Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
I T 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.”
M Y 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 stairway 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 in carnation? 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.
S ALLY H EMINGS 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 with 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.
And so, in the helpless way of a girl who has never learned to guard that heart, I’d fallen most desperately in love with him.
It didn’t matter that I was angry. It didn’t matter that I believed him a knave. It didn’t matter that I’d decided to take my vows.
Try as I might to deny it, my chest felt empty and hollow on the days when we were parted. And that exquisite suffering was replaced with a swelling ache when I came again into his company. Yes, I was a young girl with a secret love. And this tortured predicament was made only more agonizing by my father’s decision to tour Europe in March of that year, leaving instructions that Mr. Short was to watch over me and Polly while he was away.
I N P APA’S ABSENCE, Mr. Short’s attention turned to me. He came to the convent within days of my father’s departure, ostensibly to ask after Polly’s health. Strolling through the courtyard, he said, “I want to be able to assure your father that she’s recovered of her illness.”
“She was recovered of it before Papa left,” I replied, coldly. “But I’ll write a letter if he’s worried.”
“I’ll wait, should it please you to have my company while you compose. . . .” There was a thread of hope in his voice, but I knew that my friends at the convent were watching us from the windows above.
So I only shook my head. “I would rather send my letter tonight for you to enclose with your own.”
The disappointment that flashed through his eyes pleased me. And he was back again three days later. Then six days after that. Each time, I remained perfectly placid, according him civility but not more than that. Until, at last, he visited on the pretext of delivering to me an allowance. “Your father sent this payment, some for you, some for your tuition, and some to the servants.”
It was the mention of the servants that made me say, “I’d like Sally to stay at the convent with us. We’ll be glad to have our lady’s maid close at hand.”
Settling beside me on a bench, and casually crossing his leg at the knee in a way that drew my eyes to the strong and lean muscle of his calf beneath its white silk stocking, Mr. Short replied mildly, “Your father considered sending Sally to stay with you but didn’t approve the cost of boarding her at the convent.”
“How much can it cost? Perhaps with my allowance and Sally’s savings—”
“No. Your father doesn’t wish to invite inquiries as to the special status of his servants. Such inquiries might not only prove embarrassing to him, but also result in a substantial fine for his failure to register his black servants as per French law.”
It surprised me that my father, a great believer in laws, was breaking one. “How large a fine?”
Mr. Short’s voice did not waver. “Three thousand livres for Sally and James, each. Six thousand in all. Should their slave status be brought to the attention of the authorities, both of them might be arrested and expelled from the country . . . or, conversely, they might both file a petition for emancipation in the Admiralty Court. Which is certain to be granted, by the way.”
There are no slaves in France. That was the official policy.
But the specificity with which Mr. Short imparted the legal procedure was not only a revelation, but also a weapon. He must have struggled over whether or not to make the Hemingses aware of their path to freedom. And now I’d have to struggle with it, too. I remember thinking that if he were any kind of a gentleman, he wouldn’t have burdened me with it. Then again, no other man would have guessed it would burden me. “How fares your conscience, Miss Patsy?”
The question drew me back to the night of my discovery, back into my confusion and outrage. “I cannot imagine what you mean.”
His gaze darkened. “In addition to your other cruelties toward me, are we to now add dishonesty to the mix?”
I gasped. “My cruelties? What injury do you imagine I’ve done you?”
The squeezing pang of my heart belied my need to ask. I’d seen the shielded flashes of hurt and disappointment in his eyes, the crestfallen expressions, the false cheerfulness at my coldness. I’d never known before it was possible to enjoy being cruel to a man, and I’d reveled in it.
His eyes didn’t shield the hurt this time but allowed it there plainly for me to see. “You’ve held yourself so distant from me that the only logical conclusion I can draw is that you intend to cause me distress.”
I lifted my chin, though my chest throbbed with guilt. “Why, I didn’t suspect you’d even notice being held at a distance, Mr. Short. You’re known to immerse yourself in your own amusements. Why, not long ago, I saw you pay visit to my dressing chamber at the Hotel de Langeac.”
He paled, as he ought to have. But when he recovered from his shock, he said, “Please believe I meant no disrespect or impropriety.”
“As I’m sure Sally can attest.” This bitter rejoinder escaped my lips before I could stop it, and I regretted it at once.
Especially when Mr. Short only tilted his head in apparent bewilderment. “Sally?” he asked, as if he’d never heard her name. “I waited until she went down for a broom so I wouldn’t be seen.”
I was now equally bewildered . . . and scandalized. “You don’t mean to imply that you came to see me in my private chambers, do you?”
Where he’d been pale, color suddenly flooded his cheeks. “Do you take me for a scoundrel?” And when he saw I might answer that question, he hurried forth to say, “I suppose you must. I’m a bit of one, but not in this. At least, it was in no way my intent for you to ever discover. . . .” He shook his head.
I hadn’t the faintest idea how to react. “Mr. Short, if you weren’t visiting my dressing room to see Sally nor to see me, then why were you there?”
He glanced away. “Ask me again when your father returns.”
He meant for that to be the end of the discussion, but because my heart was pounding against my ribs beneath my stays, I feared my unfulfilled curiosity would kill me. “You speak of my cruelty, Mr. Short, yet you refuse to answer the simplest question.”
“Patsy, leave it be.”
Until that moment, I didn’t know I had the capacity for co ercion, but Mr. Short brought out a great many things in me I didn’t know were there. “Since you’re so concerned that the matter must wait until my father’s return, I’ll simply write him about it. . . .”
Mr. Short turned to me with an expression of astonishment at my threat. “And to think everyone who meets you praises you as such a good-natured, happy girl with the charm of a perfect temper. Everyone from Abigail Adams to the nuns at your convent assure your father that you’re a girl with the utmost simplicity of character.” He gave a rueful laugh. “None of them knows you in the slightest.”
I took instant offense. “I behave as Papa wishes me to behave.”
“And he knows you least of all. You’re his Amazon disguised as an angel.”
This was another insult, or at least, it should’ve been. And yet, I sensed in Mr. Short’s tone the hint of approval. Nevertheless, I became painfully aware that we were quarreling in an abbey under the eyes of gossipy girls. “Thank you for your visit, Mr. Short. You may assure my father that I won’t spend my allowance on fripperies.”
It was a dismissal, so he rose, stiffly. Tipped his hat, curtly. But he didn’t take his leave. “What a mess of this I’ve made,” he murmured. Then, with one gloved hand, he reached into his coat and pulled from some inner pocket a folded note of linen paper. He placed it gently on the seat beside me, and added, almost timidly, “Mercy, Mademoiselle . I beg of you.”
My mind raced with all manner of villainy that might’ve been written upon that paper, but when I opened it, I found no ink at all. Just a blank page, between the folds of which was pressed a glossy curl of ginger. “Is this—is this a clipping of my hair?”
Mr. Short cringed, as if in the greatest mortification. As if he might like to jump the gates and hop out of the convent, escaping into the streets on foot. “You’re most unkind to ask. An angel would’ve spared me the humiliation.”
Of a sudden, my heart pounded even harder and a flush heated my skin. “Then I vow to pretend I know nothing about it.”
He sighed with resignation. “On the day Sally cut your hair, I took this clipping before she could sweep it up. I hope you can forgive my act of petty larceny.”
The implications of this confession broke a fissure in my resentment like the sun cracking open a frozen river. Mr. Short hadn’t sought out a private moment with Sally. He’d stolen a token of mine! Overcome with a rush of emotion, I pressed a hand to my chest, crushing the front of my crimson frock, and breathed in, as if for the very first time. “Why would you do such a thing?”
He removed his hat and stared at his feet with chagrin. “With our friendship imperiled, I felt the want of a keepsake to remind me of happier times.”
My heart insisted it was more than that. I recalled the gold watch key containing a braided lock of my mother’s hair that Papa had commissioned. So that he’d never forget her. So that he’d carry her with him always. Mr. Short wanted that kind of connection . . . with me? “Why didn’t you simply ask me for such a token?”
“I thought you’d be ill-disposed to such a request. Moreover, I’d never presume without your father’s permission. And given that Mr. Jefferson had just confided his intention to leave you and your sister under my protection, any discussion of my feelings for you would have sounded suspect, if not depraved.”
Mon Dieu! I thought I might fall into a breathless swoon before I got the words out. “What are your feelings for me?”
“Ask me again,” Mr. Short said, snatching back the token of hair from my grasp, “. . . when your father returns.”