Read Online Eagle's Cry: A Novel of the Louisiana Purchase by David Nevin - Free Book Online

vile accusations, the tomato someone had thrown at their carriage, glares at the inn, a rude woman who’d brushed past her in the corridor …
    It was like nothing she could remember since the early days of the Revolution when she was a child and all around her patriots and loyalists were dividing into blood enemies. And into this tinder Aaron had thrown a flaming torch. It struck her that she’d never felt he had much weight, clever and handsome and charming through he certainly was—witness the way women melted in his presence. But that made her feel guilty and that made her angry. Would nothing go right in these ugly days? In fact, Aaron had been good to her when she’d needed help and she hadn’t questioned weight then. She’d been half crazed with grief when the fever had taken baby and husband. She’d asked Senator Burr to guide her affairs and stand as guardian to her little boy in case the fever returned for her.
    As a tenant in her mother’s house he’d owed her nothing, but he had performed nobly. She’d felt so alone, this being after her Quaker father’s business had failed in Philadelphia, and the church had expelled him for debt, and something broke in him—in the end, she thought, women were stronger than men—and he went to bed till he died while her mother opened for roomers.
    Months passed and she’d put aside widow’s weeds and looked about. And one day Aaron had told her that the great little Madison had asked to be presented. The request was so
specific of serious intent that she was breathless, and that very afternoon he’d brought Mr. Madison around. Jimmy had been terribly nervous, his hand shook when he took hers, he murmured “You’re very beautiful,” and then was tongue-tied; and she had rattled on rather desperately, wondering if she were making a fool of herself, wondering if he were even interested; and then he stood to go and asked if he might call tomorrow and would she on the next evening accompany him to a dinner General Washington was giving?
    He was a power in the House in those days and very close to the general, and she’d been swept into the highest circles of the capital in urbane Philadelphia and had held her own. Better than her own. Jimmy had glowed in her presence, many people told her she’d made a new man of him, and one day dear old Aunt Martha—whom Dolley could see was easily a match for the general despite her gentle manner—said she would nudge Jimmy along.
    But nothing happened. Then, with the session ending and the time ever so clearly now or never, he sent a note: He had something to say. She wore a gown the color of roses that was cut as low as she dared, seated him on the sofa beside her, and waited for what she became sure would be bad news. He stumbled, his tongue twisted, she noticed a buckle coming loose on his shoe and he’d worn hose that were yellowing with age—not at all the picture of a man who’d come to propose marriage. She had an awful impulse to tell him she understood, he could go, au revoir— but no!—she would fight to the end. So she waited, smiling, encouraging him, and at last he blurted the question she’d been desperate to hear and she collapsed into his arms. Six wonderful years had passed, that no children had come the only shadow. She knew there was ugly gossip about this, which she could settle in a word if she chose … .
    She wanted an afternoon walk and they set out, her arm through his, on brick sidewalks laid in sunburst design, past graceful stoops and saplings set in sidewalk squares and guarded by little iron fences. He still had a few days before decision and he was laying out the pros and cons, when an
elderly voice hailed them. They saw an old man on a younger man’s arm. Jimmy said it was Colonel Emberly, an old family friend, and his son. The young man, prematurely gray and wearing an army major’s uniform, scarcely spoke and when he did his lips scarcely moved.
    Glaring, the colonel cried, “I never