond the Red River into Texas daunting. Circled was an area where the trail diverted from a more logical direction. A note in the margin read: Stay clear. Comanche Indian hunting grounds.
“Maybe that is where I’m taking her,” Silas said.