America's First Daughter: A Novel (34 page)

“What’s your fault?” I asked, looking into his bleak eyes.

“John Harvie says that if I’d stayed at Varina, the plantation my father gave me, I’d have been close by at the end.”

“Oh, Tom, no,” I said, thinking it extraordinarily cruel for someone to say such a thing to a grieving son. “You rode out the
moment
you heard your father was ill. You rode like a madman to get to his side. You can’t think—”

“I was too far away,” Tom broke in. “If I’d been at Varina, I’d have been at his bedside. And that’s why . . .” He shuddered.

A sense of dread washed over me. “That’s why
what
?”

“That’s why he changed his will!”

My stomach clenched. “What can you mean?”

“I’m not the heir to Tuckahoe,” Tom said, his eyes dropping from mine, as if he couldn’t bear the shame. “He took from me my patrimony as eldest son and gave it to the new boy. He gave Gabriella’s son everything. My name, my father, my ancestral home. As if in my twenty-five years on this earth, I was never anything to him. And now I’m
nothing,
Patsy. He’s left me with nothing.”

T
HE MAGNITUDE OF THE DISASTER
—both emotional and financial—was too much to take in. “That can’t be true,” I said, my head spinning as I grappled with all this would mean for us.

“It is true,” Tom said, too weary to stand. Sinking down onto the schoolmaster’s desk, he said, “My father rewrote his will in his last hours. He chose to spite me with his very last breaths.”

Suddenly, Gabriella’s strange remarks at breakfast took on a new light. No doubt Colonel Randolph’s young widow and her father hovered like buzzards over the mean old bastard to the last. They’d stolen Tom’s patrimony, but I’d have to put a more charitable spin on it, because Tom looked on the verge of shattering to pieces.

Regardless of the inheritance, my husband would be guardian over the children and steward of the estate. Much as my grandfather had been when he built this schoolhouse. That was the custom, and Tom could find some solace in that. “Tom, I’m sure your father was only worried the child would have nothing. That boy isn’t even two years old and will need us to look after him and his mother. It’ll be nearly twenty years before he comes into his inheritance, and with your stewardship at Tuckahoe—”

“You don’t understand,” Tom said, sharply. “I won’t
have
a stewardship at Tuckahoe. I meant what I said. I’ve lost my ancestral home. Not just the profits and enjoyment of it. But everything.
John Harvie
was named guardian over the younger children.”

I gasped in outrage and insult, my arms hugging my stomach against the sudden burning ache that settled there. Never mind the money; how could Colonel Randolph have entrusted his children into the care of the Harvies? And I was suddenly struck with fear that little Jenny, who had been living with us for years now, might be ripped away. “That cannot be true.”

Tom gripped the edge of the table so hard the wood creaked. “You think I’d make it up? Until the boy comes of age, Harvie will be master of Tuckahoe, not me. My mother’s children have no place here any longer.” My husband laughed bitterly. “But my brother and I
do
have the singular honor of executing my father’s estate.”

Which meant that Colonel Randolph had left my husband to settle his debts.

My throat tightened and my heart raced, sending my head into a spin. I pressed a hand to my forehead. That malevolent old rotter said my Jefferson blood ran cold. But nothing could have been colder than this. Colonel Randolph hadn’t simply impoverished us, but aimed to rip Tom’s sisters away from us and saddle us with costs and expenses besides.

He was as petty a tyrant as any king who’d ever lived, and the most un-Christian feelings welled up inside me such that I wanted to make the trip to the cemetery just to spit on Colonel Randolph’s freshly dug grave.

But my fears, disappointment, and anger were nothing in the face of Tom’s loss. “I—I tried to obey him,” Tom murmured through bloodless lips. “Tried to please him when I could. You saw that. I tried to make of myself something he might be proud of, but I didn’t
always
obey and I never could find a way to please him no matter how hard I tried. Even so, I never thought he could hate me. What did I do to make him hate me so?”

Reaching for my husband’s face—which was somehow even more beautiful in its anguish—I cradled his cheeks in my hands. “Your father didn’t hate you.” It was a lie, but I’d told others and for lesser cause. To protect my husband from this pain, I’d tell this lie and a hundred others. “No father could ever hate his son, and especially not you. Not a learned, hardworking, loving, and lovable son like you.”

“I’m not lovable, Patsy.” Tom clutched at my arms. “Never have been.”

“You
are
.” I brought my lips to his brow, like I was soothing a babe.

But he drew back with a shudder. “You know better than anyone that I’m not worthy of love. You’ve always held yourself back because you see what’s in me—this darkness. This melancholy and temper that slips its reins. I think my father must’ve seen it, too. Must’ve known that something was broken in me, like dogs know there’s something wrong with a pup.”

At the sight of tears in his reddened, swollen eyes, I brought my forehead to touch his, whispering, nose to nose. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Tom Randolph.”

A sob escaped him. “Then why would my father do such a thing to me?”

For spite,
I thought. But it wouldn’t help Tom to know his father was a spiteful worm, lower than dirt. When a man knows that he’s come from nothing he may never aspire to better. So I said, “Your father was very ill. To do such a thing, in the end, he must’ve been quite out of his senses.”

A spark of hope lit in Tom’s eyes. “Do you think so?”

I nodded, firmly. Convincing myself as much as him. “I do. Why, any right-minded person might suspect your father’s widow stood over the bed and held the pen in the dying man’s hand.”

I was sowing discord amongst the living when it was the dead who was to blame, yet, in my estimation, the Harvies had stolen my children’s birthright, and I wasn’t apt to be charitable.

Meanwhile, Tom choked back another sob. “I should’ve been here. I should’ve been here sooner.”

I was to blame for that. I was the one who hated Varina. I’d hounded him to move to my father’s mountain, thinking it was the best place for my children. Was I wrong to have done it? “You went to him the moment you heard,” I reminded him, stroking his hair, still marveling at the thickness of it between my fingers.

Since the day Tom struck me, I hadn’t felt the stirrings of arousal and desire, so I was surprised to feel them now, stronger than ever. Tom was so vulnerable that I remembered how sweet he could be. How much pleasure we’d found in one another. How he’d driven away my pain and heartbreak with the sheer force of his desire.

Now I wanted to do the same for him.

He’d accused me of holding myself back from him, and I had. There still seemed something too dangerous in admitting that I loved him, so I tried to show him, kissing him with a brazenness I’d never dared before.

At my kiss, Tom tugged me closer and pressed his mouth on mine with a mad, desperate urgency. The abandoned schoolhouse was hardly the place a gentleman ought to make love to his wife. But it’d been here in this very schoolhouse that he’d asked me to marry him, and the emotions of the moment ran so high that I cared nothing for propriety. I welcomed my husband’s roaming hands and plundering mouth, wanting him to find in me some balm for his pain. And when my hands opened his shirt and my palms skidded down his chest, I took deep satisfaction in the way he groaned, as if my touch was a mercy.

“You’re all I have, Patsy,” he whispered. “All I have now . . .”

T
HAT WINTER
, my father limped home from his battles with the secretary of the treasury, battered and bruised in spirit, desiring to give up the work of government forever. He had resigned and retired.

It was, of course, what my sister and I wanted most.

We wanted our father home. We didn’t want to share him with the world anymore, and we both believed he’d be happier as the simple gentleman farmer he professed to be.

But when Papa returned to Monticello, it wasn’t with the high spirits of a man finally freed from public duty. Oh, he nattered excitedly about the price of wheat and molasses, sheep and potatoes, and seemed to be eager for the spring thaw. But I knew him too well not to notice the tension leaking out the edges of his daily routine.

On his third day home, he and Polly came in from a ride, and Sally Hemings was there in an instant, eager to attend him. I suppose that after years of living under Tom’s authority while steering clear of me, Sally was as grateful as I was for Papa’s return as unquestioned master of the plantation.

Perhaps she was also eager to repair whatever had been ruptured between them, which had made her status on the plantation uncertain. But when Sally reached for my father’s coat, he nearly jolted at the brush of her fingers at his neck. And when she stooped to take his muddy riding boots, Papa stopped her. “That’s all right, Sally. I’ll do it.”

Her lower lip wobbled and she bolted away, disappearing somewhere into the recesses of the house.

“What the devil was that about?” The look of bewilderment on my father’s face might’ve been comical were the cause for Sally’s distress not so plainly obvious.

“She’s a woman who wants to please you,” Polly said, her cheeks pink with the cold. “Can’t you see that, Papa?”

“She does please me,” he protested, looking between us. “I found no fault in her. I said nothing harsh whatsoever.”

My sister put a hand on her hip, addressing my father as no one else dared. “You didn’t have to say it, Papa. You don’t let her do anything for you. Not even pour your tea.”

My father gave a little snort. Then, as if to make us forget the scene with Sally, he asked me, “Isn’t Mr. Randolph coming down?”

“Tom’s not hungry.” Or at least, that’s what he said whenever I tried to take something up to him. He’d taken ill after his father’s death and was now unable, or unwilling, to rise from our bed. But it was an erratic illness.

One day, Tom would be so low in spirits he couldn’t muster the energy to rise and shave his own cheek. The next day, he’d be up before dawn working on threshing machines at such a fevered pace he’d forget to come to bed entirely. It’d been that way for weeks.

I worried for him.

Since he wasn’t hungry, I had some strong tea sent up with white sugar—some of the few goods that could still be bought with cash, for the smallpox outbreak and want of commerce had rendered the whole of Virginia a place of only barter and trade.

But when he refused it, I went up myself to coax him. “At least drink a little tea, Tom. Then maybe you’ll want supper with us tonight. Asparagus has finally come to our table and pairs nicely with eggs.”

The toll on him was evident; it hollowed out his beauty and made his eyes sink into his head. “I can’t keep anything down,” Tom insisted, bunching the quilt under his chin and turning away toward the wall. When he did, I saw his ribs beneath the broad expanse of his muscular back. He was wasting away while trying to make sense of who he was if he wasn’t his father’s heir.

Wasting away to the nothing he feared he’d become.

And I didn’t know what I could say, or do, to help him.

When I went back down, my father asked, “Is he feeling any better?” I gave a quick, distressed shake of my head and Papa frowned. “You know that you’re both welcome to stay here at Monticello as long as you like.”

“We’re so grateful,” I replied, wishing that my husband could see that even if his own father had never valued him, mine did. But Monticello wasn’t Tuckahoe. My husband had been hurt and humiliated by his father’s last wishes. What Tom wanted now was to make his own lands profitable, because the longer he lived in another man’s house and managed another man’s farm, the more he doubted his worth as a man.

My father had his own solution for the problem. “There’s an opening for justice of the peace; Tom should run. It’ll be an honor and a distraction. He’ll have more time for studying the law if he puts off leaving. Besides, it’s been a great comfort having you both here to look after my farm, and now that I’m in a position to enjoy Monticello, who else can I share it with?”

My father had no sons to give it to, that’s what he meant. Not by blood. Not even Sally’s dead boy. And I was reminded again of just how much my father’s promise never to remarry had cost him. My mother had extracted that from him to fend off women like Gabriella Harvie. And my father had given his word without hesitation, even though it now left him without an heir, and fearful of his legacy.

But I had given him a grandson. A namesake. Jeff. My thriving baby boy. And I hoped I was about to give him another. Touching the small swell of my belly, I said, “Perhaps my husband will be persuaded to stay when he learns that I may be in a delicate condition.”

Papa’s face lit up. “Why, that’s wonderful, Patsy. A baby is just the thing to give a man a renewed sense of purpose.” Then I watched the direction of Papa’s eyes as they settled on Sally in the far room, where she was making noise by scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees like my mother used to do. He watched her with longing, his throat bobbing with every bounce of her earrings as she worked. “Do the floors really need scrubbing?”

“Sally must think so.” When it came to the servants, I never had to ask Sally or Mammy Ursula to do anything. But whereas Mammy ruled over the other slaves like a queen who must be obeyed, Sally just quietly claimed dominion over whatever she felt needed to be done.

And in her unhappiness, I suppose she’d decided the floor needed scrubbing.

Papa murmured, “When we left Paris, I promised never to work her hard. That’s why I don’t ask her to tend me.” It was, I thought, a startling dishonesty, for tending to him was the easiest work on the plantation. Then he added, “Your sister’s right about women. Even while employed in drudgery, some bit of ribbon, ear bob, or necklace, or something of the kind will show that the desire of pleasing is never suspended in them . . . they’re formed by nature for attentions, not for hard labor.”