America's First Daughter: A Novel (19 page)

I gasped at his playful remark. “That’s blasphemous.”

He winked. “Probably so. I’m a sinner with more faults than you imagine, Patsy. But you’re the friend to which my soul is unalterably attached, so I’m prepared to make whatever alterations to my character would be conducive to your happiness. Only tell me this. Are my hopes in vain, or can you be induced to love me?”

I loved him already. Had loved him, it seemed, all my life. Loved his loyalty, his ambition, his radical vision for the world. That a man like William Short
wanted
my love filled me with such joy that I could’ve thrown my arms about his neck, heedless of the eyes upon us, and confessed it on the spot!

But did I not love God just as much?

Even if I hadn’t determined to take the veil, I’d been strictly taught that a girl’s easy confession of love was indecent and would destroy that love. I couldn’t answer him with true candor. Worse, in struggling to think of a reply of sufficient restraint, I uttered words he took for reproach. “Sir, your absence pained me more than I can ever express—”

“You cannot forgive me?” he asked, stiffening.

“I could forgive you anything, but I need time to petition Heaven for guidance.”

“You’re cruel, Miss Jefferson. I’ve already spent a year’s time waiting for you.”

I shook my head. “It’s not cruelty but confusion. For in that year’s time, I feared you despised me. Now in one night, everything I thought I knew is changed.”

“You feel hurried. Yes, I see that now. As do I. For your father tells me he expects permission for his leave of absence in the post any day now, and that you’ll set sail for Virginia. I saw the trunks, already packed.”

The breath went out of me. I hadn’t forgotten my father’s
congé
. But I hadn’t realized that the need for a decision would steal swiftly upon me. Now, here was Mr. Short, making my choice more complicated. “But I need to understand. If—if I loved you, what then?”

His hands tightened on mine. “Then you’d make me the happiest man who ever lived.”

His words radiated warm joy through me, but his answer didn’t tell me what I needed to know. “And what of our future . . . ?”

He smiled. “If you could give up all thoughts of the convent, our future depends upon the orders your father is awaiting from America. Your father has asked that in his absence, I be appointed in his place as
chargé d’affaires
with commensurate salary. If I receive such an appointment, then I can present myself to your father as a worthy suitor. Otherwise, I’m afraid he’ll consider me a wandering wastrel without employment.”

“He would never!”

Mr. Short chuckled mirthlessly. “You think not? I have in my possession a letter from your father lecturing me on the need to build my fortune. The most memorable line reads:
This is not a world in which heaven rains down riches into any open hand.
”

How churlish of Papa, but had I not, from the youngest age, also received letters filled with his lectures? “You mustn’t worry, Mr. Short. If my father requested your appointment, then it’s sure to come. But until it does, how can I be sure of your intentions in asking for my love?”

I didn’t expect him to laugh. “You’re Jefferson’s daughter, to the bone. You want evidence. Well, give me the chance and I’ll give you the proofs you require—both of my love and of the world you should love too much to abandon even for God. I wouldn’t have you enter a convent, much less love, in ignorance.”

“What do you think me ignorant of?”

With mischief twinkling in his eyes, he stopped, drawing me into a grove of trees. Beyond us, in the ditch, we heard boys playing a ball game in the dim lamplight. Somehow, in the dark, Mr. Short’s fingertips found my cheeks, and his mouth stole over mine. This first kiss was soft and tender. As if he feared frightening me. Nevertheless, it
shocked
me. It was like my heart was a loaded cannon he’d held fire to, and it threatened to shoot out of my chest. But I wasn’t frightened and I didn’t pull away. Instead, it seemed quite the most natural thing to kiss him back, mimicking what he did, glorying in every soft, sweet sensation.

At the feel of my lips teasing softly at his, he groaned and pulled back. “Oh, my heart . . .”

The sweet taste of him still on my lips, our breaths puffing in the night air, I asked, “Have I done something wrong?”

He held my cheeks in his hands. “The error was all mine. I’d beg your pardon if I could bring myself to regret it, but I never want to regret anything with you, so tonight I must content myself with one kiss.”

Only one? I wanted to lavish a
thousand
kisses on his face. His lips, his cheeks, his ears. The desire was a sudden hunger, a desperate plea inside me echoing like the cry of peasants for bread. “What if I’m not yet content? Wasn’t kissing me meant to be the proof of your intentions?”

“No, Patsy. Kissing you, then stopping before satisfaction, is the proof of my intentions, which I hope you’ll see are honorable and directed toward your happiness.”

This made no sense to me whatsoever, but I followed as he led me a little farther, to a copse of trees near my father’s gate. Then, taking one of the hanging lanterns down, he reached into his boot for a knife—one that I didn’t know he carried there. He took it, holding the lamp with one hand and carving the tree with the other. When he finished, he showed me a heart, inside of which he’d carved his own initials. “Like mine, this heart is waiting for you, Patsy. Every morning, I’ll come look, and when I see that you’ve carved your initials here, with mine, I’ll have my answer.”

I’
D BEEN KISSED!
And I wanted to
die
of the delirious pleasure of it, if only I wasn’t so delighted to be
alive
. All night, I tossed upon my pillow, touching with my fingertips the place Mr. Short’s lips had been. Thinking, all the while, of how much I wanted him to kiss me again.

Though I’d been dreading the arrival of Papa’s orders, I was suddenly eager for them, because they’d no doubt name Mr. Short as the
chargé d’affaires
. Then, he’d ask me to marry him.

I was sure of it.

In the morning, I wanted to rush down first thing and declare myself. I wanted to go straight to the kitchen and find James’s sharpest knife to carve my initials in that tree and take William Short there to see it. But such an act of imprudence was forestalled by the whole household already at an early breakfast before I could get Sally’s help with my laces. And Papa called up that I must hurry because the men needed to be off to Versailles.

When I rushed down, Papa snapped his fingers. “Candlesticks! Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? There were silver candlesticks on the table. They’re missing. Sally, did you take them to polish?”

Sally had been quietly refilling the new silver urn on the sideboard with hot coffee, and at this question, she overpoured with a quick shake of her head. Hissing as the coffee burned her fingertips, she made haste to clean up the spill. “I wouldn’t presume.”

Of course she wouldn’t. On our plantation, counting and polishing the silver was a task for the mistress. A task my mother claimed as her own. My father frowned, but the mood was quickly dispelled when Mr. Short grinned and set down a gauzy little bag of confections with a pink bow.

“Chocolate drops!” Polly squealed. “For me?”

“Hmm?” My father looked up, having taken a bite of a crumpet browned to his exact specifications the way no one but James could manage.

Mr. Short gave me a private smile that made me blush from head to toe. “The chocolate drops are for Patsy, actually.” But by that point, my little sister had already stuffed two in her mouth. “. . . and for you, too, Polly. For both of you, of course.”

I didn’t mind sharing them, as his thoughtfulness was all the sweetness I needed. Even if he hadn’t lain awake all night replaying the kiss and imagining our next, it was still proof that he’d thought of me. And wanted me to know.

He also had a gift for my father. A macaroni machine for the man who was passionate about every sort of invention! With much laughter, Mr. Short demonstrated how the thing could make the long and silly noodles of which we were becoming so fond. How glad I was for us all to be gathered together again under one roof.

My sister, my father, and the man I loved. Could I ever willingly be parted from any of them, even if it was God’s desire?

It was a question still on my mind when I returned to the convent.

I went back not to take the veil but to attend in the company of my father a musical performance by the mixed-race prodigy George Bridgetower. Music had long been a special thing between my father and I. The notes, and especially the silences be tween them, were a language we shared. Our songs were duets; they left no room for other singers. And so I took great pleasure in going, just the two of us.

With gallantry, Papa guided me to my seat saying, “I’ll be very interested to see if a boy of only ten years can have such talent as if by way of nature and not learning.”

Someone overheard and broke in. “I’m more interested to see if the mulatto boy’s talent weighs as evidence against his race’s inferiority.”

The whole room was alive with such talk as the boy-musician appeared in an exquisite pink suit coat embroidered with satin threads, violin in hand. In that strange moment, it seemed as if the question of slavery rested upon this little boy’s shoulders. He tossed his black curls and played to a room filled from velvet curtain to paneled wall. And what shall I say of his music? It was sublime. Technically precise, with stormy flurries that left tears shining in the corners of many eyes.

It left me profoundly affected, too, when, through the din, someone asked Papa, “Given this violinist is of mixed race, how can we know if his talent derives from his African or European ancestry?”

“It doesn’t matter,” my father replied.

“But if Africans are our natural equals,” I dared to ask, “doesn’t it make a stronger case for freeing slaves?”

I knew my father didn’t care to hear me opine on this subject. More, I feared my father might change the subject, as he did whenever I weighed in on a matter of any controversy. But instead, he replied quietly, “It does not. It’s my belief that blacks are more gifted than the whites for tune and time. It’s also my belief that the admixture of white blood always improves the black. Any man with eyes can observe differences—”

Perhaps it was the way I recoiled from my father that caused him to stop midsentence, for my heart had dropped to my stomach in shame at his words. And even though everyone else seemed to hang on his every utterance with fawning ad miration, the bitter disappointment in my eyes seemed to have shaken him.

Reaching for my hand, he hastened to add, almost apologetically, “And yet, differences shouldn’t be used to legitimize the unjust practice of slavery. It makes slavery no less wrong. It’s a dangerous premise upon which opponents of slavery ought not rely. Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

I was glad to hear my father reaffirm his opposition to slavery, in spite of our private circumstances. But I was startled, too, by the fact that he’d done it, in part, because I pushed him to. Until this moment, I had rarely dared to question him. But now, I had done more than question him. I had challenged him—perhaps more boldly than even Mr. Short would have done. For I had challenged him in public.

And he had answered that challenge by lending his voice to the cause of justice.

I’d be lost without you. Lost.

That is what Papa had said when he pleaded with me not to shut myself up in this convent. Now I wondered if he had not meant that he needed more than my companionship and care, if my father needed me and William both to challenge him when no one else would. Or could.

Renewed purpose welled inside me until my eyes sought out the crucifix on the wall, a gilded portrait of our Christ in suffering. I stared upon it for a long moment, and the lightness of clarity stole over me. I felt no more guilt for leaving this convent. I’d bargained with God that I’d give myself over to him if he saved my sister, but my father had been sent to France to protect and secure those inalienable rights endowed by our Creator. If Papa himself could be an instrument of God’s justice, was it not a moral duty for me and William Short to serve as his helpmates?

Paris, 9 May 1789

From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay

The revolution of this country has advanced thus far without encountering anything which deserves to be called a difficulty. There’ve been riots in which there may have been a dozen or twenty lives lost. A few days ago a much more serious riot took place in this city, in which it became necessary for troops to engage with the mob. Neither this nor any other of the riots have had a professed connection with the great national reformation going on. They are such as have happened every year since I’ve been here.

H
OW SANGUINE THIS LETTER READS NOW
, with the benefit of hindsight, but we were so hopeful, never anticipating the whirlwind. While men like Lafayette, La Rochefoucauld, Condorcet, and my father shaped the great events unfolding, the storm
I
faced took smaller shape within the Hotel de Langeac. There was, after all, no time for kisses and declarations of love—especially not with Papa and William gone almost daily to Versailles and Lafayette visiting so often for advice, now that he’d been elected to represent the nobles as a representative to the Estates-General.

I took it upon myself to carry the tea service on the day that Lafayette arrived unexpectedly, in a state of great agitation, rambling half in English, half in French, as he was prone to do.

“They will not hear reason!” Lafayette shouted as I poured tea into his cup. “My fellow nobles have only themselves to blame. They want only a sham of democracy, no true national assembly at all.” His anger stemmed from his noble constituents instructing him to vote against the common people. “My conscience will not allow me to support the disenfranchisement of ninety-six percent of the nation. Yet, how can I violate the instructions of those who sent me to represent them and still call myself a champion of democracy? I see no choice but to resign.”

“Forgive me, my dear friend, if my anxiety for you makes me talk of things I know nothing about,” Papa began, using the clever but unassuming manner he often employed to soften the giving of difficult advice. “But if you resign, there will be one less voice of reason in the Estates-General.”

“There are
other
voices of reason at Versailles?” asked Mr. Short, sardonically. “I’m told the nobles are quite out of their senses and the commons have amongst them some mad, radical hotheads—”

“My cause is liberty,” Lafayette snapped, with all the zeal of his ancestry, which boasted a companion of Joan of Arc. It was on Lafayette’s suggestion that the king had called the Estates-General in the first place. Few men were as invested in its outcome. “No matter how mad the agitators in the commons may be, I will die with them rather than betray them.”

Mr. Short frowned. “I think it better to compromise and
live
with them rather than die with them. Why not use your voice in your chamber of nobles to bring about a peaceful resolution to this crisis?”

Electrified by the conversation, I poured the next cup slower, not wishing to be dismissed and wondering how serious the threat of violence truly was.

Mr. Short’s advice seemed good and sensible.

But perhaps more than any man who ever lived, my father was acutely aware of the interplay between public reputation and political power and the risks that must be taken to acquire both. “This is your moment of opportunity, Lafayette,” Papa said. “Your opportunity to
defy
the instructions of your noble constituents, go over to the people now, and win their hearts forever.” Papa’s voice rang out with increasing fervor, reminding me of bygone days when I saw my father engaged in our own revolution and inspiring other men to fight for their independence. “If you wait too long, currying favor with both sides, you will lose both. The nobles will only love you so long as you do their dirty work for them. If you do not now declare yourself a man of the people, some other prominent nobleman will do so before you, and he will then have the unprecedented power and influence that ought to be yours. Take at once the honest and manly stand your own principles dictate.”

This was Papa at his finest, mixing pragmatism and principle in a way only a handful of men could.

Madison. Adams. Hamilton. And my father.

Lafayette studied Papa and nodded, thoughtfully. “Tell me. How did you feel on that glorious day you took your own honest and manly stand and signed your name to the Declaration of Independence?”

Papa’s expression turned wry. “I felt a noose tightening around my neck.”

The men barked with dark but well-needed laughter. Then, at length, the conversation turned to brokering a bargain in which taxes would be levied in exchange for a charter of citizens’ rights to be signed by the king.

A charter that my father said he would be happy to draft.

He was no unaffected bystander in this struggle. None of us were.

“Miss Patsy!” Sally said, motioning to me from the open door. The alarm in her voice ushered me out of the room. “Someone’s robbed us again and they’ve taken some of your ribbons and rings.”

How violated I felt, learning someone had stolen into my bedchamber, taking little things from me that were not nearly so precious as my peace of mind! Beside my trinkets, the thief—or thieves—made off with food from our larder, some of Papa’s favorite Burgundy wines, and some silver to boot.

First the candlesticks, now this.

We might’ve taken it as a sign of the times, for starving peasants were, every day, streaming into the capital in desperate search of employment or charity. I’d just heard Papa discuss the growing violence but never imagined such a thing would cross our threshold.

That evening, Papa sat at the head of the long dining room table, surrounded by botany books and specimens, and called James and Sally Hemings to account. “James, the thief might be one known to you. Perhaps an acquaintance you met at the taverns?”

With his hands laced behind his back, James’s stiffening spine revealed that he bristled at the implication. “No friend breaks into my kitchens and thinks he can leave with stolen goods and an unbloodied nose. But you, sir, have guests in and out of this place day and night.”

It was true, of course. We entertained all manner of Americans and Frenchmen here at the Hotel de Langeac, but that didn’t make James’s challenge any less surprising.

Seated at the table beside my father, I kept my eyes on my lap, wondering if Papa would snap in anger, but he merely cleared his throat. “I’m not accusing you of theft, James. I’m simply prying into the truth of it.”

“I’d never lie to you, Mr. Jefferson. Nor to any man.” James straightened beneath his white chef’s hat, unlacing his hands and letting them hang confidently at his sides. “Lies are for frightened slaves cowering under the whip. And
there are no slaves in France
.”

At this announcement, the room went quiet. I barely bit back a gasp and held my breath until I feared it would explode from my lungs. Sally wobbled as if she might fall.

Papa finally broke the silence, his voice carefully even. “Do you consider yourself a Frenchman, James?”

James eyed my father levelly. “I reckon I should start to. You won’t make me go to the Admiralty Court for my freedom, will you?”

Color drained from my father’s face, perhaps contemplating the censure he’d face from his revolutionary friends if that came to pass. He couldn’t fight the emancipation in court without acute embarrassment; what would Lafayette say?

Papa held up a hand. “That won’t be necessary.”

James swallowed hard at his apparent victory, as if he’d been nervous to fight for it, or was afraid to believe it. “I’ll be happy to serve you here in Paris, Mr. Jefferson, but I want to be free. So when you go back to Virginia, I can’t—I
won’t
—go back with you.”

Papa steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “I see.”

Prickles ran over my skin and a thrill warmed my blood as I sat witness to yet another extraordinary conversation, the meaning of the revolutionary fervor swirling around us coming home to me. It was right here, in this man’s heart, not asking for his freedom, but taking it.

Not that James did so without trepidation. He swallowed again, obviously finding no pleasure in this confrontation. He had a stubborn sense of pride for a servant, but not all the pride in the world would’ve made him risk being put out into the streets where thousands were starving. No, he pressed the matter because, like me, he knew his fate was to be decided by our next missive in the post. My father’s request for leave had forced James’s hand, and having no choice but to play on, his determined gaze flicked to Sally. “My sister will stay with me.”

At
that
declaration, I did indeed gasp as my eyes cut to my lady’s maid. My father had, until this point, remained calm, but now he scowled with displeasure. He too glanced at Sally, who twitched under our scrutiny like a cornered mouse.

Papa looked to James. “Surely you don’t think you can provide for Sally, here in Paris, with the economy of the place in a shambles, with robbers and cutthroats roaming the streets. She needs protection—”

“I can protect her,” James replied, taking off his hat and squeez ing it in his tawny hands. “Moreover, Sally can sew and launder. She has experience as a chambermaid, and a lady’s maid, too. We’ll do fine.”

Papa didn’t look convinced and turned his next question on Sally. “Is that what you want?”

Sally shook her head in misery, as if she didn’t know where to look. Into the coaxing eyes of the master who cosseted her but held her in bondage, or into the uncompromising eyes of the brother who meant to liberate her? For a moment, I thought she might take flight.

And when her eyes brimmed with tears, Papa softened his words, as if to a frightened child. “Well, then. Let’s not be hasty. The orders haven’t come yet, so we can take time to decide what’s best.”

It was a dismissal. James gave a stiff bow. Sally curtseyed. Then both withdrew, leaving me alone with my father.

In their wake, Papa rubbed his temples. “I face threats of abandonment on all sides.”

It felt like a rebuke. Was he still stung by my desire to take the veil? Oh, how, in my distress, I wanted to reassure him that was done now and that all I wanted was to become the wife of Mr. Short and live with both of them forevermore!

But before I could think of even a way to hint at such a thing, Papa said, “It pains me not that he wants his freedom. . . .” I suspected he’d be furious that James had spoken to him in a way that slaves never spoke to their masters. Perhaps he was deeply troubled by the potential loss of their services and hard-pressed to find another chef so well trained to the peculiarities of his palate. But he didn’t seem angry. “It’s that he could think to leave us and condemn his delicate sister to an uncertain and hardscrabble life in a place so far from home.”

Papa was worried. And wounded. Hurt as he’d been, when, on his knees, he’d begged me not to join the nunnery. A possessive man, his distraught expression told me he took the specter of freedom for James and Sally as yet another deeply personal loss. But I knew it was more than that because I’d heard him speak many times of his honor-bound duty to protect and care for his people.

I debated how to comfort him, especially since I supported James’s desire for freedom. Papa and I both believed slavery to be wrong. We both ought to have applauded the man’s stand. Yet, beyond the loss of talent and property that James’s departure would represent, was the truth that Papa hated little more than to be left behind.

As Mama had done, and Lucy, and as I had nearly done.

But in this, he would simply have to accept it. It would be
good
for him to accept it. So I drew a deep breath and said, “In any other circumstances, I’m sure they’d never leave us. Perhaps Sally and James can remain in France in your employ a bit longer. Mr. Short can watch over them during your leave. We’re very fortunate to have Mr. Short for such a constant friend, aren’t we?”

“Quite.” Papa pulled his tray of leafy specimens closer and retrieved his magnifying glass. One of my father’s many scientific acquaintances had requested his opinion on classifying flora he’d found on his estate, and Papa had been poring over Linnaeus’s
Philosophia Botanica
all afternoon. After a moment, he frowned and lowered the looking glass.

It was a frown that shot an arrow of worry through me. There had been, since Mr. Short’s return, a slight undercurrent of impatience between the two—as if the nature of their relationship had changed. Until this moment, I’d dismissed it as merely the tension of the political moment, but now I was forced to ask, “You
are
happy Mr. Short returned to us, aren’t you, Papa?”

“Indeed. William has returned charged like a bee with the honey of wisdom, a blessing to his country and an honor to his friends. I think no one is happier for his return than me, save for his friends in Saint-Germain.” In the clearing of his eyes and disappearance of the furrow in his brow, it seemed the change of subject brightened Papa’s disposition. If only a little.

But now it was my turn to frown, for I knew of only
one
friend in Saint-Germain. A sweetheart I thought Mr. Short had given up long ago. “He’s gone to Saint-Germain tonight?” My heart threatened to creep into my throat in anticipation of the answer.

“Not tonight, no,” Papa said, casually, though I sensed some purpose behind his words. “I’d be surprised if he went again to Saint-Germain so soon after his last visit. . . .”

My heart lodged
solidly
in my throat. What could he mean?

Leaning in over his specimens again, Papa added, almost as an aside, “Patsy, we must be good to Mr. Short, for I fear he may soon suffer a great disappointment.”

My bewilderment turned to fear. Had Papa guessed at our love? Did he plan to forbid it? Nearly breathless with anxiety, I asked, “What disappointment?”

Papa glanced to his notes. “I’ve pressed his appointment in my absence as
chargé d’affaires
with my superiors as far as is prudent, but Mr. Short isn’t known to them. He may not get the appointment.”