America's First Daughter: A Novel(169)
I couldn’t tell him. Not even as furious with Tom as I was. It would’ve been a disloyalty. “It doesn’t matter. It’s no excuse for what you were forced to witness. I apologize—”
“Don’t you apologize,” William broke in, with a sharp edge of anger. “Mr. Randolph is shockingly disrespectful to you. I cannot imagine your father would countenance it.”
“He wouldn’t. He doesn’t,” I insisted, trying to find the words to explain. “It’s simply that Tom feels abandoned. As I recall, you were once just as angry with me and for the same reason.”
William must’ve known that Marie reported back his long-ago furious renunciation of our love. He couldn’t deny it. Instead, he asked, “Is it true that your son intends to use his father’s property as a slave breeding farm?”
I swallowed, shaking my head. I might’ve lied to him, as we lied to visitors and to ourselves all the time. We pretended that our slaves were treated like family. That they were never abused. That whips were wielded justly. That violence—true violence—was not done to them at our whim. I had deceived myself about this for years. But it wasn’t in me to deceive him. “I don’t know what Jeff intends in that regard.”
It was a mortifying admission, one that revealed the ugliness beneath the glow of all the pretty flowers. An admission far uglier than I’d allowed myself to accept before. William paused beside spires of lavender and pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture that filled me with overwhelming shame.
No one else could’ve made me feel shame for it. I’d never, could never, condemn the men in my life who relied upon slavery, especially when my lion of a father believed himself impotent against the evil and my idealistic husband had been politically ruined for his efforts to stop it. But I was now standing beside the man who had offered me a different reality, a different life, from which I had turned away. And I felt some shame and regret for that, too.
ON THE ELEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER, in her best dress, Virginia made her bridal procession—not at her father’s home of Edgehill, but at Monticello. And awaiting her upon the grass-green floor of the entry hall was her happy groom, Mr. Trist.
My new son-in-law beamed with joy as he spoke his vows, and we all sighed happily when my sweet Virginia spoke hers. Everyone but Tom, that is. He stood stiffly at my side, as if he were merely a guest and not the father of the bride. He delegated all those responsibilities to her grandfather, saying that he didn’t wish to ruin the wedding with his malaise. I think he recognized in himself the malignant spirit that had broken free and meant only to shield Ginny from it.
But our poor daughter kept searching out her sullen father’s eyes in the crowd, pleading a smile from him. And it seemed to take all the strength Tom had just to lift the corners of his mouth. He didn’t laugh or mingle in conversation. He didn’t dance. And he didn’t offer toasts—though he drank deeply whenever they were offered. So, for the bride’s sake, I tried to be happy enough for both of us.
It wasn’t difficult. For nearly six years, Mr. Trist had been con stant in his attachment to Ginny. They’d resisted all our attempts to discourage their love until we were simply forced to acquiesce to its power. Theirs was not a marriage for money or advantage, but born of long friendship, shared troubles, and a true meeting of hearts. They might live poor as church mice all their lives, but their romance was perfectly obvious to everyone. And when the bride and groom pledged themselves to one another, their voices trembling with emotion, it wasn’t Tom who gazed at me with wistful remembrance of our wedding day.
Instead, I felt William’s gaze upon me, as if imagining the wedding we’d never had.
Glancing furtively at him over the punch bowl and floral arrangements, I found myself snared by his wistful smile. I remembered that, like my new son-in-law, he, too, was once an aspiring diplomat that everyone feared would be penniless. My eldest daughter had married a man more like her father than I wished to contemplate, but Ginny was taking the risk I never took.
Later, William sat beside me to listen when Papa gifted Ginny with a gilded cittern guitar with which she serenaded her new groom. Love endures, I thought, then tried to shake the thought away. But it was a thought that stayed with me well into the night.
THEREAFTER, TOM ABSENTED HIMSELF FROM MONTICELLO. He didn’t come for dinner, nor take tea in the early evening. It was only after the music was played and our guests had retired that he returned—hiding away in the north pavilion, refusing my company.
I knew my husband was in pain, shattered to atoms in body and spirit. I hurt for him. I wanted to reassure him of my love, of my father’s love, of his family’s love—even Jeff’s love. But the only thing Tom wanted from me was to persuade Jeff to leave the creditors unpaid. And, for the sake of our children, that was the one thing I wouldn’t do.
“Where do you think he goes during the day?” Ellen mur mured as the younger children ran inside the house ahead of us, their feet pitter-pattering across the cherry and beech wood parquet floor.
I suspected Tom actually went to Charlottesville to drink in the taverns, but couldn’t bear to tell even Ellen as much. “I’m sure I don’t know.”
Ellen leaned against one of the columns of the west portico. “I can bring my father a tray tonight. He’s made a recluse of himself in the north pavilion, but he might open the door for me. If not me, then Septimia.”