America's First Daughter: A Novel(146)

I’m going to lose them, as I lose everything, to the cause of this country.

I’d lost my mother, my siblings, my childhood. I’d lost my first love and my financial future. And, now, pregnant again and half out of my mind with fear, I couldn’t bear to sacrifice another thing.

I’m not proud of it now. Nor was I then. But I went to my father and together we hatched a plot against my husband’s military career.





DOLLEY FOLDED ME INTO HER ARMS to welcome me to Montpelier. “Why, Patsy, I didn’t expect you in your condition. Then again, you’d never go anywhere if you waited until you weren’t with child.”

Papa chuckled. “At this rate, we ought to put her in a nunnery.”

It was an entertaining jest in spite, or because, of the fact that I’d once desired to be a nun. But such was my fear for my husband that I couldn’t find the heart to laugh. Papa gently squeezed my shoulder to reassure me of his intention to speak with Mr. Madison about my plight. It was left to me to prevail upon Madison’s wife.

All my life, I’d gotten by with smiles and pleasantries. But the moment the gentlemen were out of hearing, I wept into my kerchief. Dolley was so startled by my uncharacteristic outburst that she teared up herself. “Oh, my dear, whatever can be the matter?”

“I’m so low-spirited,” I wept, unbearably relieved to tell the truth. “I fear this baby is going to be the end of me and I’ll never see my husband again. One of us is going to die before we’re reunited.”

“You mustn’t think that way,” Dolley said, stroking my hair. “Why, you have a perfect constitution. You’re not due until the new year, and when the army retires to winter quarters, Tom will come home for the birth.”

“At a time like this, every able-bodied man must be called upon, but my father thinks perhaps Tom could serve in the Virginia militia, closer to home.” I held my breath in anticipation of her reaction, my stomach sick with worry and guilt.

For a long moment, Dolley was quiet. She should’ve told me that this was men’s business. She should’ve pretended not to have any sway. But she simply tapped her fan against her cheek until an idea came to her. “What the president needs is tax collectors. Wars need to be paid for, and when we don’t send men of prominence to collect, they’re just run out of town on a rail. Your husband, with his name and connections and service, why, he’d make an ideal choice.”

It was, in the end, my father’s private word with Madison that led to the appointment. But I played my part. Which is why I took the blame when, after helping to lead a successful attack on Fort Matilda in New York, my husband returned in November from winter camp to learn the president had appointed him to collect revenue.

Tom went from puffed up and proud of his successful military campaign, to slack-jawed and bewildered as he’d read the appointment orders. I sat watching him, my stomach in knots.

He didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. But at bedtime, when his bewilderment gave way to fury, Tom entered our room and slammed the door. He paced and pulled at his hair, then turned to me and shouted, “What have you done, woman!”

Sitting on the bed’s edge, I fisted my hands in my skirt. “I merely explained—”

“I’m offered a commission on application of my wife?”

I fell silent, because I knew it would anger him, and yet, I’d done it anyway. Still, with my father’s encouragement, it’d seemed the right course.

Tom threw his sheathed sword across the room where it hit the cast iron stove with a clatter. “You and your father would have the president believing I want to hide behind a vile cloak of cowardice as a tax man?”

“Please don’t blame Papa! It was my doing.”

Tom squeezed his eyes shut with a shake of his head. “My confidence in myself has never been blind. I’ve scarcely in my life felt confident before. But on the battlefield, men looked to me. They trusted me. I didn’t let them down. Which made me trust myself. Never did I suppose you might undermine me this way! The whole world might go against me, but never you.”

“I’m not against you,” I cried. I hadn’t done it to undermine him, but to save him! Jeff was young and able-bodied, and if he didn’t serve it would bring shame upon the family. But no one expects Tom to fight, Papa had said. And so, as my husband stared at me, demanding an explanation, all I could think to say was, “The appointment pays four thousand dollars.”

I said it because I knew it grated on Tom that we lived in my father’s house. I knew it made him doubt his worth. This salary would ease that—that’s all I meant by it.

But he heard stark betrayal.

He grabbed me by the shoulders, and I yelped. Then he shook me. He shook me until my teeth rattled. He hurt me. Though I was heavily pregnant, he threw me to the floor, where I lay gasping as he stormed away.

It’d be years before the crack in our marriage became obvious to all, but I always knew it was that moment that shook our foundations. All our married lives, Tom had made a silent plea. Need me. Need me the way a woman is meant to need her husband. I’d finally allowed myself to realize how much I needed him, and look what it had unleashed. For desperate need of him, I’d stolen his pride. And now I feared he’d never forgive me.

Tom didn’t sleep in our room that evening. I don’t know where he went. And when our baby girl was born that winter, he wouldn’t even suggest a name. Seven, I thought. Our seventh daughter. I named her Septimia.