Chapter Thirty-Three
A concerned audience gathered to be on hand for the doctor’s prognosis. Jeremy had shooed Tippy, Tomahawk, Jasper, the driver Billy, Joshua, and his friends and their parents a good distance behind the overturned bucket where Jessica sat to be examined. Dr. Fonteneau had directed the bandage be removed outside Jessica’s hot, cramped wagon to have more room to work and to avoid the heat triggering the blood to flow again.
Only Silas, a fan in hand to cool Jessica and wave away flies and mosquitoes, and Jeremy and Henri DuMont, who already seemed to have become one of them, were privy to Dr. Fonteneau’s assessment of the injury. The doctor had been told of Tomahawk’s treatment and the scout’s conviction that a tourniquet bandage would close the wound without more drastic measures having to be taken.
“Your Indian friend was right,” Dr. Fonteneau confirmed in admiration, and declared Jessica fit to travel but suggested a delay of two more days to be on the safe side. “By then,” he explained to Jessica, “the flesh will have knitted nicely if you’ve kept the binding tightly drawn. I know your head must feel caught in a vise, Mrs. Toliver, but it is a necessary discomfort for the broken skin to bond.”
“I feel its discomfort not nearly as much as the need for a bath and change of clothes,” Jessica said, glancing down at the soiled skirt of her calico dress. She felt her grubby state more keenly in the presence of the immaculate, urbane Henri DuMont, but his manners were such that not for the world would he have her aware he noticed her appearance. When they were introduced, he’d bowed over her hand with all the gallantry of a courtier meeting a bedecked lady of the royal court.
The Frenchman immediately won her heart by exclaiming when he met Tippy, “What an adorable creature you are! How do you do, my child, and tell me please who is responsible for the excellent construction of your dress?”
“I am, sir,” Tippy said with a curtsy and a smile that devoured her face. “It’s kind of you to notice.”
“Kind? An oaf would take notice.”
“Tippy is a wizard with needle and thread, not to mention her genius at clothes construction and design,” Jessica had informed him, impressed that he recognized the skill in the fine tailoring of Tippy’s simple muslin dress.
“Really?” Henri had trilled, eyeing Tippy with greater interest.
The gathering burst into applause as Jeremy related the doctor’s news, and Joshua broke from the group, Tippy following, and flew to Jessica’s side. Henri said to Silas, “When the time comes, you must permit me to lead you the shortest route to the Winthorp, where Madame will be relieved of at least one of her discomforts. I know the hotel well. A bathtub in every room. The proprietors have long been customers of my father’s establishment and personal friends to boot. Henry and Giselle Morgan. They will see that your wife has every attention.”
Joshua, his arm proprietarily around Jessica’s shoulders, piped up. “Oh, Jessica isn’t my father’s wife. She’s just our friend, aren’t you, Jessica?”
Silence fell like a bomb. Silas drew in an audible breath, Jeremy studied his feet, Tippy cast her eyes heavenward, and Henri and Dr. Fonteneau exchanged glances that hiked their eyebrows to their hairlines.
Jessica was still sitting. She relieved the awkward moment by putting an arm around Joshua and drawing him close to her side. “I most certainly am your friend, my little soldier, forever and always,” she said, nuzzling his nose. “Now go gather your friends, and I will read to you.”
Silas was glad of the two days’ delay before he had to leave his wife and son at the Winthorp. He would return to camp afterwards and remain throughout the week, making periodic visits to the hotel to assure himself of their welfare before pulling out with the train in six days’ time. A kind of darkness entered his soul. He would feel untold relief in knowing his son and Jessica were safe from the horrors that might await them. The details of John Parker’s diabolical torture and the abduction of his granddaughter made the blood of every household head in the wagon train run cold. No pangs of separation would induce him to take his son and Jessica with him, but how he would miss them! His loneliness apart, he was aware of what he risked in leaving them behind. He and his son had developed a bond that months apart from each other could weaken. Joshua was growing up fast. He’d turn five in three days’ time, and at that age, a boy needed his father. He was a tender child who forged bonds quickly but deeply and felt a terrible severance when he was torn from them. Joshua still missed Lettie and his uncle and grandmother and often asked, “When can we go to see them again, Papa?” Silas had not told him of his plans to leave him in New Orleans, and he cringed to imagine the child’s pain when he left him, even to the care of Jessica, his “friend.”
Jessica. How had that wisp of a girl managed to get under his skin? How—why—had she, an abolitionist, come to care for him and he for her—even if it were infatuation on her part and admiration on his? Was he so fickle that he could forget his anguish in forsaking Lettie for his pain in leaving another woman—a girl he barely knew—for months, maybe a year, before he saw her again? Would time and separation cure Jessica’s feelings for him? Would she read her journal months down the line and wonder why she’d ever thought she was in love with him?
For a short while, he had briefly, faintly, considered buying land in Louisiana for his plantation, but the purchase would be costlier and of less acreage, and he could not set aside the view of his empire in Texas that lay constantly at the forefront of his mind. That sweeping, majestic vista was the spur that drove him on, and he must consider no sacrifice that would jeopardize its reality.
Still, for all his practical reasoning, his depression did not lift in the two days before he was to escort Jessica and Joshua in her Conestoga to New Orleans. His time was spent in huddles with Jeremy and Henri and family heads over arrangements and preparations for the journey, always with an eye on Jessica, who seemed to be recovering nicely. By night’s end of the last day, having been awake for most of it, Silas rolled over and kissed the crown of Joshua’s head. For their last night together, he’d permitted his son to sleep with him outside by the fire. Silas spoke to him from the silence of his heart. It’s for your own sake your father must leave you, my boy, and your friend’s, too. I will be back for you and Jessica and take you home to Somerset, but first I must make sure to leave your friend a memory to remember me by.
The day of departure, Jessica submitted to Tippy’s attempts to bathe her in the wagon, barely cognizant of her maid’s chatter. A pity Jessica’s bandage would prevent her from wearing a bonnet since there was not much to be done with her hair until it could be thoroughly washed, Tippy prattled on. She would arrange it in her mesh hairnet and press Jessica’s finest day dress for her to wear into New Orleans. First impressions were important. Also, she’d rigged up a pretty headband to cover the bandage, an idea that might start a whole new fashion trend. She’d see what Mr. DuMont—Monsieur DuMont—had to say about it. He did seem awfully impressed with her sewing abilities—she’d shown him the buckskin jacket she’d made as a surprise for Joshua for his birthday—and, given Henri DuMont’s line of business, it was no wonder he was the sort of man who would appreciate her work.
Finally, Tippy sighed in resignation. “You’re not listening to a word I say,” she said, knowing on whom and what her mistress had her mind. “Now, Jessie, Mister Silas is right to leave you and Joshua in New Orleans, so you might as well accept the idea and stop moping about it.”
“I know,” Jessica conceded. “It’s selfish of me to want to risk both your and Joshua’s lives for my desires. It’s just that I am afraid Silas will…forget about me while he’s gone. We are making…progress with each other.”
Yesterday, after Silas had declared her death would be a loss to him, Jessica had wondered if she’d heard him correctly. When he left her, she’d looked around breathlessly for Tippy, bursting to share his every word with her, to examine and analyze each one for tone, expression, nuance, but the sudden rush of blood to her head, pumped by the possibility—the joyous possibility—that Silas Toliver had come to care for her, had made her dizzy.
She was still leaning against her Conestoga when Silas brought Dr. Fonteneau around. He’d let out a little startled grunt and taken her by the shoulders to study her face in concern and demanded to know, like any caring husband, if she’d had a setback.
“No, I just…suddenly lost my breath,” she’d said, staring dazedly into his alarmed green eyes.
Tippy said, “Well, you know, of course, what you have to do to keep yourself in Mister Silas’s thoughts while he’s gone for only God and His angels know how long.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Do you have something in mind?”
Tippy cocked her head and a meaningful spark lit her eyes.
“Oh, Tippy, I couldn’t,” Jessica said, reddening. “I—I wouldn’t know how to go about it—what to do. I’ve had no experience with that sort of thing.”
“Just remember how your mama goes about getting your papa to do most anything, and it’ll come naturally to you.”
“I’d be afraid Silas would reject me.”
“I’d be more afraid at not taking the chance he wouldn’t,” Tippy said. “Many a triumph is lost through cowardice.”
Tippy’s mention of cowardice, coming from her trusted friend who knew her to swoop in where angels feared to fly, struck at Jessica’s heart, but it stiffened her backbone. Tippy was right. Better to know defeat from courage than safety through chickenheartedness.
But seduce Silas? With no skills in lovemaking, how could she manage it? Where? When? And what would Joshua have to say when he learned that his father and “friend” were really man and wife? Many a triumph is lost through cowardice. A fact of truth for sure, but one other fact was true as well: She, Jessica Wyndham Toliver, was no coward.