Taking the posies, a tenderness crept through me that I was forced to steel myself against. “Have you any word of my papa? Of my sister?”
“Your father’s return has been delayed, but your sister is en route. I cannot imagine how your Aunt Elizabeth got the girl onto the ship, considering Polly refused to come. Your father is quite bedeviled by the child. She defies him as if he were no more to her than a strange beggar on the streets.”
Polly had been scarcely five years old when we left her. Now she was nearly nine. She’d lived half her life with Aunt Elizabeth, and through our neglect, I worried that we had lost her as surely as we’d lost baby Lucy. It was a failure that gave me the greatest pain, and I was determined to live up to the promise I’d made my mother to watch over my little sister. Which I could do right here, in the convent. When Polly came to us in France, Papa said I must teach her to be good, and to tell the truth, for no vice was so mean as the want of truth.
But I’d teach her to be devoted, for that seemed to me a much more important virtue. Nuns were devoted. And if I was to be a devoted friend to Mr. Short, I knew that I must overlook the blots on his character as he overlooked mine.
So I determined to think no more about his pretty duchess.
Nuns wouldn’t think about his duchess.
I took the posies and inhaled their sweet scent before drawing Mr. Short into conversation. He obliged me, explaining how antislavery sentiment grew hand in hand with constitutionalism in Paris. These talks, in which he showed respect for my opinions, made me think about new things and challenge what I’d been told. Challenge, even, my papa.
And the next day I wrote to my father:
It grieves my heart when I think that our fellow creatures should be treated so terribly as they are by many of our country men. Good god have we not enough slaves? I wish with all my soul that the poor negroes were all freed.
In answer to this sentiment, Papa was also entirely silent.
Chapter Eight
London, 26 June 1787
To Thomas Jefferson from Abigail Adams
I congratulate you upon the safe arrival of your little daughter. She’s in fine health and a lovely little girl, but at present everything is strange to her. I told her that I didn’t see her sister cry once when she came to Europe. Polly replied that her sister was older and ought to do better, and had her papa with her besides. I showed her your portrait, but she didn’t know it. If you could bring Miss Jefferson with you, it would reconcile her little sister to the rest of the journey. The old nurse you expected to have attended her was sick and unable to come. Instead, she has a girl about 15 or 16 with her, one Sally Hemings.
I WAS READY TO FETCH POLLY AT ONCE. But my father bewildered me by sending a French servant to escort Polly from London instead. And I was outraged when Mr. Short let slip the reason why.
Papa had urged Mrs. Cosway to return to Paris. The shameless woman had agreed, and because she was on her way, Papa didn’t want to chance the trip to fetch Polly for fear he’d miss his paramour!
Maria. Maria. Maria.
That night, when Papa kissed me good night, I bit down on the impudence that tempted my tongue. But Mrs. Adams showed none of my reserve in her next letter, in which she tartly informed us:
Polly told me this morning that since she had left all her friends in Virginia to come over the ocean to see you, you might have taken the pains to come here for her yourself. I haven’t the heart to force her into a carriage against her will and send her from me in a frenzy, as I know will be the case, unless I can reconcile her to going.
I was glad Abigail Adams’s letter shamed Papa.
I took greater solace that Mrs. Adams would reconcile Polly to join us and that I’d soon have my sister with me once more. After all, I knew from experience that people found it extraordinarily difficult to hold out against Mrs. Adams!
Weeks passed before the welcome sound of the hired coach turned from the rue de Berri and into the courtyard of the Hotel de Langeac. Hearing it, I rushed from the salon out to the front steps. As I held my breath, two girls stepped down from the carriage, their eyes wide with wonder and uncertainty.
Oh, dear Polly!
How changed she was. Still petite, with the blue eyes I remembered so well, but now a grown girl that I might’ve passed on the street without knowing. And yet, when I tried, I could see my mother in miniature.
“Dearest Polly, I am overjoyed to see you,” I said, hurrying down the steps.
My little sister turned shy at the sight of me, sucking her lips in as she examined my face. I smiled brightly, holding my arms out to her, but they drooped when I realized that, in fact, she had totally forgotten me.
The pain was an arrow to the heart—as sharp as any wound I’ve suffered.
Reluctantly, Polly accepted my embrace but then squirmed away, her gaze swinging over the house’s facade. “Everything here is so grand. . . .”