Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Fiction
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2007-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

Her dearest Tommy.

Long after John drifted to sleep at her side, Abigail lay in the darkness, listening to the singing of the night-birds.

Thinking about her son. Her gentle, affable Tommy.

He hadn’t seemed any the worse for being left behind when they had departed for England, under the charge of her sister Betsey. Although perhaps too fond of a third glass of wine, of all her sons he seemed the steadiest, without Johnny’s tormented air of being unable to fit in anywhere, and without Charley’s—Her mind ducked away from her suspicion of what might be at the root of Charley’s problems, and substituted, Without Charley’s lightness of mind, as well as of heart.

Though now that Charley was practicing law he seemed much steadier and more mature. So everything might very well be all right.

But as the thought went through her mind she couldn’t put aside the recollection of her brother Will, handsome like Charley and with Charley’s questing intelligence.

They deserved more of us.

Yet another thing that hadn’t turned out as planned.

Five years of entertaining on a scale that even approximated that of the noblemen who comprised most of the diplomatic corps in England and France had driven John into debt. Five years abroad had been five years that neither John nor Abigail had been able to work the farm into a paying proposition. Like the Smith side of the family, Tommy had wanted to be a merchant when he’d emerged from Harvard. But John had simply been unable to provide his youngest son the money to make his start.

In law, at least, a man could get a start with no tools but his mind and his books.

Would Charley have found a vocation that called to his quick mind and restless heart, had there been some other one available?

On his way through New York to Philadelphia last April, John had visited Charley in the city, and had called on Nabby and Colonel Smith in that isolated stone house in the woods of Long Island. At least Colonel Smith appeared, at long last, to be solvent, to such a degree that John had worried about what Jefferson’s tame newspapers would say of him if his daughter and her husband continued to swan about the city in brand-new finery and a coach-and-four. Abigail agreed that it looked bad, with the country on the verge of war, for the daughter and son-in-law of the Vice President to be so obviously rich, but her heart couldn’t avoid a whisper of relief.

Only the autumn before that, 1791, on her way from Philadelphia to Braintree, Abigail had been struck with a rheumatic fever, and had lain for nearly six weeks at Nabby’s, head aching, joints burning as if she had been racked, listening to the newest baby crying and her two undisciplined grandsons—Willie and Little Johnnie—shouting at one another, and wishing she could die.

There had been no servants in her daughter’s house and sometimes, almost no food. Colonel Smith was gone most days and sometimes overnight, and Nabby was very shut-mouthed about what the family was living on.

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