America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  His voice was firm. There was no crack or waver in it to give me hope he might change his mind. And I shook my head, at a complete loss. The sun and the birdsong upon the breeze suddenly seemed to mock my predicament. I would never leave you, or my country, but for God, I’d said to my father. Was love for William to make a liar of me? “What you’re asking!”

  He drew my hands to his lips, beseeching me with his eyes. “I’m asking you to make a life with me, not to abandon your duties as a daughter.”

  Then why did it feel like that’s exactly what he was asking me to do?

  I PASSED THROUGH THE DAYS AND WEEKS that followed in a confused haze, my thoughts preoccupied by my struggle to balance my heart’s desire with my lifelong duty. A confusion made worse by the strangest of tea parties, hosted by the Duke of Dorset. Having expected to be one of many guests, I arrived to find the salon bedecked in flowers, empty except for me and the duke. Dressed as if for a ball and not for afternoon tea, he guided me to the table.

  “Are the others arriving late?” I asked as I sat. And then I realized there were only two settings.

  “I understand that your father will soon take leave to America. But my nieces tell me you might be induced to stay, given the right offer.”

  “What can you mean?” I asked, my scalp prickling as a servant swept into the room to pour the tea.

  In answer, the duke produced a velvet pouch. “I wish to propose an alliance.” He dropped the contents of the little bag into his hand, and then held something out to me.

  A ring. A diamond ring.

  Perspiration dampened the back of my neck. “What kind of alliance is sealed with such an extravagant gift?”

  “The kind that would unite your family and mine, and might reunite your people and mine.”

  The diamond glinted in the candlelight, but I had not the slightest urge to take it. Mon Dieu, did he mean to make a proposal of marriage? I could not allow it, and not only because my heart belonged to another. This was highly improper in every way. And setting aside propriety, my father was the voice of American independence. To even entertain such a proposal would be to betray my father’s principles.

  I had already allowed this to go too far. The duke continued speaking, and I may have replied, but what I remember most is my haste to escape. “Your Grace, I beg you to say no more.” I rose clumsily from my chair. “I am beyond grateful for your many kindnesses over the years, and I love your nieces dearly, but I cannot accept more than friendship from you.”

  The duke’s hand sagged and he gave a little incredulous laugh as if he could not quite believe he was being refused. And by an American at that. For long moments, he pressed his case upon me, and I pleaded devotion to my father by way of excuse. Finally, in a resigned voice, he said, “Then take the ring anyway and remember me by it, for it is just a bauble.”

  Perhaps to him a diamond ring was just a bauble, or perhaps he was salvaging his pride. I was just grateful that he did not seem angry when I finally took my leave.

  Without the ring.

  By the time I returned home, I was consumed with guilt, wondering if I had misled the duke and somehow disgraced my papa thereby. And I wondered if I should tell my father of the incident. If I should tell anyone of the incident. It would mortify Papa and perhaps the entire American embassy. Even if I could bring myself to make such a humiliating confession, it might force a discussion about William’s plans for our future. And that was a conversation I wasn’t ready to have.

  So, that evening, I sat anxiously at the dining room table, nibbling at a spoonful of James’s strawberry ice cream.

  “Don’t you like it?” Sally asked, readying to take my crystal dish. “It’s my favorite.”

  “It’s delicious,” I said but could barely taste it for the maelstrom in my head and heart.

  “Sally, you like ice cream too much,” Polly said, with a girlish laugh, her spoon clinking as she watched Sally round the table. “You’re getting as fat a belly as a pregnant lady. If you aren’t careful, everyone will point and say enceinte.”

  “Polly, how unkind!” I scolded, my gaze whipping up. But something about the comment drew my father’s eyes to Sally’s middle. I looked, too, taking in the slight swell beneath the pink-ribboned belt of her flowing chemise gown. The moment might’ve passed without suspicion had Sally not spread her fingers over her belly like a fan, and turned her amber gaze to my father in what looked to be heartbreaking desperation.

  My sister giggled. But Sally didn’t laugh and neither did my father. Instead, they exchanged a stricken, naked look between them that resounded like a thunderclap.

  And my father flushed scarlet.

  A sound like honeybees buzzed in my ears as the horrific realization slowly made its way past my defenses to assault my reason. Sally was pregnant. And Papa wouldn’t be sitting there burning with shame unless …

  No. That couldn’t be. It couldn’t be shame I saw on his countenance. Perhaps it was anger that our lady’s maid had been seduced by some villain. Or perhaps jealousy that pretty Sally had given herself to some low-bred delivery boy, or some stranger from the streets, or some visitor.

  I looked across the table at my father, searching for the truth, and under my scrutiny, he blanched. The scarlet color in his face drained suddenly away, leaving him in pale, bloodless mortification.

  Then I knew he wasn’t jealous or angry.

  He was guilty.

  I tore my eyes away to spare us both the agony of acknowledging it. Close on the heels of my shock came a wave of anger and indignation. Here I’d been so tormented about wanting to be with William because it would mean leaving Papa alone. And, yet, Papa hadn’t been alone at all!

  I clenched my fists beneath the table, which did nothing to still my hammering heart. And before I could compose myself or make any sense of my feelings, Papa shot up from the table, took Sally by the arm, and led her out.

  From just outside the dining room, their soft intimate whispers sounded, not meant for our ears. They were lovers having a quarrel, while my sister and I sat there, bewildered, our ice cream forgotten and melting.

  “Sally is going to have a baby?” Polly asked.

  “Hush.” I pressed my lips together and willed my little sister to silence.

  “But she doesn’t have a husband. Will we have to send her to the convent?” We knew girls who had lost their virtue and been sent to the Panthemont in the hopes that the world would forget. Papa had always taught us to treat such girls kindly, and to blame their error upon the wicked men who preyed upon the peculiar vulnerabilities of our sex. But Sally Hemings wasn’t a gentlewoman of society with a family reputation to stain.

  Unless it was our family reputation.

  Sally was … well, she was a lady’s maid and a chambermaid. Who in France—where prostitutes openly roamed the Palais-Royal—would judge her harshly?

  However, my father they would gleefully judge.

  For even I judged him.

  All the same anger and confusion and revulsion I felt the night I came upon them kissing roiled up inside me anew. Was it because Sally was a girl not even my own age, and he a much older man? Unions between older men and young women our age were not so unusual, as the duke’s awkward proposal demonstrated. Was it because Sally had the taint of African blood? She didn’t seem tainted to me. Was it that Sally was my mother’s sister, and looked so much like her? Perhaps. Or was it, as William had once suggested, the evil of slavery that stained the union and corrupted it even here, where Sally was ostensibly free?

  It was all these things and more. Deep, bitter resentment rushed through me at the realization that my father indulged his base inclinations while having contrived to separate me from the man I wanted.

  I sprang to my feet, as if to flee from the reality of it, but where could I go? Instead, I paced, feeling like I couldn’t sit still or I might explode. “Say nothing more about it, Polly.”

  “But—”

  “Nothing at al
l,” I told her, reaching to give her a little shake. “We shouldn’t add to Sally’s burdens.”

  Polly stared at me, her blue eyes swimming with confusion. The sister who came to us in France would never have obeyed. She’d have pestered me until her curiosity was satisfied. But in this one matter, we were fortunate Polly’s illness had made her into a more pliable creature—or at least one too weary to argue.

  But I didn’t just want to silence Polly’s questions out of consideration for Sally, nor so that I might have a better chance to overhear the conversation playing out just outside the room. I didn’t want Polly to speak of it because … I didn’t want anyone to speak of it.

  Here I’d been worrying about my father’s mortification at my proposal from the British ambassador, when Papa’s actions stood to mortify us all.

  Just beyond the doorway, Papa reached to tug Sally close. I watched in fascination and horror as his hunger for her became crystal clear. How had I missed it and dismissed it as infatuation all this time? I’d told myself the wages and dresses and locket were some manner of apology for his ungentlemanly behavior.

  I’d been such a fool! Perhaps the greatest fool in Paris. A fool not to see the danger in the duke’s attentions. A fool not to realize that William Short would never make a home with me and my family in Virginia. And a fool for believing my father was—

  How many times did Papa’s eyes lock with Sally’s across the table without my noticing? How often had they stolen away to … to …

  The memory of the kiss I’d witnessed long ago somehow transformed itself in my mind into two lust-fevered bodies upon my father’s bed, tawny limbs tangled with pale, freckled ones. I steadied myself on the back of a chair and shook the vision away.

  Then, outside the dining room, Sally pulled free of my father’s desperate grasp, daring to turn her back on her master, and strode away, leaving Papa to bury his face in his hands.

  That’s when I knew. He hadn’t just gotten her with child. He had feelings for her. Which meant as long as they were together, they’d create the opportunity for people to talk. I could already hear the mockery: The voice of American liberty, who takes liberties with his enslaved maid.

  What could I possibly do to protect any of us from it?

  Truthfully I was so angry, I wasn’t sure I cared to try.

  PAPA WENT STRAIGHTAWAY TO BED THAT NIGHT without speaking a single solitary word to anyone. He stayed abed the next morning without soaking his feet in cold water, as was his daily habit. Upon waking, I found the unused basin of water just outside his chambers and Polly said, “He won’t take it unless Sally brings it to him, but she won’t.”

  I told myself I didn’t care. I told myself to walk past his door and pretend that I didn’t hear the silent echo of his suffering over the roar of my anger. But instead I knocked lightly, then turned the ornate knob and found nothing but darkness inside. The drapes were pulled closed, and not even a candle by his bedside lit the room.

  Papa’s voice came throaty through the blackness. “Go, Patsy. You’re letting in the light.”

  I disobeyed, slipping into his solitary world with him and closing the door behind me. Then, filled with anger at him and shame for him, I dared to challenge Papa as I never had before. “Are you truly unwell?”

  Silence was my answer. And it stretched on so long that he needn’t have replied at all. I understood his silence as humiliation; he’d hoped to carry on with Sally without being found out. Maybe that’s why he’d wanted so desperately to send us back to Virginia, I thought, resentfully.

  “There is a terrible hammering in my head,” he finally said in a voice that spoke of true pain. “I cannot begin to describe the agony.”

  I made my way carefully to his bedside, sidestepping a round wooden table piled high with books. Was his agony caused by the headache or by the thought of losing his lover? Despite my anger, I’d seen the emotion on his face when he learned of Sally’s condition. He cared for her, maybe even loved her. If he’d been worried about the idea of her remaining in the chaos of Paris before, how much worse might his fears be now that she carried his child?

  Pressing a hand to his forehead, I felt his skin warm and dry. There was no fever, but he groaned, as if my touch made it worse.

  He didn’t leave his bed that day, nor could he leave it the next. Instead, he lay writhing on his mattress, put into torment by the slightest bit of light. He ate nothing, read nothing, and wanted to see no one but Sally.

  And yet, Sally would not come.

  I found her in the kitchen, and all but commanded her to go to him. But Sally stayed put, chopping onions the way her brother had taught us both to do, her eyes watering of it. And when I pressed her, we faced each other as if we were equals for the first time. Dropping her hand to her belly, she said, “I won’t go to him until he lets me and the child free.”

  So it was the explicit grant of freedom she was holding out for. She hadn’t dared to demand freedom for herself when James did, but for her child, she’d found the courage to defy my father. To abandon him. To torment him, even, for now there was no question that he was ill.

  So ill that I heard him retch on water. It was grief that had made him unable to open his eyes. Grief for how he’d tarnished his honor. An unwillingness to face a world in which he’d be vilified as a seducer of a girl in his charge, and the father of a mixed-race child he might never know if Sally left him to pursue life as a free woman, and I felt his naked fear of what might become of them on their own.

  Three days my father lay in bed, shut up, alone, in despair.

  Then four. Then five.

  He called for me on the sixth.

  There, in the near blackness of his room, he twined my fingers with his and said, “Patsy, let me tell you where King Louis went wrong. The king of France wants his people’s love so badly that he crushes them in his embrace. He won’t let them pursue happiness. He has to be forced to every compromise. I’ve seen enough tyrants in my time to learn from their mistakes, so I won’t thwart the rebellion of the young people in my household, even if it means I must lose the love and comfort of those dearest to me. You and William. Sally and James.”

  With a gasp, I said, “Papa, you can never lose our love!”

  No matter what I thought about his conduct with Sally, I loved my father dearly. So dearly that just as I’d hated Maria Cosway for rejecting my father, I now felt a festering resentment for Sally, too. It wasn’t the same, of course. This wasn’t Sally’s fault. But she knew how my father was suffering, and she didn’t need him to grant her freedom in France. She could take it and he couldn’t stop her. So why couldn’t she at least offer him a kind word before she left us?

  “I will lose you,” my father said, with a melancholy sigh. “It’s the way of things, I know. I’m going out of life, and you’re all coming in.”

  It horrified me to hear him say that he was going out of life. “Let me call for a doctor.”

  Papa put his finger over my lips as if just the sound of my voice pained him. “I had this headache when your grandmother died. It’s a penance that must be endured. It reminds me that I’m past the prime of my life, and I must give way. The earth belongs to the living, and your generation has more life left than mine. Though I’ll be lost without you, I won’t stand in the way of you and William, even if it means I’ll lose what is most precious to me. When William asks for your hand, tell him yes with all your heart if that’s your desire.”

  “Oh, Papa, you’ll never lose me,” I said, my heart filling with the bittersweet pain of happiness and gratitude, but also sorrow. Because though my father would never lose my love, if I married William, we’d never live together again.

  My father must’ve known it, which made it all the harder for him to let me go. “But Patsy, I would ask this kindness of you. Come back with me to Virginia to settle Polly and say your farewells before returning to France for the wedding.”

  I nodded, bringing his weak hand to my lips and kissin
g it, over and over.

  But at my kisses Papa turned his face back to the pillow, as if he felt himself unworthy of them. “Would you—would you send Sally to me?”

  I knew what it cost him to ask that of me. To ask me to fetch his mistress. The mother of his child. The woman he had plainly fallen in love with.

  His head. That is what he said ailed him. But it was his heart. How many times had I seen this before? The passionate heart he always forced to submit to his surpassing intellect. His heart, like all of France, was in rebellion against its ruler.

  And that’s why he asked again so sheepishly for her. “Tell her to come to me. Unlike King Louis, I’ll treat fairly with her.”

  He meant to give her up, too, then. Though he felt abandoned and unloved, he meant to give us all the freedom we desired.

  And I worried it would destroy him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Paris, 17 July 1789

  From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine

  A more dangerous scene of war I never saw in America than what Paris has presented for five days past.

  THE BASTILLE HAD FALLEN and Paris was aflame. Men had been beheaded, their corpses dragged before the mob, and tens of thousands of citizens now marched about with pistols, swords, pikes, pruning hooks, and scythes. The only hope of peace rested upon the shoulders of Lafayette, who had assumed command of the National Guard.

  And our tree was gone. The one William had carved. It’d been smashed by cannon fire or hacked to pieces by the hordes of angry citizens in the streets, I knew not which. There I stood at the balcony window, staring down at its fractured stump, mesmerized by the violent destruction of something so dear to me—and the city in which it was born.

  “Come away from the windows, Patsy,” William urged, his voice strained with worry.

  I choked back a sob. “It’s all torn apart. Everything is going wrong!”

  William dared to fold me into his arms, saying again, “Come away from the window. There is no telling with what violence the king’s processional will be met.”