Integrity's Choice (Sisters of the Revolution Book 5)

by Diana Davis

  He was right. Fischer clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll give you something to fill the space.”

  What, he had no idea. But once they had the broadside printed and proofed, he could think of something. Perhaps it would be fruitless, but this was what he really owed to Constance. Or at least it was a start.

  Constance was tying the ribbon around her cap Monday morning when Mercy, always an early riser, rushed in. “Connie, Temperance said we must come to David’s for breakfast.”

  “Did she?” Constance checked her reflection, though she hardly cared how she dressed for a family breakfast, and followed Mercy downstairs. They collected Verity and Mama from the drawing room and Papa from the dining room, all tromping through the garden and mews to David’s house, assembling in his dining room.

  David and Cassandra were already there, along with Owen and Temperance, all four of them laughing and embracing.

  “This looks like a celebration,” Papa noted.

  The four of them exchanged glances, something secretive lurking behind their gazes. “Yes,” David spoke first. “I’ve purchased an estate in the country.”

  “You have?” Mama asked.

  “Yes.” Cassandra smiled broadly. “And we’ve decided to name it Columbiafield.”

  Papa patted Constance on the shoulder.

  Westing announced Mr. and Mrs. Carter, and Helen and Nathaniel joined them. Owen greeted them, then turned to Nathaniel. “I thought you got your letter of marque last week.”

  “I did, but I wanted to make sure my family was well settled first.” He cast his wife an adoring gaze, a subtle grin playing upon both their faces.

  “Columbiafield?” Verity drew them back to that topic. “Long enough to choke a person, isn’t it?”

  Cassandra shrugged off the concern. “We’ll learn.”

  “I suggested Heartcomb,” David murmured.

  “Absolutely not,” Helen said. “We have no need of replacing Heartcomb!”

  Cassandra agreed. “It would do neither estate justice, and both can still be our home.”

  Helen grew wistful at the mention of the estate where the Croftons had been raised.

  “Does this mean you’re leaving us?” Constance asked.

  “Of course not!” David laughed at the idea. “It’s not twenty miles from here. You’ll not be rid of us that easily.”

  “And whenever we do stay there, naturally you are all always welcome,” Cassandra added.

  The couples pressed for further details — where was the estate, how many acres, how many bedrooms — while Constance, Verity and Mercy hung back.

  “It will be like having our own country estate,” Mercy said. “A veritable retreat.”

  “Yes.” Another thought came to Constance at that word, however: it would be a safe place for retreat if their new nation’s capital ever came under fire.

  Chilled, Constance took her chair, and her younger sisters did the same. The couples came to the table as well, and Westing announced Mr. and Mrs. Brand before they were all seated.

  Temperance sprang back to her feet. “Now we’re all here!”

  Everyone looked at her expectantly as she urged Owen to his feet as well. He slid an arm around her waist, holding her close, and beamed down at her.

  Finally, Temperance made her announcement: “We expect a baby.”

  Everything that had just settled was immediately thrown into an uproar again, everyone on their feet, rushing to hug Temperance and Owen. “When?” Constance and at least one other sister asked.

  “January,” Temperance said, “probably the middle of the month.”

  “That’s six months away! You waited long enough to tell us,” Mercy said. “After I spent all that time caring for you!”

  Temperance eyed their youngest sister. “I was certain you suspected.”

  “Of course I did! But you could have told me sooner.”

  Owen gestured at the room. “We wanted to tell all your family at once. Before any more of you started questioning us.”

  And to think Constance had worried Temperance was taken to bed with melancholy for the babe she’d miscarried this past January, nearly halfway through her time. They would all have to hope and pray this little one would receive a better fate.

  Constance surveyed the room and her cousins and sisters with their husbands. Cassandra and David’s new estate, Nathaniel home with Helen, Temperance and her Owen, a proud father-to-be, Patience and Gilbert, a hero who’d saved the Delaware delegation from ignominy at the least.

  And Constance and the hole in her heart. She returned to her seat along with everyone else and started on her dry toast.

  “Oh, is this the week’s Watchman?” Patience picked up the paper from the foot of the table.

  “Yes, with our declaration’s text.”

  “Very nice.” Patience perused the front page. “And what’s this? ‘To Joan of Arc, writing through the Hayes’?”

  Constance choked on her toast. Mercy clapped her on the back. “What does it say?” Mercy asked for her.

  Patience handed the paper across the table to her, and Mercy held it for Constance to read. She found the line in question at the top of the right-hand column, directly beside the declaration, but she’d misheard the title: “To Joan of Arc, riding through the haze.”

  Were the homophones mere coincidence?

  “He loves you!” Temperance proclaimed. “Did we not tell you he loves you?”

  “I certainly did,” David said.

  “Who loves Constance?” Patience asked.

  “Fischer Marks!” David, Temperance and Mercy all chimed at once.

  “How do you know that from that line?” Mama asked.

  Papa answered: “She’s Jeanne Dark. Jeanne d’Arc: Joan of Ark.”

  “What?” Mama and Patience both asked.

  “Of course she’s Jeanne Dark.” Verity sat back and scoffed.

  “You knew?” Constance asked.

  “Yes, this whole time. Why else would you and Mercy be so secretive with your little stories?” She sighed. “I see now that I was silly to ever entertain publishing a play with an authoress in the family.”

  “Nothing prevents you from writing as well.” Patience offered encouragement.

  “I might write also, but not ‘as well.’” Verity’s return smile was strained. “So I’d rather not write at all. Though I wish one of you had thought to tell me how awful my plays were.”

  Constance took Verity’s hand under the table. Surely no one wished to confirm Verity’s assessment, even if she was right. “I don’t mean to make you stop.”

  “I know; it’s my own choice.”

  Constance checked Mama’s reaction: tears of pride. “Oh, dear, you’ve made quite a name for yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Enough of a name that Fischer Marks is printing his love for you right on the front page.” Temperance beamed at her.

  Patience leaned over to speak to Temperance down the table. “I thought you didn’t like Fischer!”

  “I didn’t like Fischer for you. Because he was in love with Constance.”

  Patience sat back, stunned. This was a lot of new information for Patience to process, not the least of which was that her former suitor might care for Constance. In fact, he might have done so even while courting her.

  “Of course,” Patience said at last.

  “Of course?” Constance asked.

  Patience nodded. “He always noticed when I wore a gown that you’d worn. He always asked after you.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it, even when he told me he loved another.”

  He’d told Patience he’d loved someone else, her, Constance? Hope buoyed up her heart, but Constance could sense the demeanor of the room shift to confusion. “He courted you when he loved another?” Papa asked. Mama patted his arm as if she’d known this long ago.

  “Oh, Constance.” Patience’s tone was full of sorro
w. “You saw us that day, didn’t you, when we kissed?”

  “What?” Papa demanded.

  “Did I know about this?” Gilbert muttered to Patience.

  “Yes,” she returned in the same tone before addressing Constance again. “He said he dared not marry for love. I do hope he’s changed his mind.”

  Helen reached for The Watchman, forgotten in Constance’s hands, but she pulled it away, stood and read aloud.

  To Joan of Arc, riding through the haze:

  In morning mist, methought I saw a maid

  On steed of white, and all did heed her word.

  She rode away, but long the vision stayed

  With ev’ry soul who this maid’s words had heard.

  To act, to arms, each man and woman spurred.

  While I was trapped in my passivity,

  For land, for love, were others’ hearts bestirred.

  Those words that spoke so well of liberty

  Must touch the heart that beats inside of me.

  Forgive my shame, which caused thee so much pain!

  And without constance may I never be!

  O, maiden, please, inspire me again!

  A new vision, this morning I await

  With bated breath inside the garden gate.

  “Does he mean to enlist?” Gilbert asked when she’d finished.

  “I don’t think so,” Patience said. “But it’s perfect iambic pentameter.”

  Owen set down his glass. “Isn’t that a sonnet?”

  “English, I believe,” Helen said. “Like Spenser’s.” Cassandra and David agreed readily.

  Verity snorted. “You may all be right, but it’s terrible.”

  Constance lowered the paper. He wasn’t mocking her poem, was he?

  Verity finished, “Only someone in love could write something so truly awful.”

  “And someone who is also in love might appreciate it,” Cassandra pointed out.

  “No.” Constance shook her head.

  “You don’t love him?” Helen asked.

  “I do — but he cannot love me.”

  Nearly everyone at the table began talking over one another, and Constance fell back a step.

  At the head of the table, David rose to his feet and held up his hands to silence the tumult. “Constance, of course he does.”

  “You don’t understand.” Although of anyone here, David knew the most of what she’d done. “I burned my story in front of him to spite him. I shouted at him that I hated him.”

  David’s gaze strayed to Papa for a second. “Burned your story, did you?”

  Did David know Papa had burned her pamphlet, too?

  “Hm, shouting at someone one loves,” Cassandra drawled. “Certainly one should never forgive such a thing.”

  David forced a little laugh, taking his seat again. Had that happened between them?

  Cassandra’s smile turned wry. “Did you call him ‘boy’? Cast him out of your presence?”

  “I didn’t do that,” David murmured.

  “You did,” Cassandra and Helen said in unison.

  “I called you ‘girl.’”

  Cassandra laughed. “‘Get out and do not return’ were his exact words.”

  “And you forgave him?” Constance asked.

  Cassandra slid her hand into her husband’s. “Eventually. Once he’d groveled enough.”

  “She did not make me grovel.”

  “How did you forgive him?” Constance insisted.

  “He did apologize.” Cassandra turned to David for confirmation, which he gave to her. “And I loved him.”

  “I was — and am — the most fortunate man in all the Earth.” David leaned over the table to kiss his wife.

  Constance glanced at Papa. Regardless of whether David knew, Papa had burned her story in front of her. But he’d apologized, too, and of course she’d forgive her father. She loved him.

  Fischer had cut her too, very deeply. But if he could forgive her — and love her — she’d easily forgive him.

  Because she loved him.

  “I daresay Fischer has forgiven you if he’s printed something like that in the paper.” Verity nodded at the article in question.

  Constance lifted the newspaper again. If he did mean Jeanne Dark, writing through the Hayes, if he did mean all that he said about the words of liberty she’d written, if he were begging her forgiveness —

  Mercy pointed at the line “And without constance may I never be!” “Shouldn’t that say ‘constancy’?” Mercy nudged her with an elbow, then read the final couplet again: “A new vision, this morning I await / With bated breath inside the garden gate.”

  “Where’s that supposed to be?” Temperance asked.

  “His garden,” Patience and Constance said together.

  “He has a garden?” Verity asked.

  Temperance looked up from her chatelaine watch. “Constance, it’s past nine! You must hurry!”

  “I —” Constance touched the neckline of her plain dove gray gown. “I’m hardly dressed.”

  She’d scarcely finished speaking before every sister and cousin was on her feet. “We’ll have that fixed in a trice!” Temperance said.

  “You must eat, dear,” Mama said.

  “I couldn’t possibly.” The toast and fried eggs on her plate did not tempt her, but it was neither the food nor her tendency toward queasiness that prevented her from eating. It was sheer nerves.

  “Don’t be late for the reading of our declaration!” David reminded them. “Noon!”

  “Of course.” Temperance rounded the table to collect Constance and led the procession back to the Hayeses’.

  Surely Fischer would go to the reading. How on earth would she make it to his house in time?

  Fischer paced along the garden’s gravel paths until he began to grow dizzy. He’d spent most of the previous day catching up the garden work he and Lydia had neglected, and now the flowers were as pretty as ever: tall clusters of pink summer phlox, mats of delicate blue speedwell, raucous bunches of scarlet geraniums, vines of purple clematis, bushes of yellow and red and white roses.

  “Fischer?” Lydia called gently. “Won’t you come in? It’s getting late.”

  “I know.” He checked his watch. He’d been out here more than two and a half hours already.

  His sister approached with a cup of cider. “Will you wait out here every morning?”

  “It’s a weekly paper.” Fischer did not point out that the paper had been printed on Saturday, and that this was the third day he’d kept his vigil in the July sun. “She could read it any day this week.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “I’ll talk to her cousin.” Surely Beaufort could do something to get it in front of her eyes.

  Lydia gave him some small encouragement. “Well, I’m glad you’ve at least tried.”

  He nodded, but he was no longer certain this wasn’t completely foolish. Unless he enlisted Beaufort’s help, there was no guarantee Constance would see it. Why should she read his paper after how he’d treated her? And how would he know if she simply never saw it, or if she saw it and her answer was no? Or, the remote chance that she saw it and didn’t understand what he meant?

  Surely their hours in this garden had left as much of an impression on her as they had on him, hadn’t they?

  If not, then that was also his answer.

  He finished the cider Lydia had brought and returned the cup to her. “Thank you. Could I trouble you to take my hat and coat in?”

  “You’ll burn.” But she held out her hand and accepted them both once he’d shed them. “You should have told her to meet you somewhere indoors. Somewhere nice and cool, with good food.”

  “I don’t mean to keep you from your work.” He hoped she took that as sincerely as he meant it, and Lydia didn’t seem offended as she headed back in to her wheel.

  Fischer started on another circuit of the gravel, coming to a stop a
t that bench. He wasn’t sure whether it was romantic or simply sad that he still thought of it as their bench — his and Constance’s. He leaned against one arm on the arbor.

  There had to be something else he could try. Some way he could convince her that she could trust him. Months of prostrating himself at her feet? Years of steady, even daily courting?

  Anything. He’d try anything.

  “Fischer?” Lydia called.

  He was being stubborn and stupid, but he didn’t care. This was the smallest thing he could do for Constance, whether she knew or not. “I’m not coming in,” he replied without turning around.

  “Ever?” asked another woman’s voice.

  Fischer whirled around. There, beside Lydia at the other end of the gravel path, stood Constance, once again in that exquisite gown the color of cherry blossoms that accentuated both her perfect complexion and her lovely figure. She was even more beautiful in it than he’d remembered.

  Lydia touched her friend’s arm and left them. He didn’t dare move first. Constance lingered there a long time, fanning herself with a newspaper — his, he hoped.

  This heat. “Are you well?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I had to take David’s coach to get here fast enough.” One hand moved to her stomach as if of its own accord.

  Fischer took two strides toward her. “Do you have your fan?”

  “I’m well enough. It shall pass.”

  She took one step toward him, and he hurried to meet her amid the blooms of the garden where he’d always loved her. She held up the paper, front page facing him. “You wrote this?”

  He tried to grin but couldn’t quite manage it. “Did you read it?”

  “Oh, Fischer.” Why did she sound disappointed? “It’s terrible.”

  He laughed and looked down at the paper. “I know — it’s trite.”

  “Forced rhymes.”

  “But the meter was all right?”

  Constance lifted one shoulder. “Mostly.”

  “And . . .” He swallowed. “The sentiments?”

  “Oh, it’s extremely sentimental.”

  Fischer sighed. “You understand my meaning.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “I do.” She handed him the paper, and he tossed it in the nearest flowerbed.