“But she doesn’t have a husband. Will we have to send her to the convent?” We knew girls who had lost their virtue and been sent to the Panthemont in the hopes that the world would forget. Papa had always taught us to treat such girls kindly, and to blame their error upon the wicked men who preyed upon the peculiar vulnerabilities of our sex. But Sally Hemings wasn’t a gentlewoman of society with a family reputation to stain.
Unless it was our family reputation.
Sally was . . . well, she was a lady’s maid and a chambermaid. Who in France—where prostitutes openly roamed the Palais-Royal—would judge her harshly?
However, my father they would gleefully judge.
For even I judged him.
All the same anger and confusion and revulsion I felt the night I came upon them kissing roiled up inside me anew. Was it because Sally was a girl not even my own age, and he a much older man? Unions between older men and young women our age were not so unusual, as the duke’s awkward proposal demonstrated. Was it because Sally had the taint of African blood? She didn’t seem tainted to me. Was it that Sally was my mother’s sister, and looked so much like her? Perhaps. Or was it, as William had once suggested, the evil of slavery that stained the union and corrupted it even here, where Sally was ostensibly free?
It was all these things and more. Deep, bitter resentment rushed through me at the realization that my father indulged his base inclinations while having contrived to separate me from the man I wanted.
I sprang to my feet, as if to flee from the reality of it, but where could I go? Instead, I paced, feeling like I couldn’t sit still or I might explode. “Say nothing more about it, Polly.”
“But—”
“Nothing at all,” I told her, reaching to give her a little shake. “We shouldn’t add to Sally’s burdens.”
Polly stared at me, her blue eyes swimming with confusion. The sister who came to us in France would never have obeyed. She’d have pestered me until her curiosity was satisfied. But in this one matter, we were fortunate Polly’s illness had made her into a more pliable creature—or at least one too weary to argue.
But I didn’t just want to silence Polly’s questions out of consideration for Sally, nor so that I might have a better chance to overhear the conversation playing out just outside the room. I didn’t want Polly to speak of it because . . . I didn’t want anyone to speak of it.
Here I’d been worrying about my father’s mortification at my proposal from the British ambassador, when Papa’s actions stood to mortify us all.
Just beyond the doorway, Papa reached to tug Sally close. I watched in fascination and horror as his hunger for her became crystal clear. How had I missed it and dismissed it as infatuation all this time? I’d told myself the wages and dresses and locket were some manner of apology for his ungentlemanly behavior.
I’d been such a fool! Perhaps the greatest fool in Paris. A fool not to see the danger in the duke’s attentions. A fool not to realize that William Short would never make a home with me and my family in Virginia. And a fool for believing my father was—
How many times did Papa’s eyes lock with Sally’s across the table without my noticing? How often had they stolen away to . . . to . . .
The memory of the kiss I’d witnessed long ago somehow transformed itself in my mind into two lust-fevered bodies upon my father’s bed, tawny limbs tangled with pale, freckled ones. I steadied myself on the back of a chair and shook the vision away.
Then, outside the dining room, Sally pulled free of my father’s desperate grasp, daring to turn her back on her master, and strode away, leaving Papa to bury his face in his hands.
That’s when I knew. He hadn’t just gotten her with child. He had feelings for her. Which meant as long as they were together, they’d create the opportunity for people to talk. I could already hear the mockery: The voice of American liberty, who takes liberties with his enslaved maid.
What could I possibly do to protect any of us from it?
Truthfully I was so angry, I wasn’t sure I cared to try.
PAPA WENT STRAIGHTAWAY TO BED THAT NIGHT without speaking a single solitary word to anyone. He stayed abed the next morning without soaking his feet in cold water, as was his daily habit. Upon waking, I found the unused basin of water just outside his chambers and Polly said, “He won’t take it unless Sally brings it to him, but she won’t.”
I told myself I didn’t care. I told myself to walk past his door and pretend that I didn’t hear the silent echo of his suffering over the roar of my anger. But instead I knocked lightly, then turned the ornate knob and found nothing but darkness inside. The drapes were pulled closed, and not even a candle by his bedside lit the room.
Papa’s voice came throaty through the blackness. “Go, Patsy. You’re letting in the light.”
I disobeyed, slipping into his solitary world with him and closing the door behind me. Then, filled with anger at him and shame for him, I dared to challenge Papa as I never had before. “Are you truly unwell?”