The Gifted (39 page)

“You are still the same girl, Jessamine. Only the outward wrappings have changed.” He leaned down to look directly into her face. “Remember that. Dresses aren’t who you are. Who you are is inside. In your heart. Perhaps that is the way you are most like your beautiful mother. She had a very loving heart and I sense the same with you.”

“Sister Sophrena has always told me there are many rooms within one’s heart and that it is important to keep those rooms open and free of the clutter of sin or improper thought.”

“Not bad advice,” her father said. “But what of love? Are you supposed to keep a room open to love?”

“All rooms are to be full of love for one’s sisters and brothers.” She kept her voice soft. It didn’t seem right to talk of the Believers’ love in this room with music that was not for worship and men and women moving out to dance with arms wrapped around one another. The dances were nothing like that of the Believers. But even as she knew she could not do them, she wondered how it would feel to glide across a dance floor holding to a man.

Without thought, her eyes found Tristan Cooper on the other side of the room. He was not dancing, but instead seemed to be waiting for her to look his way.

Her father noted the direction of her eyes. “But perhaps you have saved some room for a forbidden love?”

She quickly whipped her eyes away from Tristan as a blush rose up in her cheeks. “Nay.” She stared down at her hands with the stains hidden by the gloves once more.

Her father made a sound that might have been a laugh but it carried little levity. “And so the plot thickens.”

She looked up at him, but he was staring across the room. Not toward Tristan as she expected, but toward the princess. Toward Laura. Her father’s face was devoid of any expression as though he had purposely pulled a blank sheet over it.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He looked back at her and laughed again. This time the kind of laugh she’d heard often since she’d ridden away from Harmony Hill with him. “It means that I am a writer and always looking down the path at what might happen next. To the end.”

“Granny used to tell me stories,” Jessamine said. “About princes and princesses. Fairy tales she called them.”

“And they all lived happily ever after.” Her father’s smile was gentle on her.

She returned his smile. “They did. After they conquered their troubles and kissed. Such stories were not welcome at the Shaker village.”

“But you remembered them anyway.”

“I did.”

“And now you have turned into a princess.” He touched her hair softly.

She bit back the nay that wanted to escape her mouth. Nor did she mention her granny’s promise that someday her prince would come. That was all so long ago. Perhaps it was enough the prince who loved her mother had come and wanted to show her the world. But one thing was becoming clear to Jessamine. She could never be a princess. She was no longer even sure that she wanted to be a princess.

It seemed better to have a purpose, work to do, for surely one showed love for the Eternal Father by the use of the gifts one was given. A gift to be beautiful didn’t seem to be enough. One should have a gift to be useful as well. Yet, the room was full of girls who seemed to have no more on their mind than how to attract the eyes of the men in the room. The world was a much stranger place than she had expected.

“Could I go back to my room, Father?” It was the first time she had used the word. It sat oddly on her tongue.

“Tired of being a princess already, my daughter?”

“It is much different than being a sister,” she said.

“But both dance.”

“I know no dances such as this.” She motioned toward the dancers swirling past in individual circles of two.

“Worry not, my child. We all have a dance we know. It’s just sometimes hearing the music.” He let his hand drift down to squeeze her shoulder. “Simply give yourself more time to hear your song. To know your story. You don’t have to dance right away.”

“Do you hear your song? Know your dance?” she asked.

His smile faded. “I am not young like you, my dear. I have heard many songs, tried many dances.” Then his smile was back, fuller than ever. “But I have never tired of dancing.”

She knew he wasn’t talking only of moving to the music the way the couples were doing on the dance floor, but she said anyway, “Then go dance. I will be fine sitting here watching and listening. And learning of the dances of the world.”

“I did promise a couple of ladies a dance,” he said hesitantly as he looked out at the dancers.

The music stopped and the men and women began moving back to the chairs around the dance floor, some still holding on to one another, flushed and laughing.

“Don’t be concerned for me, Father. I am not afraid to sit here alone. There is much to entertain my eyes.”

He looked back at her. “I doubt you’ll be alone for long. I’ll keep an eye out in case any of the men are too attentive.”

She watched him go with something akin to relief. It was good to be alone for a moment, even if she was in a sea of noise as the music started up again. She watched her father speak to a lady she had not met and then escort her out on the dance floor. It was as crowded as the meetinghouse floor on a Sunday morning, but here there was no order to the dances. Here they seemed to move wherever they willed but amazingly didn’t bang into one another. Occasionally her father would send her a smiling look. She made sure to have an answering smile at the ready.

And all the time she watched the dancers and let her eyes land on every ornate decoration in the gold-gilded room, she thought of the retiring bell ringing at Harmony Hill and of the tears that might be in Sister Sophrena’s eyes as she wrote in her journal. She thought of her dear sister writing of her as a former sister and had to swallow back her own tears.

One dance went by. Her father brought her a cup of mixed juices, apple she thought, mixed with something else with a bit more tang. Then he went back out to dance with Laura who seemed to almost float above the floor, the very way a princess should dance. Jessamine’s eyes sought Tristan Cooper to see how a prince danced, but he was standing to the side, watching as she was watching. He caught her eyes on him and smiled across the floor. Her heart began to beat faster and memories of the garden came to mind even as the heat in the room suddenly seemed oppressive.

The garden. Her father had sat her there by the doors to the garden so she could step outside if she needed a breath of fresh air. Other couples had been going past her and through the doors. Most returned after a short time as though unable to stay away from the music.

Jessamine stood up and slipped out through the doors. She sighed with relief as the night wrapped around her. She could still hear the music but it was muffled. Besides, it wasn’t the music that had so banged against her ears but the talk and the laughter. She had caught snatches of conversation between people as they moved past her, but little of it made much sense to her.

It was better in the garden. Even if this garden was unlike any at Harmony Hill. In the moonlight she could see white benches scattered among the plantings. A place to sit with no purpose other than looking at the flowers, for one could not weed from the high benches or pick any of the blooms or dig the roots. But she knew from Sister Abigail that some people cultivated flowers for no reason other than enjoyment of their beauty. In this place with the ruffled dresses and soft hands of the princesses, she had no doubt that was the purpose of the gardens. Beauty. Pure and simple. Understanding the ways of the world was not going to be simple.

Behind her the door opened and closed again. She stepped into the shadow of an overhanging bush and waited for the couple to pass by her. But the person didn’t walk past. The man stopped in a patch of moonlight on the path and spoke directly to her.

“And so we meet again in a garden, Jessamine.”

25

Tristan stood in the moonlight and waited for Jessamine to speak. He’d been acutely aware of her across the dance floor all evening even when his eyes weren’t on her. Others had come to engage him in conversation. He had taken Laura a glass of the punch, but he didn’t try to dance with his awkward bandaged arm. More than once he started to cross the room to see if Jessamine might need something. To see if she might need him. But each time the thought of his mother’s disapproval stopped him.

He was surprised his mother hadn’t ordered him to sit with her so she could make sure he didn’t do anything foolish. She did keep looking his way in spite of the distraction of the lawyer dancing attendance on her. Mr. Ridenour appeared to be interested in more than his mother’s signature on the documents he’d brought to Kentucky for her perusal, and if the blush in her cheeks was any indication, she was more than a little flattered by his admiration. When the band began playing a slow song, she even allowed the man to lead her out to join the couples on the ballroom floor. Jessamine slipping out the veranda doors into the garden at the same instant seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

The melody drifted out the windows to trail after him into the garden. The strains of music combined with the sweet scent of roses and honeysuckle spread an aura of romance in the air. But if Jessamine felt it, she didn’t step from the shadows to welcome it. Or him.

“There are no spying eyes here, Jessamine. In this world, you can talk to me without fear of censure. So please come walk with me.” He held his hand out toward her. “The garden is lovely in the moonlight.”

At last she stepped out of the shadows into the moonlight beside him, but she didn’t take his hand. “It is beautiful here.” Her voice was low, barely audible as though she worried about, if not watching eyes, then listening ears.

“Yes, yes it is,” he said without taking his eyes off her. She was what was beautiful. So much so he could barely breathe. “You look like a princess.”

“Nay,” she said with an impatient shake of her head. “I am not a princess.” She jerked off one of her gloves and held her hand up toward his face. “See. This hand could never belong to a princess.”

“Perhaps princess wasn’t right. Perhaps what I thought might be true on my first sight of you remains the best. An angel. An amazing angel.” He might have been slow to hold Laura’s hand, but he had no such inhibitions with Jessamine. He caught her hand in his.

She drew in a sudden breath, but she didn’t pull away. Instead she wrapped her fingers around his. “Is this a custom of the world?”

“It is.” He kept his hold firm as he lowered their clasped hands down between them. “When two people walk in a garden.”

He began to move along the path and she easily fell in step beside him. He wanted to get away from the veranda doors before his mother or Laura saw him there with Jessamine. He didn’t really think Laura would care, but they had come to an agreement that afternoon. A man preparing to propose to one woman shouldn’t be holding hands and strolling through a garden with another. But how could he turn loose of an angel?

“A princess, an angel,” she was saying, a tinge of regret sounding in her voice. “I am not near to either one. I am no more and no less than I was this morn in my Shaker dress. Just someone who wonders about things that might be best left unimagined.” She looked back over her shoulder toward the ballroom. “The girl at the table with us, Laura, she is the princess.”

“She does have princess ways,” Tristan agreed. “But it’s a learned thing. A way she’s been taught since a child. And something you could learn too.”

When she didn’t say anything, he went on. “If you want to.”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? What I want.” She let out a deep breath and looked up at the sky above them. A few stars were bright enough to show in the moonlight. “When my father came this morning, it seemed the only choice. But now the world seems too strange. Too different.”

“How so?”

“Believers seek the simple life. Those of the Ministry pray and ask God and Mother Ann how things should be done and then they pass along the answers they hear. All is ordered and there is no need to think of one’s path. It is laid out before you.”

“But you wondered about paths into the world?”

“I don’t know that I wondered of the paths, but I did wonder about many things. And about feelings that aren’t a Believer’s feelings. Sister Sophrena warned me such wondering could lead me into sin.” Jessamine paused. When she went on, her voice had the seasoning of tears. “I’m sure she thinks it has. And perhaps she is right. I am here alone in a garden planted for nothing more than beauty, holding a man of the world’s hand as if I found such an action as natural as breathing. She would not believe how quickly I have turned from the Shaker way and surrendered myself to the treacherous ways of the world.”

“Would you rather I didn’t hold your hand?”

“Oh, nay,” she said quickly, tightening her fingers around his a bit. “I was saying what Sister Sophrena would think. Not my own thoughts.” She looked down at their clasped hands and her voice was little more than a whisper as she went on. “I cannot deny that I like this worldly custom.”