Alas, that was never a possibility. It wasn’t legal to give the treatment within the city limits, so Sally was sent away to a physician’s care, where she remained quarantined for the next forty days. Which meant two things. First, that we spent forty days in fright for Sally, not knowing if we’d see her alive again. And second, that Polly finally cleaved to me.
Without Sally between us, Polly climbed into my bed. She let me take her shopping for clothes. She let me style her hair. Together we played a hiding and seeking game in Papa’s greenhouse and plucked dried and overripened Indian corn from Papa’s garden to make a display for the table. In short, now that I was fifteen, I took upon myself Polly’s mothering and cared for her as I promised my own mother I would.
Unfortunately, this only seemed to free Papa to pursue his most dangerous impulses. In spite—or perhaps because—of the way Mrs. Cosway made herself unavailable, Papa couldn’t seem to shake her enchantment. When the weather turned cold during Advent, he planned a dinner in Mrs. Cosway’s honor. Though he usually preferred small gatherings of friends, for her, he invited a large crowd of strangers including exiled Polish and Italian royalty. I hoped at least the crowd would avoid the intimacy of a less grand affair.
Jimmy prepared the feast. He was swiftly becoming an accomplished chef in the French style, whereas I still hadn’t mastered pudding, but because I imagined myself to be the hostess of this dinner, he permitted me to chop carrots and onions while he braised beef in a soup of bacon, wine, and brandy. I tried to take note of the amounts of nutmeg and allspice he sprinkled in, but Jimmy worked fast with a pinch here and there, as if he’d committed it to memory. I was obliged to watch a clock for three hours while the concoction boiled away, and while I should’ve been contemplating a way to ask my father’s permission to become a nun, I imagined I was the wife of my father’s handsome secretary and that we had a house together just outside of Paris.
It was only a fantasy, for Mr. Short had never expressed interest in taking a bride, and rumors hadn’t ceased about his love for a married duchess. But I contented myself with harmless fantasies of domestic bliss, whereas the men in my life were apparently content with nothing but real congress with sinful women.
As I dressed that night, I worried for the scandal Mrs. Cosway might cause, fluttering about my papa like a wounded bird. But when she arrived, Papa bounded toward her to kiss her cheek, whereas she turned her head so the kiss landed upon her ear. At dinner, she took the seat beside him as proffered but slid it closer to a count of some renown, with whom she flirted shamelessly. Though I’d desperately hoped Papa would give up this affair, it was painful to watch it unravel before my eyes. Worse, I witnessed the exact moment my father reached to pat her arm, and she recoiled from the sight of the curled fingers of his injured hand, as if she’d only just realized he was twice her age.
Papa looked away, his lips pressing into a tight line. She’d hurt him. And I felt furiously angry at her for doing so. If a woman was to surrender her virtue and risk eternal damnation, she ought to at least do it for good reason. I might have forgiven her if she’d sinned in the cause of love. But the way she recoiled from my father made me certain it was not her heart that led her to sin; it was her vanity. And I’ve never forgiven her for that. Not for her dalliance with Papa, nor for the way she treated him.
God may forgive her, but I never shall.
The only good to come of her rejection that night was the way it forced Papa to stiffen, as if awakening from a long, fevered dream. Perhaps my father had to suffer this humiliation in order to recover from the fever of Mrs. Cosway. Alas, it seemed that I had to be equally prepared to suffer humiliation when the dinner conversation turned to the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld.
Mr. Short’s association with the woman was the cause of several veiled but ribald jests. I pretended at supreme indifference while I surreptitiously fisted my hands into my skirts, agonized by my awareness of the man so close. I stared at the lace that peeked out from under Mr. Short’s neatly tailored sleeve, wondering how far apart our knees were spaced beneath the table. Wondering, too, when I’d be humiliated enough by my own infatuation to stop wondering such things . . .
The subject of mockery, Mr. Short only sipped at his wine with an enigmatic smile. There was no blush on his cheeks. Only mine. After a bout of raucous laughter, the Polish princess pointed at Mr. Short and accused, “You’re overly fond of French girls!”
He replied, with a sly glance my way. “Oh, I like Virginia girls just as much.”
All at once, my burning embarrassment became a different kind of fire and I died a thousand burning deaths of pleasure. Mr. Short’s amusing retort meant nothing to these people, who laughed at his defiant wit. But his eyes fastened on mine flirta tiously, and I finally knew with certainty that I hadn’t imagined his affection for me after all. . . .