America's First Daughter: A Novel(95)
No, he couldn’t be seen to leave under a cloud.
I was brooding about this while making bayberry wax candles, Tom’s favorite, because of its pleasant fragrance. It soothed him, he said, and he clearly needed soothing, given the way his boots banged heavily into the cellar kitchen where I prepared the wicks.
Arms crossed over his chest, as if he could scarcely contain his pounding heart, Tom growled out, “Richard dared to show his face at Tuckahoe, the shameless cur!”
Shameless indeed for the seducer to have visited the home of his victim’s father and brothers, I thought. Reckless, even. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear Colonel Randolph had pulled a pistol on him. “What did he have to say for himself?”
Tom threw out his arms. “Richard asked—nay, demanded—that we stop accusing him of despoiling our sister’s purity!”
Let it never be said that the Randolphs—any of them—lacked in boldness.
While I let out a surprised puff of air, Tom ranted on. “Richard first insisted it was all a malicious lie. He claimed Nancy’s virtue is still intact and that if we wanted to preserve her reputation, we ought to all keep quiet and join a slander suit against anyone who’d spread the tale.”
“Perhaps that’s best,” I ventured. “If the family doesn’t rally around your sister and profess a belief in her innocence, Nancy will be ruined.”
“She is ruined!” Tom exploded, his voice echoing off the ceiling. “When my father refused, Richard tried his next gambit. He has a letter written by Nancy confessing her pregnancy and naming a dead man as her seducer. Her letter allegedly says Theo was the father, the child was stillborn, and she absolves Richard of all culpability.”
I gasped that Nancy should put such a confession to paper, then flushed to remember that I’d suggested Theo as her seducer in the first place. Poor deluded Nancy must have determined that if she couldn’t save herself she’d save her lover instead. “You have the letter?”
Tom’s hand flexed at his side, then balled in a tight fist. “Rich ard kept it and intends to vindicate himself on a field of honor. He’s called out my brother.”
Icy dread rushed through my veins. “Your brother will duel over this?”
“No. My brother won’t give Richard the satisfaction of pretending he’s an equal or a man of honor. But I swear, if Richard Randolph tries to transfer the stigma and evade blame, I will wash out the stain on my family honor with his blood.”
Now the icy dread froze inside me, for I’d never heard such a sure promise of violence in my life. And it came from the man that I’d married. The man I’d come to love. Trying to reason with him, I murmured, “But Theo is dead. He’s the one least likely to suffer for it. Maybe you should let him take the blame for the blot on your sister’s reputation.”
Tom slammed his hand to the tabletop. “Richard did it, Patsy! He did everything they’re saying he did. That creature seduced my sister—both my sisters. Then he killed an innocent babe. It isn’t gossip. I know it happened. I know it’s all true.”
Alarmed at the state he was working himself into, I put my hand on his cheek. “Tom, if it’s going to destroy your family, what does it matter if it’s true?”
At this question, my husband jerked away, his black eyes burning. “What sort of man do you take me for, Martha Jefferson Randolph?” He so seldom used my proper name that I stiffened. So did he. “If he pushes me to it, I’ll put a bullet in his heart, because I’m a gentleman of Virginia and cannot countenance a lie.”
To this day, I don’t know why his words provoked me so. Perhaps it was that like my mother before me, I’d heard my fill of supposedly high-minded ideals that rocked nations, put unhappy women in their graves, and somehow ended with people I loved being chased or captured to await execution.
Which would be exactly the fate of Richard and Nancy if their own kin wouldn’t come to their aid. Or it could end with a duel and my husband, the father of my babies, shot dead. I wouldn’t have it. I simply wouldn’t have it. “What sort of man do I take you for, Thomas Mann Randolph? Why, I suppose the sort of man who has enough sense to keep his mouth shut even if it costs him some pride.”
In reply, Tom screamed in my face, “You dare speak to me about the cost of pride? We were there at Bizarre when my sister’s bastard was conceived! There, where I took Nancy on your say-so. If Richard Randolph isn’t to blame for my sister’s disgrace, then I am. And everyone in Virginia seems to know it but you!”
I never saw the blow coming.
My husband’s backhand caught me high on the cheek and pain exploded behind my eye in a burst of tiny fireworks. I don’t remember falling, and for a second or two, I couldn’t fathom how I came to be on the floor. My vision swam with tears and black fuzzy cobwebs of pain.
No one had ever put violent hands on me. Never in my whole life. Not even a nun had so much as laid a strap across my knuckles. I think it was the shock of it, more than the pain, that left me trembling so badly I couldn’t rise to my knees. When I finally looked up, I saw that my husband looked just as shocked.
“Dear God,” Tom whispered, hoarsely, sinking to the floor beside me. He brought his shaking hand to my hair, and I flinched, refusing to let him tilt my face to his view. “Dear God, what have I done to you?”