Read Online Jefferson's Sons by Kimberly Bradley - Free Book Online Page A

and he sent me along to help take care of them.
    â€œTwo years later, Miss Lucy died. Master Jefferson wrote that he wanted Miss Maria sent to France. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t remember her daddy, and she was afraid of the ocean. Since she trusted me more than anyone else, they made me take her.”
    Beverly had heard this story over and over. Now he tried to imagine Master Jefferson an ocean away, gone for years. Beverly would get on that ship. He would be glad to. “How old were you then, Mama?”
    â€œBy the time everything was settled, I was fourteen,” Mama said. “Miss Maria was eight, going on nine. I didn’t speak a word of French and had never been to any city at all.”
    â€œWere you afraid?” asked Beverly. He wouldn’t be.
    Mama laughed. “I didn’t know enough to be afraid!” she said. “Sometimes it’s better to be ignorant. To me it seemed like nothing but an adventure. Miss Maria was so scared and seasick, she about cried the entire trip, but I used to stand on the deck sometimes watching the wind carry the ship—and I loved it. I loved Paris too.”
    Harriet said, “I think I like Miss Maria better than Miss Martha.”
    â€œYou would have liked Miss Martha then,” Mama said. “I did.” She paused before she continued. “She married Mr. Randolph two months after we came back from France. She’d known him less than five weeks. She didn’t take time to think. I wouldn’t want to walk in her shoes.”
    Beverly wouldn’t want to walk in her nasty shoes either. They probably smelled. But how he wished he could take her place! He could live in the President’s House. Master Jefferson would introduce him to people with a proud smile, saying, “This is Beverly, my son.”
    â€œIf you and Master Jefferson got married,” he asked Mama, “would you make Miss Martha stay away?”
    â€œBeverly!” Mama said. “What a thing to say!”
    â€œI would,” Harriet said.
    â€œThere’s no sense discussing it,” Mama said. “No sense even thinking about it. It can’t happen, not ever, not this side of Paradise. Put it right out of your heads.”
    Beverly did until the next day, when he and Harriet were alone. Then they talked about it some more. “We’d travel in the carriage to Washington City,” Beverly said. “Think about it. We’d be with Mama and Papa both, all the time.”
    â€œWe’d eat in the big dining room,” Harriet said. “Roast chicken off china plates. Miss Edith would cook for us .” Harriet stopped. She clapped her hand over her mouth.
    Beverly understood. “We’d pay Miss Edith,” he said. “We’d pay her good for all her fancy cooking. And we’d let Joe Fossett come to Washington and be blacksmith there, and he could live all the time with Miss Edith and James.”
    â€œAnd we’d invite them to dinner,” Harriet said, “like Mr. and Mrs. Madison come to dinner now.”
    She and Beverly looked at each other.
    â€œNo,” Harriet said softly. “That can’t happen.”
    â€œWe’ll just make them not slaves,” Beverly said. “We’ll make everybody free, and everybody equal, and then Mama can marry Master Jefferson and everybody can do what they want.”
    But, he thought, what if Miss Edith didn’t want to be a French cook? What if Joe Fossett didn’t want to move to Washington? If Joe and Edith were free, would they want to work for Master Jefferson?
    When he asked Harriet about it, she frowned. “These are just stories,” she said. “We’re making them up. They’re not real like Mama’s stories. They’re pretend.”
    Beverly knew that. “I only like pretending things that can happen,” he said.
    Â 
    In the spring, Master Jefferson arrived at Monticello with plans for