That’s what I wanted more than anything else, so I tried to hush him with another kiss, hoping it would be as annihilating as the last. But he took hold of my coat in his fists as if he might tear it open, and made me look at him in the dim light of the lantern. “I want more than kisses, Patsy. I want you. And I cannot be content until I have you. So say that you’ll marry me.”
The reality of it all came rushing to me then. The fact that I’d quite scandalously lost my head in the arms of a veritable stranger, in a schoolhouse built by my own grandfather. In the distance, I could hear the music of the wedding party in the main house beyond.
I’d accompanied Tom to see his sister Judith of the Tuckahoe Randolphs sweep down the elegant carved walnut staircase of her father’s home and pledge her life to Richard Randolph of Bizarre plantation. The groom and his brothers were all swaggering southern boys who loved pranks and politics and tobacco. They each asked me to dance, which displeased Tom enormously. That I wasn’t tripping over myself for his attention, like the other country girls, seemed to fuel in him something akin to fury. Indeed, between bites of a feast that included oysters, lobsters, tarts, and apple pies, I felt the heat of Tom’s gaze, urging me to go off with him away from the oppressive house into some secluded place.
But I didn’t go until Richard Randolph used the occasion of his wedding to decry the sins of his ancestors, announcing that bringing slaves into the country was a “violation of the inherent, unalienable, and imprescriptible rights of man.”
In those words, I heard the echo of William Short.
That’s when I stole off with Tom. And so it was that on the very last day of the most eventful year of my life, I spent its waning hours locked in a lustful embrace with a man who terrified me more than a little.
Fortunately, I was no longer naive. I wasn’t about to be fooled by reckless words about marriage. Not for a second time. “Tom Randolph, do you think for one moment I’d surrender my virtue for a betrothal?”
Hands still fisted in my coat, he stiffened, as if my words were a mortal affront to his honor. His next words puffed angrily in the cold winter air. “I’m a gentleman of Virginia. I’m not whispering words in the dark to be forgotten in daylight. I’m asking for your hand, Miss Jefferson. You could at least do me the honor of considering my proposal.”
I couldn’t credit that he meant it. We hadn’t discussed books or politics or music. And we hadn’t exchanged a single word about love. “But—but this is very sudden. You think we’re well suited?”
He nodded, resolutely. “We’re of an age. There’s a long-standing bond between your family and mine. And the fortune that’ll be mine . . . it’s not inconsiderable. Your father agrees; he’s told me we’d have his blessing to wed.”
I cannot overstate the impact of learning that my father had already discussed this match with Tom. Did Papa want me gone, now that Sally was to give him a new child? How it pained me to think that she might replace me as his most constant companion, the one most dear to him. . . .
And as this agony of the spirit ripped through me, Tom Randolph knelt, holding his hand over his heart, as if it might burst out of his chest if his desires weren’t satisfied. “I must have you for my wife, Miss Jefferson. I must have you. So don’t keep me in the misery of suspense, but give me an answer soon.”
As I stared down into his brutally beautiful face, his proposal still echoing in the cold air, an unwelcome and unbidden thought came to mind. William Short never went down on his knee for me. He never made a formal proposal. Not like this.
Confusion swamped my racing heart and spinning head. Papa approved. Our families would approve. Society would approve. But the last time I’d considered such a thing, I’d ended up with a broken heart. So I wasn’t sure how to make the decision.
Indeed, given how little time had passed since we’d returned to Virginia, I could scarcely believe I was being confronted with making it at all.
Chapter Seventeen
SALLY HEMINGS GAVE BIRTH TO A BOY.
A boy named after my father. A boy who was both my cousin and my brother—and neither. Here on my father’s secluded mountain, where Papa’s wishes reigned supreme, no one would ever acknowledge Sally’s boy as my father’s son unless he did. But the Hemingses were as tightly knit a family as ever lived. They all knew, which meant all the slaves knew. And probably some of our nearest neighbors, too.
But it wasn’t our only scandal.
Papa’s debts were such that he had to sell our mother’s favorite plantation—Elk Hill. He’d been forced to sell land. Land, which meant everything to a Virginia planter. Everything to him. And I understood that in his perilous financial situation, the only asset I had to contribute was myself.
I’d have to marry, and I’d have to marry well.