America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  Sally stood in the center of the room, her back to me, Papa’s coat gripped in her hands. He was smiling softly at her, with an intimacy that stole the breath from me.

  After a moment, Papa grasped the jacket from Sally. But, no, he didn’t grasp the material, he held her hands where they curled around the stiff collar. He studied her, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend the contours of her face.

  And my heart thundered against my breastbone.

  I was frozen there on the threshold of the room, not quite in, not quite out. I didn’t know what was happening, or why every fiber of my body screamed at me to look away. I should have. Or maybe I should have called out to make my presence known.

  But I could do neither.

  Papa was a tall man, and Sally was small. The way he stared down at her—the girl who looked so much like my mother—it wasn’t the stare of an old man, a humiliated lover, or a widower resigned to bachelorhood.

  It was the stare of a man who contemplates damnation and salvation.

  Slowly, as if even he wasn’t conscious of his movement, Papa leaned his face down to Sally’s. As his eyes fell closed, her head tilted back and he kissed her.

  I could make no sense of the scene unfolding before me. She was a girl my own age. She was my mother’s sister, my own aunt. She was his slave. And though I knew—of course I knew—that Virginia plantation owners took slaves for mistresses, we’d been so long away from home, I couldn’t believe my own eyes.

  He couldn’t be doing this. My mind rejected what I saw clearly until he pursued her lips with more ardor and drew Sally close against his chest. At that embrace, I choked back the cry that worked its way up from my breast, where my heart raced so hard I saw spots.

  If Papa saw me … he mustn’t see me. Fingers pressed over my lips, I turned away from the private, heartbreaking moment and flew from the room.

  Chapter Nine

  IT WAS MY HASTE that made me stumble halfway down the stairs. Only a wild, wrenching grasp at the carved wooden rail saved me from a broken neck. Alas, the heavy fall of my feet echoed up the staircase and drew my father from his rooms.

  “Patsy?” he called, peering over the bannister.

  I froze, breathless, my belly roiling with shock and anger and revulsion. I ought to have pretended that I didn’t hear him say my name. I ought to have hurried on, leaving him with only the sight of my back. I ought never to have looked up at him over my shoulder.

  But I did look up.

  There on the landing my father loomed tall, a tendril of his ginger hair having come loose from its ribbon, his shirt worn without its neck cloth, the stark white linen setting off more vividly the red flush that crept up his throat. Was it shame for his behavior with Sally or … ardor?

  On the heels of witnessing his behavior, the thought was so excruciatingly horrifying that heat swept over me, leaving me to wish I’d burn away to dust.

  “Are you hurt?” Papa asked, hoarsely.

  I couldn’t reply, my mouth too filled with the bitter taste of bile. Finally, I forced a shake of my head.

  He glanced back to the door, then back at me, his hand half-covering his mouth. “Were—were you at my door just now?”

  “No,” I whispered, as much as I could manage under my suffocating breathlessness. And how dare he ask if I’d been at his door when neither of us could bear the honest answer? Even if Papa didn’t know what I’d seen, he knew what he’d done.

  He ought to have been downstairs with us, reacquainting himself with the little daughter who still didn’t remember him. He ought to have been sipping cider with the young man who fancied me, giving his permission to court. He ought to have been doing a hundred other things. Instead, he was preying upon my dead mother’s enslaved half-sister—and the wrongness of it filled my voice with a defiant rage.

  “No, I wasn’t at your door.” I held his gaze, letting him see what he would.

  My father paused on the precipice, clearing his throat, absently smearing the corner of his lips with one thumb. “Well—well … did you need something?”

  As if my needs were at the forefront of his thoughts.

  My fingers curled into fists as a lie came to me suddenly, and sullenly. “I was coming up to fetch my prayer book.” Surely he knew it was a lie, but I didn’t care. If he challenged me, I’d lie again, without even the decency of dropping my eyes. I’d lie because between a father and a daughter, what I’d witnessed was unspeakable. And I’d learned from the man who responded with silence to my letters about politics or adultery or the liberation of slaves… .

  Papa never spoke on any subject he didn’t want to.

  Neither would I.

  “Are you certain you weren’t hurt,” Papa finally murmured, “… on the stairs?”

  Rage burned inside me so hotly I thought it possible that my handprint might be seared upon the railing. I bobbed my head, grasped my skirt, and took two steps down before my father called to me again.

  “Patsy?”

  I couldn’t face him, so I merely stopped, my chest heaving with the effort to restrain myself from taking flight. “What?”

  A heavy silence descended. One filled with pregnant emotion. I feared he might be so unwise as to attempt to explain himself, to justify or confess his villainous lapse in judgment, but when he finally spoke, it was only to ask, “What of your prayer book?”

  Swallowing hard, I forced words out despite the pain. “I’ve reconsidered my need of it. I’m not as apt as some people to forget what it says.”

  MY HEART STILL IN TURMOIL, I drifted mindlessly back to the parlor, where Polly sipped at her cider, dollies by her feet on the floor. I wanted nothing so much in that moment as to escape my father and his house. To spirit away to the convent and take my little sister with me. But how would I explain myself to Mr. Short?

  “Is your father of a mind to join us?” he asked, rising from his chair expectantly, his eyes still dancing with merriment from our games in the snow.

  For me, those games now seemed a lifetime ago, our perfect moment sullied. “Papa won’t be joining us.”

  “More cider for us, I suppose,” Mr. Short mused, tilting his cup to hide his disappointment.

  “Didn’t you get Sally?” Polly asked, abandoning her dollies. “I’ll fetch her.”

  “No,” I said, harshly, grabbing her arm to stop her.

  I’d never spoken a harsh word to Polly, much less grabbed her with force. She blinked at me with surprise. “Why not?”

  “Papa has need of her.” How I nearly choked on those words.

  Perhaps Mr. Short heard the catch in my throat, or saw inside me to where a noxious stew of dark and unworthy emotions still boiled. For the merriment in his eyes melted away to concern. “Polly, do you know that Jimmy is working on a wondrous new confection made of egg whites and custard and wine? They’re called snow eggs. Why don’t you help him whip them up?” Polly’s eyes widened with delight, so I let her skip away to the kitchen before I thought better of it. And the moment she was gone, Mr. Short latched on to me with his singular characteristic of prying into facts. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’ve grown tired and wish to return to the convent.”

  His brows shot up. “Before the end of Christmastide? Your father hadn’t planned for you to return until after the religious observances were at a close… .”

  It was his way of reminding me of Papa’s antipathy for Catholicism and contempt for Catholic mass and saints’ days. Though it was still many years before my father would use a razor to construct his own Bible, cutting out all mentions of miracles and divinity, I already suspected my father observed the holy days only as a matter of form. And the reminder fueled my outrage, making me all the more determined to defy him. “Papa’s well contented with his servants. He doesn’t need me here. And in matters of faith, mustn’t we all follow our own conscience?”

  The word conscience echoed between us.

  Mr. Short glanced to the door and the st
airway beyond, in the direction of my father’s bedchambers, before rounding his shoulders beneath his dark coat. “Certainly, Mademoiselle Sally can see to your father’s comfort, but you’re the center of his world, Patsy. Moreover, how would your conscience allow you to leave me utterly bereft of your company?”

  In spite of his exquisite charm, I winced at his mention of Sally, dying a little at his unwitting implication of how she might see to Papa’s comfort, by the way he called her Mademoiselle, as if she were a free Frenchwoman.

  It was only a wince. It shouldn’t have betrayed me. But to William Short, I was capable of betraying myself without a word. “Patsy, sit down before your knees give way.” Then, more quietly, without a note of censure, he added, “You’re old enough now to know the natural way of it between men and women.”

  There I suffered my second shock of the evening—the realization that Mr. Short was somehow aware of my father’s liaison with his slave girl. Did that mean I’d not witnessed its first incarnation? Could there have been other encounters, other kisses, other… .

  Sitting down hard upon the chair by the fire, I shook away the knowing of any of it. None of this was anything a lady of character ought allow herself to be aware, nor something a Virginia gentleman like William Short ought to acknowledge. So I exclaimed, “Pray do not speak another word.”

  But Mr. Short was already more of a Frenchman than a Virginian, and instead of honoring my request, he took the chair beside me and spoke my name very softly. “Patsy. Why not tell me what troubled thoughts are racing under that lace-trimmed cap?”

  How soothing he made himself sound, as if he wasn’t the same man who had just characterized my father’s desire for Sally as the natural way of it between men and women. So soothing that the savage whisper of my answer took us both by surprise. “Because you, sir, for whom I’ve unwisely contrived no small admiration, never find fault in my father’s conduct.”

  Mr. Short gripped the armrest of his chair. “How unjust! I’ve spoken to your father many times about the evils of slavery and shall continue to do so.”

  “I’m not speaking of the evils of slavery—”

  “But you are, Patsy,” he insisted. “Should we object to a man’s affection for his slave more than we object to the fact that he holds her in bondage? I’ve told you before that slavery is a practice that compromises our morals. Perhaps beyond redemption. Whether we claim a slave’s labor in the tobacco field or the smoky kitchen or in the pleasures of a candlelit bedchamber, slavery makes it all the same.”

  “It’s not the same,” I argued, though, unlike Mr. Short, I had no experience in the pleasures of a candlelit bedchamber to guide my convictions. I had only my conscience. And my conscience cried out that this was wrong. I knew it was. So did William Short. Yet apparently he’d do nothing to stop it, even if it meant putting souls, as he said, beyond redemption. Was it because Mr. Short had seduced and corrupted the Belle of Saint-Germain and his married duchess, too? Did he feel as if he had no standing to judge my father’s illicit conduct when he himself stood guilty of indiscretions?

  Mr. Short reached for my hand. His eyes filled with desire, the same desire I’d seen only moments ago on my father’s face… . “Patsy, it’s no sin to—”

  “It is,” I said, pulling away.

  Not everything I’ve felt for Sally Hemings over the years has been noble or unselfish, but that night I perceived a difference between her and the preening, pampered Maria Cosway. With the memory of Sally’s tarnished little bell, the one my mother bequeathed her, I felt somehow compelled to defend her. But because I could conceive of no way to influence her circumstance or my own, I was filled with rage not only at my father, but also at William Short—the man who made our helplessness plain.

  I wrenched away before he could reach for me again, thinking myself miserably foolish to have ever presumed his flirtation carried with it an honorable intent. Foolish to have ever thought Mr. Short wished to court me—or marry, ever.

  “It is a sin, Mr. Short,” I said, remembering all the teachings my father supposed I didn’t hear at the convent. I knew God gave us commandments, the sixth of which forbade adulteries and fornications—even those lusts committed only in the heart. Yet the men of Paris seemed to believe the Lord could not see past the glittering brilliance of Versailles into the darker deeds done in its shadow. Deeds done under the same roof where my innocent little sister played with her dolls.

  So it was that with all the righteous indignation that can be mustered by a confused and heartbroken girl of fifteen, I brushed past Mr. Short without a backward glance.

  SALLY HEMINGS WAS AS OPAQUE TO ME as I tried to make myself to the rest of the world. We had that in common. So when she came to brush out Polly’s hair that night, she let slip not the slightest hint of anything amiss.

  In the days that followed at the Hotel de Langeac, my father’s behavior was, in every respect, correct, benevolent, and genteel. Papa was gallant with Polly, spoiling her with gifts on Christmas Day. He contrived to play music with me, ignoring the pain in his wrist, lavishing me with praise and warmly asserting after a particularly well-performed duet that he loved me infinitely. He also announced, on the coming of the new year, that he’d begin paying wages to Jimmy—who now insisted upon being called James—both generous and appropriate to his new official station as a chef de cuisine, in full command of our kitchen.

  Furthermore, Papa bestowed upon Sally a wage of twenty-four livres, plus another twelve as a gift, a sum so wildly excessive for a chambermaid that I could only understand it as a gesture of apology and regret. In truth, this largesse to Sally was all that convinced me I had not imagined the encounter between them. I thought the extravagance must be a farewell to their intimacies. The thought comforted me, and I convinced myself quite easily that it would never happen again.

  Ever amiable, Sally’s only concern that winter seemed to be a desire to be included in Polly’s and my doings, and to see the sights of Paris. Meanwhile, Papa lost himself in assuring the credit of our new nation, and shipping wine, rice, silk, and china to friends who requested it.

  Even the intrepid Mr. Short didn’t again mention Papa’s encounter with Sally.

  Nor ours in the snow.

  And I was glad of it, because our friendship had cooled considerably since the night he defended my father’s indefensible conduct with Sally. And my suspicions of Mr. Short’s moral character only increased when, upon having left Sally to sweep up my dressing room after cutting my hair, I returned to ask her some trifle and caught a glimpse of William Short in the doorway, there where he ought not to have been.

  His presence there caught me so off guard that I dashed into an empty room so as not to be seen. A moment later, Mr. Short hurried past. As his footsteps retreated down the stairs, I pressed my hand to my heart. What had he been doing in my chamber?

  My pulse beating in my ears, the question I’d intended to ask Sally was long forgotten, which was for the best. I didn’t want to chance seeing her and witness in her eyes or on her face anything that might confirm my aching suspicions about Mr. Short’s actions.

  Up until that point, I’d fervently prayed that I’d misjudged Mr. Short—that, in my shock and dismay over my father’s conduct, I’d unfairly counted him amongst those men who are unworthy of the kind of affection I bore him—but now I feared that Mr. Short, too, had noticed pretty Sally Hemings.

  I won’t spare myself by pretending this fear arose only for her sake; her liaison with my father, however brief, taught me an unfortunate habit of jealousy. I’d already compared my unruly red curls to Sally’s long, flowing dark mane. Already despaired of my tall stature against her petite frame. Already judged with impatience the plainness of my face, where hers was so beautiful. But I was, at that time, still a good-hearted girl with a mind toward decency.

  And in spite of all else, I harbored great affection for Sally.

  So it wasn’t with all self-serving motive that I treated Mr. Short w
ith contempt, turning from him to my new Catholic faith for comfort. My father didn’t know of the rosary that I kept beneath my pillow but blamed my moodiness on my friends at the convent. One night before bed, he gave me a kiss on the forehead and the following advice: “Seek out the company of your countrywomen, who are too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics and religious superstition like these Frenchwomen do; it is a comparison of Amazons and Angels.”

  I frowned at him, remembering that he was the one who sent me to the school with all these Frenchwomen, when I hadn’t wanted to go. And that the conduct of women seemed to me, in every respect, less objectionable than his.

  So while Mr. Short set to work taking dictation as Papa outlined the merits of the Bill of Rights, to be proposed upon adoption of the new Constitution in America, it fell to me to occupy myself with the tender and tranquil amusements of domestic life.

  While I mothered Polly, the two men worked tirelessly; so much so that their enterprise spilled out of the study, into the parlor, where my sister and I read our books. That is how I know that Papa worried about the perpetual eligibility of the president for reelection, a thing he feared would make a mockery of liberty. I was there, when, in a tirade, Papa condemned the “degeneracy” of the principles of liberty taking root in America, and Mr. Short slyly chose his moment to convey an invitation for Papa to join the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, of which he, Lafayette, and the Duke de La Rochefoucauld were all members.

  My father did pause to consider. But in the end, he said, “Nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery. But I’m here as a public servant to those who haven’t seen fit to give voice against it.”

  Mr. Short nodded, as if the matter were settled, but I could see plainly in his expression that it was not. There was a dogged stubbornness about William Short—one that would lead him to hold out hope for a cause, long after everyone else knew it to be lost. He was as persistent in matters of the heart as he was in matters of moral principle, though I didn’t know it yet. I only knew that I’d judged him to be dishonorable, and yet he stood against slavery, showed loyalty to my father, and had only ever shown me kindness, even when he spoke words that broke my heart.