Saving Grace (The Grace Series Book 2) (2 page)

His gifts and presents didn’t end after they married. Attached to each one was a note professing his love. She’d found it interesting that he always signed those notes with a single, simple, ‘J.’ In addition to the many trinkets, he’d spent a small fortune on her clothes. She had more beautiful gowns than she could possibly ever wear.

For their honeymoon he’d taken her to Nashville. They’d spent the week sightseeing, eating at the finest restaurants, attending operas and concerts and making love. She could still distinctly remember his sensual caresses and his whispered words of longing. More than once he told her she was perfect. He said their bodies together were perfect. He loved her long, auburn-tinted hair, too. He used to sweep it aside and kiss the very sensitive place at her nape. He said that was his favorite part of her.

That, of course, was all before she really knew him. She’d been so besotted she believed she was marrying a good man. Trent hadn’t liked Jon. He still didn’t, but early on, Trent had constantly disparaged him. The misgivings Jessica had she’d chalked up to being caused by the things Trent said. She’d believed Trent was wrong. But Trent wasn’t wrong. A few weeks into her marriage, Jon’s true nature began to emerge.

At first Jessica made excuses for his cruel treatment of the servants. He had to put Bonnie, a favored horse, down after a difficult foaling, and Jessica justified his unwarranted behavior, believing he was grieving the loss of the beloved animal. This was only one of many times she pardoned him.

Jessica knew well that colored people were no different on the inside than anyone else. She knew they had feelings, they felt pain, they were intelligent and amusing and sensitive and kind. The tone of one’s skin made no difference.

She’d tried to explain this to Jon, to help him see how wrong he was. It didn’t work. He’d promised her he would make repairs to the decrepit cabins the servants resided in, but when she reminded him, he refused. The horrible things he’d said about her students—she was wasting her time, colored people couldn’t learn—confirmed everything else that was slowly coming to light. Her students were much better judges of character than she. They were terrified of her husband and rightfully so.

He’d once told her he wanted her to enjoy herself at Bent Oak Manor, to have a life of leisure here. She’d been gullible enough to believe him. He hadn’t meant it. He didn’t want a wife. All he wanted was an overseer for his house staff. This, of course, was ludicrous. Martha, Ruth and Ditter didn’t need overseeing. Even so, Jessica knew she was right about how her husband perceived her the day he learned she was with child. She would never forget the expression on his face. He was so filled with displeasure, it was obvious. He didn’t care one bit for her, or for their baby.

But the last straw, as far as Jessica was concerned, was his joining the Ku Klux Klang

Now she knew how trusting and stupid she’d been. Now she knew what the man she married truly was—a treacherous bigot. He was arrogant, domineering and calculatingly merciless. To top off the endless list of faults, he was a drunk. His favorite pastime wasn’t listening to music. It was getting together with his Klan friends and drowning himself in whiskey.

At one time, Jessica had thought he was handsome with his neat, dark hair and angular features. She’d found his slim, well-toned frame so very attractive. But no longer. There was not one redeeming quality about him. Not one! Shortly before Christmas they had an awful quarrel. During it she told him she hated him.

This wasn’t a good Christian way to feel about someone, especially a spouse, but she couldn’t help it. She did hate him. He’d done something she couldn’t get out of her mind, something so horrendous, she didn’t know that she would ever be able to forgive him. Trent had told her about it. While on a Klan raid, Jon committed murder. He’d killed a colored man.

Had Emily been planning to marry someone other than her brother, Jessica would have cautioned her not to rush into it, like she so foolishly did. She would have advised her girlfriend to take plenty of time, to know her future spouse well, to have no doubts before the wedding. In Emily’s case, however, she didn’t need to say those things. Jessica knew her brother would do right by Emily. Trent may have only one arm, but he worked hard and would provide a comfortable home for her friend. There was only one thing about Trent that worried her. Like Jon, he was also a member of the Klan.

Jessica had tried to get her brother to see the error of his ways, but she didn’t think their talks did much good. Emily, of course, knew of Trent’s involvement, and like Jessica, Emily wished he would quit. Emily’s reasons, however, were different than Jessica’s. Emily’s primary concern was that if the police found out, Trent would be arrested. Two years before, upon orders from the federal government, the Klan was supposed to have disbanded. Since then it was illegal to be a member. This was why the name was changed to the Sovereign Sons of the South, and why members were so secretive about being part of it now.

The Klan was the reason it was imperative no one find out about Jessica’s school. Anything white people did to aid colored people was frowned upon, and it wasn’t unheard of for the Klan to prey upon those who did. They had proved that in their attack on the Reverend Sebastian Nash. He’d started a charity drive, gathering everything from clothes and food to medicine and building materials to distribute to the poor colored community. In addition, when the colored church was burned to the ground, leaving its parishioners with nowhere to worship, Reverend Nash invited them to his church. For his compassion and goodwill, he’d been maliciously beaten.

Thankfully he recovered, but he would always bear the scars. Reverend Sebastian Nash was a good-looking man. He was tall and strapping, with a fair complexion, blue eyes and soft blond hair. His handsome face would forever be disfigured by the abrasive line cutting through his pale eyebrow.

Emily was droning on about her future wedding plans. She wanted to wait until the summer, until Jessica’s baby was born. She wanted Jessica to be her maid of honor, as Emily had been for her. Of course Jessica agreed to this. She wanted to be there for her friend, and for her brother, and she wanted to take part in their very special day. Thoughts of the Klan, however, were still at the forefront of her mind. She said, “I think you should tell Trent you won’t marry him until he quits the Klan.”

Emily’s smile faded. “I wish I could, but it’s not that simple, Jessie. There are some things about the Klan that are good and there are business relationships to consider. Not only that, they preserve peace. They fight for justice. The people they go after are bad people. They have to—”

“Don’t you dare, Emily!” Jessica cut in. “Don’t you dare defend them. Don’t you dare let Trent brainwash you! You know what the Klan does is wrong. I don’t care if the people they go after are criminals, terrorizing them is wrong! Lynching people is wrong! What about justice for them? Do you ever think about them? What about their families? Their children? What I should do is turn Trent into the police. I should turn Jon in, too!”

“No! Oh my goodness, Jessie, you can’t do that! Trent is your brother! Jon is your husband!”

Emily looked so stricken, Jessica relented. As much as she’d thought about telling the police of Jon’s involvement in the Klan—and she’d thought about it often—she couldn’t. This was not because she cared for her husband, or because she worried about what would happen to her and the comfortable home she had at Bent Oak Manor. She couldn’t do it because of the many servants who depended upon their jobs. She couldn’t do it because, even though she didn’t like Trent being a member, he didn’t participate in the violence. Neither did her beloved father. If Jon were to be arrested, the police would question him, and Jessica wouldn’t put it past him to wrongly implicate both her brother and her father. “I should, but I won’t,” she told Emily. “For you, for Trent, for my father, I won’t.”

“Oh, Jessie, you scared me half to death!” Emily briefly looked away. Quietly, she asked, “Did you ever think, if you weren’t so vehemently opposed to the Klan, if you were a little more understanding, you wouldn’t be so unhappy with Jon? There was a time you loved him.”

Every now and again, Emily said things that mildly irritated Jessica, but there was nothing mild about this. She was so furious her pulse began to race. She could feel heat rising under her skin. But rather than letting her temper get the best of her, rather than telling her friend what she wanted to tell her—defending the Klan made her a spineless fool—Jessica focused on Emily’s last comment. “I never loved Jon. I never told him I loved him and I never will!”

“Oh, Jessie,” Emily murmured sadly.

Jessica rose. She could barely stand to look at her friend. “Oh dear, look at the time. I’m sorry, but I have to cut this visit short. I have to go.”

“Where?” Emily stood up, too. “Where are you going?”

Under any other circumstances Jessica might have confided in her friend, but she was too enraged. She was contemplating how to respond when Emily asked, “Are you going to the church? Are you going to be with Reverend Nash?”

Startled, Jessica said, “How did you know?”

“There’s been talk, Jessie. You’ve been going there every afternoon. It’s been noticed.”

“Well,” Jessica couldn’t hold back the sarcasm, “Reverend Nash started a school for the colored children from Shanty Town, and I’m assisting him with it. Since, as you believe, black people are less intelligent than white people, he needs all the help he can get.”

“Jessie, please don’t go like this,” Emily implored. “I’m sorry if I upset you. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t be angry with me.”

“I’m late as it is. I have to go,” Jessica said. “Ditter will see you out, and Herlin will bring your buggy around for you. Oh, goodness me, I should probably warn you. They’re both black. But don’t worry, they’re moderately civilized. They won’t hurt you!”

* * *

Sebastian Nash quickly closed the side door of the church behind him. Inside he blew on his fisted fingers and shivered. At the end of every school day, to see his students off, he walked with them out to the road. Today, for whatever reason, although he’d draped his scarf around his neck, he hadn’t bothered to put on his coat. In frigid temperatures like this, it was rather foolish. He was surprised Jessica wasn’t scolding him for it.

She was there, sitting in the front pew, waiting for him. As he watched her pull her shawl more securely around her shoulders, it struck him, as it had on many occasions, how extraordinarily pretty she was. She was slender and petite, with striking green eyes, a somewhat pointy little nose, and dark hair that glinted like copper in the sunlight. He could remember how, before he knew her, he’d heard about her beauty. In that, the gossipers weren’t wrong. He’d also heard she was egotistical and haughty. Those rumors, he quickly came to realize, were as far from correct as night from day.

Without Jessica Kinsley’s influence and example, Sebastian’s school would have never come to be. Not only his school, but Reverend Samuel Amos’s school as well. Between them, they were providing classes to both children and adults in the black community. Of course, neither Sebastian nor Sam had any formal instruction in education. Jessica Kinsley didn’t either, but by her enlightened suggestions, one would never know it. The assistance she provided every afternoon was appreciated immensely. He was equally grateful for her encouragement. More than once, she told him he had a gift. Oddly enough, he did enjoy teaching. He hadn’t thought he would. It was, however, the hours after school that he looked forward to the most. This was the time he got to spend alone with Jessica.

Most of their daily conversations, as expected, revolved around lesson plans, but that wasn’t all they talked about. Several times now, Sebastian shared his upcoming Sunday sermon notes with her, and afterwards he was glad. He found her comments and her input both insightful and inspiring. They spoke of the Klan, too. Almost every day she asked if he’d received any further malicious threats. He did, quite a few actually. Even so, Sebastian did his best to scoff away her concerns. Although he was deeply touched that she cared, he didn’t want her to worry.

His favorite discussions with Jessica, however, were the ones in which they went off track, sometimes reliving childhood memories, or just sharing stories. Through these, they’d learned quite a bit about each other. He knew of her upbringing on the farm, of her mother’s death when she was nine, of her close relationship with her brother, Trent and her father, Luther. She spoke often of the slaves they had. There were three, Maybell, Titus and Sammy. Her father purchased them when Jessica was an infant. To her, they weren’t servants. They were family. Trent and Sammy spent their days romping together and inevitably getting into trouble as young boys do. Maybell was, however, the one Jessica was most fond of. She said, because her own mother had been so sickly, Maybell took over her care. She still thought of Maybell as a mother figure. For Sebastian, this explained why Jessica’s view of blacks was so different from others in the South. She was bright enough and sensitive enough not to fall under the influence of reigning racial prejudice.

From his end, Sebastian spoke of his strict, legalistic father, and of all the time he’d spent in his father’s church in Boston as a boy. His mother, like hers, died when he was young. He was fourteen. Thereafter he became rebellious. He ran away from home at seventeen and ended up in the boxing ring. Because of his size, once he had some decent training, he did very well. Jessica knew also about the two dismal years he’d spent in the Union cavalry, and how, thereafter, he reconciled with his father.