America's First Daughter: A Novel by Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie

make their ears bleed. And they were afraid to taunt me, too, because the moment she caught someone mocking my French or the unsophisticated style of my hair, Marie would launch into a tirade so fast and biting I could scarcely follow it.
    When Elizabeth and Caroline Tufton, the nieces of the Duke of Dorset, the British ambassador to France, once dared suggest the American experiment would fail, the tongue-lashing Marie gave them for disrespecting me, my father, and the French assistance to the American cause was littered with forbidden insults. Curses like Casse toi! and Je t’emmerde! and Meurs, pute! exploded from her lips like bullets from a musket until both girls cowered, pleading they’d meant nothing by it.
    I was so unused to someone rising to my defense that all I could do was gape. But Marie’s actions warmed my heart, too, because her friendship was the first thing I’d ever had that was mine alone, untouched by the grief and travails of the past few years. A few days later, the older Tufton sister presented me with a pretty crimson ribbon. I viewed it as a peace offering, just as their country had been forced to a peace treaty with mine. And my acceptance earned me two more steady friends.
    But that night, I had only Marie. She slid into bed beside me, her gaze daring anyone else to say a word. No one did. When everyone finally settled for sleep, Marie turned and stroked a curl from my cheek. “ Cher Jeffy . You’ll be happy in Paris, you’ll see. And if not, I’ll teach you to pretend.”

    “I SHOULD STAY WITH YOU and help Jimmy prepare our Christmas feast,” I said to Papa, who’d finally recovered from his illness but was still regaining his strength. “After all, one day I’ll have to play hostess for a husband.”
    “Not for quite some time,” Papa said from his armchair, a woolen blanket over his legs. Then he gave a rueful smile. “And let’s hope when it comes to marriage, you don’t draw a blockhead. In this, I put your odds at fourteen to one.”
    Bad odds, I thought. Could it really be so hard to find a good husband or was my father’s long-absent sense of humor returning to him?
    Once he felt healthy again, Papa took me to see marionettes and gardens and Yuletide decorations. We visited cafés, billiard halls, shopping complexes, and bookstalls. Once when we strolled the snowy streets, we were treated to a song by a defrocked abbé with a guitar.
    With each new outing, Paris enchanted us more and more. Papa declared himself violently smitten by the classical architecture of the Hotel de Salm, and we spent many days watching its construction from a garden terrace across the river. Nearly every American in Paris gathered at our home for a holiday celebration. Another night we went to visit the Adams family and shared a feast of roast goose, and afterward, Nabby Adams taught me to slide on the ice.
    Papa came out into the night air to watch us, and it was a merry Christmastide. If only the New Year had been as kind . . .
    For at the end of January, the Marquis de Lafayette, returned from his journey to America, came to call. Lafayette was the French general who had saved us from the British, and we hailed him as a military commander second only to General Washing ton. But on the evening the Marquis came to call upon us, he was a humble gentleman in our doorway, unattended by his aides. In truth, the nobleman cut an impressive figure in white breeches, calfskin gloves, and a martial coat of blue adorned with two rows of gilded buttons. But beneath his powdered wig, he wore the saddest expression I’d ever seen.
    What could this man say that occasioned such gravity? When Lafayette finally began to speak, emotion caught in his throat and he nearly wept, begging my father’s pardon. He carried a letter to us from the doctor at Eppington. A letter of the most dreadful tidings.
    My father went to stone as Lafayette babbled heartfelt condolences, half in French, half in English. The Marquis