Chapter Eighty-Six
Thomas, after stabling his horse, always entered his mansion through the kitchen door. In the spotless, savory environs of hanging pots and pans, scrubbed chopping block, cavernous sink, and work surfaces, he could count on being greeted by Petunia when she’d been alive and whom he still missed, and now by Amy and her daughter, Sassie. Amy would inquire about his day and was genuinely interested in his report. Sometimes he’d sit down with a cup of coffee to listen to her share gossip telegraphed through the grapevine always humming from house to house on Houston Avenue. Occasionally, especially since his mother had been gone on her trip, Thomas would unburden himself of worries regarding Somerset and concerns of the city council. He knew his confidences would never go past the screened back door. There was always something delicious to snatch on his way through the kitchen, and today he noticed a heaping plate of his son’s favorite pecan cookies. Vernon was coming to supper and would stay through the weekend.
“Mister Thomas, your wife would like to see you in the morning room,” Amy said by way of greeting. Her anxious tone and pointed gaze warned him to be on guard. If Priscilla had her way, she would send Amy with her husband and daughter to the plantation to pick cotton alongside her uncle Jasper’s families. Jasper’s two sons, Rand and Willie, had returned to Somerset after finding Kansas overcrowded and inhospitable and the farming opportunities not as advertised. Priscilla may be mistress of the house, but the staff answered to Amy, whose first loyalty was to Jessica. Thomas was aware that the domestic situation nettled the hell out of his wife.
“Amy said you wished to see me,” Thomas said, entering the morning room.
He hated what Priscilla had done to a room that had served as a sanctuary to him when he was growing up. Light had spilled everywhere through the window sheers, now darkened by heavy draperies, and there had been comfortable chairs on which to sit. He remained standing. Priscilla got up abruptly from her oversized desk, her clenched jaw giving notice of her anger.
“I have taken much abuse from you, Thomas, but I will not take this,” she said.
Abuse? He had never so much as touched a fingernail of his wife’s hand in anger, and she spent money as freely as rice thrown at a wedding. Thomas said, “And what is it that you will not take from me, Priscilla? Enlighten me, please.”
She approached him. Her slightly thicker waist and larger hips betrayed her entry into middle age, but her face still held evidence of her former beauty. It had been a long time since her startlingly pretty looks had quickened his pulse.
“Jacqueline Chastain,” she said through tightly gripped teeth.
Involuntarily, he jerked his head back. “What about her?”
“You’re having an affair with her—or at least would like to.”
Thomas let out a little guffaw. “Who told you that?”
“I have my sources, but I don’t need them. Any blind idiot can figure out why you stop by the DuMont Department Store every Wednesday to meet Armand.”
Thomas’s brow rose. “Because it’s his place of business, perhaps?”
“Don’t play the innocent with me. You could meet him at the Fairfax for your weekly luncheon session.”
“Diners are requested not to hitch their horses by the restaurant if possible, for obvious reasons. As you know, the windows face the street. Besides, Armand and I enjoy the walk.”
Priscilla’s lip twisted. “You can give any excuse you want, but it holds no water with me, Thomas. I know that you stop by Mrs. Chastain’s counter every time you enter the store. Your face goes through a metamorphosis. You’ve been described as looking like a schoolboy bringing his favorite teacher an apple.”
“By whom? And how in the world do you know a word like metamorphosis?”
She looked ready to slap him. Her teeth clenched tighter. “Never mind how I know and don’t think the rest of Howbutker doesn’t know either, but I’ll tell you this, Thomas…” Priscilla stepped closer, so near that Thomas could see the fine hair on her lip, the tiny pores on her nose through a thin film of perspiration. “If you make a fool of me by consorting with Mrs. Chastain, I will make you sorry for the rest of your life. I’ll hurt you beyond belief, beyond your endurance. Trust me on that, you hear me?”
Thomas stepped back from her fury. He had not been the husband she’d banked on when she agreed to marry him, he granted her that. He’d tried to make up for it by indulging her spending, tolerating the exalted position she gave herself as the wife of Thomas Toliver, the snob she’d become. He despised snobs, people who thought themselves better than others by luck of birth or marriage, positions they had not earned for themselves. Translated, snob meant literally “without nobility” and that applied to Priscilla. He could not tolerate such arrogance even from her and met it with a tongue given to wry taunts.
“You continue to amaze me, Priscilla. First metamorphosis and now this. What makes you think you have the wherewithal to make good such threats to me?”
She closed the space between them and now he could smell the alcohol on her breath. She had been at the sherry. “I know things about your family that would singe the hair on every single head in this county if they were known.”
Thomas’s gaze widened inquiringly. “Really? You’ve made discoveries in my family’s history to provide you that kind of fodder for salacious tittle-tattle? I’d love to hear them. In regard to meaty tales of that sort, I’ve always thought the Tolivers rather dull fare.”
She moved away from him, fear from the realization that she’d said too much flitting across her face. For the thousandth time, Thomas wondered how he could have been so self-duped to believe this woman the perfect wife for him. He supposed the surprise of her interest in his family’s history, especially his ties to English royalty, had convinced him he had proposed to the right woman. No detail of family legend or fact had escaped her curiosity. He’d been delighted when Priscilla jumped on the slightest tidbit of Toliver and Wyndham background dropped innocently at the table, usually resulting in his father diverting the conversation to a history lesson.
Thomas had gone away to war happy that Priscilla was willing to instill in their children knowledge and appreciation of the roots from which he came. Such understanding bound descendants to family and to the land, committed them to continue what their father and his father before him had begun. Whatever was to be his fate, Thomas remembered thinking, Priscilla, under the tutelage of Silas Toliver, would not allow his children to forget who they were and the duty they owed their family name.
What a fool he had been!
“You were saying, my dear?” he inquired politely.
His wife’s bluster was like a sea swell whose force has suddenly collapsed. Her Dutch courage had deserted her. She stepped farther away from him, her posture crumpling, and sputtered, “You—you just be careful of your step…that’s all I’m saying, Thomas. I will not have you embarrass our children.”
“I would never embarrass my children, Priscilla, and please hear what I’m saying to you. If I ever hear a word of your suspicions of a liaison between Mrs. Chastain and me uttered to anyone else, I will make you wish you hadn’t. I am not thinking of myself or you or even our children. I am thinking of Mrs. Chastain, who is totally innocent of your unfounded accusations. Whatever makes you think she would indulge in an affair with a married man? I am, therefore, not likely to be guilty of the charge you’ve leveled against me.”
Thomas let the icy implication hang in a silence in which Priscilla appeared too stung to speak. “And tell your little spy in the DuMont Department Store that I’ll have her fanny fired if I ever get wind of a whisper of slander against Mrs. Chastain,” he went on. “I’ll hold her personally responsible.”
A throat cleared behind them. Thomas and Priscilla whirled to the sound. Vernon stood in the doorway. “I’ve come for supper, Mother and Daddy,” he said.