The Gifted (40 page)

Tristan barely heard the music from the ballroom now. He wasn’t sure if that was because they had walked that far into the garden or if the blood pulsing through him was blocking it out. He led Jessamine over to a bench under a tree beside a hedge of roses. Moonlight pushed through the leaves above their heads and dappled them with light. It would be the perfect place for a man to go down on his knee in front of a lady. A place for him to seal his arrangement with Laura.

He pushed the thought aside. That was a plan for another day, another time. Tonight he was with an angel, and if it was a good place for a proposal, it was an even better place for a stolen kiss. There would be no Shaker bell to break the spell over them this evening.

As if divining his thoughts, she turned her face toward his just as she had in the Shaker garden. The shadows were not so deep he couldn’t see her eyes, so pure with an innocence that touched something deep within him. A spiritual place he thought had been lost forever on the Mexican battlefields. But now he felt, almost knew, that him being with this girl at this time was meant to be. Perhaps the Lord did really write love in the stars.

“Do you believe in God?” His words seemed to surprise her. In fact they surprised him. Talking about God was hardly the best way to lead into a kiss. And he did want to kiss her. So much so he could almost taste her lips against his.

“How could anyone not believe in God? He’s everywhere. In everything.”

“Is that what the Shakers taught you?”

“Nay.” She seemed unaware of falling back into the Shaker speech. “Well, they did, but I have ever known it to be true. He has been with me always, ever since I can remember.” She sounded perplexed as she stared at him. “Is he not with you?”

“My times have not been as innocent as yours. I have been witness to many things God would surely want no part of.”

“I have been told there is much in the world such as that. Wars and battlegrounds. Thievery and killing. Such was shut from my life at Harmony Hill, but even before I was taken to the Shakers, my granny taught me the Lord would ever be with me.”

“Even now?” he asked when she paused.

“Yea. Always.”

She stared at him, expecting him to agree. He could see the depths of her faith in her eyes, the expectation that her truth would be his truth. She did not have his doubts. She had not seen his sights. But he had no desire to tear down her belief, so he kept silent.

“You think I shouldn’t feel that way because I have turned my back on my sisters and brothers.” Her voice quivered as she looked away from him toward the glow of light radiating from the ballroom at the other end of the garden.

He grasped her hand tighter. “No—” he started.

She jerked her hand away and interrupted him with fierce words. “He is with me even now. Even here. Even if I have let my feet stray on wrong paths where evil might pursue me. Granny showed me where in the Bible it says nothing can separate me from the love of God. Not death, not life. Not angels or powers or things present or to come. She said the only thing that could separate me from God’s love was me. She said even then God would be there loving me, but I might refuse to see it.”

He looked at her and didn’t know what to say. Why in the world had he asked her if she believed in God when all he wanted was to feel her lips surrendering to his? Maybe he had lost his sense of romance. Along with his faith. He wanted to go back and change his words. Go back even farther to the day when his soul had emptied out of belief and somehow change that day. Cling to at least a modicum of the kind of faith Jessamine had.

But some things couldn’t be changed. He told himself he should stand up, escort her back to the ballroom, turn his eyes from her to Laura. That was where his future lay. Where he had already promised his future. Not with the woman beside him. Not with the beautiful Jessamine. The empty place inside him yawned wider. He searched for something to say to break the uneasy silence between them, but every word that came to mind seemed foolish and wrong.

She did not appear to be as burdened by the silence as he was. Instead she seemed to be in deep thought as she turned to meet his eyes in the shadowy moonlight. She looked at him a long moment before she said softly, “Are you refusing to see it?”

“See what?” His voice was husky. He was seeing what his heart wanted to see. Her face only inches from his. He was feeling what he wanted to feel. Her breath intermingling with his.

“God’s love,” she whispered.

“I want to see it.”

“Then you will.” She raised her hand up toward his face before letting it hover there in the air as though afraid to allow her fingers to do the bidding of her heart.

He captured her hand once more. As though holding something of great treasure, he lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed her knuckles. He took her hand and rubbed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. He savored the feel of her skin against his.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t look away from him. He released her hand to run his fingers down her cheek to her lips just as he had in the Shaker garden. She kept her hand on his face, her fingertips as soft as eiderdown against his skin.

He slid his hand around to the back of her neck and dropped his head down to cover her lips with his. He had intended a mere brush of lips so as not to frighten her, but at the touch of her lips he forgot his noble intent. Her hand climbed away from his cheek up into his hair and he was lost. A man drowning with no desire to be saved.

Then on the other side of the roses, a twig snapped. A furtive sound somehow that was like a dash of cold water. Tristan lifted his head to see who was intruding on their moment. Nobody was visible, but it was as though the spying Shaker eyes might be on them still, even though they were miles from the Shaker village.

“Oh my!” Jessamine whispered as she dropped her hand back to her lap. “It is no wonder some of my sisters must struggle to forget such things of the world.”

Then she noted his posture of listening. “What is it?” she asked. “Are there those who watch here the same as at Harmony Hill? Have we broken rules?”

“No, no.” Tristan tried to push away his uneasy feeling. It could have been only a raccoon or an opossum looking for a dropped bit of food. Nobody would be spying on them in the garden. Nobody but perhaps his mother. “The gardens here at the Springs bloom with romance as abundantly as with roses. Romance and kisses. But it may be that I should not have kissed you.”

“Why?” With no feminine wiles, her question was blunt and fair.

“Why indeed,” he said as he fought the desire to pull her close again. But there was his mother. There was Laura. There was his promise. There was Jessamine’s delightful innocence. “Because a lady has to guard her reputation in the world.”

“So even though such contacts of the lips are not uncommon, they are not always good. Even in the world.” She was silent a moment as if trying to understand what could not be understood. “As you guessed in our good doctor’s garden at Harmony Hill, I have wondered about kissing and how it would feel.”

She raised her hand up and soundly kissed the back of it. Tristan felt a consuming desire to replace her hand with his lips, but he made himself sit apart from her. Silent. Sadness welling up in him. He should have never followed her out into the garden. Some temptations were better avoided.

She appeared not to notice his silence as she held her hand toward him. “See, that was nothing but lips on skin. That’s all I felt. Yet when it was your lips against mine, it was as if I stood in a whirlwind of feelings.”

“What sort of feelings?” The words almost stuck in his throat.

“Good feelings. Apple blossoms and butterflies in the air and birds singing. Like I could spin in joy.” She looked at him. “Perhaps wanton feelings. Sister Sophrena has often warned me that Satan can use such feelings to entice us into sin.”

She looked at him with hope he might tell her something that could chase away her feelings of wrong. Hope that slipped away from her face when he didn’t answer her quickly enough.

“You think it was wrong.” Her voice was flat. Her smile gone.

“No, not wrong,” he said at last, his words too late to be convincing. “Troublesome, but not wrong.”

“Troublesome sounds very wrong.” She stared down at her hands and sighed. “The world is indeed very troublesome for one such as I who oft leaps before I look. But I did look. As we left the eating area. And I did see. I simply didn’t want to believe.”

“Believe what?”

“You love the princess. As a prince should.”

“Prince? Are you talking about a fairy tale?” He frowned a little, trying to understand.

“Nay, I’m talking about love,” she said very softly as she looked up at him.

“Love,” he echoed. He wanted to say more, but how could he claim love for this girl in front of him? He barely knew her, but there was little doubt he had lost his head and given her his heart. That was going to be very troublesome indeed.

“Sister Edna was right. I have put my feet on a very slippery slope with naught to keep me from falling into sin.” She stood and stepped back from him up onto the path.

“Wait, Jessamine.” He rose to his feet and reached for her, but she was as elusive as a moonbeam.

“Nay.” She picked up her skirts and rushed away much the same way she had run from the Shaker doctor’s garden.

“Wait.” He started after her, but what could he say if he caught her? What could he promise that would be true? He could tell her it wasn’t a princess he loved, but an angel. He thought of calling those words after her, but even if she heard him and believed what he said, the truth of that didn’t make his situation one bit different. In a few days, at the midsummer ball, he was going to propose to Laura. She was going to accept, and they would both leave behind their true loves and begin their life together. For family honor, prestige, money. But was that enough?

The brush behind him rattled, and he jerked around to see someone moving away down the path. He took a couple of steps after the shadowy figure, but stopped himself. The garden was open to all. Other couples would be strolling in the moonlight. He had no reason to feel suspicious of a crackle of brush. None at all.

He tried to push the uneasy feeling out of his head. Perhaps that came from being shot in the woods. Was every rustle of brush going to set him on guard now? But nobody was going to shoot him in Dr. Hargrove’s garden with ballroom music floating out to his ears.

Up ahead of him the veranda door opened and closed. She was gone from him. He had no right to chase after her even though she had taken his heart with her. He remembered Laura staring out over the lake earlier that day. Would their every day together be filled with such moments of regret?

He was almost back to the veranda when he saw his mother on the pathway in front of him. He looked around for the lawyer, hoping to see him there ready to stroll with his mother, but no, she was alone. Waiting for him. Even in the dim light, he had no trouble seeing how her mouth was twisted in an angry knot well before he reached her.

“What in the world do you think you are doing, Tristan?” she said in a fierce whisper when he reached her side. “Are you trying to ruin all our plans?”

“Calm yourself, Mother. Nothing has changed.”

“So you think, but what if Laura noted your dalliance with that Shaker girl? What if she refuses to marry you now? We’ll be ruined.”

Tristan had no words to answer her. Inside he already felt ruined.

26

Jessamine was relieved when her father offered to escort her to her room. The music hadn’t stopped. Couples continued to whirl about on the dance floor and also to slip past her into the garden. But Jessamine was ready to leave it behind. She needed time to figure out the world.

She couldn’t think straight with so much new all around her. Mostly she couldn’t think straight with Tristan Cooper there in front of her talking to the princess, Laura. Not while her own lips continued to burn from his kiss. A kiss that had meant nothing to him. Princes probably kissed a different girl every evening. But the kiss had exploded inside her like a shooting star that left a burnt streak across the sky. The trail of the kiss would evermore be on her heart.

Her father stood inside the door of her room and said he would find a maid to help her get ready for bed.

“Nay, there is no need,” she said quickly. She had felt uncomfortable earlier with a woman she did not know helping her into the dress. And to call some person away from her nighttime rest so late into the night seemed altogether wrong.

“Are you sure?” He studied her face. “You might need assistance in undoing your buttons or taking down your hair. A maid can tend to your dress and lay out your nightclothes.”

They had forgotten nightclothes when they were at Mrs. Browning’s, but while they were at dinner, a frilly nightdress with pink ribbons and lace had appeared. It was folded on the bed waiting for her.

“I can surely do such myself,” she told him. Then at the look on his face, she added, “Or is that against the rules here?”

He touched her shoulder. “No, no rules here. Not like at the Shaker village.”