Chapter Seventy-Six
It had been a morning of visits with her grandchildren. Vernon first, who tapped on her door as Jessica was dressing. “Granmama, will you help me decide what David and I can get Poppy for her birthday?” and later, at breakfast, when everyone else had eaten and gone, David, her favorite, had stayed behind. Jessica was the only one in the household with whom her younger grandson could discuss his passion of baseball. It seemed that John “Monte” Ward had become the first pitcher to hit two home runs in a game when his New York Gothams defeated the Boston Beaneaters 10 to 9 in May.
“Wouldn’t that have been something to see, Granmama?” he’d asked.
“It sure would have,” she’d agreed.
“Maybe you and I can go see a game together one of these days.”
“I’ll count on it,” Jessica said.
Now Regina had come to call. From the gazebo, Jessica watched her granddaughter let herself out the screened back door of the house. “I thought I’d find you out here,” she called to her grandmother.
Nothing much to think about, Jessica thought, but fondly as she watched Regina pick up her skirts and daintily make her way down the back steps to the brick walk leading to the gazebo. Weather permitting, Jessica always sat in the swing this time of day to have her midmorning tea. Regina had a little of her mother’s vacuity in her, but it added an endearing quality to her sweetness of nature denied Priscilla. It was impossible not to adore her.
“I brought an extra cup,” Regina said. “You don’t mind sharing your pot with me, do you?”
“I’m delighted with the company as always,” Jessica said, making room on the swing. “What do you have there? Is that the package of long-awaited patterns from Tippy?”
Regina giggled. “I think it’s darling the way you call one of the most famous fashion designers in America Tippy when everybody else calls her Isabel.”
“She wasn’t always Isabel. Which pattern did you choose?”
“Well, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.” Regina removed three envelopes from a glued paper sack, the new type of packaging material for mailing lightweight goods. “I need to enlist your help with Daddy.”
Jessica poured Regina a cup of tea. “I can’t imagine why you’d need my help with your father. You have only to ask, and he will do your bidding.”
Regina smiled. “Not about something like this,” she said. “I want Armand’s tailor to make the dress for my birthday party from this design”—she handed Jessica one of the three colorfully illustrated envelopes—“but Mother and I agree Daddy will think it’s too daring. She’d like me to choose one of the more modest ones, but I want you to convince Daddy that this is the one for me.”
Jessica drew her spectacles from her dress pocket to study the illustration on the envelope containing tissue pattern pieces cut approximately to Priscilla’s dress measurements. The evening gown was billed as an “Isabel” design, created for the E. Butterick Company in New York. Tippy had been working for the company since 1876 when Ebenezer Butterick offered her the position as head designer of his pattern empire. Since his revolutionary introduction of graded patterns for home use in 1867, it had grown to include one hundred branch offices and one thousand agencies throughout the United States and Canada, Paris, London, Vienna, and Berlin. The gown featured a low neckline and a waist the circumference of a wasp’s middle. Jessica could understand why Thomas would object. At almost sixteen, Regina’s figure was voluptuous—“another attraction we all agree to blame on you, Mother,” her son accused with a father’s sigh and roll of his eyes.
“I’m going to be sixteen, Granmama,” Regina said. “It’s time Daddy realized that I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“Fathers never realize their daughters are not little girls anymore,” Jessica said. She squinted at the pattern. “What if the seamstress raised the neckline just a little and dropped the shoulders a bit more? That way you still have the right amount of flesh showing for the same effect.”
“Oh, Granmama, you’re a genius,” Regina cried, throwing her arms around Jessica’s shoulders. “Thank you for not suggesting lace, like Mother did. Can you imagine lace on the neckline of a dress like this? It would simply ruin the effect I’m trying to achieve.”
“And what effect is that? To slay the heart of every boy in the room?”
Regina settled herself comfortably beside Jessica on the swing. “Not every boy,” she said. “Only one. Tyler McCord.”
“The rancher’s son.”
“The same. Oh, Granmama, he’s…beautiful. So tall and strong—like Daddy.”
“Yes, he’s quite a handsome fellow,” Jessica agreed.
“And even nicer than he is handsome. Granmama, how old were you when you married?”
Uh-oh, Jessica thought. She could guess the reason behind the question. “Eighteen,” she answered.
“You’re going to tell me that eighteen when you married is different than being eighteen now, aren’t you?” Regina tilted her head and gave Jessica an arch look. On days when her mother did not have her “receiving,” Regina wore her abundance of brick-red hair loose and flowing, refusing to sit for the hour it took Amy to tether her crowning glory into a french twist on top of her head. An April breeze stirred her tresses, lifting strands away from her pale, freckle-sprinkled face. Jessica never looked into her granddaughter’s green-flecked hazel eyes but that she tried to recall Major Duncan’s. After a few weeks of his acquaintance, she’d never looked into them again.
“Not at all,” she answered Regina’s assumption. “Eighteen is eighteen in any generation, though years do not always reflect one’s age.”
Regina took a sip of tea and gazed at Jessica over its rim. “Were you eighteen when you reached eighteen?”
“In some ways, but not in all.”
“Were you ready for marriage?”
Jessica hesitated, then smiled. “I was not ready for Silas Toliver.”
“Really?” Regina’s eyes grew larger. Jessica knew she loved these moments alone with her when she could pry memories of her youth out of her grandmother. “Was he ready for you?”
“I believe I can truthfully say he wasn’t.”
Regina’s laughter pealed across the yard, the sound young and pure and happy a week from her sixteenth birthday. When it subsided, she said, her tone serious, “Tyler is definitely ready for me.”
“That’s what’s worrying your father. At sixteen he believes you’re definitely not ready for him.”
“But I will be at eighteen. Granmama, I want to marry Tyler. Daddy, of course, is having a fit. He doesn’t think Tyler is good enough for me.”
“Well, now,” Jessica said, “that brings up another father principle when it comes to daughters. Fathers think no man is good enough for their little girls.”
“Did your father think Grandfather Silas wasn’t good enough for you?”
Jessica took a moment to sip her tea. Regina waited, her gaze anticipatory of her answer. “I’m sure he didn’t,” Jessica said, patting her lips with her napkin, “but your grandfather surprised him by making me happy. What color and fabric do you think you’ll choose for the dress?”
“Oh, I’ll have to consult with Armand on that,” Regina said, her attention instantly diverted to the pattern. “I think a dramatic color in satin, don’t you, with elbow-length gloves in the same fabric…”
Jessica heard without listening. Her thoughts were on Jeremy Sr. He had hoped that one of his grandsons, Jeremy III or Brandon, would win the heart of Regina—“a mingling of our families’ blood, Jess. What could be a sweeter twist of fate?” The twinkle in his eye had made clear his wish that in a great-grandchild he would have a part of Jessica Toliver to have and to hold.
Camellia had died in the spring of 1880, three years ago. Jeremy’s sons had homes of their own, and their father rambled around in his baronial mansion by himself with only a cook and housekeeper to see to his domestic needs. When he wasn’t working twelve-hour days, and his children and friends weren’t allaying as many of his empty hours as he’d permit, he filled his time at home reading voraciously. Of all the families, he was the best informed. It was from Jeremy that Jessica learned of the experiments of a Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, whose research in cross-breeding garden peas had led to the discovery that the basic principles of heredity governing color, shape, and height in plants can apply to traits in people and animals. Jeremy showed her a Chapter in a book that explained how certain traits in human beings, termed dominant and recessive and relating to everything from hair color to temperament, could disappear in the second generation but reappear in the next.
“So now we have an explanation for Regina’s red hair and freckles and winsome figure,” Jeremy said.
Jessica was usually uncomfortable with any reference comparing her granddaughter’s physical features to hers. It was only a skip and hop to Major Andrew Duncan in the memory of anyone who remembered him. But Jeremy had given her even more of a red herring to throw the dogs off the scent. She’d borrowed the book and showed it to Thomas. “I think you’ll find this interesting,” she said. “The marked chapter explains how I’m to blame.”
In a rare display of affection, though Jessica loved the girl dearly, she placed her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulders and hugged her to her. In a week, Regina would be sixteen. In another two years she would be married. She would leave her family to go live with her husband on his ranch. She would have her own family. As she grew older, enmeshed in the duties of wife and mother, time would assert its will on her face and figure. The simple passing of the years would eliminate any sudden connection to the union major who came to Howbutker long ago. What could possibly spark it? Regina had only to get through the next two years, and Jessica could foresee no situation or occasion that would bring up the question of her paternity.
“I’ll put in a good word for the dress with your father,” she said.