The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (9 page)

“Mathew, we’re in public,” I whispered and purposely glanced around the vestibule of the stage house. My mother and sister were looking at a painting of Lake Eerie, while I saw Jacque turn in their direction. Before he turned though I saw his nose flare; his shoulders hunch.

“Forgive me, my dear. I will try to keep my hands by my sides,” Mathew said as he took a step away from me. “Try, but I’m in trouble with what you’re wearing. That dress! ‘Tis beautiful. Ah, there’s that word again. What color is your corset?”

My jaw flew open. Then I darted another look at my sister, mother and Jacque who all had their backs turned away from Mathew and I.

“Oh . . . oh, dear.” Mathew grimaced.

I glared at him.

“I’m sorry.” Mathew smiled lazily. “Too many grogs at the tavern, dear. I forget we are not yet married and as such, I’m not supposed to talk to you in those terms. I do so want to marry you soon. Can we please marry soon? ‘Tis been three years now.”

“You’re very drunk.”

“Aye. And I love you, Violet Justine Buccleuch.”

I shook my head and began to laugh again. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I’ll behave. I promise, if . . . if you’ll tell me what color your corset is.”

“Mathew!” I slapped his large bicep. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

He stepped forward again and pressed his lips to my ear. “I love you, Violet. I will ‘till the day I die. I love you so much. I want you as my wife; I want you in my bed. I love you so much.”

Icy-hot pain shot right down the middle of me.

I glanced at my chest, my breasts were heaving against the restraints of my corset and dress, but I didn’t see any blood. With my heart being torn in two, I could have sworn I would have seen blood pour from my chest. I wanted to cry. I had never heard Mathew say such brutal yet romantic words, and it did affect me so. My internal organs quivered and between my legs grew intense liquid heat.

But the feeling of being ripped down the middle made me want to search for Jacque again.

Damnation!

“Lavender,” I whispered.

Mathew released me and looked down at me with his dark blond eyebrows cascading into confusion.

I arched a brow and glanced down at my chest. “The color is lavender, a light purple.”

“Oh!”  Mathew smiled, then his eyes tripped to the valley between my breasts. “Oh,” he moaned.

“You promised you’d behave.” I pointed a finger at him.

Slowly, his eyes rose to meet mine with a half smile, sloppily thrown on his face. “Oh, yes, I will. Are you wearing black garter belts?”

In the theater Mathew sat next to me. Oddly, Jacque on my other side, my mother beside Mathew, and my sister was on the other side of Jacque. I felt as if I was at the tumultuous junction of two rivers. I was drowning, and I knew it.

Mathew leaned heavily into my shoulder with his chest and whispered over my face to Jacque. “You should have been there, old man. John Hancock was in a form I’d never seen before. This fiancée of his is driving the poor man to his whit’s end. He was blathering on and on about how he can’t seem to make a good impression on Miss Dorothy Quincy. I’ve never seen a man so torn to pieces over a woman. And here he is the wealthiest man . . . probably in England, not just the Americas.”

“Haven’t you?” Jacque whispered back as the orchestra prepared with a few pricks of their instruments and wails from the winds. “Haven’t you seen a man torn from limb to limb over a woman?”

Jacque’s voice was deep and growled. His eyes flicked to mine with open hostility.

Mathew blew through pursed lips, making a noise similar to a novice trumpet player. He quietly snickered. “I just never expected a wealthy man to be like that over a woman. He could choose any woman he wants. He’s young still, extraordinarily wealthy, a hero to many British Americans, and yet, he’s heartsick over just one woman.”

Jacque didn’t say anything for a few moments. He balled his hands into tight fists; his knuckles turned white. Out of my periphery I saw that his face was so tight he had made fine lines around his frowning mouth, those lines were also white. For half a second he wore a snarl, the next he plastered his face into serene stone, letting one black eyebrow remain elevated.

Jacque turned to Mathew, his breath hot on my face. “Perhaps love is not so easy. Perhaps Monsieur Hancock is just a man under all that wealth, and like all men cannot choose who he loves, but loves anyway.”

Mathew nodded and smiled, looking forward while the curtains rose. “Ever the philosopher, you are. You and Violet share that in common, did you know? But you philosophers are wrong, love can be a choice. I’ve made my choice.” He smiled down at me.

“What if she did not love you, hmm?” Jacque hissed. “Would you choose another, then? That would be the thing to do. Just trade her in, if she did not love you in return. Can your love turn off and on like that, my friend?” Jacque’s racing heart beat into my arm as he leaned more into me, staring at Mathew with coal dust in his blue eyes.

Mathew turned slowly to look at Jacque. The orchestra had begun their melancholy melody.

Mathew shook his head while looking down at me. “No. I would keep on loving her, although she wouldn’t love me in return. I couldn’t stop loving her, even if I tried, even if all the world was against me, I’d still love her. I see what you mean, friend, and can only concede the point.”

The sting of being torn apart, savaged in two directions was enough for me to look down at my chest again. No blood, but still I felt slashed in half.

“Now, what is this bloody play about?” Mathew chuckled into my ear.

I smeared a smile in place and tried to control my quaking voice as I whispered how
Inphingenie en Aulide
was about the Greek King Agamenmon and his travels to Troy. But before the king was to leave for Troy, he was told he had to sacrifice his daughter Inphingenie. Achilles, Inphingenie’s betrothed, would not let her be sacrificed and tried to rescue her. I stressed how it was one of the few operas with a happy ending, wherein the Goddess Diana changes her mind about Inphingenie being sacrificed, and blesses Inphingenie’s wedding as well as her father’s trip to Troy.

Mathew whispered loudly, “It’s all Greek to me.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that even Jacque couldn’t help but smile and chuckle at that.

That night, Hannah and I slept in one of the beds in the suite that Jacque had rented for us. In the apartment, there were three beds, more room than my sister and mother I were used to. My sister and I didn’t want to be separated, so we slept together. We giggled into the night remembering the taste of the food, the costumes of the opera, and how many women swarmed to my sister to give compliments about our dresses. There had been comments about our dresses being similar to the fashion in Paris. I gushed how the design was all my sister’s.

There were several women who obtained, almost through brute force, our card and address in Concord. There were many promises to visit us and my sister’s dresses. In our shared bed, we talked about how she could become a dressmaker. I thought we should run away from the British Americas and go to Paris where my sister would provide for me, so I could lay on a chaise and eat chocolate and get a huge bottom and have young French men tell me, “
Sans vous je ne suis qu’un ver de terre
.”

“And what does that mean?” Hannah snorted.

“I am only an earthworm without you.”

Hannah chuckled and squeaked, making our softly snoring mother suck in a gust of air that she let out in a groan. After Mother resumed her blissfully slumbering breath, Hannah asked, “And what is to happen to our fiancés when we go to France?”

  “We’ll leave all men behind. It’ll just be us. We don’t need a man’s love anyway. We have each other.”

Hannah giggled. “I almost believed you.”

My heart stabbed in my chest with the dull ache that I had lived with for all of that night. In the next few moments Hannah found sleep, while I could not lose the restless, unrelenting pain in my head and heart.

The next day Mathew was back to Concord. He was exalted he had been asked to be in the caravan to Lexington with Mr. John Hancock and Mr. Samuel Adams, where the latter two were staying during congress. Mathew told me before he’d left that he would show much more sympathy for Mr. Hancock now that he understood better the wealthy man’s broken heart, thanks to his friend, Jacque. Mathew encouraged me to speak philosophy with Jacque, if I so chose. I nodded and let him kiss me on my lips before he went, hoping it would rub out any and all of my affections for Jacque.

All that day Jacque lent his company and his large Landau carriage so that my sister, mother and I could tour all through the town of Boston . . . and, no, the kiss had done little to staunch my emotions regarding Jacque.

Before we dined, I rummaged through the inn finding a pianoforte and solitude in a dark room with only one candle for light. Playing music reminded me of my father, and as such I was hoping I would gain fortitude or some kernel of wisdom as to how to stop my heart’s meandering to Jacque. I sat, looking at the keyboard, praying for guidance.

“You will play something?” Jacque asked, making me jump and thump at the ivories on the keyboard.

I clutched at my chest, laughed a high pitched nervous neigh, then silenced the noise from the pianoforte. Jacque softly chuckled himself when he strode to stand beside the bench I sat upon.

Further surprising me, he sat next to me. “I’m sorry. I startled you. I keep doing that.”

I shook my head, although the memory of our first meeting, the overpowering desire to float closer to him, came crashing back into my mind.

Somehow I managed to say a few words, although what good they did, I do not know. “I thought I was alone.” I fingered the back of my neck, wiping the phantom feeling of his hands on me away.

“
Non,
I am here. You will play something for me?”

His eyelids were ever so slightly lowered. The intensity of his dark oceanic eyes waved into my body, crashed into my heart. Oh Lord, we were alone in a secluded room with me falling even more in blue.

“I recall that you play too . . . Jacque?”

He smiled. “
Oui,
but it’s been a long time.”

I nodded and looked down at his hands already perched on the pianoforte. “So, you’ll play with me?”

He slid closer–his leg touching mine, hip to hip, elbows just kissing. “A duet, it is, then.”

We found we knew much of the same music and a duet was easy to choose. We learned each other’s rhythms, and our fingers danced on the white and black music-making steps, stirring blazes. We laughed, letting our fingers make melodies, letting our fingers caress and feather each others’ until they seemed to burn with the music. The white keys turned pink and the black glowed like dark red-orange embers. We were reminded twice by the inn’s girl that it was time to eat. We paused before we left for dinner, both of us looking down at the pianoforte and our hands so close to each others. Had a volcano erupted within my body? When we finally left the small music room, I was certain the pianoforte was on fire.

The French dignitaries sat at a table close to us as we ate our supper. I overheard much of their conversation about how some French organization planned to finance the Massachusetts Militias with more guns, powder, and cannons. I was alarmed and looked at Jacque who was sitting close to me again. He gave me a sad smile and held my hand under the table in response.

Mother and Hannah were discussing how Hannah’s fiancé had finally written a note, letting Hannah know that he had been delayed because of his soldier’s duties. Unfortunately, we had run into many Regulars who had been out strolling through Boston, relaying to us that there was little to do. A few officers had gotten leave to see the spring foliage of Lexington and Concord, but they knew that young Lieutenant Kimball was not one of those officers. My sister had the upmost faith in her fiancé, she said with her chin lifted yet trembling. My mother was soft, but trying to reason with Hannah about what kind of a man this Lieutenant Kimball really was.

“They don’t know that you speak French,” Jacque whispered, interrupting my mother’s quiet, calming voice that was trying her best to be both nurturing yet firm with Hannah.

“Should you let them know that I understand them explicitly?” I said
sotto voce
.

Jacque squeezed my hand. “I apologize for their language. They shouldn’t swear with women in company, even if they don’t think the women can understand.”

“I’m not offended by their imprecations. I feel like swearing right now too. Is France giving arms to Massachusetts as a loan?”

“Not my government,
non
.”

I huffed an ironic laugh. “Oh, aye, a supposed French
business
is gifting arms to my colony. About that supposed French business, hmm? Is it backed by your king?”

Jacque’s thumb caressed my own, and instantly I forgot all language and my own name. Through my stupor, he said, “You are so perceptive. I can guess that the arms are truly from my king. But I’m not privy to that knowledge.