Read Online Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Jennifer Chiaverini - Free Book Online Page B

always called him Lyss for short,” said Simpson. “Now consider his initials.”
    “Hiram Ulys—” Julia gave a little laugh. “Oh, dear. HUG.”
    Simpson spread his palms and touched the tips of his thumbs together as if to frame the monogram. “Now you must imagine those initials pounded with brass nails into a trunk belonging to a young cadet setting off for West Point.”
    “I confess I find it endearing,” said Julia, watching the color rise faintly in her husband’s tanned cheeks, “but for a young man going off to the military academy, I suppose it wouldn’t do.”
    “It would have been an obvious invitation to ridicule,” said Ulys, “so I decided to switch the initials and call myself Ulysses H. Grant.”
    “But the matter had already been decided for him,” Mr. Grant broke in. “Congressman Hamer, the gentleman who signed Lyss’s formal application, had put him down as Ulysses S. Grant, assuming that his middle name was Simpson, for my wife’s people.”
    “West Point knew me as Ulysses S. Grant, and since I rather liked the name, I decided to adopt it as they had it down,” Ulys said. “I realized too late that cadets relish any chance to poke fun. Whenever they saw ‘U. S. Grant’ posted on a bulletin board, they’d call me United States Grant, or Uncle Sam Grant, and eventually, just plain Sam.”
    Julia laughed, delighted. “Well, I like Ulys best, but I would have loved you no matter what you called yourself.”
    In the days that followed, the newlyweds made the customary round of calls to family and friends, first in Bethel and later venturing out to Georgetown, Cincinnati, and Maysville. Everyone welcomed Julia graciously, and everyone had a favorite story of Ulys to share—often of the young ladies Ulys had taken ice-skating or horseback riding, and one in particular for whom he had painted a watercolor landscape of the majestic scenery around West Point.
    “I never said I didn’t enjoy the company of young ladies before I met you,” Ulys defended himself mildly. “I said only that I had never fallen in love.”
    “You never painted me a watercolor landscape,” she said, unable to refute his explanation and yet still pricked by jealousy.
    “I might have done, if I hadn’t spent almost our entire courtship in Mexico.”
    Her jealousy was immediately forgotten. “I do hope you’ll never go to war again.”
    “As do I,” said Ulys soberly, taking her hands in his. “I want nothing ever to part us.”
    •   •   •
    It was not unusual for the Dent sisters to bestow their worn, outgrown dresses upon their favorite servants, but the gift of a lovely, almost new India mull muslin gown had no precedent. Still, as the entire family had witnessed Julia offering it to Jule, no one objected when she retrieved it from her absent mistress’s wardrobe and carried it off to the servants’ quarters in the attic. There, by whatever light she could find, Jule began altering it to fit her own figure, deftly plucking out stitches and taking in seams, always out of sight of the curious Dent women.
    Late one night a week after Julia’s departure, Jule donned the altered gown, crept quietly down the attic stairs, slipped out the back door, and raced soundlessly to the carriage house, where Gabriel waited.
    A side door opened, and faint lantern light from within briefly cast Gabriel into silhouette. “Are you ready?” he asked, quickly shutting the door behind him, his voice a warm caress in the darkness.
    She nodded, breathless from apprehension and excitement.
    Hand in hand, they hurried through the gate and down the sidewalk, ready to duck into an alley or a shadowed doorway at the first glimpse of anyone who might arrest them for breaking curfew. At last they came to the African Methodist Episcopal church, where their soft knock upon the door was answered by the pastor himself, a former slave twenty years free. He quickly led them into the chapel, where his wife and brother