“Colonel Randolph is with God now,” she interrupted, standing up and walking to the window.
I rose to follow her, imagining she must be frightened, widowed and with two babes, now at the mercy of my husband for her upkeep. “You mustn’t worry about anything. Now is a time for family to come together. Please let me know what I can do to ease your time of mourning.”
Very calmly, Gabriella traced a finger over the windowpane where Nancy had carved the date of her mother’s death. “You think of me as family?”
I hadn’t. Not truly. But I was resolved, henceforth, to do so. “From this day forward—”
She spun to face me. “Don’t bother. It won’t be long before I remarry. I have my looks, two babies to prove I’m fertile, a respected family name, and a fortune to bestow.”
I supposed there were advantages to being the daughter of John Harvie, but to say such things while her husband was only a few hours dead . . . well, I excused it as the shock of her loss. “Just know that you’ll always be welcome here at Tuckahoe. It’s your home.”
She gave an amused snort. “I will be welcome here, of course.”
It was a strange remark, but I dismissed it. And I thought it was merely her father’s natural aristocratic sense of command that made him strut about the place, giving commands to the slaves at Tuckahoe as if it were his own plantation. None of this went down easy with Tom or his brothers.
And, adding to the tension, the Randolphs of Bizarre arrived for the burial the next day. Judith, Nancy, and Richard all arrived in one carriage. For his safety, I suppose Richard counted upon the solemnity of the occasion, and the protection of his womenfolk, as always. Having escaped justice—though not the censure of all right-thinking Virginians—he obviously felt free to go in public with his lover on one arm and his wife on the other.
But whereas Nancy and Richard were unrepentant, the scandal had obviously taken its toll on poor Judy and her baby son, who had been afflicted with deafness. Some said it was God’s punishment for Richard’s crimes. I myself sometimes worried about God’s vengeance, having broken my promise to enter his nunnery and having sworn falsely upon a Bible at court. But would God really visit the crimes of the father onto his child? Judy must’ve thought so, because she wore her mourning clothes as if she might never wear any others, clinging to her Bible, praying more devoutly than a nun.
Draped in expensive black lace that made her an even prettier widow than she’d been a bride, Gabriella leaned in at the grave site and whispered to me, “He’s thinking of divorcing her, you know.”
“What?” I asked, sure that I’d misheard.
“Richard,” Gabriella replied, impatiently. “He’s been consulting a lawyer in Richmond about the possibility of divorce and showering his whore with little gifts. I suppose he means to switch sisters.”
I’d never known anyone who’d been divorced. Not even at the convent in Paris, where I’d met women who had run away from their husband and wanted annulments, but never divorce. I didn’t even think it was possible in Virginia. Especially not to divorce one sister and take the other as a wife! “Poor Judith,” I breathed.
No wonder she was clinging to her Bible, thumbing the pages, murmuring a prayer by her father’s grave site that seemed more desperate than devotional. And while we waited on the officiant, my husband stooped beside his mother’s unkempt grave site and began to clear the weeds with his bare hands. “Couldn’t someone be bothered to tend her grave?” he muttered, and I had to put a hand to his shoulder to silence him. But his sisters overheard and cast looks of blame at Gabriella.
I kept my silence because, even as I tried to remember this was my family now, I didn’t understand the Randolphs. A short time later, listening to the officiant praise a man I’d never thought of as any sort of father, my eyes drifted to the edge of the woods where I saw Sally Hemings standing by a field of wildflowers, mourning for her dead son—a little boy who, like her, was my family in truth.
I was still thinking about her—worrying for her—after we’d returned to the house for tea while the men closeted themselves together to go over Colonel Randolph’s will in the great hall.
All at once Tom burst out of the arched double-doors, looking as if he’d been struck with a hammer like a hog at the slaughter. Without a word, he walked right out of the back door of the house, staggering toward the river, like a man come unmoored from his senses.
“Tom!” I cried, hurrying after him. I had no idea where he was going as he then changed his path and circled the house. He never turned when I called his name. Holding my skirts in both hands, tromping through autumn leaves, I chased after him, realizing that we’d come again to the little white schoolhouse my grandfather built when he’d presided here at Tuckahoe.
All at once, Tom whirled and pulled me up the stairs and inside. “It’s my fault. My fault for not staying at Varina.”