Tess Elliot

The epitome of southern belle -- fluttery, silly, with a backbone of steel and far more common sense than meets the eye -- Tess is up there with Scarlett in rash decisions. Married at sixteen to a fellow named James McDoherty in 1860, it turned out that McDoherty was the kind of fellow you want to be married to until you're unfortunate enough to marry him. With his habits of drinking far too much and beating senseless anything that upset him (usually Tess), it was a considerably less than ideal situation, and to Tess' utter relief, he was killed early in the War Between the States.

Late in 1863, Tess had a son, whom she named Kevin, having moved back home after James died. Her oldest brother headed west to California, and the summer of 1868 saw Tess following him.

She didn't make it.

An Indian attack on the fort that she and Kevin were wintering at moved Tess into Maddock; Kevin disappeared, stolen by the Indians, later to be found by Maddock Sheriff Randall Kyle. Tess is, as a result, perhaps one of the few people in Maddock who thinks that Kyle wears a glowing halo. She lived in Maddock for several months, with her son, until a letter came saying that her father was dying. Tess and the boy went back to Virginia for the winter of '69.

Maddock changed rather a lot in the months that Tess was gone, and she came back to a new crew of faces (Kevin, incidentally, did not return with Tess, but rather went to stay with his father in upstate Ohio), many of whom she heard about in detail (Tess is something of a gossip) before actually meeting them. One of those particular notables was Miguel Mendez, whom Tess thought was interesting before she met him. Before she got a look at those eyes. After that, 'interesting' became the understatement of the year.

Tess began working in 1870 at Ylsa's Restaurant; after a time, she moved in there -- which, incidentally, Miguel owns, and where, equally incidentally, he happened to live, along with Wu Fong, much to the scandilization of the LAC -- and really, much to their fascination.

Miguel, inconvienently, was in love with someone else -- Jack Transom -- though despite this, he and Tess fell in love. One fateful and utterly unplanned night, Tess got pregnant. Miguel did, once, explain to Tess that he wasn't able to marry her; she told him she wouldn't marry him, anyway. Sensitive to his Mexican heritage, he took it as an insult until Tess explained that she would not come second to anyone, in marriage, and she knew perfectly well that Miguel was more in love with Jack than with her. The matter was left there.

Shortly thereafter, the town had it that Jack Transom was the father, and that, in fact, Transom and Tess had been secretly married. Neither, for some reason, bothered to deny it. In slightly less than the accustomed time (Isabel was a month early), Tess had the baby, without ever once claiming aloud who the father was, much like she did, and does, with Kevin.

Miguel had, meantime, practically gotten himself killed, and Jack had, some time before, left him. Tess, with newborn Isabel, took one look at the mess of the man she loved, and broke with him, unable, any longer, to maintain a semblance of sanity in her life and to be with Miguel. For nearly a year, the only time they saw each other was at work, at the restaurant -- which meant, actually, regularly, but Tess was quiet, uncomfortable, and said little. Miguel, largely, conversed with Isabel.

Until a fateful night at the Saloon, at least, when Tess, less under the influence of drink than lonliness, told Miguel that not only had she been wrong to break with him, but moreover, wrong to say she wouldn't marry him.

That December, they got married.

Tess bore a stillborn child some six or seven months later; some of the town had it as a devil's mark, what with a respectable white woman (or Tess' approximation thereof, at least) marrying a Mexi boy, and the rumours and vicious commentary that have followed the marriage have not lessened any in the year since the wedding. Despite it, the couple seem extremely happy, very much in love.

Cuckholded husband Jack Transom hasn't offered an opinion on the subject.