“Patsy, all the world thinks of your father as a man of cool temper. Some assume that because he dabbles in everything, he holds true passion for nothing. We know better. The abiding passion of his life is a government that derives its authority from the people. These past few months here, in Paris, working to enlist France in the spirit of revolution—have you ever seen him more himself?”
“No,” I whispered, for it was true, even if government was not the only thing for which he held a passion. Not since my mother’s death had my father been so alive. What part did Sally play in that? And what would happen to him when he accepted that she and the child were both lost to him?
William continued, battering at my weak defenses. “We treat your father like a living monument because he was born to do important work. You’re his daughter and he says I’m his adoptive son. But the American Experiment is the child he birthed and will never abandon. So he can wax prosaic about the joys of private domesticity on his mountaintop all day, but in the end, he’ll join the president’s cabinet. And he won’t return to Paris, with or without you.”
“You’re just impatient for us to be together,” I said, desperate to deny it all. Almost as desperate as the people on the streets below, anxious for the answer of their king. “We’ve waited this long and you don’t want to wait any longer. But this is all my father asks of me. To return with him to Virginia and settle Polly there before marrying you.”
“And all I’m asking of you is not to go.”
I’d loved William all my life, but never had I been angrier with him. As shouts from the crowd rose up to our window, I said, “That’s not all you’re asking of me. You want me to give up my father, my sister, and my country. You’re asking all these things of me, but all I’m asking of you is to wait for me to return.”
It seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable argument, one that might have persuaded a man in love. Even a man as stubborn as William Short. But his chin jutted out willfully. “I’m thirty years old, Patsy, and what do I have to show for it? No career, no wife, no fortune. I have done everything your father has asked of me save return to Virginia, and still he would keep us apart. Still I am lectured to, by your father, as if I were a boy. And maybe he thinks it right because when he was my age, your father was building Monticello. Already had a wife and child. Had already written A Summary View of the Rights of British America—”
“You can’t compare yourself to my father!”
His eyes narrowed with . . . something that looked like disappointment, and he shook his head. “All my friends have said you’re still too young—”
“What friends say that?” I snapped, anger boiling now.
“That’s not important. What’s important is that you can be a wife and mother or you can be a devoted daughter all your life. You can’t be both. Not when Thomas Jefferson is your father. You have to choose, Patsy.”
His words echoed the very debates that I’d been having with myself for weeks. And that horrified me. Because he was saying that I couldn’t have them both. “You’re asking me to choose you over everything else and blaming my father for it.” My voice cracked. “My papa isn’t asking me to choose, but you are.”
William didn’t even lower his eyes at my rebuke. “You’re right. I am. If you go to Virginia, two months will become six. Six will become a year. We’ll never be together. So if you leave France, know that I won’t be waiting.”
Just then the trumpets blared to announce the king’s procession, and we fell silent, watching the street below. Mesmerized by the sight of the surging crowd. Not knowing if it would come to open war, then and there. The people wanted their freedom; they strained for it. Were willing to fight for it in bloody struggle.
But, like a father of the nation, the king had come to Paris to restore order. And between these two forces, between the carriage of the king and his people, was caught the Marquis de Lafayette.
In proud uniform, a cockade of red, white, and blue just like the one I wore pinned to my own gown, he rode at the head of the processional. It required courage and honor in its rawest form to ride as he did, defending the very king whose authority he sought to strip away against an armed mob with whom his heart belonged. And my eyes filled with tears at the thought that Lafayette might falter and be torn to pieces by the crowd.
I didn’t brush those tears away as Lafayette’s horse passed under our window. And though he rode in a crowd of thousands, he looked up at me. I imagined that our eyes met—that I saw in Lafayette’s white-faced grimness an acceptance of his fate so long as he never betrayed his cause.
Then he bowed to me, and I knew I had not imagined it.
He bowed to me, and his honor and courage became my own.
The spark of his devotion lit a fire inside me that burned away my doubts.
My hand fell away from William’s grasp, and my voice no longer wavered. “I’m going to Virginia with my father, and if you love me, you’ll wait for me a little longer.”