Chapter Seven
“Silas, dear, what’s the matter?” Lettie said to her betrothed’s back. He stood at a window of the church manse that offered a view of a small garden ablaze with golden chrysanthemums. He was to take home a large arrangement of them for his mother’s Thanksgiving table tomorrow. “Are you bored with all this wedding nonsense?”
Silas turned from the window, the vision of Lettie at a table overflowing with wedding frippery—lace and ribbons and a swath of something filmy—lovelier than any garden.
“No, my love, though I admit they’re more to a woman’s enthusiasm than a man’s.”
“As long as you’re not having second thoughts about marrying me.”
“Never.” Silas came to sit beside her at the table, and she set aside a writing tablet on which she had been checking off an endless list having to do with their wedding date, the first Saturday in February. He could not comprehend why women felt compelled to begin nuptial preparations months in advance (his mother was in a flurry of activity), but he’d been assured that, with the demands of the holidays in between, early organization was critical. He had argued to set an earlier date to settle into marriage before their departure the first of March, but his fiancée’s brother was a student at West Point, and he could not get leave to attend the festivities until the first week of February.
“What’s troubling you, then?” Lettie ran her fingers lightly over his furrowed forehead. “When your brow gets bunched up, I can tell you’re disturbed.”
Silas took her hand and pressed her fingers to his lips. The smallest touch of her skin to his could arouse him. God forgive him, he could not remember his first wife’s flesh that had borne his son. Were it not for Joshua, he would not have remembered her face. Ursuline, she’d been called, and the rather prudish name had fit her moralistic views, especially those related to sex. That memory of her remained. His wife had been the daughter of a planter and a member of the landed gentry, but in truth, his father-in-law had been a hell-raising brigand. Silas had expected some of the old man’s fire to burn in his daughter’s veins, but he had been sadly disappointed. Lettie, daughter of a preacher, hadn’t a priggish bone in her body and was as eager as he to share a marriage bed. Silas called the difference in their attitudes, so incongruous to their upbringing, quirks of nature.
He was of a mind to tell Lettie the truth, but she was, after all, of Presbyterian stock, Scottish to the bone, and abhorred debt. She was aware that he would have to borrow the money for their expenses to Texas from Carson Wyndham, but, like Silas, she was convinced that with hard work, they could clear the books with him within a few years.
“We won’t be sitting on our verandahs like the members of the planter class here,” she’d said. “We’ll work right alongside the field hands to get the job done. Time to play lord and lady of the manor when our debt is paid.”
“My father would turn in his grave to know we were working alongside blacks,” Silas had said, laughing, loving her for her courage and willingness to set sail into the unknown—or, rather, into the known dangers and personal deprivations—with no armor of protection but her love for and faith in him.
“Let him. We’re going to Texas. Anything goes there.”
His fiancée’s disposition made him love her more every day, and Silas could not understand why he felt it necessary to protect her from disquieting news such as the latest unrest in Texas and this new development that threatened his dream. Lettie rose to every unexpected roadblock. Where he saw obstacles, she saw challenges. What he considered maddening detours—irritating rearrangements of his plans and desires—Lettie serenely accepted as “mercies in disguise” arranged by some grand design to save people from taking a wrong path. She lived by and taught her students the motto she’d coined to tackle onerous but necessary tasks: “Dread and do, or don’t and regret.”
Despite her porcelain appearance, she seemed the perfect wife to take with him to a frightening and uncertain country, but as problems continued to pile up, Silas could not brush aside his fear that even Lettie would find them insurmountable when time came to leave her home and father, lifelong friends and her beloved Charleston, so close to the town where she’d grown up. What if she refused to go? Silas couldn’t bear to go off and leave her until he forged out a life for them in the new territory, and he couldn’t endure remaining at Queenscrown.
Jeremy had stronger faith in her fortitude than he. “Lettie is not going to change her mind, Silas,” he had told him more than once, “but it’s only fair to give her the reasons to do so, or you’ll regret it later on.”
Silas had decided to risk the regrets and kept some daunting news to himself—like today’s, for example. A new cloud hung over their heads, and he could see no sun peeking through. Eight of the ten families who’d signed agreements to lease his Conestogas had backed out. He’d thought his speculation in the wagons was a sterling investment. He’d bought them to rent to families who could not afford their own transportation to Texas, certainly not the space and comfort the Conestoga offered that regular farm wagons did not. Silas had believed the lure of striking and graceful vehicles to lease would increase the number in the wagon train (the more, the safer), and the rent money would offset part of his investment cost and pay his expenses on the trip. He would still own the wagons, which he would sell upon arrival in Texas, and a clause in the contract agreement stated the renter was to pay him a percentage of his crops for the first two years. He had not counted on the deterrents of war in Texas or the faintheartedness of men seeking a better life but lacking the will to pursue it. He’d have been better off keeping his money in his pocket.
Jeremy suffered no such financial anxieties, but Silas would not borrow from his best friend. The Warwicks and Tolivers were to begin their enterprises in Texas with no indebtedness to each other but dependency upon their mutual friendship. Snow would fly in hell before Silas gave his brother, Morris, the satisfaction of lending him money—and at exorbitant interest, no doubt. Unless he could find replacements for the number who had reneged on renting his Conestogas, he would be forced to borrow more money from Carson Wyndham, and Lettie would strongly disapprove of that. She would loathe being in further debt to a man she intensely disliked.
Soon enough to tell her, Silas decided, when he had time to hear from the advertisements he’d placed in the state newspapers and the Nashville Republican publicizing his Conestogas to lease, though he had little hope they’d be answered. There was great turmoil in Texas, the reason the eight families had pulled out.
“Share with me,” Lettie urged, smoothing his brow.
Silas chose to relate the lesser of the two disheartening events troubling him. “The scout is back that Jeremy dispatched in late September to reconnoiter the area where we’re headed,” he said. “It seems that skirmish in October between the Texians and the Mexican Army kindled a fire that can’t be put out.”
“It happened on Jessica’s birthday—October Second,” Lettie said with a trace of wonder that people could be shooting each other while others were enjoying a party.
Silas smiled indulgently and tapped her nose. “Goodness, girl, the occasions by which you remember dates,” he said. “But yes, on Jessica’s eighteenth birthday, the scout rode right into the fire and took up arms himself.”
The papers had carried the story of the October 2 fracas between the Anglo settlers and one hundred dragoons of the Mexican Army in a town in Texas called Gonzales. The skirmish had been incited when the area’s military commander of the Mexican forces demanded that a cannon be returned that the citizens of Gonzales had borrowed to protect them from Indian attacks. The colonists had refused and mounted an armed resistance under a hastily sewn flag made out of a wedding dress on which had been written: COME AND TAKE IT!
The Mexicans had tried but were defeated, and the cannon remained in the possession of the colonists.
Lettie’s reaction to the story had been typical. She’d laughed. “I believe I like these Texians,” she’d said. “They show fortitude and bravery against odds.”
Silas draped the swath of gauze Lettie called tulle around her neck and drew her face close to his. He’d found that amorous moments worked best for softening bad news. “Remember how we thought the incident would blow over?” he said, gazing into luminous blue eyes that, come their wedding night, he would watch close in sleep and awaken the next morning beside him. “Well, it hasn’t. The newspapers are calling the battle at Gonzales the ‘Lexington of Texas.’”
Lettie’s eyes fell seductively to his lips, quickening his desire. “And that means?”
“The Texas revolution has begun.”
Dismay flooded her enamored gaze, and she pulled against the filmy restriction. “Oh dear. Will that mean we have to delay our departure until things are more settled there?”
“We can’t delay. We must head out by March to make our destination before winter. We need to arrive in time to get shelters built and the land cleared for the next spring’s planting.”
His lips were making a slow descent from her forehead to her lips, and he heard her little sigh of pleasure. “Don’t worry, my love,” she said dreamily. “The United States was founded on revolution. Can we expect anything less of Texas?”
“You are the most wonderful girl,” he said, but before he could kiss her, the manse’s maid appeared in the doorway. “The new teacher is here to see you, Miss Lettie. Should I show her in?”
“Yes, by all means.”
Lettie rose to greet her visitor with a regretful look at Silas and playfully swiped the length of tulle over his head. Silas felt briefly irritated at the interruption but was glad to be relieved of further discussion of the troubles in Texas. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to be leaving my students in the hands of Sarah,” Lettie said. “I was doubtful at first, what with Sarah coming to us from the North, but God answered my prayers indeed to send us someone so competent and dedicated to teaching.”
“According to Jeremy, it was Jessica’s doing more than God’s,” Silas corrected her without Lettie’s enthusiasm. He had to wonder along with Jeremy why a single woman of Sarah Conklin’s age and beauty had accepted a teaching post so far from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Behind her charming appreciation of us, I sense a woman at odds with her surroundings,” Jeremy had commented. “I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something slightly off-key about the lovely Sarah Conklin.”
Silas paid attention to his friend’s observations. Without passing judgment, Jeremy could assess people better than anyone he’d ever known, but he knew with whom to be on guard.
“Maybe it’s the Massachusetts accent that sounds out of tune among us southerners,” Silas had suggested.
“Maybe.”
“Lettie says Sarah’s escaping a broken heart.”
“This far south? And why weren’t local applicants considered to take Lettie’s place? I know several who are qualified.”
Silas had guffawed. “I’ll bet you do, and they all wear skirts. Lettie says none of those who applied had the excellent references and teaching experience Sarah does.”
“Those qualifications had little to do with her getting the job,” Jeremy had said. “Sarah Conklin got the position because of Jessica Wyndham. They knew each other from school in Boston. Sarah’s the sister of one of her classmates. Papa Wyndham pulled strings to get her hired at Jessica’s request.”
“Well, as the school’s main benefactor, I suppose Carson feels he can take that right, but, in any event, the children of Willow Grove are getting a first-rate teacher.”
Originally, Silas had considered that Jeremy’s reservation toward a woman who was very much his type—independent and self-contained—was the result of his romantic relationship with one of the “local applicants” who had coveted the position and he was piqued that she didn’t get it. There was also the surprise that the comely new schoolmistress had not shown a flicker of interest in Silas’s handsome and eligible bachelor friend on the social occasions she had been in his company. Yet, for Jeremy to give her rebuff any more than a second’s amused thought was unlike him as well. There was something about Sarah Conklin that persistently did not ring true to him.
Lettie greeted her replacement with outstretched hands when she was shown into the room. “Good morning, Sarah. Father has Jimsonweed all harnessed up for you. You’ll find our horse very manageable.” She turned to explain to Silas. “Sarah has come to borrow Jimsonweed and our wagon for a ride into Charleston this morning. She’s to pick up a shipment of books for the children at the post office. Sarah, are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“Oh, no, no!” Sarah held up both hands to emphasize her objection. “I couldn’t possibly drag you away from all you have to do here.” She gestured toward the overflowing table and then acknowledged Silas as if noticing his presence for the first time. “Good morning, Mr. Toliver.”
Silas returned a brief nod. “Good morning, Miss Conklin.” There was no mistaking the glacial cast that fell over her features at sight of him before the frost was thawed by an immediate smile he thought forced. Did she dislike men in general after her broken love affair, or was it something about him and Jeremy and Michael, brother of Jessica and son of her powerful benefactor, that doused the warmth in her?
The question was no concern of his, Silas decided. Lettie liked her, and that was all that mattered. He left the women to discuss Sarah’s request before his fiancée suggested he drive her into Charleston to collect her books. Silas could think of no one he’d rather less spend time with than the frosty Sarah Conklin, and he had an appointment to meet Carson Wyndham, hat in hand, at noon.