America's First Daughter: A Novel(32)

What new kind of madness was this?

I feared he had written a love letter—which Maria Cosway might use to embarrass him. Worse, I feared he’d written a plea for her to leave her husband and take up notorious residence as my father’s illicit lover. Such scandalous arrangements were not uncommon in France. Indeed, they were common enough for my classmates at the convent to discuss them in excited whispers. But they’d destroy Papa’s reputation with our countrymen. And, as Papa had said of the French queen, reputation is everything.

Of course, I’d also heard him say that a person ought to give up money, fame, and the earth itself, rather than do an immoral act. Ask yourself how you’d act if all the world was looking and act accordingly. This was the advice Papa gave all the men who looked up to him. He said it to his nephews, to Mr. Madison, to Mr. Monroe, and to Mr. Short. He’d also given this advice to me.

But in the matter of Mrs. Cosway, he seemed to have forgotten it.

So it was that I found myself doing a dishonorable thing, telling myself that I was doing so in order to protect Papa from his own folly. Having heard my father give instructions that his secret letter should be posted to Maria Cosway, I decided that I must find the letter before Mr. Short had the chance to seal it. Reading Papa’s private letters would be wrong, and I knew that, but I could think of no other way.

I dared not sit upon the stiff-backed desk chair for fear it might make the floorboards creak beneath my feet, so I held my skirts tight in one hand while sifting through the stack of letters with the other. My fingers brushed an envelope so thick it formed a packet and my heart dropped. I pulled it from the pile, knowing before I saw the address it was the one I sought.

Dread washed over me as I unfolded the pages.

My hand shaking, I read Papa’s secret words.

My heart suddenly beat in my throat.

He characterized himself as more dead than alive?

The words pulled me into the past, into the woods surrounding Monticello upon Caractacus’s strong back, into our wandering journeys looking for a ship to set sail, into the time when Papa still yearned for the grave. I thought him quite beyond that, quite recovered, but he still claimed, in this extraordinary letter, to feel more fit for death than life.

And oh, how furious it made me to read it! It was one thing for Papa to have longed to die of grief for my mother, but to feel that impulse over this . . . this . . . this foreign harlot? Anger and panic tingled up my spine and my gaze flew over Papa’s words, some of which leaped up from the parchment as he likened himself to a gloomy monk, sequestered from the world. Had the promise he made never to remarry left him to compare himself to a monk? My gaze rushed on. “The human heart knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have not drank.” The sentiment made my chest tighten, and then I gasped as Papa expressed his wish that Mrs. Cosway never suffer widowhood, but that he, above all men, could offer solace if she did.

It wasn’t difficult to see Papa’s fantasy through the thin veil of his prose: he wished not only for Mrs. Cosway to be his mistress, but perhaps even for her husband to die so that she might come to live with us at Monticello. Despair rushed through me. This letter was such a betrayal of my mother’s memory that I was eager to hurl it into the fire!

Intending to destroy the letter—every scrap of it—I returned my attention to the pile of letters to make sure that I had all the pages. That’s when my gaze landed upon my own name within the missive that sat atop the stack. Not in my father’s handwriting, but in the hand of Mr. Short. It was a scribbled note to a painter of some renown, from whom my father had commissioned a miniature of himself to give as a gift to Maria Cosway.

Mr. Short might have taken it upon himself to cancel such an unwise commission—but instead, he requested the painter make another miniature for me. More astonishingly, Mr. Short asked the painter to pretend the request came from my father. This gesture, at once thoughtful, gallant, and modest, moved me deeply. It also shamed me, for there I was, snooping about in Mr. Short’s desk.

I began to wonder how many times Mr. Short had secretly interceded on my behalf. How many men with such responsibilities would take the time to worry after the feelings of a girl? How had I betrayed the trust of such a friend, even if my intentions were good? The full measure of my wickedness sank in, like a stone dropping to the bottom of the sea, when the door creaked open.

Mr. Short caught me where I should not be, still clutching my father’s love letter. Given the soft look of reproach in his eyes, he knew just what I’d come here for and why. He came toward me, reaching wordlessly for the letter. “Don’t make me wrestle it away from you, Patsy.”

I couldn’t excuse myself—nor could I lie. Red-faced and miserable in my guilt, I let him take it from me, but pleaded, “Pray throw that letter in the fire!”

He replied with an indulgent chuckle. “I’d never do such a thing. Every shining word that flows from your father’s pen is a national treasure.”

He was jesting, but I couldn’t smile. “You don’t know what’s in that letter, or how it might embarrass Papa or sully his honor.” I hated that I had to speak the words, but it was better than admitting that my father was slipping back into the state of mind that nearly ruined him.

Mr. Short gave a rueful sigh. “I have a rather good idea of what’s in this letter. Your father confided that it was a debate between the wishes of his heart and the restraint of his intellect.”