Washington's Lady by Nancy Moser

accompanied us scrambled to the carriage and wagon, clearly surprised by our quick exit.
    “Go!” George commanded as soon as we were settled. “Go now. Away!”
    Faster. Take us faster . . .
    Away.
    *****
    As the miles from Ferry Farm increased, our pace settled into one that ceased the violent jarring across road and rut. The children lay asleep upon the seats, each one’s head in a lap as George and I faced each other.
    His jaw remained clenched, but his shoulders had lowered to a more serene state. “We made it,” I said, offering him a smile.
    “Made what?”
    “Made our visit and made our escape.”
    A smile softened his jaw. “Now you see why . . .”
    “I wish to understand why,” I said. “I will only ask this once, and then you need never tell me again, but I do wish to know your mother’s history. I wish to understand this bitterness that emanates from her like heat from a fire.”
    The horse took twenty strides before he answered me. But then, finally, the story began.
    “As you know, my two older brothers were born from a different mother. Father doted on them and took them to England for an education. When he returned to Virginia, he found his wife had died.”
    “How horrible.”
    “It was a blow. Soon after, he met my mother, Mary Ball, who was twenty-three at the time.” He looked at me, then away. “She had never been married.”
    This one fact was telling. In a land short on women, women who were unmarried, even at the age of twenty, made questions arise as to their . . . suitability.
    “My father had heard she was headstrong, but he thought he was up to the match.”
    “What did her parents think of it?”
    “Her parents were dead. And there is some shadow regarding their marriage. There is a rumour her mother was an indentured servant.”
    “Oh.”
    “We colonials value hard work, but you know as well as I that the level of servant who traveled to the Americas to work off their passage waned as England began emptying its gaols on our shores.”
    “Your grandmother was not—?”
    “No, no. Not a convict, as far as I know. But her lowly beginnings . . . When Grandfather Ball died, his wife remarried multiple times. All this when my mother was a mere child. When my grandmother died, Mother was only thirteen. Though she had some inheritance, she was shuffled between relatives. I have always understood it was not an amiable situation.”
    “She was not loved, did not feel secure.”
    George’s profile was stern. “Upon her marriage to my father . . . that deficit in her life did not improve. Father had many grand plans but was not very adept at making them succeed. And he chose to be gone more than he was home. My childhood was tense. Mother was left with six children—though my baby sister, Mildred, lived but a year. Mother did the best she could, but there was no room in her heart for survival and affection.”
    I nodded, my own heart finding empathy for this bitter woman.
    “When Father died . . . I was the eldest, yet only eleven. Unlike your situation upon Daniel’s death, Father left most of the good lands to the sons of his first marriage. He left Ferry Farm to me, under my mother’s tutelage until it was mine at age twenty-one, but the other children . . . it was as though they did not exist to him.”
    “That is not fair.”
    “No. It is not. Without an estate, with six children, and with her reputation of character, my mother was not a widow who was sought after.”
    “She was—she is—lonely.”
    “I suppose she is.”
    “Yet if she desires companionship, why does she not make it easier for her children to visit, to draw close and offer her the comfort she desires?”
    “I don’t know.” George’s face was drawn with an inner pain. “I wish to love her, Martha. Truly I do. Yet even though I know the reason for her bitter ways, I find that to be in her presence . . . I find it draining upon my soul.”
    I extended my hand across the gap and