by Diana Davis
Constance forced those thoughts and all the pain that attended them back into the corner of her mind, shutting the door and locking it fast against those memories. She couldn’t let past pains ruin her present. What good could any of that do? What was she supposed to do, tell Fischer how he’d hurt her? That would certainly change nothing.
But there might still be time to spare her friend this kind of pain, perhaps. Constance took Lydia’s hand. “If you’d like, I could be there to support you.”
“I will try to dismiss him. Give me a little time, if you would.”
“Of course. Simply say the word and I’ll be there.” She thought of offering Gilbert’s assistance, but either Fischer had already made Lydia aware of his scheme enlisting Gilbert, Nathaniel and David to conspire against the relationship — or he didn’t wish for Lydia to know.
“Thank you.” Lydia squeezed her fingers. “I’ve missed you so. Can I offer you any refreshment? We have plenty of pickled grapes.” Her eyes grew wide as if she realized what she’d said. “And limes, pickled limes.”
Constance locked the hurt away. “No, thank you,” she said, maintaining her tone perfectly.
She allowed herself another half hour with her friend before she had to leave rather than risk seeing Fischer. She made her escape, and though Lydia would doubtlessly tell her brother Constance had been there, at least she was spared the sight of him. Her own family had probably hardly missed her, unless there had been an emergency. Not a one of them had noticed last year when she’d spent all morning and most of the afternoon with Lydia and Fischer every other day for weeks. Temperance had just married, Patience was deep in her law volumes and Verity her play, and Mercy had been busily investigating their maid Ginny’s new husband.
She was a block away from home when she spotted Cousin David, surely on his way home as well. Congress must have reached its evening recess.
“Constance.” He greeted her warmly and invited her to walk with him without prying into where she’d been. “Did you like Common Sense?” he asked.
“Very much. Paine’s image of crowning the law is very moving, don’t you think?”
David grinned broadly. “Then you’re in favor of independence?”
“It’s a very persuasive pamphlet.”
“That it is.” David conducted her to his house, and she stopped off to play with his girls, who were always so happy to see her.
Constance made sure she was back at her own table for supper and seated herself by Papa.
“Constance, dear,” he addressed her. “My child, what have you to say in favor of peace?”
“Oh, Papa,” she said. “Peace is valuable above all else. Our plan must be peace forever, an endless and uninterrupted peace.” She had to look away; she couldn’t hold his gaze as she paraphrased Common Sense when she knew what Papa really meant.
Common Sense also pointed out that “every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual.” But Constance was too cognizant of what her father felt on the matter to believe for a minute that anything she might say at the supper table could persuade him against the objective he’d held for so long.
Above all, Constance did not wish to quarrel with Papa. Or David. Or anyone. There was simply no way she could make her true feelings known without sacrificing a relationship. Even if she could, it would do her no good with the general sentiment of the Pennsylvania delegation.
She, too, wanted peace forever. Was keeping the peace herself the best way to find it?
Fischer left work as early as he dared that evening. He didn’t expect Beaufort, Carter or the younger Brand to have headed straight to Phineas to entreat him to see reason. For all he knew, Phineas Brand had been sitting in Fischer’s own house all day, working his wiles upon Lydia.
Perhaps he already knew Lydia couldn’t marry him. Perhaps that wasn’t his intention at all. Fischer wasn’t entirely sure Brand could make her situation worse in the eyes of Philadelphia, but he wasn’t about to find out.
He hurried home so fast he was nearly panting when he reached his door. But Lydia sat alone in the drawing room, winding off a bobbin onto the reel. He watched her a moment, the reel turning like a windmill, forming a large loop of yarn around the posts at the ends of the arms.
Lydia did not look at him and did not offer supper.
If Phineas Brand wasn’t here, should Fischer assume his confederates had already begun their work, or was it merely coincidence?
“Did you happen to see Constance today?” Lydia asked, her voice all innocence.
“Good evening to you, too.”
“Good evening,” she said. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Obviously most grown men did not live with their older sisters for a reason, aside from the fact that they were usually married to other people. “Shall I bring you supper?” he offered as a distraction.
“I’ll thank you for that.”
Fischer fetched them both some bread, cheese, salt ham and dried apples. Lydia continued spinning the reel until the clock mechanism made the pop that indicated it had completed forty revolutions, and she stopped the arms.
“Productive day?” Fischer asked, settling in the free chair.
“Quite. The afternoon seemed to fly by, but that’s always the way when you have company.”
Fischer nearly choked on his cheese. “Company?”
He’d murder Phineas Brand. He didn’t care if he did hang.
Lydia finally looked him in the eye as she lifted her plate. “Yes.”
“Lydia, why do you torment yourself?”
She snorted. “Frère cadet,” she addressed him. Little brother. “I cannot believe for a moment that you’re presuming to lecture me on that count.”
Fischer’s supper seemed to suddenly require quite a bit of his attention.
“I see you’ve assumed I mean Phineas.”
“Must you be so familiar with him?”
“Fischer,” she scolded. She sounded like Maman when she did that, and Fischer imagined her punishments would be likely just as lenient and fruitless as their mother’s had been in correcting him.
“Lydia,” he returned in the same tone. “Why do you persist in this? It cannot end happily.” He’d yet to see a marriage that had, especially in his own family.
She grew quiet before starting on her dried apples.
Surely Lydia knew even better than he that love was not to be trusted. “I don’t want to see you unhappy,” Fischer murmured.
“Then you will have to close your eyes.” Lydia frowned at her plate, and Fischer regretted every word.
None of this was his fault, but he was making none of it better. “Lydia, you must understand. Love is an exceedingly cruel mistress.”
She fixed a stare on him. “Pray, tell me you do not mean to inform me of that.”
“I only meant that we all have our hearts broken from time to time.” With any luck, they mended.
Fischer apparently had no luck. But perhaps that also ran in the family.
“Ah, let me discard Phineas then, because this is what we do when we fall in love?” She scoffed.
He knew she meant to allude to his own misfortune, but she’d only illustrated exactly why her own circumstances rendered this impossible. “I wish that it mattered that you loved him.”
“Well, I don’t, if that’s any comfort.” She ripped her bread roll in half. “Though I would if I could let myself.”
Perhaps he was a wicked brother, but Fischer inwardly rejoiced to hear that. Perhaps it was not too late to spare them the greatest pain. “I’m glad you haven’t yet, then.”
“I’m certain you are.”
He did not like to hear his sister bitter; it reminded him too much of how he’d found her when he’d first come to Philadelphia. Friendless. Alone. It had taken him a day of caring for her before she could even speak to him.
“It’s better to end things now, before the attachment grows any greater.�
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Lydia glared at him and rose from her seat. “I am not hungry,” she announced, placing her half-full plate on the side table by his chair. “Be so good as to finish my yarn?”
“Lydia.”
She spun on her heel and marched to the doorway. She paused before she left the room. “You never asked who my company was.”
“Was it not Mr. Brand, then?” The little rise of hope in his voice only added to the unintended cruelty.
“It was Constance Hayes.” She strode from the room.
Fischer collected her plate and deposited it along with his in the kitchen before turning back to her yarn. As a boy, he’d found it all so fascinating when Lydia began learning the trade. He pulled the linchpin from the reel and carefully removed the arms. If he dropped the tensioned yarn, he’d end up with eighty yards of knots.
Nearly as many as he’d created in his private life.
Constance Hayes had come to visit as he’d asked. Was it his imagination, or did he smell the scent of violets in their drawing room still, just as he had that first time in the garden?
Could it have really been a year ago? It seemed only last week he’d been running home like he had today. Instead of dreading meeting Phineas, though, he’d run in hopes of seeing Constance. He couldn’t help but indulge the memory.
—
Even his soul had seemed to thrill last year when he’d joined her on that apparently-too-small bench, leaving his body in contact with hers from the shoulder to the knee and his mind full of her violet scent.
As soon as Fischer had taken that seat next to Miss Hayes last year — Constance — he’d begun to upbraid himself mentally. What on earth was he doing? First asking leave to call her by her given name and now sharing a bench which was even smaller than it had looked before he sat down?
Oh, idiotic impulses. He could have gotten up again, but that would have only further illustrated how wrong he was to sit here in the first place.
And he didn’t want to.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
But then he was sitting there. He offered the jar of pickled grapes to her, and she fished one out.
He had to think of something to say to her or sitting there watching her eat pickled grapes was going to make her uncomfortable. “What do you write?” he asked.
“Mostly poetry.”
“‘But, O my soul, sink not into despair,’” Fischer quoted. As soon as he launched into the poem, he realized his attempt to impress Constance was extremely transparent — and he’d picked a very telling passage to quote. “‘Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand would now embrace thee.’”
“Oh, Phillis Wheatley? My sisters and I enjoyed her book very much.” Constance smiled at him, and something in his chest seemed to ease.
For that brief moment, basking in her placid, reassuring smile, he found no fault with . . . anything. Not with her, not with the world, not with himself.
He allowed himself to revel in that feeling for a little too long, and Constance looked down to the jar of grapes. What had they been talking about? Poetry, Phillis Wheatley, yes. “You’ve heard that Miss Wheatley will appear at Carpenter’s Hall this Sunday?”
“I hadn’t heard!”
Fischer tried not to take offense. He’d advertised it rather prominently in the Watchman yesterday, but perhaps she hadn’t seen it.
Did he care if she didn’t read his paper? It wasn’t as though he expected every friend and associate to buy every edition.
Plus — he suddenly remembered himself — the edition had sold out so quickly yesterday with the story about Lexington and Concord.
Was sitting here in a bower with a beautiful young woman the best thing he could be doing now with war looming over their country?
Was that enough to make him leave her?
“Will I see you at Miss Wheatley’s reception?” he asked.
Constance shrugged a little, taking another grape from the jar. “I’ll see if one of my sisters could accompany me.”
He should invite her to go with him.
No, he couldn’t do that, not unless they were courting, and it was far too soon for that. He’d definitely skirted close enough to the edge of propriety today, sitting right next to her. He barely knew her and had no guarantee that she had any interest in changing that.
“Do you write?” she asked, then added, “Fischer?”
He liked hearing his name on her lips a little too much. “I do, a little — not poetry, though.” Should he admit Wheatley was the only poet he knew?
“Oh, you must write editorials, of course.” Constance blushed charmingly and ducked her head. “Silly of me.”
“I do, though I’ve been wanting to write a series of essays.”
“Oh?”
“Yes — something to illustrate the injustices we’ve been laboring under here in the colonies, to help persuade the more moderate ditherers among us.”
The words were no sooner out than he remembered her father had been one of those ditherers voting for servility in the Congress last year. He might hate Josiah Hayes’s loyalties, but he didn’t mean to offend his daughter.
“Are you considering something like Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania?” Constance asked, apparently unperturbed.
“I hadn’t considered letters.” That was a very good idea. John Dickinson’s pamphlets had been very popular and effective on public sentiment, although the man himself was now one of those obsequious cringers. “Although Dickinson does have the advantage of being a farmer.”
“That’s true. Like those pamphlets from New York.”
“Oh, yes, A. W. Farmer.” Fischer pursed his lips. That scoundrelly pamphleteer was a base liar, the way he misrepresented the efforts and character of the Congress.
Constance surveyed the garden. “Did you cultivate all this?”
“I helped a little. It was mostly Lydia.”
She retrieved another grape from the jar. “And did you grow these?”
He pointed up at the vines over their heads, just beginning to leaf and bud. “Our first harvest last fall.”
“They’re very good.” She ate the grape. “I daresay that makes you more of a farmer than John Dickinson. I doubt he’s ever worked the soil.”
She reached for the grape jar again, but without looking away from Fischer. Her hand found his on the jar instead, and lingered there.
He gazed back into her eyes, an arresting shade of green. He was seized by an overwhelming urge to kiss her, if he just leaned in —
That was madness. He pulled his gaze from hers. “That is a very good idea,” he said. He was responding to what she’d said, wasn’t he? Because kissing a woman one had known for two days was not a very good idea, not if one intended to be honorable toward her.
“Shall I show you more of the garden?” he asked.
“I’d like that.”
Fischer helped her to her feet and began the tour — and managed not to do more than take her hand for a few seconds to guide her. After a moment, her eyes acquired a far-away cast, as if she were lost in a dream. Rather than interrupt, Fischer took the chance to watch her unguarded, walking through the garden alongside him. She seemed so self-possessed and yet so peaceful that he couldn’t help but envy her. Merely walking alongside her settled him.
All too soon, Lydia returned. “I was certain we had more pickled limes,” she lamented.
That broke the spell on Constance, who blushed to see him watching her. “I’m sorry, have I not been attending you?”
“It’s quite all right.” And then horror struck him: what time was it? He pulled his watch from his pocket. “Blast,” he muttered. He should have left for the print shop half an hour ago.
He turned to Constance. He had never wanted so little to go to the shop — and the shop was his life. But all he wanted now was to prolong his time with her.
He would have to see her again. “I hope I shall see you Sunday.”
She offered a tiny smile in response, and he squeezed her hand one last time before he hurried off.
His sister’s giggle reached his ears just as he closed the door. He wasn’t sure that was good for him, but he was so happy to hear it, he couldn’t worry about himself now. Lydia deserved to laugh, and she deserved a friend to laugh with.
When he married, he’d thought, he would have to be sure his wife could be friends with Lydia.
That was certainly still the case a year later, as Lydia would likely live in his household for the rest of their lives. But Lydia worked too much — and was too much maligned — to make many friends.
And he’d ruined the one friendship she’d had.
Giving heed to so cruel a mistress as love was dangerous indeed.
The morning after she’d visited Lydia, Constance cleared out her desk, looking for all the books she’d borrowed from Lydia without returning. There were not quite so many as she’d expected, given the abrupt ending to their connection, but she found three or four volumes that didn’t belong to her.
If only her time with Fischer hadn’t been a secret — a thrilling, wondrous secret. If they had courted with at least her sisters’ knowledge, she might have been able to talk about him instead of being left stewing in steaming silence. Still.
She stacked Tales of Rouen and Henrietta and The History of John Bull on top of the desk, then pulled out another drawer. Within she found a stack of papers: her poem about Hades. Patience had rightly pointed out that it made no sense for St. Mark to be sojourning in the underworld, and soon after, she’d burnt through all her fury at Fischer Marks.
Or she’d finally managed to put it away under lock and key, where it belonged.
What she ought to burn was this poem. It was unfinished and utterly useless, and she had no intention of either completing or sharing it with anyone else. She’d never intended any of her poetry to do more than entertain her family, and she’d learned a harsh lesson the one time she’d let her work out of her sight. She didn’t care she’d never seen her shepherdess verses again.
Though it was not the most painful memory from her last visit to Lydia and Fischer’s house, she could not forget how Fischer had said that poem was the worst drivel he’d ever read and printing it in his paper would have made him a laughingstock. She’d never intended to publish it in the first place, written mostly for her own fancy. Eventually Patience had confessed she’d given the poem to Fischer because she was too busy to help Constance herself.