The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (10 page)

“To be honest with you, I think France still winces from the Seven Years’ War, and would like to see Britain stumble in her walk to glory.”

I swallowed and let what he said filter through. “What you’re telling me is that . . . France is instigating a war?”

Jacque shrugged. “I do not know the full intentions of my king and his cabinet of counselors. I know that on one hand the king smarts at a war that ended when he was but a child. On the other hand, my king is very fond of you British Americans. He likes your vigor and strength.”

I smiled and felt my own hand tuck more securely into his. It was as if someone else had reign over my hand for I could not pull away from him.

Jacque’s eyes seemed to be just as glassy as Hannah’s had been last night. He poured glass after glass of white wine for himself, trying to top my mother, my sister, and my cups, but he had been the only one keeping up with his serving. He turned to look at the men sitting close to us, laughing now about how American women loved to
snatch
—my translation may be off, but something I vaguely understood to mean making love, except without the love. They were intoxicated as well. Jacque sighed and looked back at me. “Perhaps, I could convince you to become a spy with me, hmm?”

I swallowed wondering how much was jest and how much was the wine.

“I’m drunk,” Jacque admitted in a coarse whisper. He looked surprised to find himself in his condition.

“I will confess at this table my darkest secret, Violet, while your sister is angrily telling your mother to keep to her own business. Do you want to know the secret that I try to keep hidden even from myself?”

He held onto my hand with both of his, one of his fingers grazed the inside of my wrist. He looked up at me from inspecting my hand. “Your skin is so pale, yet you work outside.”

“I keep myself covered, otherwise I’d burn from the sun. I get freckles anyway.”

“Do you already have freckles? I see a couple on your shoulders; they are so pale of color too. Do you have blue blood in you?”

I slowly nodded and glanced at my mother.

“Yes, I remember now.” Jacque gave my hand a squeeze, then swept the back of his fingers against my wrist, causing flames to embrace me low in my belly. He continued his petting of me while he said, “Your mother, from Puritanical aristocrat blood, fell in love with her poor Scottish tutor, your father. What a love story. I find, now, that I quite like to hear happy love stories.” He closed his eyes and slightly shook his head. Opening his burnished blue eyes, his jaw clenched and unclenched, then he cleared his throat. “But we were talking about something else.”

I nodded again. “You were going to tell me a secret.”

“Tell you a secret, indeed. A secret that is almost criminal.”

I couldn’t tell if he held one of his tiny mischievous smiles, or if his face, although momentarily, fell in dark grief.

“Criminal?” I asked.

“
Oui
. It should be a crime,
criminel
. You see,” he paused for a long moment, then leaned into my arm, letting his nose touch my cheek as he whispered, “I am not a good man, not at all.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding on a quiet chuckle.

“I am.” He argued at my soft laughter. “I am a horrible, horrible man.”

I shook my head, smiling. “No, you’re not. I haven’t known you for very long, but you are anything but a horrible, horrible man.”

“I am. My heart is . . . not good.”

“Do you mean literally? Do you have health problems?”

Jacque barked a loud enough laugh to make my sister and mother stare for a moment at him, but then Hannah began to tell my mother how men of our younger generation were more lax with courting rituals, but it did not mean that the man was any less courteous for being more modern.

Jacque leaned into my ear again, this time letting his nose caress the spot of skin behind my ear, turning me on fire. “I have told you before,
chére
, that I don’t have any health problems, save for not dying when I should have years ago. I should have never met you. I would have never known what—” Jacque leaned away suddenly. His face contorted in what looked like pain, but a second later he coated his features in cold stone then said after he sipped more of his wine, “Yes, I will make you a spy, Violet. Like my mother was.”

“Your mother?” Yes, that’s what I asked. I couldn’t keep up with Jacque’s spinning, circulating, tornado of a conversation.

He nodded and intertwined his fingers between mine. And the world stopped. The rest of the dining room disappeared. I saw only Jacque smiling at me.

He opened his mouth, and the world spun too quickly again.

“
Oui
, my mother was a spy for her country. She was very patriotic. She married my father for her king.” Jacque then mumbled something that sounded like Henry, but then kept talking. “You see, the king thought there might be a coup and the masterminds of it were the nobility. He was right too. He was ahead of his time to get a spy to watch within the ranks of nobility and aristocracy. So my mother married my monstrous father. She died when I was ten years of age. I still miss her. Did I tell you, you remind me of her? Her determined spirit? God, I’m drunk. Don’t you think it’s a stroke of genius to make you a spy? Yes. Yes.
Oui. Mon Dieu, je suis ivre
.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. I listened to Hannah tell me how frustrated she was that Mother was trying to sway her affections away from her own fiancé. I actually did listen to her too. I was gladdened to do so. It relieved my pacing mind. I tried to provide comfort, and told her I would speak with Mother myself in the morning, and remind our mother that just because some of the redcoats weren’t busy didn’t mean that all of them weren’t drilling.

But when Hannah fell asleep, I was left with my own whirling thoughts. I was certain that Jacque was jesting about making me into a spy; I wasn’t worried about that. I wasn’t even worried about knowing that France was willing to pay for the colonies to strike up against their mother country. I wasn’t worried about Hannah after she fell asleep. Perhaps I should have been. She was my younger sister who was looking to me for guidance. Only, I felt I had none to offer. I was obsessed with a man I wasn’t going to marry. But what I worried about, what kept me awake that night, was that I wasn’t alone in this infatuation.

Jacque had folded each of his fingers around mine possessively while he was drunk, and mumbled about the cruelty of this earth before we departed. “. . .
en vouloir à ce planète dès ça avoir à en vouloir vontre moi.”

That’s what he whispered to my hand, saying his good night to me and that the planet had a grudge against him, and he would have a grudge against it. Strangely, just as I was fading into a restless sleep, I could have sworn he was with me in the very room where my sister and I slept. I sat up with a start and looked around the apartment. I knew he wasn’t there, but I felt deeply lonely and sad when my eyes couldn’t make out the form I hoped to be there.

“What have you done to me?” I asked the darkness. I settled back onto the feather bed and closed my eyes. “What have you done to me?” I whispered again.

I dreamt of Jacque whispering near my face, “
Non, chér, que m’avez-vous fait
?”

What have you done to me?

“Mama, you don’t know what it’s like nowadays to court a man. You met Father so long ago—”

“In the dark ages?” my mother interrupted my sister’s constant argument. “Is that what you think of me and my aged and decrepit form?”

I smiled and silently chuckled at my mother, who had just as strong and straight a back as any woman of twenty.

Jacque had, again, lent us the Landau and four black draft horses that had a very quick gait and would get my mother, sister and me back in Concord in record time. Jacque himself was somewhere near on his black thoroughbred, riding beside or slightly behind the carriage, which opened  enough privacy for my sister to convince my mother she was wrong in her thoughts about Lieutenant Kimball not exactly being a prudent young man.

“No . . . I’m sorry to sound so insulting, Mother, I just . . . I love him. I do. If you’ll only give him a chance—”

“Of course, Hannah, of course,” my mother said. “I fell in love with your father when I was but your age, or was I younger? Since I’m so old I have a weakened state of mind. I can hardly remember a thing anymore.”

I laughed out loud, which earned me a quick glare from Hannah beside me.

“The point is, my youngest daughter, I will gladly give this man any and all opportunities when I meet him. Your own father courageously asked for my hand from my brutish father, who only threw him out after. I would never do that to your man, but I
must
meet him. That tradition in courting is invaluable and should still be obtained even amongst you younger people.”

Hannah nodded, but began another tirade about modern living.

Then something sparked in my mind. I remembered how our party had been interrupted by the group of French dignitaries last night, asking Jacque for a fact about who was King Louis XIV’s secretary; Jacque remembered surprisingly well who the man had been. All the Frenchmen chuckled and remarked how it was amazing that he knew his history so thoroughly; such a good French citizen to have memorized all the players of past courts.

My mind clicked. A cog finally caught and spun. Jacque, last night, had told me his mother had been a spy for King Henry. King Henry IV? That was the last French monarchy with the name Henry. Yet that couldn’t possibly be true, because King Henry IV was from . . . . Lord, King Henry IV had been assassinated, if my memory served right, in 1610.

That was almost two centuries ago.

Hannah interrupted my mind’s flurry with her voice sounding crisp yet slightly whiney. “I am not such a fool you think I am, Mother. And neither is my Mark, my Lieutenant. He has told me how he wishes to pay out his commission. He plans on retiring soon. He’s even promised me he will become a colonist.”

My mother was close to tears as Hannah’s incense grew. Her chin quivered, and her shoulders slumped.

I half screamed, “I’ve decided I’m going to elope.”

Both my mother and sister turned to me stunned. Their twin-like mouths open, two pairs of blonde eyebrows drew tight.

“Yes, I’ve made up my mind,” I rattled on, “I’m going to marry a Scotsman; one that wears a kilt, not breeches. And—and he’ll walk on his hands for me whenever I want.”

At that my mother leaned over and swatted my knee then began to quietly laugh, while a tear stole from her eye and ran down her cheek. She had a white kerchief already in her hands and dabbed at her face while her chuckling grew. My sister didn’t want to laugh, but soon enough she couldn’t purse her lips hard enough to stop her own snickers.

“Mathew will be heartbroken, you know.” My sister shook her head with a small smile still on her face.

My mother chimed in, “Oh, he might understand, Hannah. After all a man who can walk on his hands while he wears a kilt is quite a find. Not even your beloved father could pull off that feat.”

“For you, he probably tried a few times.” I arched a brow at my mother, who let her smile make fine lines around her twinkling hazel-blue eyes.

“He did try a few times.” She actually blushed.

I laughed so hard my belly began to ache, and the whole while, I could have sworn I heard Jacque’s laughter in my ears, bounce through my body, and invade my heart all the more.

Jacque said good-bye to us in Concord and let the driver take us the rest of the way unescorted to our home, a little over a mile past the Concord Common. He forced a note into my palm before he’d left. I couldn’t open it until I would be in pristine privacy, which I knew would only be in the forest, and I’d just have to wait to read it until then, which killed me a bit.

We arrived safely back at our home, where Mr. Jones let me know that Bess, the cow, hadn’t runaway, which she was prone to do when I wasn’t home. Although evening was encroaching, Jonah thought it best to start his journey to retrieve his wife-to-be. He used one of our horses, and I begged him to take both for the sake of his new wife. But he thought it best to be more frugal and just have the one horse; he’d have his wife sit upon the horse on the way back.

I thought it so romantic, what Jonah said and the look in his eyes. He appeared to be a man about to burn from the inside out. Since I had gotten to know that feeling all too well, I let him travel even with the dark night approaching.

I changed into my breeches, boots, and a working shirt and ran into the woods as soon as I could. The sun was blushing, exercising her need to exude the last bit of warmth and color, forming a scarlet and orange horizon. It was just enough light to read the scrawl of Jacque’s.

My dearest Violet,

Again, meet me again at our usual time and location. Tomorrow.

Yours,