America's First Daughter: A Novel(160)

I rose from my bed, bewildered. “Whatever can you mean?”

Sally met my gaze levelly, but her lower lip was atremble. “I loved your sister. I loved Miss Polly all her life, and she loved me, too, but I could never win your affection.” I started to tell her that she did have my affection, but she ran over my words. “That’s why I’ve always kept out of your way and made myself of use to you so that someday you might feel some small bit of love for me—”

“I do feel it,” I protested. “Of course I do.”

“Then why are you trying to take my son from me?” Her anguished question echoed through the room, and I was speechless in its aftermath. She pointed with an accusing finger. “I know it was you. Your father wouldn’t speak to anyone else about such a thing. And whatever you said to him—”

“I advised him to ask Beverly what he wanted!” I cried, in defense of myself.

But this appeased her not a bit.

“Beverly? My son is too young to know what he wants.”

Older than you were when you had to decide, I thought. “He’s a grown man, Sally.”

She shook her head, nostrils flaring. “He thinks he knows what’s out there for him in the world. Thinks he can leave this mountain behind without regret and make his own way. But it’s a decision he can’t take back. I want him free—but I’m not ready to let him go.”

How could I blame her? Especially after so nearly losing my own son? But from the edge of my bed I said what I believed to be true. “Wouldn’t it be kinder to let him go, Sally? His Negro blood . . . it’s only one-eighth. He’s legally white. If Papa petitions to keep Beverly here in Virginia, everyone will know your boy as a former slave. He’ll live with the taint and the shame of it all his life. But if Beverly leaves . . . he can pass, Sally. Beverly can marry into white society. Isn’t that the best future you can give him?”

She blanched, wiping tears with the backs of her hands. “That’s what you’d want, if he was your son?”

I thought hard about her question. I’d been afraid for my son when he marched off to war. Terrified when they brought him back to me in a wagon, bloodied and maimed. Each time, the thought of parting with him forever nearly unraveled me.

But if I had to give my son up to save him, I would. I was sure Sally would, too. I’d always known her to be a protective mother. And it’d taken the courage of a mother lioness to confront me this way. “Yes, I would, Sally. God as my witness.”

And this time, it was no lie.

She narrowed her eyes, hugging herself, bronze arms against a bright white apron. “What happens when your father dies and his estate passes into the hands of a man who hunts Beverly down as a runaway slave?”

Though I couldn’t bear to think of my father’s death, his health and vigor wasn’t what it once was. When we lost him, his estate would pass to my husband and my sons. “I’ll never let anyone hunt down Beverly. I vow, I’ll never let that happen.”

When she was sixteen, she’d relied upon my father’s promise. Staked her whole life upon it. I couldn’t say she’d been wrong to, but she was less trusting now.

And my vow mustn’t have persuaded her, because she kept Beverly at Monticello and sent him back to work as a slave in the carpentry shop.





JEFF’S FATHER-IN-LAW DIED in the autumn of 1820, leaving everything and everyone ruined: his people, his plantation, his once-haughty widow, and quite likely my father, too.

The only good news was that Jeff was moving his arm. It still pained him, but he had the use of it, which improved my spirits and Tom’s, too. Returning from Richmond for Sunday dinner, my husband set down a carefully folded piece of paper onto the writing table beside me. “A letter from Nancy for you.”

I smiled, blandly, not wanting to tell him all the letters we’d exchanged since I took her part against Randolph of Roanoke.

“Nancy sent crayons for Cornelia,” Tom continued, rubbing the back of his neck. “And the girls tell me she sent you an extraordinary cup and saucer.” He turned, his muscles knotting tightly beneath his white shirt. “Martha, I know what you and your lady friends did for Jack Eppes during his campaign against John Randolph.”

My stomach clenched because I couldn’t be sure who my husband hated more. Jack or John . . . or me? “We did it for your sister. But it didn’t work.”

“Oh, it worked,” Tom said, turning to face me, again. “Mr. Morris took my sister’s side in the matter before he died, didn’t he?” Thankfully, that death couldn’t be blamed on Nancy—having come about due to Mr. Morris’s botched self-surgery with a whalebone to remove a blockage from his urinary tract. “My sister is a wealthy widow now, and she has you to thank. You kept the villain from doing real mischief.”

“But John Randolph won the election anyway,” I said, bitterly.

“Doesn’t matter. He’ll think twice before going after Nancy again. Besides, anyone could’ve beat Jack Eppes in that election. With the war over and Virginians so angry, Jolly Jack would never make a proper representation for popular rage.”

He didn’t use the word jolly in any complimentary way. Nevertheless, it was, I thought, a correct assessment. “I’m glad to have been any help.”