America's First Daughter: A Novel (13 page)

Jimmy prepared the feast. He was swiftly becoming an accomplished chef in the French style, whereas I still hadn’t mastered pudding, but because I imagined myself to be the hostess of this dinner, he permitted me to chop carrots and onions while he braised beef in a soup of bacon, wine, and brandy. I tried to take note of the amounts of nutmeg and allspice he sprinkled in, but Jimmy worked fast with a pinch here and there, as if he’d committed it to memory. I was obliged to watch a clock for three hours while the concoction boiled away, and while I should’ve been contemplating a way to ask my father’s permission to become a nun, I imagined I was the wife of my father’s handsome secretary and that we had a house together just outside of Paris.

It was only a fantasy, for Mr. Short had never expressed interest in taking a bride, and rumors hadn’t ceased about his love for a married duchess. But I contented myself with harmless fantasies of domestic bliss, whereas the men in my life were apparently content with nothing but real congress with sinful women.

As I dressed that night, I worried for the scandal Mrs. Cosway might cause, fluttering about my papa like a wounded bird. But when she arrived, Papa bounded toward her to kiss her cheek, whereas she turned her head so the kiss landed upon her ear. At dinner, she took the seat beside him as proffered but slid it closer to a count of some renown, with whom she flirted shamelessly. Though I’d desperately
hoped
Papa would give up this affair, it was painful to watch it unravel before my eyes. Worse, I witnessed the exact moment my father reached to pat her arm, and she recoiled from the sight of the curled fingers of his injured hand, as if she’d only just realized he was twice her age.

Papa looked away, his lips pressing into a tight line. She’d hurt him. And I felt furiously angry at her for doing so. If a woman was to surrender her virtue and risk eternal damnation, she ought to at least do it for good reason. I might have forgiven her if she’d sinned in the cause of love. But the way she recoiled from my father made me certain it was not her heart that led her to sin; it was her vanity. And I’ve never forgiven her for that. Not for her dalliance with Papa, nor for the way she treated him.

God may forgive her, but I never shall.

The only good to come of her rejection that night was the way it forced Papa to stiffen, as if awakening from a long, fevered dream. Perhaps my father had to suffer this humiliation in order to recover from the fever of Mrs. Cosway. Alas, it seemed that I had to be equally prepared to suffer humiliation when the dinner conversation turned to the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld.

Mr. Short’s association with the woman was the cause of several veiled but ribald jests. I pretended at supreme indifference while I surreptitiously fisted my hands into my skirts, agonized by my awareness of the man so close. I stared at the lace that peeked out from under Mr. Short’s neatly tailored sleeve, wondering how far apart our knees were spaced beneath the table. Wondering, too, when I’d be humiliated enough by my own infatuation to stop wondering such things . . .

The subject of mockery, Mr. Short only sipped at his wine with an enigmatic smile. There was no blush on his cheeks. Only mine. After a bout of raucous laughter, the Polish princess pointed at Mr. Short and accused, “You’re overly fond of French girls!”

He replied, with a sly glance my way. “Oh, I like Virginia girls just as much.”

All at once, my burning embarrassment became a different kind of fire and I died a thousand burning deaths of pleasure. Mr. Short’s amusing retort meant nothing to these people, who laughed at his defiant wit. But his eyes fastened on mine flirta tiously, and I finally knew with certainty that I hadn’t imagined his affection for me after all. . . .

It was real.

The dashing Mr. Short could’ve had any Frenchwoman in Paris. But he was looking at me in my blue gown with the golden sash. He was looking at
me,
and I felt suddenly as light and warm as the wisps of smoke that floated up from the silver candelabra on the table.

T
HAT NIGHT
, long after the guests took their leave, I couldn’t stop spinning on my toes. Round and round I went into the bedroom like a whirlwind. Polly peeked up from her goose down pillow in vague alarm. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” I said, falling into bed on a laugh. I was no longer certain I wished to join the convent, because I might soon have, in Mr. Short, a suitor of my very own.

What’s more, for the first time I could remember, things were just as they ought to be. My family was together under one roof, domestic tranquility the aim of our existence. Exactly what my mother had always wanted—what I’d always wanted, too.

And a few days later, something even more wonderful happened.

Mrs. Cosway left Paris.

I learned this from Papa, who came in from the wintry cold with frost upon his wig and a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. “I was to have breakfast with her this morning,” he bit out. “But I found only a note of farewell.”

Papa marched up to his chambers and stayed there. And though my father was always writing, that whole next week, he sent not a single letter. Seeing me fret over this, Mr. Short asked, “Will you never stop wrinkling your forehead with worry for your father, Patsy? He’s merely lanced a boil.”

Had Mr. Short also believed that Maria Cosway was a plague on our house? If so, why had he stood by and let her happen? “She might return to Paris.”

“He wouldn’t see her again if she did. If nothing else, Mrs. Cosway deprived your father of his good-bye, of a closing scene, of a way to make sense of it, categorize it, and put it in final order. He despises nothing so much as that.”

He had the right of it, for he knew my father well. Papa might be miserable but would soon be purged of it. What he needed was someone to tend to him so that he could distract himself with work, as he’d always done. Sally had returned from her ordeal in the countryside hale and hearty, not a pock mark on her beauty, so I tasked her with being Papa’s chambermaid. It was a cold winter—colder than anyone in Paris could remember—and I instructed Sally to keep the fires blazing at his hearth until Polly and I returned from the convent for Christmastide.

In the meantime, at Jimmy’s insistence, Papa hired a special tutor to teach the Hemingses French. I provided Sally with a new wardrobe from my cast-off clothing, so she’d look like a suitable maid to accompany us on social visits. Together, my sister and I took to the city, bedecked in new, elaborate dresses of our own. And Mr. Short sometimes accompanied us, playing the part of gentleman chaperone while stealing little smiles at me whenever I glanced his way. Between this, the gaiety of the holiday, and the passionate political debates on every street corner, it was all a delight.

When Polly and I returned home the Sunday before Christmas, the embassy was alive with the smell of bread. Low candles and crackling fires warmed every room, and I was filled with an undeniable happiness. Polly and I shared tea and buttered rolls, and I showed her the
Cabinet des modes,
a popular fashion leaflet in Paris. “Would you like a gown like this?”

I was eager to dress her just as Mrs. Adams had dressed me upon my own arrival in France. And Polly was so much prettier, just like a little doll. What fun it would be for us, two sisters, to choose fabrics and ribbons and shoes, together. But Polly just shrugged. She was less interested in clothes than in playing outside, so I tossed the leaflet aside. “Shall we go out and see the snow?”

Polly’s face immediately brightened. “Oh, let’s!”

We bundled up and went into the courtyard, where we made a game of throwing little balls of snow. To my surprise, Mr. Short joined us in the merriment.

Under threat of slushy snow packed in his gloves, I cried, “You wouldn’t dare!”

Mr. Short, cheeks pink from the cold, grinned at me. “
Mademoiselle,
I’m a daring man. The question is whether or not you’ll duck away.”

Light-headed at his flirtation, I fluttered my eyelashes like a coquette. “I could run.”

Packing the snow tighter in his palms, he narrowed his eyes. “If you run from me, Patsy Jefferson, I vow to give chase.”

I didn’t think we were speaking of the snow game any longer.

Nevertheless, I wanted him to prove it. Giddy, I grabbed my skirts and fled down the pathway. Our garden was nothing next to the snow-covered green majesty of the palace grounds, but that day, ours seemed more beautiful. The cold made my lungs tighten as I ran, laughing. But when Mr. Short chased, I began to feel as if it was each thud of my pounding heart that forced the breath out of me.

In moments, Mr. Short caught me by the coat, spinning me to him. Alas, my heel caught a patch of ice and my foot went out from under me. But I didn’t fall. At least, not right away. Mr. Short’s arms came around my waist and I crashed against his chest. Then we both lost our footing and, still laughing, fell together into a drift of snow.

With my head cradled upon his shoulder where he lay sprawled, his hat blown away by a gust of snowy wind, I didn’t feel the cold. Though the frigid melting water seeped into my woolen dress, I felt only the warmth of Mr. Short’s breath on my face. Only the heat banked in his eyes. Only the strange desire that burned in me, to take off my glove and trace his cheek with my bare fingers.

Instead, I let my hand drift near to his, and nearly swooned when he hooked my little finger with his own. We hadn’t touched skin to skin, but there was an unmistakable intimacy as his gloved finger linked, tightly but tenderly, with my own. We breathed in perfect harmony, bound so innocently, finger to finger, even as we ached for more.

It was a still and perfect moment. . . .

Which Polly ruined by pelting us with snow.

Declaring herself the victor, she danced over us. Still breathless and exhilarated, we went inside to change into dry clothes. When we came down, Jimmy set out spiced cider, and Mr. Short suggested that we summon Papa to join us. I wondered—perhaps vainly—if Mr. Short meant to speak to my father about a courtship between us. It was with this question in my mind, veritably floating on air, that I went in search of my father.

His sitting room door stood open, and I stepped into the room. “Papa?” Despite the warm glow from the fireplace, the room was empty. A noise sounded from Papa’s chamber, the door to which was ajar. Crossing to it, I inhaled to call his name again, but what I saw made the words die in my throat.

Sally stood in the center of the room, her back to me, Papa’s coat gripped in her hands. He was smiling softly at her, with an intimacy that stole the breath from me.

After a moment, Papa grasped the jacket from Sally. But, no, he didn’t grasp the material, he held her hands where they curled around the stiff collar. He studied her, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend the contours of her face.

And my heart thundered against my breastbone.

I was frozen there on the threshold of the room, not quite in, not quite out. I didn’t know what was happening, or why every fiber of my body screamed at me to look away. I should have. Or maybe I should have called out to make my presence known.

But I could do neither.

Papa was a tall man, and Sally was small. The way he stared down at her—the girl who looked so much like my mother—it wasn’t the stare of an old man, a humiliated lover, or a widower resigned to bachelorhood.

It was the stare of a man who contemplates damnation and salvation.

Slowly, as if even he wasn’t conscious of his movement, Papa leaned his face down to Sally’s. As his eyes fell closed, her head tilted back and he kissed her.

I could make no sense of the scene unfolding before me. She was a girl my own age. She was my mother’s sister, my own aunt. She was his
slave
. And though I knew—of course I knew—that Virginia plantation owners took slaves for mistresses, we’d been so long away from home, I couldn’t believe my own eyes.

He
couldn
’t
be doing this. My mind rejected what I saw clearly until he pursued her lips with more ardor and drew Sally close against his chest. At that embrace, I choked back the cry that worked its way up from my breast, where my heart raced so hard I saw spots.

If Papa saw me . . .
he mustn’t see me
. Fingers pressed over my lips, I turned away from the private, heartbreaking moment and flew from the room.

I
T WAS MY HASTE
that made me stumble halfway down the stairs. Only a wild, wrenching grasp at the carved wooden rail saved me from a broken neck. Alas, the heavy fall of my feet echoed up the staircase and drew my father from his rooms.

“Patsy?” he called, peering over the bannister.

I froze, breathless, my belly roiling with shock and anger and revulsion. I ought to have pretended that I didn’t hear him say my name. I ought to have hurried on, leaving him with only the sight of my back. I ought never to have looked up at him over my shoulder.

But I
did
look up.

There on the landing my father loomed tall, a tendril of his ginger hair having come loose from its ribbon, his shirt worn without its neck cloth, the stark white linen setting off more vividly the red flush that crept up his throat. Was it shame for his behavior with Sally or . . . ardor?

On the heels of witnessing his behavior, the thought was so excruciatingly horrifying that heat swept over me, leaving me to wish I’d burn away to dust.

“Are you hurt?” Papa asked, hoarsely.

I couldn’t reply, my mouth too filled with the bitter taste of bile. Finally, I forced a shake of my head.

He glanced back to the door, then back at me, his hand half-covering his mouth. “Were—were you at my door just now?”

“No,” I whispered, as much as I could manage under my suffocating breathlessness. And how dare he ask if I’d been at his door when neither of us could bear the honest answer? Even if Papa didn’t know what I’d seen, he knew what he’d done.

He ought to have been downstairs with us, reacquainting himself with the little daughter who still didn’t remember him. He ought to have been sipping cider with the young man who fancied me, giving his permission to court. He ought to have been doing a hundred other things. Instead, he was preying upon my dead mother’s enslaved half-sister—and the wrongness of it filled my voice with a defiant rage.

“No, I wasn’t at your door.” I held his gaze, letting him see what he would.

My father paused on the precipice, clearing his throat, absently smearing the corner of his lips with one thumb. “Well—well . . . did you need something?”

As if my needs were at the forefront of his thoughts.

My fingers curled into fists as a lie came to me suddenly, and sullenly. “I was coming up to fetch my prayer book.” Surely he knew it was a lie, but I didn’t care. If he challenged me, I’d lie again, without even the decency of dropping my eyes. I’d lie because between a father and a daughter, what I’d witnessed was unspeakable. And I’d learned from the man who responded with silence to my letters about politics or adultery or the liberation of slaves. . . .

Papa never spoke on any subject he didn’t want to.

Neither would I.

“Are you certain you weren’t hurt,” Papa finally murmured, “. . . on the stairs?”

Rage burned inside me so hotly I thought it possible that my handprint might be seared upon the railing. I bobbed my head, grasped my skirt, and took two steps down before my father called to me again.

“Patsy?”

I couldn’t face him, so I merely stopped, my chest heaving with the effort to restrain myself from taking flight. “
What?
”

A heavy silence descended. One filled with pregnant emotion. I feared he might be so unwise as to attempt to explain himself, to justify or confess his villainous lapse in judgment, but when he finally spoke, it was only to ask, “What of your prayer book?”

Swallowing hard, I forced words out despite the pain. “I’ve reconsidered my need of it. I’m not as apt as some people to forget what it says.”

M
Y HEART STILL IN TURMOIL
, I drifted mindlessly back to the parlor, where Polly sipped at her cider, dollies by her feet on the floor. I wanted nothing so much in that moment as to escape my father and his house. To spirit away to the convent and take my little sister with me. But how would I explain myself to Mr. Short?

“Is your father of a mind to join us?” he asked, rising from his chair expectantly, his eyes still dancing with merriment from our games in the snow.

For me, those games now seemed a lifetime ago, our perfect moment sullied. “Papa won’t be joining us.”

“More cider for us, I suppose,” Mr. Short mused, tilting his cup to hide his disappointment.

“Didn’t you get Sally?” Polly asked, abandoning her dollies. “I’ll fetch her.”

“
No,
” I said, harshly, grabbing her arm to stop her.

I’d never spoken a harsh word to Polly, much less grabbed her with force. She blinked at me with surprise. “Why not?”

“Papa has need of her.” How I nearly choked on those words.

Perhaps Mr. Short heard the catch in my throat, or saw inside me to where a noxious stew of dark and unworthy emotions still boiled. For the merriment in his eyes melted away to concern. “Polly, do you know that Jimmy is working on a wondrous new confection made of egg whites and custard and wine? They’re called
snow eggs
. Why don’t you help him whip them up?” Polly’s eyes widened with delight, so I let her skip away to the kitchen before I thought better of it. And the moment she was gone, Mr. Short latched on to me with his singular characteristic of prying into facts. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Nothing. I’ve grown tired and wish to return to the convent.”

His brows shot up. “Before the end of Christmastide? Your father hadn’t planned for you to return until after the religious observances were at a close. . . .”

It was his way of reminding me of Papa’s antipathy for Catholicism and contempt for Catholic mass and saints’ days. Though it was still many years before my father would use a razor to construct his own Bible, cutting out all mentions of miracles and divinity, I already suspected my father observed the holy days only as a matter of form. And the reminder fueled my outrage, making me all the more determined to defy him. “Papa’s well contented with his servants. He doesn’t need me here. And in matters of faith, mustn’t we all follow our own conscience?”

The word
conscience
echoed between us.

Mr. Short glanced to the door and the stairway beyond, in the direction of my father’s bedchambers, before rounding his shoulders beneath his dark coat. “Certainly, Mademoiselle Sally can see to your father’s comfort, but you’re the center of his world, Patsy. Moreover, how would your conscience allow you to leave
me
utterly bereft of your company?”

In spite of his exquisite charm, I winced at his mention of Sally, dying a little at his unwitting implication of how she might see to Papa’s comfort, by the way he called her
Mademoiselle,
as if she were a free Frenchwoman.

It was only a wince. It shouldn’t have betrayed me. But to William Short, I was capable of betraying myself without a word. “Patsy, sit down before your knees give way.” Then, more quietly, without a note of censure, he added, “You’re old enough now to know the natural way of it between men and women.”

There I suffered my second shock of the evening—the realization that Mr. Short was somehow aware of my father’s liaison with his slave girl. Did that mean I’d not witnessed its first in carnation? Could there have been other encounters, other kisses, other. . . .

Sitting down hard upon the chair by the fire, I shook away the knowing of any of it. None of this was anything a lady of character ought allow herself to be aware, nor something a Virginia gentleman like William Short ought to acknowledge. So I exclaimed, “Pray do not speak another word.”

But Mr. Short was already more of a Frenchman than a Virginian, and instead of honoring my request, he took the chair beside me and spoke my name very softly. “Patsy. Why not tell me what troubled thoughts are racing under that lace-trimmed cap?”

How soothing he made himself sound, as if he wasn’t the same man who had just characterized my father’s desire for Sally as
the natural way of it between men and women
. So soothing that the savage whisper of my answer took us both by surprise. “Because you, sir, for whom I’ve unwisely contrived no small admiration, never find fault in my father’s conduct.”

Mr. Short gripped the armrest of his chair. “How unjust! I’ve spoken to your father many times about the evils of slavery and shall continue to do so.”

“I’m not speaking of the evils of slavery—”

“But you are, Patsy,” he insisted. “Should we object to a man’s affection for his slave more than we object to the fact that he holds her in bondage? I’ve told you before that slavery is a practice that compromises our morals. Perhaps beyond redemption. Whether we claim a slave’s labor in the tobacco field or the smoky kitchen or in the pleasures of a candlelit bedchamber, slavery makes it all the same.”

“It’s
not
the same,” I argued, though, unlike Mr. Short, I had no experience in the pleasures of a candlelit bedchamber to guide my convictions. I had only my conscience. And my conscience cried out that this was wrong. I knew it was. So did William Short. Yet apparently he’d do nothing to stop it, even if it meant putting souls, as he said,
beyond redemption
. Was it because Mr. Short had seduced and corrupted the Belle of Saint-Germain and his married duchess, too? Did he feel as if he had no standing to judge my father’s illicit conduct when he himself stood guilty of indiscretions?

Mr. Short reached for my hand. His eyes filled with desire, the same desire I’d seen only moments ago on my father’s face. . . . “Patsy, it’s no sin to—”

“It
is,
” I said, pulling away.

Not everything I’ve felt for Sally Hemings over the years has been noble or unselfish, but that night I perceived a difference between her and the preening, pampered Maria Cosway. With the memory of Sally’s tarnished little bell, the one my mother bequeathed her, I felt somehow compelled to defend her. But because I could conceive of no way to influence her circumstance or my own, I was filled with rage not only at my father, but also at William Short—the man who made our helplessness plain.

I wrenched away before he could reach for me again, thinking myself miserably foolish to have ever presumed his flirtation carried with it an honorable intent. Foolish to have ever thought Mr. Short wished to court me—or marry, ever.

“It
is
a sin, Mr. Short,” I said, remembering all the teachings my father supposed I didn’t hear at the convent. I knew God gave us commandments, the sixth of which forbade adulteries and fornications—even those lusts committed only in the heart. Yet the men of Paris seemed to believe the Lord could not see past the glittering brilliance of Versailles into the darker deeds done in its shadow. Deeds done under the same roof where my innocent little sister played with her dolls.

So it was that with all the righteous indignation that can be mustered by a confused and heartbroken girl of fifteen, I brushed past Mr. Short without a backward glance.

S
ALLY
H
EMINGS WAS AS OPAQUE TO ME
as I tried to make myself to the rest of the world. We had that in common. So when she came to brush out Polly’s hair that night, she let slip not the slightest hint of anything amiss.

In the days that followed at the Hotel de Langeac, my father’s behavior was, in every respect, correct, benevolent, and genteel. Papa was gallant with Polly, spoiling her with gifts on Christmas Day. He contrived to play music with me, ignoring the pain in his wrist, lavishing me with praise and warmly asserting after a particularly well-performed duet that he loved me
infinitely
. He also announced, on the coming of the new year, that he’d begin paying wages to Jimmy—who now insisted upon being called James—both generous and appropriate to his new official station as a
chef de cuisine,
in full command of our kitchen.

Furthermore, Papa bestowed upon Sally a wage of twenty-four livres, plus another twelve as a gift, a sum so wildly excessive for a chambermaid that I could only understand it as a gesture of apology and regret. In truth, this largesse to Sally was all that convinced me I had not imagined the encounter between them. I thought the extravagance must be a farewell to their intimacies. The thought comforted me, and I convinced myself quite easily that it would never happen again.