Vivienne held back, not wanting to interrupt. But when Liam looked up and saw her, he spoke a word to Henri and pushed up to his feet, making his way to where she stood.
She held out the basket as soon as he was near enough to take it. “You must be famished.”
A smile creased his face when he peeked inside. “Worth the wait.” He met her gaze, holding it as gently as he had just been holding Henri’s. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong. When I was scolding Henri in the kitchen,” he added. “I couldn’t abide how he was treating you. But now at least I know where it’s coming from.”
“He’s right about one thing.” She kept her voice low. “I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m kind, I worry I coddle him. When I try a firm hand, he rebels. Whether I’m with him or away from him, he’s never pleased.”
Liam set down the basket. “Your job is not to please him. Your job is to show him the right path, and from what I can tell, you’re doing your best.”
“And you know this because I tried to get him to peel a carrot? I wouldn’t call that a success.”
“You were right in that. And it looks like you’ve been thinking this through.” Lips slanting in a lopsided grin, he looked at her hair while pressing his fingers to his own temple.
Oh, mercy. She brushed at the hair that had drawn his notice, and her fingers came away dusted with flour. “You don’t understand,” she said as she continued to rake through her hair. “My mother was no example at all—you have no idea—and Armand simply was not around.” She bit her lip. She had not intended to let his name slip, but Liam did not look surprised. “Thank God for my Tante Rose, but I don’t know how to parent. I’ve never seen it done, so how can I be the right person for this role?”
Liam took her hand to still it and clasped it between his own. “God placed Henri with you for a reason, Vienne. He’ll equip you with the wisdom and grace for the task. And I heard—from a certain monsieur who seems to know—that you are nothing like your mother.” He released her.
Dried leaves cartwheeled across the yard in the strengthening wind. Her skirt billowed before her, and a lock of hair blew across her eyes. She tucked it behind her ear, searching for an adequate response. The small thank-you she finally managed did not begin to express what she felt.
“Henri needs you,” Liam told her. “Even if he doesn’t say it, he does.”
She peeked around him to glance at Henri. How small, how frail he looked. But was he Martine’s son, or Marie Antoinette’s? Had the queen spirited her son into the care of her lady-in-waiting? “I still don’t know who he is,” she whispered.
Liam frowned. “I doubt he knows himself. He’s unmoored, isn’t he, without his parents, in a new country—”
“That’s not what I mean,” she interrupted. The uncertainty surrounding Henri was a weight she could no longer bear alone. “He told me once that his name is actually Louis. Right after the fever, but he was lucid. He’s been hiding something from me ever since.” Though she hadn’t planned to, Vivienne told him the slender threads of what she knew and the gaps of what she didn’t. Taken together, it was an unfinished pattern, where order had yet to emerge from all the loose and dangling ends.
A muscle flexed in Liam’s jaw. “You don’t think . . .”
“I don’t know what to think. Or do. Or say to him.” Faith, but she sounded as desperate as she felt.
“Give him time. Royal or not, he’ll let you in once he’s secure in your love for him. Give yourself time, too.” Liam stooped to retrieve the basket of food. “In any case, I doubt he’ll give you any more cheek.”
“At least not while you’re around. How long can you stay?” Vienne smiled.
Liam didn’t. “Not long enough.”
She agreed.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning, with Vivienne’s fresh baguette in his belly and her situation fresh on his mind, Liam headed to the Treasury Department and shifted his thoughts toward the encounter ahead. This time, he did not wait to be shown to Alex’s office. Blowing by the clerks just inside the front door, he marched straight into the spartan room where Alex sat bowed over some writing on his green felt-topped desk.
“Do you really want another war?”
Alex looked up, not quite as ruffled by the outburst as Liam might have hoped. He didn’t even stand. “Dispensing with pleasantries, I see.”
“Suppose we save the time.”
Alex leaned back. “Have out with it, for I can see you’re set to explode if you don’t.”
Liam pulled a chair closer to the desk. “Washington called out the militia against the frontiersmen in the western part of the state.” Against Finn.
“You mean the rebels. Call them what they are, and do not tire me with stories of days gone by when you and I fought against England. These men are no patriots. They must be made an example of, or else who would obey any laws at all?”
Liam narrowed his eyes. “Calling out the militia is an extreme measure—”
“An extreme measure? My friend, is it possible you are not aware of their violence?”
Liam held his tongue, bracing himself as Alex pushed back from his desk and began pacing the small room.
“On July 15, whiskey rebels fired at two tax collectors, U.S. Marshal David Lennox and John Neville, when they attempted to serve a writ to a distiller for failing to register his still.”
Liam was not surprised that the frontiersmen refused. For many, the absence and expense of travel across the state would be grievously costly. Still, they should have known better than to shoot at the collectors.
“On July 17,” Alex continued, “a crowd of hundreds of men went to Neville’s home, which was guarded by a group of soldiers. Shots were fired by both sides, one man killed. The troops guarding the house surrendered, and the rebels burned much of the property to the ground.” He faced Liam. “How’s that for extreme?”
Finn O’Brien surged in Liam’s mind. He’d left the Four Winds Tavern on July fifth, so he may not even have been present by the seventeenth, so long was the journey. And with only one eye, even if he’d been there, it was unlikely he’d taken a shot at the tax collectors. But was it possible he took part in burning down Neville’s house? Having survived one revolution, was he now taking part in another?
“I’m not through,” Alex continued. “In early August, thousands of western Pennsylvanians marched on Pittsburgh but were dissuaded from destruction when plied with food and liquor.” He gave a dark laugh. “Imagine! Several thousand of the lower class, beguiled by bread and beer. It only shows that they’ve been roused by some instigators. It smacks of the Jacobins and the French Revolution all over again.”
Liam frowned, failing to make the same leap. “Indulge me, Alex, because the connection is blurry from where I stand.”
A scowl pleated Hamilton’s face, betraying his impatience for those who couldn’t keep up. “It’s the work of those Jacobin clubs—they call themselves Democratic-Republican Societies, recall—that have sprouted up all over this country. It’s a Jacobin movement, I’m convinced.” More pacing. “There is precedent. Last year these societies worked with French ambassador Genêt to recruit Americans to fight with France—after Washington had already declared us neutral. They planned for the backwoodsmen of Kentucky to seize Spanish-held Florida and New Orleans, and if I don’t miss my mark, these American Jacobin clubs are behind the whiskey revolt in western Pennsylvania right now. Anything to overthrow the administration of our government, even by the most irregular means. If they can remove us Federalists and get Jeffersonians in power, their agenda is for America to fight alongside France in their war against the rest of Europe. It’s madness.”
Liam rubbed his chin before responding. Fomenting insurrection was a serious charge. “Genêt was dismissed,” he pointed out.
“Yet indications are strong that his replacement, Fauchet, now lends his support to the whiskey rebels.”
“Rumors, Alex? Tread carefully now.�
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“No, Liam.” The Treasury Secretary shook his head and sat at his desk once more. “More than rumors. Western Pennsylvania has become a center of terrorism under the leadership of Albert Gallatin, the French-speaking, Swiss-born Jeffersonian politician. And look at this.” He pulled out a Pittsburgh Gazette and spun it around to face Liam.
Liam parsed the text. A man named David Bradford, one of the Whiskey Rebellion’s leaders, likened himself to Robespierre. Eyebrows raised, Liam’s mouth went dry when he read the ill-conceived comparison. It was Robespierre who had initiated and enforced France’s Reign of Terror before finally being beheaded himself. Under Robespierre’s leadership, tens of thousands had died. Shaking his head, Liam scanned the next column and found that Bradford’s followers talked about setting up a guillotine in the upper reaches of the Ohio Valley as a political solution.
“If you’re about to advise me to let the states handle their own messes,” Alex continued, “you can stop right there. The Supreme Court certified that the judicial system in western Pennsylvania could not restore order.”
“Which prompted Washington to call out the militia,” Liam supplied. “At your behest, I suspect.”
Alex slammed his fist on his desk. “Absolutely, at my behest! I’ll be hanged by the nearest lamppost before I stand by and allow this country—my country—to be ripped apart by lawlessness and anarchy! I will not have it, not as long as I have any say whatsoever.” His face purpled, and he dabbed a kerchief to his glistening brow.
A pocket watch on the felt clicked away several seconds before Alex spoke again. “I know you have friends out there. But if you could set aside personal loyalties for any length of time, perhaps you could understand what’s at stake here. Everything I built.”
“You mean America. You built it? Really?” Leaning forward, Liam whispered, “Does President Washington know?”
“Blast it, Liam. We all know what Washington means to this country, but if I didn’t labor to put some kind of financial footing beneath the whole of it, we’d fall apart like thistledown. We must put down this rebellion, or our democracy has failed.”
Liam raised an eyebrow. “What kind of ‘we’ are you referring to?” And then he knew. “You’re going, aren’t you? Didn’t see enough combat during our own revolution, eh?” As Washington’s aide-de-camp, Alex hadn’t attained the pinnacle of military glory he’d hoped for.
Alex straightened his waistcoat, then polished a button with his thumb. “The Secretary of War has a leave of absence right now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, so I’m going with Washington. Look, we’ve given the rebels plenty of time. The tax was passed three years ago, for pity’s sake. Last month we sent a commission to western Pennsylvania to negotiate. They offered the rabble amnesty in return for ending their resistance to the tax.”
“And the rabble didn’t take it,” Liam guessed.
Alex thumped two fingers on the page in front of him, dated September 24. “This is their report. Conclusion: the rebels are unwilling to submit to the government. I wish it weren’t so. But it is, and it cannot stand. We leave in two days. You’ll join me. You did travel to Philadelphia by horse, didn’t you? You’ll need him.”
Liam shot to his feet. “Are you in earnest?” He couldn’t imagine marching against his own cousin.
Rising, Alex skirted the desk and stood nearly nose-to-nose with him. “I checked the militia rosters. You’re still on record with a Philadelphia regiment. If you don’t comply, you’ll be deserting. And I know where to find you.”
“This could take weeks. Months. I can’t be away from my farm that long.”
“You’ll be gone from it longer if you’re in jail.” Alex let the words settle between them. “Surely you have someone, a neighbor perhaps, who can look after your land in your absence. Send word tomorrow.”
“Send word with whom? I’m the mail carrier, Alex, remember? And the horse I rode here doesn’t belong to me. There’s no way I’ll take her on a military campaign. She’ll be expected back in Asylum within the week.”
“You’re not the only postman for the settlement. Stable the horse at your sister’s tavern until the next carrier arrives. He will know enough to look there, will he not? He can find out what happened to you from Tara and lead your horse back to Asylum when he returns. My clerk will procure a different horse for you to ride. No more excuses. You’re coming.”
Liam barely bottled his frustration. How could he leave Jethro to manage the farm alone? “You cannot ask this of me.”
“I’m not asking. You’ll be my personal guard, one of six men I trust to protect my life, for they’re burning me in effigy already. Being hung from a lamppost is not a hypothetical possibility.” Alex tapped the newspaper article calling for the guillotine to be put to use.
Liam knew his old friend better than to doubt that this was true. Alexander Hamilton was arrogant and self-important, but he was no liar. If he said his life was in danger, it was.
“Perhaps now you see what’s at stake here.” Alex smoothed down the tie of his neckcloth. “Hang the Jacobins. They may have toppled their monarchy, but the American government will not yield.”
“Henri, I’m pleased to see your appetite has returned.” Vivienne smiled across the small round table as the boy spooned another bite of ice cream into his mouth. Bucephalus was splayed on the table beside him. “But I had rather hoped,” she added, “that it would be for something a bit more nutritious.”
“You sound more like a mother every time I see you.” Sebastien Lemoine dropped his spoon into his empty bowl and leaned back in his chair. Behind him, a large window placed the bustle of Front Street on display. “Sure you don’t want anything? It’s not too late to change your mind. They have strawberry, orange, pineapple, banana, blueberry, pistachio, chocolate . . .”
“It’s like a rainbow under glass.” Henri pointed with his spoon to the colorful presentation of ice creams lining one wall of Mr. Collet’s shop. “And the rest is a cloud.” He smiled as his gaze bounced from the white marble floor to the white plaster ceiling with bas-relief crown moulding. Even the tables and chairs were of white-painted iron.
“No, thank you,” Vienne repeated. If it hadn’t been for Monsieur Lemoine’s insistence on treating them, and for Henri’s sudden animation at the mention of it, she would not have come. And she would have missed this rare glimpse of Henri enjoying himself.
While the boy tilted his bowl and slid more ice cream onto his spoon, she tried to untangle the emotions he evoked within her. Always, an urge to protect him. Joy when he smiled or laughed—which was not as often as she wished. Guilt for not being a wiser guardian, and fear that her mistakes would cost him. And she knew with a clarity so sharp it felt like pain that she would do anything to keep him well and healthy. Was this what a mother’s love was made of? How she hated that she didn’t know. Though this ice cream parlor was worlds away from the Palais-Royal, the smells wafting over her triggered a terror of making Henri feel as unwanted as Sybille had made Vienne feel the day she stained her lace with chocolate.
“Why don’t you want any?” Henri asked her, licking his lips. At least he now spoke English, and his attitude seemed a bit improved. Whatever Liam had said to him a few days ago seemed to have taken hold. “It’s very good, you know. If you try it, you’ll see. Just a little taste. Here.” His tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth in concentration as he held out a spoonful for her to sample.
A quiet laugh escaped Vivienne. “I should be doing this with you but with venison stew, no?” But he remained so earnest, she could not refuse him. A hand over her lace fichu to protect it, she leaned over the table and took the bite.
“Well?” Henri asked. “How is it?”
She closed her eyes and let the sweet cream melt on her tongue. The flecks of grated vanilla infused it with unparalleled flavor. She opened one eye to squint at Henri as she swallowed. “Lovely,” she said, and she meant it.
The
smile on Henri’s face rivaled her own.
“Then it’s settled,” Monsieur Lemoine declared. “A bowl of the same for you.”
She lifted a hand to stay him. “Perhaps next time, monsieur, if there is occasion.”
His eyebrows rose. “Of course. There will be. And please, you must call me Sebastien.” He turned to Henri. “And what should we call you, young man?”
Vivienne held her breath at such a bold grasp for Henri’s identity. Sebastien proved relentless, even here, in a shop where other customers were close enough to hear.
The child hesitated but a moment. “Call me next time you go for ice cream!” Dimples starred his cheeks, transforming him into a charming, blue-eyed imp.
With a squeeze in her chest, she laughed in surprise at his clever rejoinder. Sebastien had the good sense to join in and let the matter go.
But then her laughter died on her lips. The voices of Sebastien and Henri grew dim, and the people strolling outside the window faded into blurs of moving color. The lace collar at Henri’s neck was familiar, she realized, not because she’d seen him wear it before, but because she’d been the one to make it. On the left side of the collar, entwined in flowering branches, were the initials LC for Louis-Charles. On the other side, the number XVII was tucked into the design. It had been a special commission made for the boy when his older brother Louis Joseph died, making Louis-Charles next in line for the throne, the new Louis XVII. His royal portrait had been painted while wearing that collar. And here was Henri, eating ice cream in it as though it belonged to him.
Did it?
Her glance darted to Bucephalus before she felt Sebastien looking at her. Had he asked her a question? He rose and helped her pull out her chair. Ah, so it was time to go.
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