America's First Daughter: A Novel(87)

I pressed my hand to my mouth, unable to look away from the gore. Only my father would debate anyone about opossums! If Papa still did have a madness, it was in that he had to take a measure of everything under God’s creation, obsessively recording the tiniest minutiae, as if it would all add up to an answer for what ailed us in this world. And now he’d dragged poor Tom into it. Poor Tom, who was here running another man’s plantation—my father’s plantation—instead of his own. And for my comfort.

I cleared my throat. “I regret my father has troubled you with this.”

“It’s no trouble,” Tom said, wiping bloody hands on a gardener’s apron.

He was being mannerly. My husband had been ripping out dead trees for my father and planting new ones at Monticello, working himself from dawn to dusk. And when he wasn’t busy with that, he was kindly tutoring my little sister in arithmetic and botany. He wasn’t as tired as he’d been at Varina, but he was restless, as if always finding new ways to prove himself.

“Papa will understand that you’re too busy to indulge every little curiosity.”

“Patsy,” Tom said, with a sheepish shake of his head, “I’m happy to do whatever Mr. Jefferson asks because your father wants to learn everything, whereas mine thinks he’s got nothing left to learn. And if my father ever did have a question, I’m the last person he’d ask for help.”

Seemingly of its own accord, my body moved closer to him. My hand found Tom’s cheek and stroked it tenderly. Bashfully, he turned his face to kiss my palm, careful not to touch me with his own bloodied hands. “Don’t suppose you’ve a French recipe for opossum stew?” he asked.

I laughed. And in that moment, my life in Paris seemed as far away as the stars.





Part Two


Founding Mother





Chapter Nineteen


Monticello, 8 February 1791

To Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.

Patsy continues in very good health and would’ve written herself had I not prevented her from the fear of her being fatigued. The little one is perfectly well and increases in size very fast. We are desirous that you should honor her and us by conferring a name on her and have deferred the christening till we hear from you.

OUR DAUGHTER ARRIVED three weeks into the new year, a whole month early, leaving me fevered. But love cured me of that fever. Love for the little baby, bald and blue-eyed as she was, with a pink gurgling smile.

Because we were waiting on Papa for a name, the poor baby girl went without one for two whole months. But it was worth the wait. Papa chose Ann, after Tom’s dead mother.

Nothing could’ve pleased my husband more—except maybe a son of his own. The night of Ann’s christening, I rested in bed with Tom, the baby between us. My husband looked happy, and it made me want to find ways to make his happiness stick.

As the baby suckled, I whispered, “If it’s in God’s will to bless us, I’ll yet give you a boy.”

Planting a playful kiss on my bared shoulder, Tom’s eyes smoldered. “When can we start on that business, Mrs. Randolph?”

Though I wasn’t in any condition to entertain the notion, I smiled. “In due time, Mr. Randolph. In due time.”

With an uncharacteristic grin, he nodded, gently brushing our baby’s cheek. “For tonight then, I’ll content myself to be truly pleased with our Ann.”

He’ll be a good father, I thought, softening to him as I hadn’t allowed myself to before. We were a family now—a reality brought home to me more powerfully when my husband’s four young sisters fled to us en masse one cold day.

“We can’t stay at Tuckahoe anymore,” said Nancy, at sixteen, the oldest of the four. “Our father’s wife is a monster!” Nancy wept on Tom’s shoulder while he patted her back. “She slaps the little ones. She says it’d be a happier home without them, so I took them with me . . . not that our father cares one way or the other.”

The servants had ushered the younger girls into the kitchen for a spot of warm milk, and I was glad for them not to hear Nancy’s words, true though I believed them to be. “I’m sure Colonel Randolph loves you all very much,” I said, though I was sure of no such thing.

“No,” Nancy sobbed. “He loves only that vile woman.”

With baby Ann in the crook of my arm, I knelt before Nancy and grasped her hand. “Oh, he’s just enamored of her youth. In time, when the ardor fades—” I stopped speaking then, because Sally came in, setting down a tray of tea for us.

“It’ll be too late then,” Nancy cried. “My father insists that I marry the man he chooses or leave his house. But it’s her choice.”

I could guess which kind of man Gabriella Harvie Randolph might choose for her stepdaughter. Someone old and wealthy, on a faraway farm. So I persisted in my silence until Nancy sniffled and said, “Well, I left her a farewell gift anyway. I scratched the date of our mother’s death into a windowpane to remind Gabriella that no matter how many coats of white paint she puts in the parlor, she’s only the mistress of Tuckahoe because our mother is dead.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, imagining the trouble that might cause. Did all the Randolphs show their emotions so openly—going so far, even, as to enshrine them in glass? “Well, now you’ll have to stay with us until tempers cool.”