I’d have happily listened to Mrs. Adams decry the morals of Frenchwomen, or whispered gossip with her daughter Nabby, but always, Charles Williamos turned the topic to finance. How much could America borrow? How many loans had the envoys secured? And whenever a question was put to him about his own affairs, he answered it with a question of his own.
Since my mother died, I’d come to understand silences better than most. Perhaps that’s why I found something strangely suspect in the things Mr. Williamos chose not to say.
Later, when I crossed paths with Mr. Short in the hall, I asked, “How did my father come to be in company with Charles Williamos?”
Mr. Short rubbed his cheek in thought. “I can’t say I am entirely sure, Patsy, but why do you ask? He’s always eager to fetch whatever your father needs. He’s made himself a useful friend.”
The hollowness in my gut insisted Williamos was no friend at all. “I have no fondness for him.”
It was an unladylike thing to say and I wished I could call it back when Mr. Short raised a brow. “Why ever not?” Mr. Short shot a ferocious look in the direction of the dining room, as if he intended to be my champion against some unseen foe. “Has Charles Williamos said something to you?” he asked sharply, eyes narrowed. Then, more darkly, “Has he done something untoward?”
Mr. Short’s fierceness unleashed a tingle in my hollow belly and helped me voice my suspicions. “It is only that he listens differently than other men at the table. Have you not observed it? He always holds his tongue when he might offer an opinion, and is uninterested in the opinions of others unless they’re made with great specificity. He’s trying to learn something of us without allowing us to learn anything of him.”
Mr. Short appraised me, his gaze running over my face. “You noticed this just sitting at dinner, behaving yourself like a little lady?”
My head bobbed with eager agreement, sensing that it pleased him. “Should I tell Papa?”
He paused a long moment, studying me with an intensity that caused my heart to beat faster. “No. What is there to tell?” He gave a small smile. “You worry too much for your father. Now, go on to bed Patsy, it’s getting late.”
But in the morning, I knew that I’d have to return to the convent. I’d have no opportunity to protect Papa from those who didn’t understand the depths of his sensitivity. To those who felt free to opine about Papa taking a new wife, not knowing—or perhaps, not caring—that he had sworn never to do so.
My father was too trusting; it was always the case.
So, I didn’t go to bed. Instead I slipped quietly into the empty room where Charles Williamos slept at night, not knowing what I was looking for. He had few belongings and even fewer that interested me. A scattering of papers on his writing table drew me closer. None of them useful, I thought, but, then …
A receipt. A tailoring bill charged to Papa—surely the sort of thing my father’s secretary ought to be aware of, if the expense was incurred on my father’s behalf. It was nothing, I told myself. Or at least not much. But maybe it was something… .
I snatched it up and carried it across the hall to where Mr. Short took dictation for my father. And I left Mr. Williamos’s paper there, as if it’d merely been mislaid by a servant.
“CELEBRATIONS ARE IN ORDER, Jefferson,” the Marquis de Lafayette exclaimed the next weekend over a glass of wine by the fire. “I’m told it’s now official that you’re to replace Benjamin Franklin here as minister to France.”
“No one can replace Dr. Franklin,” Papa replied. “I am only his successor.”
It was a modest reply, and Papa was earnest in his admiration for Dr. Franklin, but he couldn’t disguise his pride. He’d secured a position of great esteem and importance for our new nation. We were charged here with protecting American citizens, securing documents for travel and letters of introduction. We were to foster goodwill, educate Europeans about our new country, and make reports to America on the happenings overseas.
It was, Papa assured me, great and necessary work. I was very proud, of course. And upon hearing the news, Kitty Church behaved much better toward me. For if her father had been a rival to mine, he was no more.
In celebration, Papa took me to witness the grand procession to Notre Dame in honor of the new prince of France, born to his mother, Queen Marie-Antoinette.
Papa and I bumped and jostled along with the rest of the crowds that lined the roads. Given the harsh words some of the Frenchmen had for their queen, I was surprised they came out in such force to see her. But the moment her carriage rolled into view, the crowd roared and surged with eagerness. Such are the contradictions of monarchy, I supposed.
Even Papa was taken in by the spectacle.
“Look, look!” Papa cried, elbowing a space for me at the front of the crowd.
I clapped my hands in excitement. How beautiful the queen’s garments and how regal the king looked at her side! And yet, they were too far away to judge if they looked like their portraits in Philadelphia. “Why do some in the crowd boo the queen, Papa?”
“Because King Louis is too much governed by his queen,” Papa replied.
That hardly seemed like a thing she ought to be faulted for, but I held my tongue, for we were having a grand time. When the entourage disappeared, Papa and I walked hand in hand to the convent. I was a giddy girl the whole way, and didn’t want the feeling to end. “I should like to come out into society with you more often, Papa. Perhaps go with you to concerts and the theater.”
Papa smiled and pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. “You’re turning into my little lady, aren’t you?” The compliment lit me up inside and I stroked my hands over the fine silk of my beautiful green skirt. In truth, I was thirteen, no longer a child, nor even a girl, but, according to the nuns at the convent, a spring flower on the cusp of blooming. I’d just experienced my first woman’s blood, and I felt all the more like a woman when, with great adult satisfaction, I learned on my next visit home that Mr. Williamos had been sent packing.
Papa would say nothing of why his boon companion had been so unceremoniously ejected from our embassy. So, while he changed out of his formal waistcoat and powdered wig to take an evening brandy, I went to Mr. Short.
I suspected he would tell me the truth about such matters, and I was right.
Closeted with an array of ink pots and quill pens scattered upon his desk, my father’s secretary explained, “Mr. Williamos was ‘sent packing’ because he had his tailoring billed to your father’s account. What’s more, he had the temerity to lay the bill of receipt on my desk!”
I dared a glance up at Mr. Short in the light of a flickering candle. “Did he?”
An eyebrow lifted at my interest. “Indeed. Of course, he accused me of ransacking his belongings to find it. Can you imagine the nerve?”
Mr. Short must’ve suspected that I was the one who ransacked Mr. Williamos’s belongings. But he didn’t scold me for my misadventure. Indeed, I saw a hint of admiration in his eyes. That emboldened me to venture, “Surely a tailoring expense isn’t the whole reason Mr. Williamos was banished. Papa is very generous with his guests.”
Short nodded. “That’s true. Your saintly father thinks too well of other men, whereas I’m a sinner with a rather peculiar talent for prying into facts.”
I tried valiantly not to imagine what sort of sins Mr. Short may have committed, but my efforts did not prevent a flutter in my belly. “Did you pry into the facts of this matter, Mr. Short?”
His smile was thin and conspiratorial. “I made inquiries and got word from a certain Frenchwoman that Charles Williamos is a British spy.”
I gasped. A spy!
Pleasure brimmed up inside me at the thought that I had some part in flushing out an enemy, and any guilt I still felt for my sneakiness disappeared on the spot. The rightness of my instincts justified my actions and perhaps saved my father from embarrassment or harm. It was all very well for me to study music and Latin, but I was now decided that it would be m
uch better for our fathers and husbands—for the country itself—if all American women learned to study the manners of people and warn against the bad ones.
It is a belief in which I have never wavered since.
BY LATE SUMMER, all anyone could talk about was Queen Marie-Antoinette. The fascination owed mainly to the accusation that she’d somehow persuaded the Cardinal de Rohan to secretly purchase for her an exquisite diamond necklace. Kitty Church’s bold and irreverent opinion was, “The audacious woman wanted an expensive bauble, but didn’t dare buy it openly while her subjects go hungry. Then, when the bill came due, she couldn’t even pay!”
It was patently false, and the nuns ought to have been embarrassed by the cardinal’s gullibility to be fooled by a woman impersonating the queen, but many of them seemed to blame the queen anyway. “How can the people believe her guilty?” I asked Papa. “The imposter signed her letter Marie-Antoinette de France. Even I know that’s not how sovereigns sign letters.”
Directing the servants as to where to place his favorite mirror in our new embassy, Papa replied, “The people believe it, because the queen of France has a reputation for callous imprudence. It sounds in keeping with her character.” He paused, to give me his full attention. “You may take a lesson from this, Patsy. Reputation is everything. A soiled reputation in an ordinary person may reduce them to impoverishment, but a soiled reputation in someone like the queen may take down a government.”
It was a shocking statement—one that revealed my father’s lingering revolutionary sentiments. Did he think the French would rebel, too? But he said no more about it.
Because he was now a minister in the Court of Versailles, we were obliged to live in a way the French believed equal to his station lest he be thought ineffectual by the foolish standards of Paris. Foolish standards or no, we were both pleased with our new two-story town-home on the Champs-Élysées. It had more rooms than I dared to count, and in shapes one wouldn’t expect. There was a coach house and a stable for the horses. A greenhouse for the plants Papa loved to collect. Even a water closet with a flush toilet!
Of course, we’d need more servants. A coachman, a gardener, and a housekeeper, too. Jimmy Hemings couldn’t be expected to do it all. And, in truth, I’d begun to worry for our mulatto slave to be seen in the dining room where he provided ammunition to those who mocked my father as our slaveholding spokesman for freedom. But after hearing Mr. Short worry aloud that he wasn’t sure how Papa would manage all this on a salary of five hundred guineas per annum, I fretted at the expense of my new gown—lavender silk with a ribbon of lace for my neck in the place of jewels.
Nevertheless, we had a grand time together at a musicale, and afterward, at home, Papa sighed and said, “I miss it.”
“What do you miss?”
Absently fingering the watch key in which he kept a braid of my mother’s hair, he said, “Music.”
His reply ought to have puzzled me, for we had heard more music—and in more variety—since coming to Paris than any time past. But he used to make music with my mother, and he was merely a listener now.
“I should very much like to hear you play your violin, Papa.”
He blinked down at me. “It’s a lonely instrument without accompaniment.”
Till then, I had been a middling student of music. More enthusiastic than talented. But in that moment a desire bloomed inside my chest to sing and play as beautifully as my mother had so that neither of us might ever be so lonely again. “Shall we choose a duet, Papa?”
His lashes swept guardedly down over his blue eyes, as if he meant to refuse and retire early to bed. But then his lips quirked up at one corner and he called for his violin.
We made music that night, and every night I was home from the convent.
And I think Papa forgot his cares.
I think he forgot that Lucy was dead and that Polly still hadn’t made the crossing of the sea to be with us, despite Papa’s repeated requests. I think he forgot all our unhappiness. And I think I forgot it, too.
At least until the carriage ride home, when he spoiled it all by telling me that he was going to England. “Only for a few weeks, Patsy. You needn’t be afraid.”
But my memory resurrected our most harrowing days. I lived in dread of British soldiers since the night we had fled Monticello. It was an English king who declared my papa a traitor and tried to capture him. “It’s England, Papa.”
“John Adams reports a civil reception in London,” Papa said, to allay my fears. “Besides, I’ve fought too long against tyrants to let the terrors of monarchy keep my girl awake at night.”
This left me with only one suggestion. “Then let me go with you. I’d very much like to see Nabby again.”
“You have your schooling,” Papa said firmly. “The more you learn, the more I love you. Lose no moment in improving your head, nor any opportunity of exercising your heart in benevolence. Your duty is to attend your studies at the convent. My duty takes me to England.”
What of the duty Mama had bestowed upon me to watch over him?
Nevertheless, Papa left me in the care of Mr. Short, who had command of the American embassy while my father was away. I believed it was the increased responsibility that was behind the infrequency of Mr. Short’s visits to the convent and not—as my friends whispered behind their hands—that he spent all his free time in the company of notorious women. But their rabid gossip gave me the strangest sinking feeling, so I refused to even acknowledge it.
On the day he came to pay my tuition, Mr. Short reported, “Your father has arrived safely in England. He bids me to look after your happiness.”
Tartly, I replied, “I’d be a good deal happier if he’d write me.”
Mr. Short straightened his cravat and gave a sympathetic smile as we walked together on the convent grounds. “Perhaps he’ll return with a little gift … I have it on good authority that he’s ordered a special harpsichord for you.”
I gasped, imagining the duets Papa and I would play together. My mother played the harpsichord and I wanted to make beautiful music with one, too. “Is that really true?”
My spirits lightened as Mr. Short guided me to a bench and we sat in the cool spring sun. “It is. And maybe he’ll return with your sister Polly, too,” Mr. Short suggested, perhaps encouraged by the light in my eyes. Hope flooded my heart. Seeing Polly would be even better than a harpsichord! It shocked me to realize that it’d been nearly a year since we wrote instructing Aunt Elizabeth to send Polly to us. Seldom was anything my father commanded left undone, and I began to worry that they were all very ill at Eppington. Too ill to come to us here in France. And I said as much.
“Patsy, if you keep fretting, you’ll wither away before your fourteenth birthday and I’d hate to see a fair bloom spoiled before it blossoms.”
A thrill rushed through me. Had Mr. Short called me a fair bloom? Did he mean anything by it? Certainly not. Still, an odd lightness of being filled my chest until I was nearly giddy. The heat of a blush flustered me. I remembered the gossip about Mr. Short and notorious women, and his words made me bold. Brushing away a tendril of my hair caught by the breeze, I forced my gaze to meet his, which was bright green in the light of the sun. “Mr. Short, what should a friend do if she knew your reputation was in danger?”
He tilted his head. “If my friend was a daughter of the U.S. minister, she should tend to her father’s reputation and not mine.”
I had tended to Papa’s reputation; but Papa was better now, his reputation unblemished, his honor as a Virginia gentleman beyond reproach. “Doesn’t my father call you his adoptive son? Therefore, by your reasoning, I should tend to your reputation because it reflects upon him.”
Mr. Short smirked at my boldness. “Why do you think my reputation is endangered?”
“Rumors say you’re overfamiliar with women, especially with a girl in the village of Saint-Germain, where you first learned French.” My brazenness set me to trembling. I clasped my hands to hide it
.
“Ah, the Belle of Saint-Germain.” He laughed, proving he took no offense.
But I hoped he’d deny it and didn’t know how to respond to laughter, nor to the odd disappointment welling in my chest. Finally, I said, “It’s gossip. I know it’s not true. You’re a sprightly dancer. How can you be blamed if licentious Frenchwomen flock to you?”
This only made him laugh harder.
“I’ve defended your honor,” I added hastily, my temper rising with my discomfort. “I’ve vouched for your good character.”
He squinted his green eyes with mischief and mirth. “Oh, never do that. You can never know the heart of a diplomat. Perhaps the gossip about me is true.”
My spirits sank, but my spine straightened. “Mr. Short, do you not realize that I’d defend you against disparaging words even if they were true?”
My earnestness pierced his bubble of merriment. He sat forward, his amusement dying away. “I’m sorry that such matters should ever concern you, Patsy. Truly. I endeavor to flaunt my affections with such openness that I cannot be suspected of secret lusts or hidden vices. My affections for the Belle of Saint-Germain and for the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld, and any number of Frenchwomen who frequent the salons of Paris, are genuine and transparent. I’ll not claim my own actions are innocent, but theirs are blameless.”
His admission that he felt affection for these women made my throat go suddenly tight. “Well, I worry,” I managed weakly.
Mr. Short smiled. “Your care is ever a comfort. Just be sure you attend to your own happiness, too.”
I HOPED PAPA WOULD RETURN from England with my little sister. And failing that, my new harpsichord. Instead, he returned with a startling missive from Polly, who refused to join us in France, writing: I want to see you and sister Patsy, but you must come to Uncle Eppes’s house.
Polly’s willfulness pained me. Never would I have defied Papa’s wishes in such a way. And since my sister’s letter was written under Aunt Elizabeth’s supervision, I couldn’t help but think it had my aunt’s approval, which left me quite sour toward her.
America's First Daughter: A Novel Page 9
