“Nonsense,” I said, not risking a glance at her. “Mr. Short is merely a friend of long acquaintance.”
“Then why are you pink to the tips of your freckled ears?”
At last, I decided it would do no good to hide it from her. I spun on my toes in an excited pirouette. “Do you think he fancies me? Whenever he visits, he stays longer than he is obligated to do. He had an artist paint a portrait for me. . . .”
Marie’s expression fell. “Oh, poor Jeffy. Has no one told you that your Mr. Short is infatuated with Rosalie, the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld?”
I pretended to dismiss it, waving a hand. “That’s a malicious rumor.”
She hesitated at my staunch defense, then concluded, “I think it’s true that he’s infatuated with her, but let’s hope it is only rumor that they’ve become lovers.”
Lovers. I was wholly unprepared for the flash of pain that burned just beneath my breastbone at the thought. Mr. Short was a man of twenty-seven who spent his days with the cream of French society . . . of course he took lovers.
With sinking spirits, I decided that I’d been a fool. The reminder made me wonder how I’d ever so much as entertained the notion that he might take an interest in me. How ridiculous to dream, for even a moment, that a mere schoolgirl could compete for his affections with the likes of a duchess, no matter that she was another man’s wife. . . .
Wounded, I kept to myself, finding comfort in the scriptures. I reported the political happenings in Paris to Papa by post, hoping to keep him apprised. But he didn’t seem pleased by my interest in politics. My letters were all too often met with silence and, in one case, a veiled rebuke that I should attend ancient Latin texts and keep my mind always occupied to guard against the poison of ennui!
How could I care about the translation of Livy with the world in such a state? Moreover, I wouldn’t need to keep my father apprised of the goings-on in France if he hadn’t been away, pining for the plumed and piffling woman who aroused his sinful impulses.
Only you, Martha. That’s what he swore to my mother four years before as she gasped her last breaths. I believed him then and so did she. But what I learned about men in Paris—even American men in Paris—opened my eyes and bruised my heart. And so I wrote to Papa, bitterly, of the latest news, almost hoping to wound him:
There was a gentleman, a few days ago, that killed himself because he thought that his wife did not love him. I believe that if every husband in Paris were to do as much, there would be nothing but widows left.
To that letter, Papa did not reply.
IN THE CONVENT’S SALON, clutching his smart tricorn hat and a nosegay of posies, Mr. Short said, “Patsy, I’ve had word that you were ill. I shouldn’t have insisted the nuns rouse you from bed, but when you refused to see me, I feared—”
“It was only a violent headache,” I said, pulling my shawl round myself for warmth, though it was springtime. “The kind Papa suffers when he’s upset.”
I didn’t tell him of the mysterious pain in my side that had blistered up and caused me such suffering. No doubt elegant duchesses never fell prey to such unsightly maladies. If he was to find out about my blisters, he’d have to learn it from the bewildered physician, not from me, so I offered nothing else by way of explanation. Nor could I explain to him the wound on my spirit—one that’d driven me, in prayer and contemplation, to a religious epiphany.
What I couldn’t tell him, for fear he might tell my papa, was that I had resolved to take my vows and join the convent.
The idea had first come upon me in a sudden swirl of anger and resentment . . . and yet, during my illness, it had transformed itself into a genuine desire. Though I knew my father would despair to hear it, I was more contented at the Abbaye de Panthemont than at any other place I’d ever been. Immersed in its world of women devoted to each other and the betterment of mankind, I felt sheltered against the wickedness of Paris. What’s more, my dearest friends were always near to me at the convent, and I felt more suited to a life of reflection and scholarship than to a mar riage or to a plantation to which my father supposed I must one day return.
None of this, of course, could I tell William Short.
At my silence, Mr. Short exhaled a long breath, then drew one of the purgatorial wooden chairs closer. I sat, careful of the shifting of my gown against my side. When he sat, he didn’t cross his legs like a man of leisure, but perched on the edge, as if waiting for a verdict at court. “Your father couldn’t bear it if anything should happen to you, and under my watch—”
“I’m quite recovered of my infirmity. You needn’t worry for your career.”
Mr. Short scowled, extending the nosegay to me. “Enjoy these in good health, then.”