America's First Daughter: A Novel(81)

Sensing a brewing rebellion in his parlor, Colonel Randolph snapped, “Do something about your womenfolk, Tom.” Then he stalked away.

Choked with tears, Sally asked, “Where will we bury my baby? Can’t leave him with strangers.”

Trying to take the tiny body from Sally, Nancy Randolph said, “He won’t know any different. Why, a little baby like this was only in this world for a few breaths. He won’t remember anything in heaven. It’ll be as if he was never here at all.”

My sister-in-law meant to comfort, but Sally recoiled from Nancy as if she were the devil. It was Tom who had to reason with her. “Sally, your boy won’t be buried amongst strangers. When my father passes on, I’ll be master of Tuckahoe and Patsy will be mistress here. We’ll be buried here and our children, too. With your baby nearby.”

That’s what it took to make Sally surrender her baby for burial. And I felt a flare of pride in my husband. He wasn’t good at laughter and levity—what he did best, he did in the dark—but there was a decency about him.

He said those words to ease the heart of a grieving mother. But when those words got back to Colonel Randolph, they did more damage than I could’ve imagined.

Maybe it was Nancy who ran telling tales, but it could’ve been any of the miserable souls in that big old house. Whoever reported the conversation must’ve made Tom’s words sound ugly and entitled, like we were wishing for Colonel Randolph’s demise.

That night in the dining room, my father-in-law eyed Tom over a glass of liquor and said, “You and your fancy new convent-educated wife have made yourselves quite at home here at Tuckahoe.”

“We’re very grateful for your hospitality, sir,” Tom replied, stiffly. “Now that the snows are gone, we’ll take Miss Polly to Eppington and make our rounds.”

Colonel Randolph threw back a gulp of the amber liquid and gestured to a slave to refill his goblet, then he held out his hands, as if in question. “When Mr. Jefferson asked you to call on his relations, did he leave you any horses to take you there or did he expect you to take mine?”

An awkward tension, one that was sadly common at Tuckahoe, settled over the room like the air growing heavy before a storm. Tom swallowed. “I suppose with all the excitement of the wedding, we didn’t give it much thought.”

Colonel Randolph sneered. “Well, that is a conundrum for you then, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t about the horses. And to this day, I’d argue that it wasn’t even about our sense of presumption. The truth was, that for some reason I could never surmise, nothing Tom or his siblings ever did satisfied or pleased that old man.

“Your new father-in-law is the sort of man who assumes every thing will all work out,” Colonel Randolph continued. “Sunny disposition, those Jeffersons. But ice water in their veins.”

It was an insult. To me, to my father, and to Tom. For a moment, I thought my husband might actually raise a fist to his father; instead, an emotional chill settled between father and son beyond even that which was there before.

Tom was still seething by the time we went to bed. “We’re moving to Varina, straightaway.”

“Aren’t we going visiting at Eppington?” I asked, pouring water into a basin to wash my face and hands.

“Your sister and Sally can stay there, but we’re going to Varina to make a home. Better than relying upon the generosity of my father one more day!”

I wondered if Tom had given this plan enough thought. I didn’t know if there was time to get crops in the ground at Varina. I didn’t even know if there was a habitable home there, and without my sister or a maid, what would I do? Why, the only things James Hemings had taught me to cook were French delicacies. “I’m very much averse to this plan. I thought you intended to buy Edgehill from your father and settle near Monticello?”

“My father’s in no mood to sell anything to me right now,” Tom snapped. “And I didn’t ask your opinion on the matter.”

I’d lived too long with Frenchwomen to lower my eyes and apologize for daring to have thoughts on the matter of where I should live. But I didn’t want to quarrel. So I used the charms I’d learned in the ballrooms of Paris, and the more natural ones I was only beginning to discover in myself. “Well, if you find it necessary to go to Varina,” I began, crawling into bed and reaching for him under the blankets, “I will, of course, comply.”

“Yes,” he said, gruffly, touching his nose to mine. “You will.”

But the touch of my fingers turned the heat of his anger into a different kind of heat, which I found gratifying. Tom was an ardent lover, easily distracted by pleasure. So I forced a wide, sweet smile. “It’s my desire and duty, after all, to please you.”

The edge of Tom’s anger melted away as he glanced at me from beneath lowered lids. “You do, Mrs. Randolph. You please me very well.”

Later, spent of seed and rage, he laid his head back on the pillow and spoke softly. Regretfully. “I shouldn’t have been harsh with you. It’s only . . . I’ll always be a boy under his roof, Patsy. That’s why we have to go to Varina. Can’t stay here another day or it’ll come to blows.”

It seemed an exaggeration, but I suppose family quarrels never look the same from the outside as they do from within. I was only starting to understand the Randolphs; I wasn’t privy to the thousands of injuries they’d done one another, real and imagined. It just seemed to me a silly quarrel over horses between a controlling father and his headstrong son.