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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Dreams of Glory
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“Please. If you were waylaid on my account I would never forgive myself. We have our last goose waiting for you in the oven. You must allow me to show my gratitude. Caesar was—was very dear to me. He had—a good heart.”
Hugh Stapleton looked out at the gathering gloom of the winter twilight. He thought about his tired horses and the thirty miles of dangerous roads to Great Rock Farm. For a moment he envisioned the welcome he would receive there—his wife's wan face, his noisy younger son climbing on him. Then a blizzard of woes, worries, complaints. Perhaps he should heed this plea, in which he sensed—or was it hoped?—that there was more than mere patriotism. Besides, he was supposed to be helping solve the mystery of Caesar's death. To this task he could easily add the mystery of how and
where that shy Dutchman, Henry Kuyper, had found such an attractive wife.
“Please,” Flora Kuyper said once more.
“Very well,” Congressman Stapleton said.
SO THIS WAS A CONGRESSMAN, Flora thought. He looked and acted like a spoiled English scion. He dressed like one, too. His apple-green frock coat was in the latest Pall Mall style, with a broad, contrasting collar and deep cuffs of darker green velvet. He wore a frilled jabot of fine batiste at his neck, and from beneath his fashionably long embroidered blue waistcoat dangled the requisite two watch fobs. His buff breeches were skintight in the London mode.
Hugh Stapleton called in his coachman and told him to complete the journey to his home near Hackensack, inform his wife of the reason for his delay, and return for him tomorrow. He retained his trunk and from it changed out of his traveling boots to elegant blue shoes with expensive silver buckles. He eyed his hostess's dress appreciatively. “You must have friends in New York, madam,” he said. “I believe that gown is identical to one worn by Mrs. Robinson at a ball given by the Prince of Wales less than a year ago.'
Was he being sarcastic? Flora wondered uneasily. “London trading”—buying English goods, above all expensive dresses—was strictly forbidden by Congress. Then she saw the smile in his eyes and realized he was paying her a compliment.
“What an unexpected pleasure, to find an American congressman approving what a woman has broken the law to wear—even when she imitates the Prince of Wales's mistress.”
He laughed. “You expected one of our snarling Yankee saints, who think that any man or woman who dresses well is a traitor to our glorious revolution? Let me assure you, madam, I have no use for those hypocrites.”
Flora smiled. “I'm so glad,” she said. “I must confess I was a little afraid that your opinions might be extreme. I understand
some of the patriots of New Jersey lean in that direction—although I don't really keep track of their views. I try to live quietly, and avoid politics.”
“That's decidedly in your favor,” Stapleton said. “Women and politics don't mix. My wife has taken up politics. It has soured her temper and ruined her sensibility.”
“I find it hard to believe that mere politics could wreak such havoc,” Flora replied. “I feel impelled, as a woman, to defend her. Have you been neglecting her?”
“I suppose so,” the congressman admitted, taking a steaming glass of mulled Madeira from a tray proffered by Cato. “We've been married thirteen years. Do you really think love—I mean, the sentiment that blinds us to the faults of a spouse—can last so long?”
“I wouldn't know. I've never felt it.”
Flora took her wine and sipped it, her eyes cast down. That was well done, she decided, spoken at just the right moment. When she looked up she saw bemused erotic interest playing across her visitor's handsome face.
“But that's extraordinary, madam,” he said.
“Did you know my husband well?”
“Moderately. I went to Kings College with him for a year. I saw little of him since. He was—”
“A good man, a kind man. But I didn't love him. It was a marriage of convenience. Does it disturb you to discover that a woman can do such a thing?”
“On the contrary, madam. I've never been one of those who feel a woman should find a man irresistible simply because he crooks his finger at her. Unless she takes fire, unless her sensibility is aroused, there can be no real affection.”
Flora smiled. How glad she was that she had not trusted the advice she had gotten from Beckford, to discuss politics with this man. The congressman saw women as creatures apart. He thought they were intended to amuse, to soothe, to intrigue successful powerful men, among whom he clearly numbered himself.
Flora sipped her wine and let Hugh Stapleton ask her the inevitable question—how had she come to marry Henry Kuyper? “He bought me,” she said. “Just as you might buy my butler, Cato—though I would never sell him.”
“You came out as a redemptioner?”
“Yes,” Flora said, slipping smoothly from truth to fabrication. It was a plausible story, the tale of Henry Kuyper purchasing her from one of those English or German ships crowded with human cargo that docked regularly in American ports, where the passengers were “redeemed” for the cost of their voyage plus a profit for the shipowner. It was an easy way for the buyer to get a servant for six or seven years, the usual length of the contract the redemptioners signed to work off their passages. “Henry's mother disliked me from the moment I set foot on the property. Perhaps her woman's intuition warned her that Henry would disobey her for the first time in his life and marry me. I had to put up with her bad temper until she finally died, the year before the war began.”
“You have my sympathy,” Congressman Stapleton said. “I know what strong-willed Dutch women are like. My mother was one. I moved to New York to escape her.”
“More Madeira?” Flora asked.
“Thank you. Is it Tinto?”
“From the southern vineyards. What a pleasure it is to serve it to an appreciative palate. My father was a Marseilles wine merchant who went bankrupt. The shock killed my mother. I was left alone, penniless. It was America or—sell myself in less attractive ways.”
“How dreadful,” the congressman said, with surprisingly genuine sympathy in his voice. “My dear madam, you have endured a great deal. I'm amazed that it has not in the least diminished your spirit, your—if I may say it—beauty.”
Ah, Mr. Stapleton, Flora thought. If you only knew how much I have diminished my spirit, how much I am diminishing it at this very moment to preserve the beauty that you admire and I am beginning to hate. For a moment behind her
smile she was virtually paralyzed by a spasm of grief. She could see Caesar in his coffin in the icy barn, his angry eyes closed, his proud mouth slack with death's nothingness. This American, who stood here paying her compliments, may have been one of his killers.
The congressman was admiring her furniture. “It makes me wish this damned war would end somehow and I could regain my house in New York. It was furnished much like this. I, too, am fond of Chippendale.”
“Will the war ever end?” Flora asked.
“Some people think it could last another ten years, provided the British remain as inert as we are.”
“What if the British roused themselves?”
“I prefer not to think about that, although circumstances seem to be forcing my mind in that direction. I've just spent four days in Morristown. Washington's army is a collection of half-starved scarecrows.”
“The thought of a British victory fills me with horror,” Flora said. “I know I have nothing to fear from it. I suppose it's my French blood.”
“Allow me to disagree with that kind of national antagonism, madam,” Hugh Stapleton said. “I'm inclined to think we have a perfect right to like or dislike individuals, but it makes no sense to dislike an entire nation. Such prejudices cut us off from a vast range of potential friendships. You think of yourself as French. Should I dislike you because my father fought your countrymen in the north woods twenty years ago?”
“I would hope not,” Flora said, letting her voice surround the negative words with a positive invitation.
“Just so. We have idiots in Congress who think that way. But I am not one of them. I have friends in England whom I hope to see and love again, though I have opposed the greedy, aggrandizing policy of their government which gave our New England fanatics the excuse they wanted to start this stupid war.”
“I'm amazed to find such detachment of mind in a politician,” Flora said.
Hugh Stapleton liked that. He liked to think of himself as educating—perhaps even creating—a woman's mind in his image. Flora decided that she would have to appear naive without becoming stupid.
“It's a product of philosophy, Mrs. Kuyper. Without reflection, what are we? No better than beasts. Detachment enables us to find our way through life with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain. To
enjoy
our liberty, madam, that's the important thing.”
“I've never felt the exhilaration of such freedom,” Flora said. “Perhaps because I'm a woman. Or because I've been unfortunate.”
“But now your fortune has turned, madam. You sit here, sole heiress to the Kuyper estate, the finest three hundred acres in New Jersey. I'm surprised this parlor is not thronged with suitors all the day long.”
Flora smiled, acknowledging the compliment. “I felt a year's mourning was required.”
“So you've gone to church every Sunday and let old Dominie Demarest put you to sleep?”
“Yes,” she said.
“We have an even bigger bore in Hackensack, Dominie Freylinghuysen. My wife insists on my going, for the children's sake. But I'm not a believer.”
“Nor am I.”
“A woman after my own mind,” Congressman Stapleton said, tossing down the last of his wine. “You're in danger of making me regret I married young. If I were free, madam, you might find me at the head of that throng of suitors you'll soon be facing. And I assure you that my interest would not be in your three hundred acres.”
“If you insist on teasing me with these compliments, the regret will be more on my side,” Flora said.
Cato summoned them to dinner. The dining room's cut-glass
chandelier glistened in the candleglow from the wall sconces and the seven-branched silver candelabrum on the table. Cato served them goose in a dark gravy, flavored with preserved cherries. The wine was Chateau Margaux, 1769. The congressman said he had not tasted anything like it since he left London, four long years ago. For dessert Cato flamed a pair of his wife Nancy's crepes filled with sliced apples. With them came the rare French dessert wine, Vin de Rousillon, which also caused the congressman to exclaim with pleasure. They returned to the parlor to drink coffee laced with brandy.
By now the congressman's face was flushed. Winter had been banished from his mind and body. He cheerfully accepted a cigar. Flora studied the small brown tubes of tobacco in their mahogany box and said, “Will you consider me a loose woman if I join you?”
“I'll consider you a woman of fashion, which you obviously could become—if you were willing to take the final step. You know the saying?”
“A lady can't become a woman of fashion until she loses her reputation?”
“Precisely.”
The congressman took a tall candle from the mantel and lit her cigar. There was no question that she had him. But did she want him? Caesar dead in the barn, delivered to her like a piece of merchandise, the proud face crushed against the raw pine of the coffin lid. Could she betray him so soon?
“It may be necessary to lose one's reputation in London or Paris, Mr. Stapleton. But here in America we can be more discreet. We can have both pleasure and reputation. It's one of the things I like about your country.”
“Servants talk,” he said as Cato took away the coffee cups, then served more brandy.
“Not my servants,” Flora said. “I permit only two in the house, Cato and his wife, Nancy. They are absolutely trustworthy.”
Cato departed, carefully shutting the door behind him. “Then the question, madam,” said the congressman, strolling
around the room to look at the paintings, “comes down to those elemental principles that my father's old friend Ben Franklin so lucidly explained in his book on electricity—attraction and repulsion.'
“Fascinating,” Flora said. “What about scruples, Mr. Stapleton? Did Dr. Franklin write about those?'
Where did she find the will, the wit for this banter? She must be playing a part that Walter Beckford had written for her. Sometimes she thought he was Satan, and William Coleman one of his dark angels. They possessed her soul and body, and no one had the power to break their spell.
“Scruples are like buzzing flies, madam,” Congressman Stapleton said. “If they blunder into the field of attraction, they flutter to the ground, knocked silly by its violence.”
“You make it sound so fierce.”

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