America's First Daughter: A Novel(28)
Short nodded. “That’s true. Your saintly father thinks too well of other men, whereas I’m a sinner with a rather peculiar talent for prying into facts.”
I tried valiantly not to imagine what sort of sins Mr. Short may have committed, but my efforts did not prevent a flutter in my belly. “Did you pry into the facts of this matter, Mr. Short?”
His smile was thin and conspiratorial. “I made inquiries and got word from a certain Frenchwoman that Charles Williamos is a British spy.”
I gasped. A spy!
Pleasure brimmed up inside me at the thought that I had some part in flushing out an enemy, and any guilt I still felt for my sneakiness disappeared on the spot. The rightness of my instincts justified my actions and perhaps saved my father from embarrassment or harm. It was all very well for me to study music and Latin, but I was now decided that it would be much better for our fathers and husbands—for the country itself—if all American women learned to study the manners of people and warn against the bad ones.
It is a belief in which I have never wavered since.
BY LATE SUMMER, all anyone could talk about was Queen Marie-Antoinette. The fascination owed mainly to the accusation that she’d somehow persuaded the Cardinal de Rohan to secretly purchase for her an exquisite diamond necklace. Kitty Church’s bold and irreverent opinion was, “The audacious woman wanted an expensive bauble, but didn’t dare buy it openly while her subjects go hungry. Then, when the bill came due, she couldn’t even pay!”
It was patently false, and the nuns ought to have been embarrassed by the cardinal’s gullibility to be fooled by a woman impersonating the queen, but many of them seemed to blame the queen anyway. “How can the people believe her guilty?” I asked Papa. “The imposter signed her letter Marie-Antoinette de France. Even I know that’s not how sovereigns sign letters.”
Directing the servants as to where to place his favorite mirror in our new embassy, Papa replied, “The people believe it, because the queen of France has a reputation for callous imprudence. It sounds in keeping with her character.” He paused, to give me his full attention. “You may take a lesson from this, Patsy. Reputation is everything. A soiled reputation in an ordinary person may reduce them to impoverishment, but a soiled reputation in someone like the queen may take down a government.”
It was a shocking statement—one that revealed my father’s lingering revolutionary sentiments. Did he think the French would rebel, too? But he said no more about it.
Because he was now a minister in the Court of Versailles, we were obliged to live in a way the French believed equal to his station lest he be thought ineffectual by the foolish standards of Paris. Foolish standards or no, we were both pleased with our new two-story town-home on the Champs-élysées. It had more rooms than I dared to count, and in shapes one wouldn’t expect. There was a coach house and a stable for the horses. A greenhouse for the plants Papa loved to collect. Even a water closet with a flush toilet!
Of course, we’d need more servants. A coachman, a gardener, and a housekeeper, too. Jimmy Hemings couldn’t be expected to do it all. And, in truth, I’d begun to worry for our mulatto slave to be seen in the dining room where he provided ammunition to those who mocked my father as our slaveholding spokesman for freedom. But after hearing Mr. Short worry aloud that he wasn’t sure how Papa would manage all this on a salary of five hundred guineas per annum, I fretted at the expense of my new gown—lavender silk with a ribbon of lace for my neck in the place of jewels.
Nevertheless, we had a grand time together at a musicale, and afterward, at home, Papa sighed and said, “I miss it.”
“What do you miss?”
Absently fingering the watch key in which he kept a braid of my mother’s hair, he said, “Music.”
His reply ought to have puzzled me, for we had heard more music—and in more variety—since coming to Paris than any time past. But he used to make music with my mother, and he was merely a listener now.
“I should very much like to hear you play your violin, Papa.”
He blinked down at me. “It’s a lonely instrument without accompaniment.”
Till then, I had been a middling student of music. More enthusiastic than talented. But in that moment a desire bloomed inside my chest to sing and play as beautifully as my mother had so that neither of us might ever be so lonely again. “Shall we choose a duet, Papa?”
His lashes swept guardedly down over his blue eyes, as if he meant to refuse and retire early to bed. But then his lips quirked up at one corner and he called for his violin.
We made music that night, and every night I was home from the convent.
And I think Papa forgot his cares.
I think he forgot that Lucy was dead and that Polly still hadn’t made the crossing of the sea to be with us, despite Papa’s repeated requests. I think he forgot all our unhappiness. And I think I forgot it, too.
At least until the carriage ride home, when he spoiled it all by telling me that he was going to England. “Only for a few weeks, Patsy. You needn’t be afraid.”
But my memory resurrected our most harrowing days. I lived in dread of British soldiers since the night we had fled Monticello. It was an English king who declared my papa a traitor and tried to capture him. “It’s England, Papa.”
“John Adams reports a civil reception in London,” Papa said, to allay my fears. “Besides, I’ve fought too long against tyrants to let the terrors of monarchy keep my girl awake at night.”