America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  Yes. Perhaps distraction and duty were exactly what Papa needed right now.

  Mr. Short’s words were both cloak and candor. And I realized that there was no one else in the world who spoke to me this way. The garrulous Mrs. Adams spoke to me as if I’d become a woman of good sense. Papa shared with me his enthusiasm for science and inventions and architecture and music. Especially music. But only Mr. Short ever spoke to me of politics, spies, and finance. Only Mr. Short seemed to believe I had some right to know more about the revolution my family had brought about.

  He didn’t treat me like a child anymore, and that was for the best, because I very much wanted William Short to know that I hadn’t been a child for quite some time.

  THANKFULLY, WHEN PAPA’S WRIST HAD HEALED A BIT, he embarked on the trip to the south of France. As we stood together on the street in front of our embassy waiting for the carriage, I wished I could tell my father to forget Maria Cosway. I wished I could tell him to find joy in discovering the countryside and observing the beauty of nature—instead of the beauty of a married woman.

  But I could say none of this without confessing that I’d read his letter. Instead, I let my breaths puff silently into the cold morning air, hoping he could divine my hopes in those little clouds of steam. Hoping he’d sense my love, my longing for him to confide in me where he wished only to confide in others.

  Maybe he did. “Patsy, I have a farewell gift that I hope you’ll hold close to your heart.” He withdrew from the pocket of his embroidered coat a miniature portrait of himself.

  I pressed it against my chest. “Oh, it’s lovely, Papa. I’ll treasure it. Why, it must be one of a kind!” In saying this, I hoped to give him an opening. A chance to confess that it was a duplicate of the one he’d commissioned for Mrs. Cosway. A chance to beg my pardon for remembering me only because of Mr. Short’s kindness.

  I waited for Papa to say these things, ready to tearfully confess my own sins. Eager for him to embrace me and reassure me that he hadn’t forgotten Mama and that he didn’t intend to return to Virginia with Mrs. Cosway and make her the new mistress of Monticello. But Papa merely kissed my cheeks. “I’ll write to you so often you won’t even know I’m absent from Paris.”

  Then he climbed into the carriage and was gone.

  Watching the wheels of Papa’s carriage rumble down the street, I backed up the stairs to find Mr. Short waiting there. Still smarting with disappointment, I asked, “So, I suppose you’re to be master of the embassy while Papa is away?”

  “Custodian anyway.” He clasped his hands behind his back, swaying with faux hauteur upon his buckled shoes. “But since you’ve also been entrusted to my care, I’m uncertain as to which duty will be more trying.” He raised a brow, as if to remind me that he knew a part of my nature to which the rest of the world was blind. “If you have any care for the prospects of my career, make certain I’m not forced to account to your father for bad behavior while in my charge.”

  I did have a care for the prospects of Mr. Short’s career. I had a very great care. And so, when he next came to the convent to pay my tuition, I quizzed him on France’s financial troubles, which, to my ear, sounded like a very grown-up topic indeed.

  “The finance minister has called for tax reform,” Mr. Short explained as we strolled through the convent’s inner courtyard past neatly trimmed shrubbery and an explosion of spring flowers in yellow, red, and pink. “And at least half the city stands insulted by the king’s refusal to put the matter before parlement.”

  “I’ve heard the political quarrel has spilled out into the streets in scuffles,” I said, a little ashamed of the thrill in my voice, especially since it wasn’t the danger that excited me, but the nearness of Mr. Short. How had I never noticed before how noble a profile he had? And his green eyes … how could eyes be so strangely world-weary and enchanting at the same time?

  “Men will fight for liberty,” Mr. Short was saying, sounding very much like Papa. “But there’s always a risk that fighting will descend into lawlessness.”

  “Then I’m glad our revolution is over in America.”

  Mr. Short’s lips twitched up. “You think our revolution is over and done, Patsy?”

  “Have we not wrested our liberty from the British?”

  “We’ve won, at force of arms, the right to draw up a Constitution. Yet, you need look no further than your father’s own plantation in Virginia—or indeed, our embassy kitchen—to see that liberty hasn’t been secured for all men.”

  My lips parted in astonishment. Mr. Short was unwilling to judge my father for his affair with Mrs. Cosway, but on the matter of slavery, I heard the very certain note of censure. Bristling, I said, “I suppose the Virginia gentlemen of Spring Garden, from whence you hail, don’t keep slaves?”

  “Not this Virginia gentleman,” he said, with a determined shake of his head. “I entered this world with a small patrimony. I hope to grow my investments such that my fortune may sustain me. But I will not water it with the infamous traffic in human flesh. The practice compromises our morals and teaches us a habit of despotism.”

  His vehemence took me entirely unawares. I couldn’t imagine this was a conversation of which my father would approve, but the lure of discussing anything with an impassioned Mr. Short proved too much to resist. “Then what—what is to be done about slavery?”

  Mr. Short turned us into the bright green hedge maze. “I haven’t an answer yet. But I intend to join a society for effecting the abolition of the slave trade.”

  As we walked, Mr. Short explained to me his vision for a world where slavery was no more and men lived in equality and deference to the law. And for once I didn’t curse my long legs, for I had no trouble matching his stride as our shoes fell into rhythm together. I’d always taken him for a pragmatist—a shrewd man if not an entirely virtuous one. But that day I learned he was a man whose ideals were as lofty as my father’s.

  Perhaps loftier.

  When he left me, I raced up to the bedroom so that I could stand at the window overlooking the street to watch him go. Marie came upon me and flounced atop the embroidered-coverlet of the bed, propping herself up on one elbow in bored repose. When she glanced out the window to see the retreating figure of Mr. Short, her mouth formed a little circle of surprise. “Mon Dieu! Jeffy, you are smitten.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, not risking a glance at her. “Mr. Short is merely a friend of long acquaintance.”

  “Then why are you pink to the tips of your freckled ears?”

  At last, I decided it would do no good to hide it from her. I spun on my toes in an excited pirouette. “Do you think he fancies me? Whenever he visits, he stays longer than he is obligated to do. He had an artist paint a portrait for me… .”

  Marie’s expression fell. “Oh, poor Jeffy. Has no one told you that your Mr. Short is infatuated with Rosalie, the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld?”

  I pretended to dismiss it, waving a hand. “That’s a malicious rumor.”

  She hesitated at my staunch defense, then concluded, “I think it’s true that he’s infatuated with her, but let’s hope it is only rumor that they’ve become lovers.”

  Lovers. I was wholly unprepared for the flash of pain that burned just beneath my breastbone at the thought. Mr. Short was a man of twenty-seven who spent his days with the cream of French society … of course he took lovers.

  With sinking spirits, I decided that I’d been a fool. The reminder made me wonder how I’d ever so much as entertained the notion that he might take an interest in me. How ridiculous to dream, for even a moment, that a mere schoolgirl could compete for his affections with the likes of a duchess, no matter that she was another man’s wife… .

  Wounded, I kept to myself, finding comfort in the scriptures. I reported the political happenings in Paris to Papa by post, hoping to keep him apprised. But he didn’t seem pleased by my interest in politics. My letters were all too often met with silence and, in one case, a veiled rebuke that I should atte
nd ancient Latin texts and keep my mind always occupied to guard against the poison of ennui!

  How could I care about the translation of Livy with the world in such a state? Moreover, I wouldn’t need to keep my father apprised of the goings-on in France if he hadn’t been away, pining for the plumed and piffling woman who aroused his sinful impulses.

  Only you, Martha. That’s what he swore to my mother four years before as she gasped her last breaths. I believed him then and so did she. But what I learned about men in Paris—even American men in Paris—opened my eyes and bruised my heart. And so I wrote to Papa, bitterly, of the latest news, almost hoping to wound him:

  There was a gentleman, a few days ago, that killed himself because he thought that his wife did not love him. I believe that if every husband in Paris were to do as much, there would be nothing but widows left.

  To that letter, Papa did not reply.

  IN THE CONVENT’S SALON, clutching his smart tricorn hat and a nosegay of posies, Mr. Short said, “Patsy, I’ve had word that you were ill. I shouldn’t have insisted the nuns rouse you from bed, but when you refused to see me, I feared—”

  “It was only a violent headache,” I said, pulling my shawl round myself for warmth, though it was springtime. “The kind Papa suffers when he’s upset.”

  I didn’t tell him of the mysterious pain in my side that had blistered up and caused me such suffering. No doubt elegant duchesses never fell prey to such unsightly maladies. If he was to find out about my blisters, he’d have to learn it from the bewildered physician, not from me, so I offered nothing else by way of explanation. Nor could I explain to him the wound on my spirit—one that’d driven me, in prayer and contemplation, to a religious epiphany.

  What I couldn’t tell him, for fear he might tell my papa, was that I had resolved to take my vows and join the convent.

  The idea had first come upon me in a sudden swirl of anger and resentment … and yet, during my illness, it had transformed itself into a genuine desire. Though I knew my father would despair to hear it, I was more contented at the Abbaye de Panthemont than at any other place I’d ever been. Immersed in its world of women devoted to each other and the betterment of mankind, I felt sheltered against the wickedness of Paris. What’s more, my dearest friends were always near to me at the convent, and I felt more suited to a life of reflection and scholarship than to a marriage or to a plantation to which my father supposed I must one day return.

  None of this, of course, could I tell William Short.

  At my silence, Mr. Short exhaled a long breath, then drew one of the purgatorial wooden chairs closer. I sat, careful of the shifting of my gown against my side. When he sat, he didn’t cross his legs like a man of leisure, but perched on the edge, as if waiting for a verdict at court. “Your father couldn’t bear it if anything should happen to you, and under my watch—”

  “I’m quite recovered of my infirmity. You needn’t worry for your career.”

  Mr. Short scowled, extending the nosegay to me. “Enjoy these in good health, then.”

  Taking the posies, a tenderness crept through me that I was forced to steel myself against. “Have you any word of my papa? Of my sister?”

  “Your father’s return has been delayed, but your sister is en route. I cannot imagine how your Aunt Elizabeth got the girl onto the ship, considering Polly refused to come. Your father is quite bedeviled by the child. She defies him as if he were no more to her than a strange beggar on the streets.”

  Polly had been scarcely five years old when we left her. Now she was nearly nine. She’d lived half her life with Aunt Elizabeth, and through our neglect, I worried that we had lost her as surely as we’d lost baby Lucy. It was a failure that gave me the greatest pain, and I was determined to live up to the promise I’d made my mother to watch over my little sister. Which I could do right here, in the convent. When Polly came to us in France, Papa said I must teach her to be good, and to tell the truth, for no vice was so mean as the want of truth.

  But I’d teach her to be devoted, for that seemed to me a much more important virtue. Nuns were devoted. And if I was to be a devoted friend to Mr. Short, I knew that I must overlook the blots on his character as he overlooked mine.

  So I determined to think no more about his pretty duchess.

  Nuns wouldn’t think about his duchess.

  I took the posies and inhaled their sweet scent before drawing Mr. Short into conversation. He obliged me, explaining how antislavery sentiment grew hand in hand with constitutionalism in Paris. These talks, in which he showed respect for my opinions, made me think about new things and challenge what I’d been told. Challenge, even, my papa.

  And the next day I wrote to my father:

  It grieves my heart when I think that our fellow creatures should be treated so terribly as they are by many of our country men. Good god have we not enough slaves? I wish with all my soul that the poor negroes were all freed.

  In answer to this sentiment, Papa was also entirely silent.

  Chapter Eight

  London, 26 June 1787

  To Thomas Jefferson from Abigail Adams

  I congratulate you upon the safe arrival of your little daughter. She’s in fine health and a lovely little girl, but at present everything is strange to her. I told her that I didn’t see her sister cry once when she came to Europe. Polly replied that her sister was older and ought to do better, and had her papa with her besides. I showed her your portrait, but she didn’t know it. If you could bring Miss Jefferson with you, it would reconcile her little sister to the rest of the journey. The old nurse you expected to have attended her was sick and unable to come. Instead, she has a girl about 15 or 16 with her, one Sally Hemings.

  I WAS READY TO FETCH POLLY AT ONCE. But my father bewildered me by sending a French servant to escort Polly from London instead. And I was outraged when Mr. Short let slip the reason why.

  Papa had urged Mrs. Cosway to return to Paris. The shameless woman had agreed, and because she was on her way, Papa didn’t want to chance the trip to fetch Polly for fear he’d miss his paramour!

  Maria. Maria. Maria.

  That night, when Papa kissed me good night, I bit down on the impudence that tempted my tongue. But Mrs. Adams showed none of my reserve in her next letter, in which she tartly informed us:

  Polly told me this morning that since she had left all her friends in Virginia to come over the ocean to see you, you might have taken the pains to come here for her yourself. I haven’t the heart to force her into a carriage against her will and send her from me in a frenzy, as I know will be the case, unless I can reconcile her to going.

  I was glad Abigail Adams’s letter shamed Papa.

  I took greater solace that Mrs. Adams would reconcile Polly to join us and that I’d soon have my sister with me once more. After all, I knew from experience that people found it extraordinarily difficult to hold out against Mrs. Adams!

  Weeks passed before the welcome sound of the hired coach turned from the rue de Berri and into the courtyard of the Hotel de Langeac. Hearing it, I rushed from the salon out to the front steps. As I held my breath, two girls stepped down from the carriage, their eyes wide with wonder and uncertainty.

  Oh, dear Polly!

  How changed she was. Still petite, with the blue eyes I remembered so well, but now a grown girl that I might’ve passed on the street without knowing. And yet, when I tried, I could see my mother in miniature.

  “Dearest Polly, I am overjoyed to see you,” I said, hurrying down the steps.

  My little sister turned shy at the sight of me, sucking her lips in as she examined my face. I smiled brightly, holding my arms out to her, but they drooped when I realized that, in fact, she had totally forgotten me.

  The pain was an arrow to the heart—as sharp as any wound I’ve suffered.

  Reluctantly, Polly accepted my embrace but then squirmed away, her gaze swinging over the house’s facade. “Everything here is so grand… .”

  I grasped
her hand. “I know. Paris is a wonder. You’ll love it here. Come. Papa’s eager to see you.”

  As I guided her to the steps, I glanced over my shoulder at the slave girl. I hadn’t seen Sally in many years and she’d changed, too. If I’d ever doubted that Sally was my mother’s half-sister, I was convinced the moment she said hello. She had my mother’s voice. The soft lilt of her greeting was so familiar. And, in truth, her appearance was strikingly similar to my sister’s. Sally was a mulatto of fair complexion, but not so perfectly fair that the French wouldn’t suspect she was a slave. And I worried what our French friends would think. I remembered the words spoken against my father’s reputation as our slaveholding spokesman for freedom. But perhaps Sally’s resemblance to Polly would be to our advantage, for it was perfectly common here for lesser relations to take on positions as servants to their wealthier kin.

  Like all our Hemings servants, Sally had been raised at the hearth of our family; she’d make a very fit companion in Paris, where she might learn a good trade, just as her brother had been doing with his cooking. When we entered the entrance hall, Jimmy Hemings stood waiting, dressed in his chef’s toque and work uniform. He bowed and offered a warm welcome to my sister. And his.

  While the Hemings siblings celebrated their own reunion, I led Polly into my father’s study, where he leaped to his feet at the sight of us. My little sister stumbled back, still clinging to my hand as my father went down on one knee. “Don’t be frightened, child.” And when she smiled a little, he asked, “You know me, Polly, don’t you?”

  She shrugged apologetically. “I think, upon seeing you, I recollect something of you, sir.”

  It was another barb that dug its way into me. I had dreamed of restoring the happy little family that had laughed and sung in a wilderness cabin while hiding from the British, yet my sister didn’t even know us.

  By evening, Polly and I started to overcome the deep sense of separation, and I hoped she’d spend the night in my bed, but she wanted to sleep with Sally.