America's First Daughter: A Novel(71)
“You can’t compare yourself to my father!”
His eyes narrowed with . . . something that looked like disappointment, and he shook his head. “All my friends have said you’re still too young—”
“What friends say that?” I snapped, anger boiling now.
“That’s not important. What’s important is that you can be a wife and mother or you can be a devoted daughter all your life. You can’t be both. Not when Thomas Jefferson is your father. You have to choose, Patsy.”
His words echoed the very debates that I’d been having with myself for weeks. And that horrified me. Because he was saying that I couldn’t have them both. “You’re asking me to choose you over everything else and blaming my father for it.” My voice cracked. “My papa isn’t asking me to choose, but you are.”
William didn’t even lower his eyes at my rebuke. “You’re right. I am. If you go to Virginia, two months will become six. Six will become a year. We’ll never be together. So if you leave France, know that I won’t be waiting.”
Just then the trumpets blared to announce the king’s procession, and we fell silent, watching the street below. Mesmerized by the sight of the surging crowd. Not knowing if it would come to open war, then and there. The people wanted their freedom; they strained for it. Were willing to fight for it in bloody struggle.
But, like a father of the nation, the king had come to Paris to restore order. And between these two forces, between the carriage of the king and his people, was caught the Marquis de Lafayette.
In proud uniform, a cockade of red, white, and blue just like the one I wore pinned to my own gown, he rode at the head of the processional. It required courage and honor in its rawest form to ride as he did, defending the very king whose authority he sought to strip away against an armed mob with whom his heart belonged. And my eyes filled with tears at the thought that Lafayette might falter and be torn to pieces by the crowd.
I didn’t brush those tears away as Lafayette’s horse passed under our window. And though he rode in a crowd of thousands, he looked up at me. I imagined that our eyes met—that I saw in Lafayette’s white-faced grimness an acceptance of his fate so long as he never betrayed his cause.
Then he bowed to me, and I knew I had not imagined it.
He bowed to me, and his honor and courage became my own.
The spark of his devotion lit a fire inside me that burned away my doubts.
My hand fell away from William’s grasp, and my voice no longer wavered. “I’m going to Virginia with my father, and if you love me, you’ll wait for me a little longer.”
OUR TRUNKS WERE PACKED and I took a last look at the inventory list of books, busts, pictures, and clocks to be shipped ahead of us. The Hotel de Langeac was strangely bare and quiet. And I kept hoping—hoping desperately—for William. No matter how angry he was at my leaving, surely he’d see us off!
I lingered near the door, jumping up at the sound of every passing carriage in the street. And when a carriage finally pulled inside our gates, I ran out to meet it. It was not William inside that carriage but Marie, her expression bleak. “Has Mr. Short changed his mind?” she asked, coming into the house with a hat box. “Has he agreed to wait for you?”
When I shook my head, she lowered the hat box and her eyes filled with tears as she rained curses down upon William’s head. Finally, she asked, “With all the men who pursued you, is there no other offer that might keep you in France?”
No, there was no one for me but William. That morning, a messenger wearing the livery of the Duke of Dorset had presented to me a parting gift—another ring, this one a simple silver band, with a note begging me to accept it as “a feeble proof of my fond remembrance.” I had nearly burst into tears on the spot because the duke thought to send me a token of farewell, whereas I had nothing but angry silence from William. But if I told Marie about that, then I surely would burst into tears, so I only shook my head.
“Then you will not come back.” She choked on a sob, utterly undone. “I have not wanted to believe it, but now I cannot bear to part with you, and I cannot stop crying.”
“Oh, Marie!” We embraced and held one another tightly, our hearts pounding against one another as we fought off tears.
Finally, Marie murmured, “I shall throw myself into a river without you.”
I drew back abruptly. “You must never say anything that, Marie. Never.”
She looked abashed, brushing away her tears with her thumbs. “Of course. I am the one who first taught you to pretend at happiness in Paris. Now we must both pretend.” She straightened, sniffling into a kerchief. “I’ve had a hat made for you, because yours are all out of style. They don’t indent hats in the front anymore and yours with the rosette is good for nothing. You must wear this one and think of me. And we must promise to write letters.”
We promised. We exchanged tokens of remembrance. Then we parted, abruptly, as Marie fled from me in tears. I had not offered her any hope that I would return to France, as I now feared there was none. I think it was the excruciating fear that William might truly let this be the end of it between us that left me so confused to see Sally in the foyer with her own satchel of belongings.
All she owns in the world, I thought. I was moved by her plight, not only because I was fond of her, or even only because she was, in the way of the Hemingses, near kin to me. But also because the truth of our situation was leaking around all the barricades I’d put up against it.