America’s First Daughter

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Hartford, 11 October 1784

To Thomas Jefferson from Lafayette

When I heard of your going to France, I lamented I couldn’t have the honor to receive you there. My house, my family, and anything that is mine are entirely at your disposal and I beg you will see Madame de Lafayette as you would your brother’s wife. Indeed, I’d be very angry with you, if you didn’t consider my house as a second home, and Madame de Lafayette is very happy to wait upon Miss Jefferson.

H AS THERE EVER BEEN such a labyrinthine city as Paris?

Upon our arrival, we found sooty walls within muddy walls around the city proper and beggars round every corner. But all the soot and mud gave way to beauty when, borne in a fine coach by seven horses, we passed under a bright blue sky onto the wide avenue of the Champs-élysées.

From there, the whole city fanned out before us in splendor. Stone archways, domes, and pillars all reached for the sun. In truth, the bustling seaports of Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore were mere infants in comparison to the ancient majesty of this grand city.

I was giddy at the sight, and I wasn’t the only one. Jimmy Hemings removed his cap, thunderstruck. And Papa gasped when the proud Palais-Royal came into view. The palace’s ex panse of creamy white bricks beyond ironwork gates was nearly too much to take in. I could never have imagined such a place. Overcome, I asked, “This palace belongs to the king?”

The word king elicited a frown from my father, but our coachman explained that the gardens were now open to the public—a thing we could plainly see as we turned a corner into the teeming crowds. Every man was ornamented in waistcoat and powdered wig, and the ladies wore their hair as tall as you pleased, strutting about like well-plumed songbirds. Every breeze carried a thousand voices in the melody of the French language.

The breeze also carried the disagreeable smell of so many people crowded close together, but the sweet perfume of the gardens and the ribbons of bright green shrubbery winding in every direction made me forget all else. “Oh, Papa! Is this what heaven looks like?”

“If there be such a place, perhaps it is just so.” There was a new light in his eyes. As his gaze slipped over the carved facades of the palace and its surrounding structures, the hard lines of his expression melted away into fascination. I hadn’t seen him this engaged with the world since my mother died.

And Paris was very much alive.

Taking it in, Papa sat with his mouth set in an awed half smile. I realized with a jolt that the shadow of grief seemed to have lifted from him. Could I dare to hope this momentous change I sensed was real? Unable to resist, I threaded my fingers through his.

His hand, so often stiff and cold since my mother’s death, closed warmly over mine.

We stayed that night at a cheerful little inn. The next morning, Papa was up early to shop for wine and a map of the city, and to look for servants. He hired two men straightaway.

That afternoon, we were paid a visit by one Mr. Adams—a member of our delegation in Paris—and his wife, Abigail. What a relief it was to be in the company of Americans after even a few days of being surrounded by people who spoke only French!

The stout Mr. Adams greeted my father with the warmest friendship.

It was Mrs. Adams , however, who commanded our attention. In a gray gown with few ruffles at the sleeves, she rolled into the room like a summer storm. “Oh, poor Mr. Jefferson! I’ve seen the new house you intend to lease and it’s even emptier of furnishings than ours. There is no table better than an oak board, nor even a carpet.”

“We’ll have to shop for furnishings,” Papa allowed.

Mrs. Adams beat back the hotel draperies for dust. “You’ll also need table linen, bed linen, china, glass, and plate. Our own house is much larger than we need; forty beds may be made in it. It must be very cold in winter. With a smaller abode, you’ll have the advantage.”

She wasn’t an elegant woman, Mrs. Adams. Nor was she deferential in the way Papa taught me good women must be. I looked to him for signs of disapproval, but when it came to Abigail Adams, he wasn’t able to muster it. “I won’t need many beds,” he said. “There will only be me and my daughter and a few servants. And, of course, my secretary, Mr. Short, when he arrives . . .”

I hadn’t heard Mr. Short’s name in quite some time. Not since my fall from the horse, when he chastised Papa. The mention now was a pleasant surprise. Almost as pleasant as learning that Mr. Short would be joining us here in Paris.

As I absorbed the happy news, Mrs. Adams turned her gaze to me. “You must be your father’s dear Patsy.” Then her dark eyes narrowed over a beak of a nose when she saw the stain upon my calico dress. She looked me up and down and when she reached my feet, I wiggled my toes nervously in worn shoes. Mrs. Adams spun to face my father. “Oh, dear. Oh, no. This will never do. Your daughter can’t set foot in Paris looking like this.”

How provoking! She made me sound like an urchin. My father looked positively mortified, and Mr. Adams grumbled.

Immune to our general discomfort, his wife continued, “For that matter, Mr. Jefferson, it might be well for you to have some new clothes made, too. We Americans must represent ourselves well, and you’ve no idea how these Parisians worship fashion. Why, to be out of fashion is more criminal than to be seen in a state of nature . . . to which the Parisians are not averse.”

I blushed and so did my papa, but I didn’t think it was the mention of Parisians in the state of nature that embarrassed him most. He looked down at his own waistcoat, self-consciously fingering one of the loose fastenings. “Is there no advantage to remaining uncorrupted by sophistication?”

Mrs. Adams smirked but insisted with an innate sense of authority, “You must send immediately for the stay maker, the Mantua maker, the milliner, and even a shoemaker!” In a few hours, merchants of every variety overran our quarters and Mrs. Adams marshaled them this way and that, lecturing my father on the cost. “I could’ve furnished myself in Boston, twenty or thirty percent cheaper than I’ve been able to do here. I cannot get a dozen handsome wineglasses under three guineas, nor a pair of small decanters for less than a guinea and a half.” When the dressmaker arrived, Papa allowed the garrulous Mrs. Adams to herd me upstairs. “Poor motherless girl. We’ll get you in proper order straightaway.”

It was a comedy after that, for the dressmaker knew only a little English and neither Mrs. Adams nor I spoke French very well. My apprehension grew when the dressmaker’s assistant displayed bolts of cloth for our perusal. Mrs. Adams asked my favorite color, and looking at the samples before me, I hesitated, afraid to give the wrong answer. I’d never been good at keeping my clothes tidy, so I hoped to choose something that might hide the stains.

“The blue silk would suit you,” Mrs. Adams said, then seemed to reach into my thoughts and snatch them from the air. “Girls keep their clothes tidier if you let them choose the colors and fabrics they like.”

Under her expectant gaze, I tentatively asserted myself. “I am fond of the blue, but yellow, too.”

Mrs. Adams nodded. “A lovely combination. Perhaps a pale yellow petticoat beneath the blue silk and some yellow bows on the sleeves.” With hand motions, Mrs. Adams made the dressmaker understand. Assistants rushed in with a dizzying array of shiny ribbons and frothy lace. Meanwhile, Mrs. Adams looked through my trunks, quite uninvited. “You’re nearly twelve?”

I nodded.

“Then you’ll need a new wardrobe entirely. We can’t get it all done today, but I’ll draw up a list.” She said I was to have shoes with decorative buckles and bonnets with flowers. I was to have new undergarments and a side-hooped petticoat to give me the illusion of hips in the case of a very formal occasion. I was to have a cape and handkerchiefs and maybe even a chemise gown of pure white muslin like the kind made popular by the French queen. I was to have at least one gown immediately, made of the scraps and bits that the dressmaker sent her assistant to fetch, so that I could go out into proper company while the other dresses were being made.

Standing in the middle of the whirlwind as the seamstress took measurements, I was shy of the attention. But Mrs. Adams encouraged me to stand up straight. “You’re going to be tall like your father; there’s no help for it. Still, your red hair is lovely and your soulful eyes are sure to be some man’s undoing, so never shrink down into yourself.”

Her direct manner might have been off-putting but I perceived a compliment. Maybe two. “My thanks, Mrs. Adams . . . but you’re sure Papa will consent to the expense for my clothes?”

At this, Mrs. Adams softened. “What a sweet girl you are to worry. The truth is, you’ll have to help your father make do. The policy of our country has been, and still is, to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. The nation which degrades their own foreign ministers by obliging them to live in narrow circumstances cannot expect to be held in high esteem. Here in Paris, my dear, appearances are indispensable.”

I liked that she didn’t speak in the falsetto voice some adults do with children. She talked of grown-up concerns as if I was old enough to understand. She was too loquacious to remind me of my own mother, but I felt mothered as I hadn’t been in years. Though Mrs. Adams offered very firm guidance, she didn’t bully me. When the friseur came and I declined to have my hair styled in the high plume of fashionable Parisian women, Mrs. Adams said that I should have my own way and I left my copper ringlets down, tied in a simple ribbon.

Eventually the dressmaker’s assistant returned with a gown of lilac satin that had been discarded by some other girl. I was virtually sewn into the dress on the spot. When the seamstress was finished, I stroked the fabric, which was soft as peach skin. I’d never owned anything so lovely. Excitement fluttered in my belly that the dresses made for me would be even prettier. In my new gown of draped sleeves, I scarcely recognized myself in the mirror. Indeed, I preened so long that I feared Mrs. Adams would think me vain. But I no longer appeared to be the rustic girl I knew.

Abigail ushered me into the parlor, where we found Papa with a book in his hands, pointing something out to Mr. Adams.

“May I present Miss Martha Jefferson,” Abigail said, clearly pleased.

Papa glanced up, his eyes widening. “Why, Miss Jefferson, you have become a miniature lady.” He looked to Abigail. “I thank and congratulate you, madam.” He pressed his hand to his mouth and shook his head. “Plainly, a woman’s touch was just what was needed.”

Perhaps not sensing the sadness I heard in his voice, Mrs. Adams clasped her hands and gave a self-satisfied smile. “Indeed.”

Their praise made my cheeks heat, but I enjoyed Papa’s astonishment so much that I didn’t mind the attention. Especially when, after Mrs. Adams left, Papa turned to me once more. “Let me see you,” he said. “Spin ’round.”

Like a dancer, I held out my arms and twirled, the long skirts swishing around me. And Papa smiled. The first open smile I’d seen in so very long.

I was afraid to pinch myself for fear that I’d wake up in Philadelphia, alone and afraid. But no. I was awake. And I dared to hope that the charms of the Old World had awakened us both from our nightmare of grief and madness, at last.

P APA’S F RENCH FRIENDS who had helped us during the Revolution were also eager to get us settled. In fact, it was the Marquis de Chastellux who arranged for my enrollment at the Abbaye Royale de Panthemont, a convent school where two of the French princesses took their education.

Fearful of being boarded with strangers yet again, I pleaded, “Can’t I have tutors? I promise to attend my studies. I want to stay with you, Papa.”

I was grown, now. Old enough to help set up his household. If Papa believed, as he said he did, that young girls ought to primarily be trained for domestic tasks, to prepare for a life as wives and mothers, then why did he insist on my learning music, drawing, arithmetic, geography, and Latin? But Papa would not be dissuaded in his plans for my education. Even when my enrollment in the convent was universally criticized by our American friends, who feared royal and papist influences. The abbess swore, however, that though I would be cloistered behind convent walls during the week, I’d be exempt from catechism and the sacraments.

As the day I was to attend the new school dawned, I could scarcely force myself from bed, despite the fact I’d hardly slept all the night before. Papa had to call for me twice, and I was so distraught at our inevitable separation that I didn’t even care that my delays earned his ire.

When we finally passed through the gates of the Panthemont, underneath a magnificent clock that faced the street, I clung to my father’s arm. In habits, the nuns all looked much the same, rushing about with their charges, girls wearing uniforms of crim son. We were led into a large room filled with beds and writing tables where I was to board with other girls. And though some of the girls were introduced to me as the daughters of English nobility, none would speak anything but French. I thought I was the only American, and when Papa left me for the night, I cried into my pillow hoping no one could hear.

Today, if someone were to ask where I have been happiest in my life—where I found the most companionship and joy and discovered the best in myself—I would name the convent without hesitation. But my first days at the Panthemont were a misery. I lived for the evenings when Papa came to share supper with me. Every night, I thought he’d change his mind and take me home, but he didn’t.

I kept quietly to the corners, ignoring the taunts of the older girls. They pointed and laughed at my freckles and my big bony elbows. They mocked my faltering attempts to speak French. And I learned that I wasn’t the only American girl after all—there was also Kitty Church, whose mother was from New York, but she seemed to despise me most of all. A kindly abbot encouraged me to play with the other girls in the courtyard during the afternoon, but when I cleaved to him, Kitty teased me that Catholic priests couldn’t marry—which made me blush so hotly I could scarcely bear it.

Learning embroidery one day, I was asked by one of the girls, “Is it true that your father owns African slaves?”

The question was softly put, with no hint of malice, but before I could answer, Kitty Church laughed. “Yes, of course it’s true. Don’t you know that Mr. Jefferson is our slave-holding spokesman for freedom?”

The way Kitty spoke of my father, with such mockery, stung my cheeks with shame. It was a shame deepened by the fact that Kitty’s father, like mine, was an American envoy to France. Her family hailed from the North, where slaves were fewer and the abolitionists held much sway. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d learned this scorn for my father from hers, and if her father was a rival to mine.

“Do you own a slave, Patsy?” Kitty singsonged the question. “Do you whip her when she misbehaves?”

This boldness encouraged our classmates, many of whom expressed dismay and made a point to tell me French law freed any slave who set foot in the country. I wondered if my father—or Jimmy Hemings—knew this. And while I fumbled for a reply, mortified and defensive, one of the girls stabbed a needle into her embroidery before berating Kitty Church on my behalf, hurling curses in French.

The savage-tempered girl was raven haired and tiny, and I wondered why she took up for me.

“It isn’t how you say it is,” I finally argued as the girls outdid one another in imagining horrid abuses. I remembered the day Papa commanded our overseer to stay his hand with the lash; I’d never witnessed slaves being whipped bloody, or flayed open and left to wild animals if they disobeyed. Never had such a thing happened at Monticello!

But the more I tried to defend our plantation, our home, our way of life, the more strident the criticisms became. And the nuns said nothing, for this was a house of pity, and they must’ve thought my papa a wretched sinner.

I stared down at my crude embroidery, remembering my mother’s sewing. Her neat stitches to repair a dress in need of mending. A small embroidered flourish to ornament a bonnet or a tablecloth. In a dark mood, I was lost in that memory until I looked down to see that I’d stabbed my finger with the needle and my blood had seeped into the delicate cloth.

“Come,” said the raven-haired French girl. “We’ll bandage that.”

Before I could protest, she shook her head and pressed her fingers to her lips to hush me. She was delicate and beautiful like my little sister Polly. That’s what made me follow her back to the bedroom where she sat beside me until I could face the world again. Her name was Marie de Botidoux, but she couldn’t say my name. The closest she came was Jeffy . I liked the way it sounded on her tongue. And I was so desperate for a friend I would’ve let her call me anything at all.

T HE NEXT AFTERNOON, the nuns made me draw in the parlor, imagining it to be some comfort to me. But I struggled with drawing—as I always had—my lines curving sadly down at each end, my strokes too bold on the paper, smudges on my fingers and clothes. It was in this state that my visitor found me. Deep in melancholy, I looked up slowly, believing that my eyes deceived me.

Could it be William Short, clutching at his hat?

I was so glad to see him that I rushed to embrace him with the exuberance of a Frenchwoman. “Mr. Short! Have you seen my papa?”

He gave a quick bow of his head. “The very reason for my visit, Patsy. Your father suffers of fever. He’ll be confined to his house for some days. I know you are apt to worry, so I thought to convey his warmest regards myself.”

I was unbearably grateful. He had seen us the day I was thrown from Caractacus, he understood as no one else did. He knew why I worried for Papa. But these were things that couldn’t be spoken aloud. My lower lip trembled and he must’ve seen it, for his eyes softened and he reached for my hand.

“Poor child. If it will comfort you, I’ll report to you on your father’s health every few days.”

The warmth and strength of his hand surprised me as much as steadied me. As his thumb slipped over my knuckle, I blinked up at him, reassured by the amiable smile on his well-bred, handsome face.

For a moment, I couldn’t help but study him, the only person who knew even a hint of my struggle with Papa. William Short’s countenance appeared more angular, more masculine, less boyish than it had been years before. He carried himself with a new confidence, too, one that made me glad he’d be serving at Papa’s side. “Thank you, of course. But . . . can’t I go to him, Mr. Short?”

“Don’t fret, Patsy. The thing that will best ensure his comfort and well-being is to know that you’re well cared for and thriving at your studies. If I can reassure him of this, he’ll rest easier.”

Alas, I’d presented myself in precisely the way that most vexed Papa. I’d received his new secretary in a slovenly state, smudging his hand with pencil dust. “I’m sorry, Mr. Short. I’ve dirtied your hand.”

He looked down and chuckled at the sight of my blackened fingers, the graphite smearing into the lines of his palm. “So you have.” Then mischief lit in his eyes as he reached to playfully smudge my nose with his thumb.

I giggled, which attracted the attention of sour-faced nuns. They scolded me, eyeing my green-eyed, sandy-haired visitor with a mixture of enchantment and disapproval. In French, I told them Mr. Short was a kinsman of my mother and as close to a son as my father had.

One hand pressing to his chest, Mr. Short startled at my diction. “I envy you, Patsy, for your French is so improved. I’ve been struggling to learn it, but now I have the solution. I’ll join the convent and live with you and all these pretty girls so that I may learn it quicker.”

His jest scandalized the nuns, who blushed and tittered and scowled at him in turn, before showing him out. But then, many women and girls blushed for the handsome Mr. Short. Even Marie—who blushed at nothing.

Indeed, I suspected his visit accounted for my sudden change in social fortune, for the girls made an effort to befriend me after that day. And each time one of them asked an innocent-sounding question about Mr. Short, it forced me to see him not as my family’s protector during our flight from the British, and not as my confidant, and not as Papa’s secretary, but as a bachelor in a city full of beautiful, forward women.

The thought disconcerted me for reasons I didn’t want to understand. At least Mr. Short remained true to his word, delivering regular updates about my father’s welfare and providing reassurance that I could devote myself to my studies and my life at the convent.

In that, Marie became my first true friend. We made an odd pair, Marie, who loved all the fine things a lady should love, and me, who longed to run outdoors. I’d been taught never to raise my voice in anger, but she was fierce tempered. Other girls were afraid to provoke her because she repaid them with such abuse as to make their ears bleed. And they were afraid to taunt me, too, because the moment she caught someone mocking my French or the unsophisticated style of my hair, Marie would launch into a tirade so fast and biting I could scarcely follow it.

When Elizabeth and Caroline Tufton, the nieces of the Duke of Dorset, the British ambassador to France, once dared suggest the American experiment would fail, the tongue-lashing Marie gave them for disrespecting me, my father, and the French assistance to the American cause was littered with forbidden insults. Curses like Casse toi! and Je t’emmerde! and Meurs, pute! exploded from her lips like bullets from a musket until both girls cowered, pleading they’d meant nothing by it.

I was so unused to someone rising to my defense that all I could do was gape. But Marie’s actions warmed my heart, too, because her friendship was the first thing I’d ever had that was mine alone, untouched by the grief and travails of the past few years. A few days later, the older Tufton sister presented me with a pretty crimson ribbon. I viewed it as a peace offering, just as their country had been forced to a peace treaty with mine. And my acceptance earned me two more steady friends.

But that night, I had only Marie. She slid into bed beside me, her gaze daring anyone else to say a word. No one did. When everyone finally settled for sleep, Marie turned and stroked a curl from my cheek. “ Cher Jeffy . You’ll be happy in Paris, you’ll see. And if not, I’ll teach you to pretend.”

“I SHOULD STAY WITH YOU and help Jimmy prepare our Christmas feast,” I said to Papa, who’d finally recovered from his illness but was still regaining his strength. “After all, one day I’ll have to play hostess for a husband.”

“Not for quite some time,” Papa said from his armchair, a woolen blanket over his legs. Then he gave a rueful smile. “And let’s hope when it comes to marriage, you don’t draw a blockhead. In this, I put your odds at fourteen to one.”

Bad odds, I thought. Could it really be so hard to find a good husband or was my father’s long-absent sense of humor returning to him?

Once he felt healthy again, Papa took me to see marionettes and gardens and Yuletide decorations. We visited cafés, billiard halls, shopping complexes, and bookstalls. Once when we strolled the snowy streets, we were treated to a song by a defrocked abbé with a guitar.

With each new outing, Paris enchanted us more and more. Papa declared himself violently smitten by the classical architecture of the Hotel de Salm, and we spent many days watching its construction from a garden terrace across the river. Nearly every American in Paris gathered at our home for a holiday celebration. Another night we went to visit the Adams family and shared a feast of roast goose, and afterward, Nabby Adams taught me to slide on the ice.

Papa came out into the night air to watch us, and it was a merry Christmastide. If only the New Year had been as kind . . .

For at the end of January, the Marquis de Lafayette, returned from his journey to America, came to call. Lafayette was the French general who had saved us from the British, and we hailed him as a military commander second only to General Washing ton. But on the evening the Marquis came to call upon us, he was a humble gentleman in our doorway, unattended by his aides. In truth, the nobleman cut an impressive figure in white breeches, calfskin gloves, and a martial coat of blue adorned with two rows of gilded buttons. But beneath his powdered wig, he wore the saddest expression I’d ever seen.

What could this man say that occasioned such gravity? When Lafayette finally began to speak, emotion caught in his throat and he nearly wept, begging my father’s pardon. He carried a letter to us from the doctor at Eppington. A letter of the most dreadful tidings.

My father went to stone as Lafayette babbled heartfelt condolences, half in French, half in English. The Marquis was shockingly sentimental, even for a Frenchman, and it took me several moments to sift through his emotional speech. I heard the names of my sisters. An illness, born of teething, worms, and whooping cough, had swept through my aunt and uncle’s household, striking all the children.

“Your little Polly survived,” said Lafayette. “But baby Lucy is gone.”

Gone? I pressed a hand to my shuddering chest and struggled to draw in a breath. The pain started as a sting in my heart and burned its way out until I had to choke back a sob. Never once had I imagined my separation from my sisters to be final. Never had I thought our hasty farewell to baby Lucy at Eppington would be the last. I’d written a letter to Aunt Elizabeth just weeks ago with wishes for Lucy she did not live long enough to hear. To learn the sweet girl had been gone for over three months and I hadn’t known it, I hadn’t felt it, I hadn’t sensed the loss.

What a wretched sister I was!

And, poor Polly. Just six years old and she’d already lost her mother and sister to death’s grip. And here we were, so far away. The sob finally broke free. My mother bade me to watch over my father, but what of my sisters? I was to watch after them, too, to protect the little family that Mama so loved, and I was stunned by my failure.

Papa made a quick farewell to Lafayette, all but shutting the door in his face. Then he leaned against the wall, shuddering with grief. He thumped his fist on the wood to punctuate each moan and sob. I fell against him, hugging his waist, pressing my face against his rib cage where his heart thudded. His body muffled my wails, and his shirt absorbed my tears. He clutched at me and I clutched at him as if we were wrestling. Perhaps we were.

We were wrestling the pain, thrashing against it, drowning in it, until we were insensible to all else.

And I knew that no one could ever see us like this.

W E MUST HAVE P OLLY , I decided. We must have my remaining sister here in France where we could care for her and hold her close. For months, Papa resisted the idea, worrying that the seas were too unsafe for one so young to travel alone. For pirates, privateers, and warships abounded across the Atlantic.

But I couldn’t be content without her. There was only one way to honor the losses of my mother and baby sister, and that was to bring our family together again.

Our conversations on the matter were often frustratingly disagreeable, even when I pressed Papa calmly —if also frequently—to reunite our family once and for all. Meanwhile, I dared not trouble Papa in any other way for even the smallest thing; I even drew my allowance from the ma?tre d’h?tel rather than go to my grieving father.

Our house was in mourning, and our French friends were effusive with their sympathy. Lafayette seemed haunted by having delivered us the news and sent bouquets to brighten the house. The pretty young Duchess de La Rochefoucauld brought sweets for our table and bade me to call her Rosalie. In truth, the very Frenchwomen Mrs. Adams and my father sometimes spoke of so disparagingly for their bold manners were tender and kind to us.

By contrast, some of our American friends and other guests seemed insensible to our loss. Charles Williamos, a Swiss-born adventurer who often dined with us, said my father should simply remarry and make another baby to heal his broken heart.

At hearing this, Papa excused himself from the table, no doubt to wrestle with his grief in private. But I had not Papa’s good manners. Williamos’s heartless advice reminded me of Colonel Randolph’s suggestion that Papa remarry. Were the affections of these men so shallow they believed a lost life, a lost love, could simply be replaced?

From that moment, I despised Mr. Williamos.

And it must have showed. Mr. Short looked up from the meal, caught a glimpse of the enmity on my face, and said, “Patsy, shouldn’t you be abed? Better still, back at the convent?” He dabbed at the corners of his mouth with his napkin and stood up. “I’ll carry you there myself.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t leave Papa when he was so upset. In fact, I wanted to sneak up to my father’s room and lie beside him as I did when my mother died. But Mr. Short prevented me. “You’re forgotten here in the glumness, Patsy. You’ll be better cared for at the convent, and your well-being will weigh less upon your father’s mind.”

With that, Mr. Short reached for his coat with a stance that brooked no argument.

For a young man of such good humor, there was a hard strength in William Short. And I remembered how, when we were hiding from the British, he went off into the wilderness by himself, against all advice. When he made up his mind, he was as firm in it as my father could be. Maybe even firmer. And so I had no choice but to do as he said.

But I glanced back over my shoulder at Charles Williamos with a promise to myself that I would see the obnoxious man gone from my father’s house, somehow. . . .