I didn’t know. And not knowing was a torment.
One visit home, while I sat staring unseeingly at the artificial flowers I was making as gifts for my friends in the convent, Papa took the seat beside me and handed me a small sack. I blinked up at him. “What is this?” I asked, taking it in hand and working at the little string.
“Something to cheer you,” he said, a small smile on his face.
He’d meant it as a kindness. Of course he did. For he had no way of knowing that the chocolate drops that filled the bag would remind me of that day Mr. Short and I had imagined our futures. But remind me they did until I could no longer hold in the torment, or the questions. “Why did you release Mr. Short from his duties, Papa?”
For a long moment, my father didn’t answer. “As his mentor,” he finally said, “it is my duty to shepherd his career. William wishes to be a diplomat, and that requires that he be well traveled and conversant with places and customs beyond that with which he now has experience.” He said this quietly, seriously, as if this was more than a casual answer to a casual question. As if he didn’t fully approve. As if he knew why I asked, and thought me quite improper for doing so.
“Will he return to your service when he’s completed his travels?” I forced myself to ask around the knot in my throat.
“I hope so. We’ve talked about his returning to Virginia with me, but each man must make his own destiny. At present, William’s is unclear to me.” I didn’t think I imagined that Papa chose his words very carefully—which confirmed what I already suspected. They’d discussed me, or at least intimated that I might be a part of William’s future—a part of his destiny—and the result of that discussion had been for Papa to send him away.
And for William to decide to go.
I asked nothing more of my father that night because I was shaking with upset, and I feared I would not be able to speak without my voice quavering. Instead, abandoning the chocolate drops on the side table, I simply walked from the room without another word and sharply closed the door behind me, letting my silence say to my father all that I could not.
But I should have gathered more courage that night. I should have pressed and asked him the more direct questions whirling through my mind. Because Papa never gave me another opening to do so.
My father was always an artful politician, too clever to be drawn into discussions of matters of the heart when his was so guilty. Too crafty to be cornered into a confrontation with his daughter that he wasn’t ready to have, especially after I’d asked him about William—and about William’s future.
So I was forced to try to win Papa over to reopening the subject. I forced myself to be genial and even-tempered to prove that I was a grown woman with good sense enough to be wooed. Failing that, I hoped my comportment would encourage my father to confide in me any reservations he had about Mr. Short so that I might put his mind at ease. But at the time, my father’s praise of Mr. Short was so lavish and his affection so sincere that it left me entirely bewildered.
Meanwhile, there was nothing for me to do but drown my sorrows in tea. British tea, to be precise, taken with the Tufton sisters and our convent friends at the home of the Duke of Dorset. For an ambassador of a country that was so hostile to my own and whose king had ordered his army to hang my Papa, the duke quite generously extended his enormous charm to me. Some of my convent friends jested that the handsome duke was especially solicitous of me, but he was known for his solicitations with all sorts of ladies, honorable and notorious. I gave little thought to him at the time, since he was my father’s age and prone to talk more about cricket games than matters of importance. Besides, my thoughts were all of William and what objection my father could possibly have to our match.
It wasn’t until that summer, when Papa took me to see an opera, that I had my first inkling of the heart of the matter. Squir ing me to my seat in gentlemanly fashion, my father asked, almost absently, “Have you had any word from Tom Randolph, Patsy?”
“Cousin Tom? No. Should I have?”
“He’d planned to visit us here in Paris this summer but I haven’t heard from him since his last letter. I worry he’s been waylaid by brigands.”
This was the first I learned of Tom’s intention to visit. “I hope no harm has come to him.”