Chapter Seventy-Three
Priscilla paused at the door of Jessica’s suite. No matter that every member of the family was gone from the house for the rest of the afternoon and she’d made sure the servants were well engaged downstairs, she glanced up and down the wide gallery before opening the door. She felt the familiar roil in her stomach. Even after five or six of these secret sorties into Jessica’s room, she still trembled from the possibility that her mother-in-law may have forgotten something and returned, or—God forbid!—Petunia, Jessica’s watchdog. The housekeeper might pop in with fresh linens or roses from the garden or for some other reason and catch her at Jessica’s desk.
What plausible excuse could she give to explain stealing into her mother-in-law’s room and reading her private journals she’d taken from a locked compartment when she knew Jessica was away? There simply wasn’t one, and from the onset Priscilla knew her goose would be cooked with Thomas and Jessica if she were caught, but she’d thought the risk worth the minimal chance of discovery. So far Jessica hadn’t had even a whiff that anyone had been at her journals. Priscilla noted their arrangement in the stacks each time she unlocked the top cupboard of the secretary and replaced them in their exact position and the key precisely where she’d found it.
Almost from the moment Regina was born, Jessica had treated her daughter with a wariness not displayed with Vernon. For a while, Priscilla had thought it due to the firstborn grandchild taking center stage in a grandmother’s affections.
“Second grandchildren do not cause as much of a stir as the first, do they?” she’d asked her mother.
“Why, of course they do,” she’d replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Regina does not seem to hold the same fascination for Jessica that Vernon does.”
“That’s because she’s partial to boys. She’s raised only sons, thank goodness. Her nature is not warm enough for daughters, as you can testify.”
Priscilla had agreed. She and Jessica had never bonded, much to Priscilla’s disappointment, but her mother’s explanation did not account for Jessica’s fondness for Amy, and her delight in all children, regardless of gender, race, or class.
“You’re imagining things,” Thomas told her when she’d mentioned the disparity to him. “My mother shows no partiality to Vernon over Regina.”
And indeed, when David was born, on the surface of things, Thomas was right. Jessica appeared painstakingly careful in distributing her affection equally among her three grandchildren, but with Regina there was always a little reserve involved. It took a mother to see it.
Jessica’s guardedness with Regina had caused a ripple in the calm waters that Priscilla, up until then, had tried to establish in coexisting with her mother-in-law. The small jealousies she’d taken pains to control blossomed into resentments. They were the green-eyed monsters common to any daughter-in-law sharing the domain of her husband’s mother. Thomas’s implied staunch support of his mother over his wife (though Jessica never provoked a situation that called for it) began to grate. Annoyance at the children’s respect for their grandmother when they sassed their mother, and Petunia’s and the servants’ deference to Jessica when she, Priscilla, was mistress of the house rose to the surface like skin pimples—all caused by her mother-in-law’s strange disengagement from Regina.
Why, then, Priscilla asked herself, had she not seen the obvious until last December, in 1874, when her daughter was seven years old? It had struck like a thunderbolt—the key to the mystery that had been staring her in the face since Regina was born. Jessica suspected that her granddaughter was the fruit of adultery, that Major Andrew Duncan, and not Thomas, was the father of her grandchild.
That sudden realization had all but caused her to faint when the families had gathered on Christmas Eve for their annual eggnog party. They were at the DuMonts’, and the children were around the tree, opening their presents. Regina was wearing a green velvet dress with a white lace collar and a green ribbon in her hair sprigged with red berries and holly, the only girl among the boys—a princess among her lieges, Vernon and David, Abel, Jeremy III, and their younger brothers.
Bess remarked, “I declare, Jessica, your granddaughter grows to look more like you every year.”
Jessica had set her eggnog cup on its saucer with just the slightest deliberation. “I don’t see how that could be possible. Regina is so pretty.”
It was a perfectly innocuous remark, but Priscilla had fixed her mother-in-law with a stunned gaze she sensed Jessica felt but had purposefully avoided by keeping her attention on the group.
That night Priscilla had lain wide awake frozen with terror beside Thomas. What if Jessica in some unguarded, aggravated moment divulged her suspicions to Thomas? It was then that the idea of reading Jessica’s diaries had slowly crept into her numb mind. Jessica wrote in them religiously in preparation of the book she intended to write of the founding families of Howbutker. She must pour out her soul in them. What better place to learn if her fears were founded than in Jessica’s written thoughts? The journals were under lock and key, but a year ago, after Regina had been invited to tea in her grandmother’s room, she’d watched Jessica store away her current journal, lock the cabinet door, and place the key beneath an ink well. Priscilla had located the key within seconds of entering Jessica’s room.
She’d gone directly to the notebook marked 1866, the year the union occupation of Howbutker began, and found justification for her terror. It was as she’d guessed: Jessica suspected her of having had sexual relations with Major Duncan. The entry that had caused her to stifle a cry was dated August 19, 1866.
I hesitate to commit my dreadful suspicions to paper for fear these pages may be read by eyes other than mine, but my heart is heavy, and I’ve no where else to unburden it. I believe my lovely daughter-in-law is having an affair with Major Andrew Duncan. I have watched helplessly as this love-starved child has succumbed to the handsome major’s attention. She is so blinded by her infatuation with him that she cannot see what is plainly visible to me and possibly Petunia, but thank goodness, not to Thomas. He sees nothing beyond the scope of his duties to Somerset and his delight in Vernon.
And later on, another quickly written paragraph dated April 10, 1867: Regina Elizabeth Toliver was born today. She is exquisite, perfectly formed. She is fair-skinned and red haired—like me, everyone says. Well…we’ll see.
And further into the year shortly after Jessica’s fiftieth birthday, she’d written: Tippy tells me someday I’ll know whether the child is a Toliver. How will the knowledge come to us, I wonder. How will it reveal itself?
Priscilla had had to dig for these personal comments among recordings of local and national happenings, news of friends, inventions, fashions, books, music—This year of 1867, Johann Straus, the Younger, has given to our frightening world one of the most beautiful and soothing waltzes ever written, “The Blue Danube,” Jessica had written on one page. Priscilla had paused, remembering the night she’d waltzed to a Brahms composition in the arms of Major Duncan at the party he’d hosted for the townspeople. Her face grew hot with horror at herself. How could she have been so stupid not to have realized that anyone looking could see the chemistry between them?
Thomas had not looked. Priscilla had peered over Andrew’s shoulder at her husband huddled in a corner with other planters and known she was safe. He would not have noticed, in any case. She had grown so tired of handing her cup to her husband to be filled, so weary of loving a man who would never have for her the feelings she wanted and needed. He’d married her to produce an heir. Thomas was the preferred desire of her heart, but—as Jessica had observed and noted—she was starved for the kind of attention Andrew gave her and her husband did not. Was it possible the whole town, looking at Regina, wondered at what Thomas had never seen?
Priscilla had placed the journals back in their chronological order before her luck ran out. Panicked from the information she’d learned, she’d left Jessica’s room to consider its implications. Jessica had not acted on her suspicions except to withhold, consciously or not, a definite warmth from Regina that the boys enjoyed, but Priscilla had noticed a thaw toward her daughter in the last year. Perhaps Jessica had become aware of the extent to which Regina adored her, blood of her blood or no, and Jessica would never slam the door of her affections in the face of a child.
Jessica would also never tell Thomas what she suspected. Why would she? Her son and daughter-in-law were contented with each other now. Their family was thriving; their household peaceful. If their marriage was not all they’d like it to be, it was good enough. They’d each gotten what they’d bargained for. Thomas had his two boys as heirs and Priscilla the title of Mrs. Thomas Toliver, recipient of all the name entailed. She had earned and now occupied a special place in her husband’s heart. Why and for what purpose would a loving mother and grandmother wish to destroy all that?
Time would erase Major Duncan from the town’s memory. He had been gone seven years. The other day someone had trouble recalling his name. Priscilla could imagine no other threat to her peace of mind. Life did have a way of revealing the dust swept under the rug, as Jessica would say, but for the time being, Priscilla saw no reason to expect exposure.
She would never have returned to the notebooks and continued her secret missions into Jessica’s room but for a curious reference that had caught her eye and further spiked her interest in Toliver history. Priscilla could not resist investigating, and so she’d gone back to the beginning of the journals to search for its origin and meaning. She’d found numerous mentions, and in the meantime she’d gained amazing insights into the person of her mother-in-law and garnered shocking information that she would file away against the day it might serve as protection for her daughter. She had three more years to go to complete her perusal of the private life of Jessica Wyndham Toliver, and Priscilla would have learned all her mother-in-law had written of the Toliver curse.