The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (3 page)

“Hannah, please.” I foresaw where my sister’s conversation was heading and internally cringed as I knew there was no stopping her from embarrassing me now.

“Is that she was my father’s son,” Hannah continued without noticing my glare. “Not literally, of course. I guarantee she’s all woman. I mean that my father taught her to read and write just like the boys. Oh, my father was a Harvard lecturer, by the by, in his younger days. He was said to have a keen knowledge of almost the full curriculum of the university’s library, but he met my mother, fell in love, and decided to be done with Harvard and Boston and to come here to farm.” She wrinkled her nose. “Can you believe he left Boston for this? My father must have been mad with his love for our mother. Oh, but I digress, which I do quite often. My conversations are filled with tangents that drive my lovely sister insane. I’m not sure what I love more, my digressions or my sister’s reaction. Oh, but I must add that my father also taught our Violet how to hunt like a man and think like a man. Now, that’s hardly boring, is it, Monsieur Beaumont?”

I avoided looking at Monsieur Beaumont for his response. My right eye might have been twitching with the need to deepen my glowering frown at my sister. She looked down at me with the sweetest, most glorified of smiles, as if she had just saved my life with her words. My anger subsided as I worried about Monsieur Beaumont’s judgment toward me—half-man woman that I was.

I wasn’t humiliated that I had, indeed, been raised like I was a boy–even playing field hockey. (Before the age of ten I preferred to take my shirt off, just like the lads.) I was embarrassed because I never understood my station, never knew where I belonged. I did like the feel of smooth silk stockings against my bare skin and wearing flowery perfume and swishing about in a skirt. But I also liked wearing breeches and being in the mud and not wholly dependent on a man for my opinions. I liked having my own mind, my own ideas, but I never knew if that was acceptable or not.

Monsieur Beaumont linked my hand through his arm, forcing me to gaze up at his warm smile as I felt his twitching rounded bicep.

“My mother could outshoot any man in Marseille. She was the one that taught me how to use a musket and sword.”

“No! Isn’t that a coincidence?” my sister hollered. “Violet also reads like my father did. She could probably teach better than any man at that stupid Harvard. She knows all the sciences and math and philosophy and,” she clapped and made tiny jumps up and down while she said, “she speaks at least four different languages, including French!”

That was why I could never stay angry at my sister. She might embarrass me or sometimes get annoying with her vanity and the incessant eye rolling, but she loved and adored me and always wanted to brag to others about me. I loved her from the start, as well. At six years of age, I told everyone that she was really
my
baby. I would, of course, brag about her accomplishments too–like the dress I wore was one of her designs, and she really was one of the best playactors. Too bad respectable ladies weren’t welcomed to playact.

Mr. Foster then snuck up behind my sister and grabbed her handkerchief that she had loose in her hand. She turned toward the running back of Mr. Foster and yelled, “Come back here, you beast of a man!” Then took off with her sky blue skirts billowing about her as she gave chase.

I softly laughed and turned toward Monsieur Beaumont, releasing myself from his hold, if only physically. He tilted his face and narrowed his dark blue eyes at me.

“V. V. Buccleuch. It is such an unusual name. Mathew told me it is Scottish. I just assumed it was a relative of yours or maybe your father, but it is you.”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about and wondered if the hot sun had gotten the better of him in his dark uniform, but then he said, “Every book I have checked out from the Harvard library has been checked out by you. Every one by a V. Buccleuch.”

I smiled and my heart raced. “You must read a lot.” I flinched and retracted. “I mean—oh, I sound like a braggart.”

His laugh was no longer silent or could even be considered as quiet. Suddenly he stopped chuckling. “You have Locke’s
Letter on Toleration
.”

“Yes, I do. I just got that a week ago.”

“I know. The librarian told me that a scholar had it.”

“He did? Mr. Winthrop was a friend of my father’s who lets me check out the books.” I was inwardly warmed that Mr. Winthrop would call me a scholar. “I love the philosophical mind of John Locke. Any philosopher really. My father and I used to spend whole days discussing philosophy.”

Monsieur Beaumont’s smile dimmed. “May I ask, who you talk to now about philosophy?”

I looked over at the smiling face of my mother as she was drinking wine with Mrs. Barrett, and the angry face of my sister as she was pointing a finger at Mr. Foster’s chest, and finally my eyes swept over the large frame of Mathew. My mother and sister hadn’t ever engaged in philosophy, and Mathew was such a good, kind, and intelligent man, but not a philosopher.

I shrugged. “No one. I—”

“Then, it is settled for us. We must meet . . . every day, I think, to make up for lost time.”

“Meet?”

“
Oui
, don’t you think so? After all it was Locke himself that stated that it was a duty for all mankind to come together to discuss philosophy.”

I chuckled. “
The Essay Concerning Human Nature
, yes? That is what you are using as the agent to propel us to discuss philosophy . . . every day?”

He nodded. “All right, I admit, he wrote to explore such subjects within the limits of one’s social opportunities, but I have not had anyone to talk to, nor have you, for some time. So we should meet every day. We have so much to discuss. Should we start with the Greeks?”

I’d always wondered what impelled a person’s decisions, especially when the choices he or she made could change their lives forever more. Greed? Sex? The Greeks believed these were the main drives of humanity. But what about matters of the heart? What pushes a person to knowingly make a bad judgment?

I cannot tell, as my own heart was beating so voraciously I couldn’t hear any advice it was giving.

  “I—I want to discuss science and math too. Newton and Leibniz.”

Monsieur Beaumont’s smile somehow managed to widen; his eyes took in the light of the afternoon sun and radiated it back to me in the deepest color of blue.

“As you wish, but I must warn you, I’m not good at calculus.”

I smiled and nodded. “I am. I’ll tutor you.”

“I will, of course, be a horrid pupil.” He lifted one black brow playfully.

I chuckled. “That’s all right. I’ll just beat you.”

“I’m looking forward to it then.”

“As am I.”

I bit down on my smile as I turned from him, instantly spying my mother and sister—my whole life. If there was even the slightest whisper of me conducting interviews with men, single men, both my mother and sister’s lives would be changed, perhaps in ruins, if I was caught being improper.

“No.” I couldn’t look at him while I gave my answer. I could only stare at my family. “I can’t meet you. I’m sorry, I—”

“But I’ve seen you shoot,” he paused.

His long silence provoked me to turn back to him, wondering what his point was. I met his dark, searching eyes.

His nose flared while he said, “With a shot like that you can do anything you want.”

“Monsieur Beaumont, spoke of you.”

Mathew cleared his throat then smiled at me.

I was in my family’s barn, inspecting the moldboard plow’s handle that was surely going to break soon when Mathew made this brief statement. It felt like I had been punched right under my ribs. My breath ceased and I absentmindedly bit my tongue until it bled. The coppery taste of earth filled my mouth. I fiddled with the small crack in the wood of the handle, then wiped my hands on my tan breeches and considered how best to appear cavalier.

“Did he?”

Mathew nodded and glanced at Mr. Jones, my family’s hired hand, who coughed while he was drying off Bess, the ox, from the morning showers. Whenever it rained like it had all that morning, the scent of the horses and Bess, stored grain, straw and dung amplified in the damp darkness of the barn, making work nearly intolerable.

I, too, peeked at Mr. Jones in Bess’s bin, who was humming peacefully to the black cow, but I looked back at Mathew, trying to detect any signs from him to indicate that he thought I was acting odd.

It was the very next day after meeting Monsieur Beaumont, and I hadn’t had time to figure out what I felt, let alone how I was supposed to act. I was still wondering just what it was that was affecting me so. Why did I spend almost all of last night contemplating Monsieur Beaumont’s words he’d said and the way he smiled or the way he laughed? And, Lord help me, the way he smelled? Oh, he was delicious.

I didn’t just think that, couldn’t have possibly thought something that ridiculous.

“He did.” Mathew’s smile wavered for a moment when he looked down at me again. “He was very grateful that you took him by hand and escorted him around the potluck. He had met all the militiamen, of course, but he is, like you, a bit shy in public. Unless he’s had a few ales, you know. Bottled courage, they say.”

I chuckled at Mathew’s jesting and nodded, then fingered the fracture in the wood all the more.

“And might I mention,” Mathew continued, “that I was quite proud that you were my fiancée and proud of
you
too. Taking by arm a Frenchman and making him feel welcome here, that was splendid. As well as that shot. Randolph is in love with you now, I’m sure.”

I chuckled again and shook my head. “He is not. Mr. Randolph has an altogether too healthy sense of humor, I’m afraid. I did like him though, that funny man.”

“Miss Buccleuch, Bess is as dry as I can get her,” Mr. Jones said as he smiled at Mathew and me.

I hadn’t noticed Mr. Jones approach, but was grateful for the interruption, grateful to stop obsessing about the way I should appear.

“On behalf of that spoiled cow, thank you for making her more comfortable.” I smiled.

Mr. Jones nodded while Mathew strode toward him and shook his hand.

“Ah, Mr. Jones, how are you today?”

“Fine, Mr. Adams. I’m fine. I keep wanting to plow the fields, but with this rain—Good Lord, is that rain tapering off now? After I got that ox all dry, now it’s fixing to stop raining.”

Mathew chuckled. “It is Massachusetts weather, after all. The one thing it has is unpredictability.”

Mathew certainly liked that joke.

Mr. Jones laughed though. “That it does have. It does, indeed.”

“Mr. Jones,” I said, “’Tis no use; we couldn’t plow today anyway. ‘Tis too wet now. Please, go inside and eat. Hannah made some beef stew, this time with beef.”

My sister, as a way to pretend we weren’t quite as poor as we really were, would create many versions of savory dishes that might exclude the main ingredient, like expensive beef. But Mrs. Barrett gave my mother two pounds of the luxurious meat yesterday. The Barretts were one of the riches families in Concord and were charitable to their neighbors. However, charitable is a strange word to use considering they were also slave owners. My father had begged and pleaded for their slaves’ freedom, but my father was often ignored for being too intelligent, too radical, or for being too much a Quaker. After all, he had practiced religious freedom within his own house, never forcing my mother, my sister or I to practice his faith. And I, until the age of ten, liked to pal around with the boys, often dressing as one, which my father gave me great liberty to do so.

“Beef stew made with real beef. Will wonders ever cease?” Mr. Jones stepped closer to the plow and me. “You need help on the handle?”

“I’m not sure.” I shook my head at the plow. “My main problem is wondering if I can afford to buy all the lumber this might require to fix.” I sighed, and swept some of my feral black hair out of my eyes. Seeing how concerned Mathew appeared, I laughed to ease his tension. “But I’ll get to it, Mr. Jones. Thank you, but you need to go inside and eat. You look thin.”

Mr. Jones gently pushed at my ribs with his elbow. “Talk about thin, missy.”

He laughed and rushed from me, very aware how I might throw a jab at him for teasing me about my build. My mother jested that if she cooked me, I’d be nothing but string and bones. Being raised around women who were adored for being plump, I detested my body for its lack of fat.

“Mr. Adams, I bid you a good day!”  Mr. Jones said while running backward with a gigantic smile on his face.

“You can run, but you know I’m faster!”  I hollered.

Mr. Jones laughed harder, but turned and picked up his speed. “I know! I know!”

He closed the barn door after himself, and left me alone with Mathew.

“Will you have lunch with us as well?”

Mathew shook his head. “Sorry, darling, no. Even though Hannah is turning out to be a good cook, I’ve got to run back to the Safety meeting.” He was talking about the Massachusetts Congress which could no longer be a congress because of the Intolerable Acts, and as such it was called the Committee of Safety. Rather passable title for a colony’s illegal congress, I thought.