America's First Daughter: A Novel(84)
Aunt Elizabeth had been right when she said I badly needed the assistance of a maid. Trapped in an endless cycle of toil and solitude, how I yearned for feminine companionship. Establishing a new plantation left no time for letters or visits with neighbors. And even eating for two, there were nights I’d have happily gone hungry rather than cook something from our near-empty larder over a fire that made the nights hotter and more miserable by far. I couldn’t get comfortable on the old bedding or on the wooden floor, and was a meal for mosquitoes either way. Grimy and drenched in sweat, aching from head to toe, I couldn’t quite conceive of how I’d come to this.
A year earlier, I’d been drinking bubbling wine from crystal glasses in Paris ballrooms. I’d been decked in silks and satins and brocades, dancing with French and English nobility, taking music lessons, attending concerts, and gambling with duchesses. For the love of God, I could have been a duchess. How did I find myself exiled to this remote farm, tossing and turning, weary to the bone?
If I’d stayed with William Short, accepted his proposed vision for my life—become the wife of a diplomat instead of a planter—
No. Tom was my husband and my place was with him now. I boxed the disloyal thoughts up and locked them away. Especially since every day, under that fiery sun, Tom worked the fields with the slaves, all of them sweating and struggling in the earth. The slaves were obliged to do it at the threat of an overseer’s whip, but Tom wanted to learn the work, and I’d never in my life seen any white man work as hard.
Until that summer I’d only known Tom as a schoolboy and then as a gentleman of learning. I didn’t know how much of a planter there was in him, and I guess he wasn’t too sure either.
In truth, when I wasn’t exhausted or sick or otherwise distracted by Varina’s countless demands, I was proud of my husband’s efforts. But I was equally worried that he was determined to prove something to his father even if it killed him.
And I feared it just might.
Almost every night he came back with his sweat-soaked shirt sucked tight against his broad chest, face sunburned, and his stomach too sick to eat even on those evenings I did manage to have something like a meal ready for him. After a particularly arduous day’s labor, Tom retched up his guts outside the house murmuring, “I hate tobacco. Too hard on our people. Too hard on me.”
“It’s the climate,” I replied, hating to see him reduced to this and stroking his handsome face with a wet cloth. A heat rash was spreading all over him, and I could tell it itched something awful. “It’s not healthful here.”
“It’s torture,” Tom agreed, peering at me from under his sweat-soaked hair.
That emboldened me, and I knelt to look him in the eyes, swabbing his face with the cool cloth once more. “The air near my father’s mountain . . . it’s fresher.”
“Fresher.” Tom nodded, and let his blistered hand come to rest on my lightly swollen belly. The look of defeat in his eyes nearly broke my heart, even as his next words filled me with hope. “Maybe after my father marries the Harvie girl, I’ll muster up the courage to ask him to sell us his property at Edgehill.”
And because it was as far as I could push him on the matter, I let myself be content. At least until the wedding proper . . .
Gabriella Harvie was a beautiful bride who floated down her father’s grand staircase into a hall filled with white flower garlands, wearing a dress of pale blue damask with a tasseled bodice. At eighteen, she had a queenly presence, a charming voice, and—as I would come to learn—no soul at all.
Her long lashes and doe eyes blinded men to the virago that dwelled within, and on her wedding day, the bride smiled so angelically at Colonel Randolph that he seemed thunderstruck by the sight of her. At the time, I hoped she’d bring him such comfort that he’d be kinder to his children. And I myself was in a hopeful mood because I’d availed myself of the amenities of the great house and finally got a good bath.
I felt like a lady again for the first time since moving to Varina.
Once the vows were said and the celebration begun in the great hall, Nancy rushed to me, crying, “Citizen Patsy is going to make me an auntie!” I was glad to see her smile in spite of the awkward circumstance her father’s marriage created. Alas, the bride soon swept over to us before I could tell her so.
“My dearest new daughters,” Gabriella said.
I laughed, since we were all only a few years apart in age. But Gabriella laced a cloying arm through Nancy’s and announced, “The first thing I’m going to do is paint the parlor white so I’ll feel more at home at Tuckahoe. The black walnut walls are so gloomy!”
Nancy stiffened. “My mother chose them.”
“All the more reason, then,” Gabriella said, her eyes glittering with malice. “It’s important for everyone to know there’s a new mistress of Tuckahoe.”
Was she taking aim at Nancy, who would have to relinquish her mother’s keys? Or was it a barb aimed at me, because of Tom’s indiscreet remarks when Sally’s boy died?
Maybe it was meant for both of us.
The bride batted her lashes. “Patsy, everyone says you’re so worldly, so tell Nancy how it works. Perhaps she’ll listen when you say that unless she’s planning a trip to Paris, she’ll never have a better chance to snag herself a wealthy husband than at this wedding. And she can’t live at Tuckahoe forever.”