He patted my back. “My dear Patsy . . . But no, I suppose we must call you by your given name now. Martha, or, more properly, Mrs. Randolph.”
Hearing that name made me marvel anew that I was some man’s wife. But a little part of me grieved to think Patsy Jefferson was no more. A thing brought home to me most painfully that afternoon, when a letter finally arrived from William Short.
I found it left open at my father’s seat, a sure invitation to read it. And I pored over every line of William’s decidedly hurried scrawl, searching for my name. Instead, I found nothing but old news from France about how Lafayette bravely risked his life to save people from the angry mob. A part of me still longed to go back. To witness the struggle in the cause of liberty. But I’d made my choice.
And William Short had made his.
He closed the letter with a simple: Present my compliments to the young ladies. So I was just a young lady, now. The same to him as Polly. A daughter of his mentor. Which meant William could be no more than my father’s friend. Perhaps it was just as well.
For Patsy Jefferson had loved William Short.
Martha Jefferson Randolph would make herself feel nothing for him at all.
“ISN’T HE ADORABLE?” Polly asked, cuddling Sally’s infant son. “As sweet as an angel.”
Fortunately, no one at Tuckahoe looked askance at my sister sharing a bed in the dormitory with Sally, who they believed was her lady’s maid. And if Colonel Randolph or any of Tom’s family guessed the mewling baby was closer kin to us than any other Hemings, they didn’t say a word.
Papa had gone off to serve as secretary of state with James Hemings at his side, and Tom intended for us to stay with his family a few weeks before making the traditional round of honeymoon visits to all our friends and country neighbors. But I hoped our stay at Tuckahoe would be brief, because Colonel Randolph reigned over his family like an aging despot.
He cut my husband with casual insults. And the old man’s daughters—my new sisters—fared worse. Colonel Randolph spared hardly a glance for his littlest girls and left the older ones quaking in fear of his temper. Especially Nancy, who’d taken on the role of mistress of Tuckahoe for her widowed father. “Keep your pickaninny quiet,” Nancy snapped at Sally. “Or my father will rage at the noise.”
Seated with Polly on the divan, Sally looked up with only a flicker of indignant anger. In France she’d been an exotic beauty and cosseted mistress. Here in Virginia, she was just a slave again, and it must’ve been difficult for her to swallow down. Still, she did it, whispering a soft, “Yes, Miss Nancy.”
The next day, Nancy glanced nervously at Colonel Randolph’s retreating form. “We’ll take our tea in the garden when Judith visits. This way we won’t call attention to ourselves and give him a reason to scold us.”
“I’d rather take tea inside,” Polly complained. “Otherwise bees will buzz around our biscuits!”
Nancy huffed. “It’s a tea for ladies. You’ll take your biscuits in the kitchen with your maid.”
Though I bristled at Polly being excluded, I wanted desperately to be embraced by my husband’s family, so I didn’t raise a fuss. Still, I feared what I’d do or say if my father-in-law vented his temper on Polly, so I told her, “Keep out of the colonel’s way.”
Then I went with Nancy to meet her sister in the drive. When Judith stepped out of her husband’s carriage, she cried, “Why Martha! If I’d known you were going to marry my brother, I’d have waited to make it a double-wedding.”
Nancy scoffed, leading us to the tea table set up in the garden. “Oh, Judy. As if you could wait.” When Judith glared, she added, “I’m just saying you’re too vain to share your day with anyone else!”
“Well, I might have—” Judith broke off, stooping to pull some plants up by the root. “You’re a disaster as a housekeeper, Nancy. Just look what you’ve let happen to Mama’s herb garden. It’s overrun with weeds!”
Nancy cried, “How am I to know the difference between the herbs and weeds?”
Judith sniffed imperiously. “Well, if you paid attention to the medicinal arts instead of burying your nose in tawdry romance novels . . .”
I took my seat on a lawn chair, disheartened to hear the way my husband’s sisters bickered, smiling as though they were just teasing, but with a nasty undercurrent. And I was downright scandalized when Judith pointed to a patch of greenery and said, “If you’d had some clippings of that, Patsy, you wouldn’t have had to marry my brother in such haste.”
My mouth fell quite agape. “I beg your pardon?”
“Gum guaiacum,” Judy chirped. “Part of my mother’s special recipe for easing colic, but it’s also known to bring on a woman’s flow. So if you feared you were with child—”
“I beg your pardon,” I said, again, this time more sharply.
“Oh, don’t take offense,” Judith cooed. “You’re married now, and all the gossip in the world can’t undo that.”