America's First Daughter: A Novel(168)

Papa retired at ten o’clock every evening, and kept to this routine as religiously as he did his morning footbaths. But to discourage Tom’s drinking at the table, my father called an early evening. “I must meet the welcoming committee in the morning, so I’m afraid it’s time to retire.” Then, smiling at Mr. Short, he said, “Still, I’ll sleep easier tonight than in many years having set eyes upon you again, my friend.”

William smiled, rising to his feet to take his own leave, but my husband didn’t follow suit. Instead, taking another bottle of wine from the dumbwaiter, Tom asked, “Still a bachelor, Short?”

William was so famously a bachelor that we’d have assuredly heard if his status had changed. But he merely gave a rueful smile. “Alas, I’m still without a wife.”

“Lucky,” Tom murmured, pouring more wine.

My girls froze, their teacups half aloft. My boys stiffened in their seats at the far table, their biscuits left without a nibble—all looking to their older brother Jeff, whose eyes told them to keep their peace.

Meanwhile, my shame at Tom’s indictment was so acute that I couldn’t move from my place. The open insult to me, fallen so casually from the lips of my husband, came to me like a knife in the dark. I dared not look up from my tea, but merely set the cup back down so no one would see my hand tremble.

“Unlucky, yes,” Mr. Short replied at length, pretending to have misheard. “As you say, Randolph. Very unlucky. But perhaps that’s to put too much upon luck. I’m to blame by declaring myself for women who were too wise to marry me.”

My gaze locked on my teacup with the cornflower garland pattern, my stomach churning with upset. Mr. Short’s self-deprecating remark was to be understood as chagrin about his wayward duchess. But I understood it to include me.

And that was salt in the wound my husband had just opened.

Into the awkward silence, Septimia blurted, “Mr. Coolidge declared himself for Ellen. She says she can’t be persuaded to marry him, but I don’t believe her.”

“Tim! I can’t possibly marry Mr. Coolidge,” Ellen explained, as if to distract from the undercurrents. “Firstly, I’m an avowed spinster and will make an unreservedly excellent old maid. More importantly, Joseph Coolidge lives in Boston. I couldn’t possibly leave Mother and Grandpapa and the rest of you!”

In that moment, I let myself understand—really understand—why Ellen rejected all her suitors. Ellen was my companion, and my father’s nurse when I couldn’t be. Did she feel so bound to us that she’d turn away love, as I once did?

Into the wound went more salt.

Septimia chewed her bottom lip. “But if you truly love Mr. Coolidge, you have to marry him. Even if it takes you from us. Don’t you think so, Mr. Short?”

I dared not look at William during his excruciating hesitation. Finally, he said, “I’m the wrong man to ask. In my experience the heart is always torn between competing attachments. I once considered my fate a great tragedy, but now I think it a blessing. After all, I’ve known extraordinary love and have nephews to whom I look upon as sons.”

“Sons,” Tom snorted. “Everyone counts sons a blessing, but I assure you . . . daughters are a man’s only comfort in the end.”

The veins on Jeff’s good arm swelled as he clenched his fist. For months now, my eldest son had endured his father’s hostility. But his honor could finally stand no more. He glared at Tom. “Do you want to say what you mean, sir?”

Under the table, I put a hand on my son’s knee, silently pleading with him to swallow his bile. He could do it, I knew. But Tom’s dark eyes flashed savagely. “If you were any kind of son, you’d leave me a few acres on Edgehill for a vineyard or a sawmill.”

I gasped that Tom would broach our financial troubles in front of a guest—even William. Perhaps especially him.

“I’m the kind of son who won’t lie to you,” Jeff shot back, shoving from the edge of the table. “I can’t leave you even an acre. If we somehow manage to keep Edgehill in the family, I’d need the whole of it to produce tobacco—”

“And to produce Negroes,” Tom accused.

Jeff winced. “Do you want to leave your wife and children with nothing for their survival but the charity of my grandfather? Is that what you want?”

Tom stumbled to his feet as if ready to beat my boy, and my daughters let out terrified cries. “Gentlemen,” our guest interrupted, white-faced with anger, and with an authority few men but my father possessed. “It’s unseasonably warm in here,” William said with calculation, like the diplomat he’d once been. “I’ll escort the ladies outside where the cool mountain air may calm and soothe.”

It ought to have shamed them. Both of them. If a quarrel was inevitable, it ought to be taken outside. Instead, my children and I were forced to flee our tables while the argument raged on. And somehow, I found myself on the winding flower walk in the glow of the setting sun, staring at showy scarlet plumes of cockscomb and golden marigolds, fighting back the tears that burned behind my eyes.

Ann, my beautiful eldest daughter whom I sometimes despaired of ever seeing again, had planted those flowers. And now the rest of my family was splintering apart, with my oldest and dearest friend as a witness.

“How much is the debt?” William asked.