by Diana Davis
Was that a recommendation? Constance was barely able to restrain her smile. “Indeed.”
“And that is why you must not read it.”
She startled. “What?”
“It is dangerous, verging on dissembling.”
She could do no more than blink at Papa while it felt as though her heart were being cleaved in two. “What?” she asked again.
“I’m afraid it may not even have artistic merit. I know it must sound entertaining and clever to you, if you’ve heard anything about it. But please understand: it is written for a particular purpose, to persuade. Thus it alters facts and sometimes willfully ignores or even subverts them.”
But it was a work of fiction! She’d compressed the timeline, certainly, and put a few things into the common parlance, but she was not willfully subverting facts!
Constance took a steadying breath and unclenched her fingers around her fork. “Surely it cannot be that bad?”
Papa shot Mama a stern look, as if they ought to be concerned about Constance. “It is the kind of writing which will imprudently push this country to war. It is written from the perspective of someone very angry with our King. Thus it is based on exaggerations and misconceptions and is, frankly, wrong.”
Constance’s gaze fell to her untouched tart. The dessert wasn’t the only reason she felt sick. He would dismiss the arguments merely as her being angry with the king? That was not why she’d written at all.
“Furthermore,” Papa continued, “we can’t know who wrote it. From what I’ve heard, even Mr. Marks himself doesn’t know who this Dark woman is.”
Had someone overheard their conversation after the minuet? Had Fischer asked someone else?
“For all we know, this could be an alias for someone who stands to profit from a war — soldiers in the army, a prospective privateer —”
“Papa,” Constance said, “Nathaniel wishes to become a privateer.”
“Your cousin’s husband makes his own choices. I doubt he’s Jeanne Dark, though.”
No, because she was Jeanne Dark! The cry strangled in her throat. Railing at Papa would not change his mind and could only fracture tender feelings. Had she not just left a dear friend so injured by her loved one’s rage? Constance still cringed at the memory of Phineas’s fury.
Constance excused herself from the table and went straight back up to her room. Before she could lift her clothing out of the drawer, a knock sounded at the door. None of her sisters and likely neither of her parents would knock, so she answered to find Cousin David standing on the other side. “Good afternoon,” she greeted.
“How does Mrs. Ainsley fare?” he asked.
“She is well enough to be working, but I go back to her shortly.”
David accepted that answer. “I have a letter for you.” He held up the paper addressed to Miss Jeanne Dark.
Constance’s eyes dropped. She didn’t wish to hear from Fischer, and she didn’t wish to be called that if it was anathema to Papa. “Do you think Columbia’s Fields is dangerous?”
David was quiet. “I think the only dangerous course of action is to pretend we can ignore the conflict. Columbia’s Fields makes that impossible. Jeanne Dark and her words are on every lip.” He studied her a long moment. “Why?”
“What does the Congress say?”
“It is a matter of debate” was all David would allow.
“Is this a good thing, what we’re doing?”
David took her by the shoulders. “This is no longer as simple as a tax on tea. This is about our right to have a say in our own government. What you’ve written is not merely good. I think it a marvelous thing.” He took her hand and deposited the letter. “And so does Fischer Marks.”
She looked down at the letter. “Fischer Marks would feel that way about anything he printed that sold so well.”
“No doubt he enjoys the success, but he believes in your tale. For someone who was so happy to dance with him, you think very little of Marks.”
“I was . . . under a different impression.”
“If you have some impression of him that is anything less than his being completely affected by you, you must be wrong.”
She took a moment to make sure she could speak without betraying herself. “I have his own word against that.”
“Then he doesn’t know his own heart.”
“Apparently not, if he sought to court first Patience and now Jeanne Dark.” Constance held up the letter.
David frowned as well. “This is a tangled web indeed, and I’ve pushed you right in it, haven’t I? Shall I go and tell him whom he’s really been courting?”
“Certainly not!” She’d already suffered enough at his hands. They both knew already what he would say, and she couldn’t stand one more mortification.
This was too much for her to bear. She tucked the letter into her pocket. “I shall think about it later. I must finish the sequel.”
“By all means, please do! I’m eager to read it. But — do you think you could make Solomon’s antlers a little more ornate?”
Constance blushed. Had her caricature been that obvious?
David grinned. “Oh, don’t let me tease you.” He turned away, but stopped short. “Nearly forgot. Marks also sent this.” He fished a purse from his gold-embroidered waistcoat’s pocket and handed it over. It was quite heavy, the coins clinking against one another inside.
Fischer had reported the sales to her, but she couldn’t help but gape at the weight of the real money she’d made from her little tale.
David took his leave, and Constance returned to the drawer, carefully stacking her gowns on the nearest bed. She removed the false bottom and placed the purse there, slipping a few coins into her pocket first. Then she pulled out the manuscript and read over it one last time.
The ending was still quite tricky. She tried to give a sense of conclusion, when in reality, she’d only begun the story of the heaviest fighting thus far. Perhaps that would be an asset. It would virtually guarantee there would be a third volume.
When she was satisfied it was how she wanted, she scrawled a note to Mercy asking her to copy it over — her hand was aching now, after all — and give it to David. Before she could replace the false drawer bottom, though, Constance paused.
There lay the stack of papers in the controlled hand of Fischer Marks. Dozens of pages of letters exchanged nearly every day that they hadn’t seen one another during those brilliant few weeks the year before.
They did not hold confessions of tender feelings or declarations of love. But they held esteem, she’d thought even warmth, profuse gratitude for every visit and letter from her, and countless stories: about Lydia, his childhood, his work. He had seemed to delight in telling her anything and everything about himself, and she’d done the same.
She had not seen her letters among his things. Surely he’d burnt them when his heart had turned to Patience. Or thrown them down a privy. Constance ought to do the same.
Instead, she sat on the bed and pulled his latest letter from her pocket. After a general report of the sales, the permissions he was still working to secure in other cities, and the amount he’d sent, there were a few lines more personal to the woman he was supposedly courting.
My dear Miss Dark, I can live in suspense no longer. If I am to pay my addresses to you, it would only be proper for me to do so in person. Please consent to meet with me.
Well, that was obviously not going to take place. She added the letter to the others and replaced the false bottom and her gowns, laying out one to bring with her along with a clean shift.
Papa might be right. Perhaps her analysis was weak, willful, even wrong. Perhaps she herself was an agitator, attempting to provoke outrage when there was no real injustice. Perhaps her writing had no artistic merit.
She could let Fischer decide. He’d never spared her feelings about her writing before, and courting the imaginary authoress or not, he could certainly be a jud
ge of what people would buy.
Did that make her wrong?
Constance tried to put the thought from her mind. Stewing on Papa’s judgement would only serve to upset her. Even if he was the intended audience, and he had liked it not at all.
That was not Constance’s fault. She’d tried her best, and she knew several discerning readers — David and even Owen, who had a liberal education — who had found her writing effective.
Still, her heart ached the whole walk back to Lydia’s.
Not only was Fischer Marks not interested in courting her — and was, in fact, at least attempting to court someone else yet again — but her pamphlet had also failed in its singular aim. If the only thing most readers came away from it with was Who is Jeanne Dark?, she’d written it very poorly indeed.
Perhaps the sequel could correct that. Or perhaps it would be worse than the first.
Ten days had passed since Fischer had requested to meet Jeanne, and her only response had been another volume of Columbia’s Fields, and to accept his few editorial suggestions. Once again, she’d pierced right to the heart of the matter in not only the way the servants misreported the problems of the farm to the Farmer, but the Farmer’s even worse response, entrenching himself in the worst possible position against the animals. And then the way the animals’ own dissentions and dissembling and perpetual debates only served to further exacerbate that problem — the woman was a real politician.
But he was beginning to worry she wasn’t real. Clearly she didn’t want to meet. Should he have offered reassurances that he wasn’t so frivolous as to concern himself with her appearance?
Fischer straightened his best blue coat as he approached the Harrisons’ home outside the city. Whether or not he attended to fashion, he didn’t have to find his wife attractive, not if they could work alongside one another and help one another and if she could write like Jeanne Dark.
Though a pretty woman might sooner help him put Constance Hayes out of his mind.
On the other hand, Patience Hayes was very pretty, and he hadn’t forgotten Constance for a moment, even when she wasn’t present.
Hopefully she would not be at the Harrisons’ tonight. Fischer assumed the Hayeses, like the Beauforts, were of the same circle as the Harrisons. Fischer himself would never have been invited were it not for Columbia’s Fields’ success, though he’d always assumed the Harrisons leaned loyalist. But he was received and conducted into the ballroom, so whatever their loyalties, they didn’t seem to have warned their staff to bar the door. That was fortunate; he’d given the letter to Beaufort just that morning telling “Miss Dark” he’d attend and asking her to do the same if she could.
Fischer scanned the room. Unless “Jeanne” was wearing jewelry in the form of a fleur-de-lis or a crowned sword or a miniature of the original Jeanne d’Arc, how was he to tell if she were here? Asking every woman he met?
Perhaps he had urged her too strongly to meet. Perhaps he had pushed the relationship further than he should have. She had accepted, but he had had little account from her since. Should he have more effusively professed his . . . well, not love. He wouldn’t lie. Admiration, then.
What was he to do? Print a broadside urging her to come forward? He’d look a fool.
Of course, if he was to spend the night scouring the Harrisons’ party, perhaps that fate was unavoidable.
Constance took Lydia’s arm as they continued up the walk to the Harrisons’ house. They’d spent a delightful afternoon getting ready with her sisters, far too busy to read the latest business report from Fischer when David dropped it by. It had taken Constance over a week to coax Lydia to borrow a gown and join their family. Lydia had objected because she wasn’t known to the hosts, but the Harrisons would hardly notice if David brought an extra guest. Actually, Constance wasn’t certain David himself had noticed or counted a surplus anyway, with Patience and Gilbert missing. Most of all, she couldn’t let Lydia simply sit at home and stew in her sorrow. She had to keep moving.
Lydia came to a complete stop five steps from the doors. “I can’t go among company.” She turned to Constance. “Do you not remember —”
“I do.” She couldn’t forget how Amity Duché, the rector’s own daughter, had insulted Lydia in front of everyone at the end of Patience’s engagement party. Constance had tried to stand up for her, but her defense had done little to change Amity’s mind.
“Then do not make me go.”
“You shouldn’t have to lock yourself away forever because of someone else’s misdeeds,” Constance said. “Besides, if anyone insults my friend, I’m sure Cousin David would be the first to demand satisfaction.”
Lydia laughed at the idea of the priggish Amity drawing pistols with someone of David’s quality. Naturally, even someone as hateful as Amity deferred to David.
“Come,” Constance said. Her stomach still hadn’t settled from the trip here; how could she take Lydia home now? “If I survived a coach ride all the way here, you can survive one party.”
Constance managed to urge Lydia into the ballroom, and it took all of fifteen seconds for her to regret it. Not only was Amity Duché there, but she stood not ten feet from Fischer Marks.
Perhaps they could leave after all. Surely they’d have just as lovely an evening sitting at home with David’s girls, Elizabeth and Katherine, and whatever pet Mercy had rescued lately. No, a far better evening. Other than the coach ride home.
As Constance leaned over to speak to Lydia, though, a whisper behind her caught her attention: Columbia. She turned, but she didn’t know the women behind her. She could just make out her character’s names, Gérard, Solomon, the Farmer. Leaning a little closer, she strained to follow the conversation. Had they read the latest volume?
Then the voices of a nearby group of men overpowered them. Constance recognized John Hancock among them, and it was from his lips she heard the toast to Jeanne Dark.
Her brother-in-law stood at the periphery of the group, at least close enough to have heard what preceded the toast. Constance tapped Owen’s shoulder, and he looked to her. “I hope you don’t wish for me to stand up with you,” Owen said, kind and humble as ever.
“I hadn’t realized that was a liberty you could ask, even of a family member.” Invitations to dance were supposed to go the other way, after all.
Temperance leaned across him. “If it were, I’d have to claim the privilege.”
“Oh! I didn’t realize you were here, Tippy,” Constance said. “Are you feeling better?”
“For now,” she murmured.
Constance inclined her head toward the men who were still celebrating it seemed. “Do they like the latest volume?”
“More than that,” Owen informed her. “They think it directly responsible for the Provincial Assembly changing course.”
“What?”
Temperance leaned in again. “They’ve told our delegates they may vote for independence.”
Of anyone, Papa must already know this. He hadn’t said anything all evening. Constance excused herself from Lydia and her sister, hoping Temperance understood that meant Lydia was under her care until Constance returned.
She found Papa at the punch bowl. “I’ve just heard: has the Assembly permitted you to vote for independence?”
Papa’s expression immediately darkened, and Constance fell back a step. “Spineless Januses, trying to appease both sides at once. And to think David —” He stopped himself before he said anything more immoderate.
Papa was almost never harsh — nearly as kind and gentle as Mama — but now he truly seemed enraged.
It was too much to ask whether he’d read the second volume of Columbia’s Fields. She’d rather not know than have him unwittingly rail against her writings again.
“Morris, Willing and I cannot be so inconstant,” Papa said, recovering himself. “But I don’t know how our delegation will fare. Humphreys is with us, it seems. Allen too. Wilson will want to caucus h
is constituents.” He sighed. “David’s loyalties are obvious. And Franklin’s on the committee writing the —” He glanced at Constance as if censoring himself. “I don’t mean to trouble you with all this.”
“Of course not, Papa.” She declined to mention that she’d been carefully following the delegation’s stances: that left five definitely against independence, one uncertain and two in favor.
Before Constance could fret, she checked on Lydia. Though Constance had crossed the room, even from where she stood she could see the fear in her friend’s eyes. Constance checked; she just glimpsed Owen and Temperance leaving, her sister pale.
Already making her way over, Constance scanned the crowd in front of Lydia until she saw the pleated back of Amity Duché’s gown. Right in front of Lydia.
Oh no. Trying not to upset anyone over much, Constance pushed her way through the crowd faster. She reached her friend’s side before Amity had had time to do much of anything but glare at her friend. “Mrs. Ainsley?” Amity’s sharp, thin voice cut through the room’s conversations. “Is that you?”
Her tone was altogether too sweet, knowing how sour Amity could be. Lydia regarded her with appropriate caution. “Good evening, Miss Duché.”
Constance searched the room for help. Verity was several feet behind Amity. Had they had another tiff?
“Good night, Miss Duché,” Constance said, as if ending their conversation. She tried to drag Lydia off, but her friend was rooted to the spot.
“Come, Amity,” Verity attempted. “Isn’t that young Mr. Harrison wanting for a partner?”
Amity, undeterred, raked her eyes up and down Constance. “I must say, I’m surprised to see a Hayes sister associating with such company.” She placed a hand over her heart. “It is quite charitable of you to take pity on a ruinated woman.”
Constance looked back to Verity, as if she could stop her friend’s cruel mistreatment. Verity’s eyes were wide as well, and she gave a little shake of the head. She had tried. Before she could make a second attempt, Godfrey Sibbald approached her.