Free Dreams of Glory by Thomas Fleming Page A

wall sconces and the seven-branched silver candelabrum on the table. Cato served them goose in a dark gravy, flavored with preserved cherries. The wine was Chateau Margaux, 1769. The congressman said he had not tasted anything like it since he left London, four long years ago. For dessert Cato flamed a pair of his wife Nancy’s crepes filled with sliced apples. With them came the rare French dessert wine, Vin de Rousillon, which also caused the congressman to exclaim with pleasure. They returned to the parlor to drink coffee laced with brandy.
    By now the congressman’s face was flushed. Winter had been banished from his mind and body. He cheerfully accepted a cigar. Flora studied the small brown tubes of tobacco in their mahogany box and said, “Will you consider me a loose woman if I join you?”
    â€œI’ll consider you a woman of fashion, which you obviously could become—if you were willing to take the final step. You know the saying?”
    â€œA lady can’t become a woman of fashion until she loses her reputation?”
    â€œPrecisely.”
    The congressman took a tall candle from the mantel and lit her cigar. There was no question that she had him. But did she want him? Caesar dead in the barn, delivered to her like a piece of merchandise, the proud face crushed against the raw pine of the coffin lid. Could she betray him so soon?
    â€œIt may be necessary to lose one’s reputation in London or Paris, Mr. Stapleton. But here in America we can be more discreet. We can have both pleasure and reputation. It’s one of the things I like about your country.”
    â€œServants talk,” he said as Cato took away the coffee cups, then served more brandy.
    â€œNot my servants,” Flora said. “I permit only two in the house, Cato and his wife, Nancy. They are absolutely trustworthy.”
    Cato departed, carefully shutting the door behind him. “Then the question, madam,” said the congressman, strolling
around the room to look at the paintings, “comes down to those elemental principles that my father’s old friend Ben Franklin so lucidly explained in his book on electricity—attraction and repulsion.’
    â€œFascinating,” Flora said. “What about scruples, Mr. Stapleton? Did Dr. Franklin write about those?’
    Where did she find the will, the wit for this banter? She must be playing a part that Walter Beckford had written for her. Sometimes she thought he was Satan, and William Coleman one of his dark angels. They possessed her soul and body, and no one had the power to break their spell.
    â€œScruples are like buzzing flies, madam,” Congressman Stapleton said. “If they blunder into the field of attraction, they flutter to the ground, knocked silly by its violence.”
    â€œYou make it sound so fierce.”
    â€œIt’s like music, madam. Fierce, sweet, fierce again.”
    â€œAs I told you, I’ve never—played the music you’re suggesting. Never gone from fierceness to sweetness to—”
    Liar, boomed Caesar from within his coffin. Liar. She saw his hands reaching out for her. Those murderous dark hands. Terrifying in their ferocity—and the sweetness they created. She saw them, black on her white breasts.
    She sat down at the harpsichord in the corner of the living room. “Will you allow me to sing my favorite song for you?”
    The words were on her lips: Plaire à celui que j’aime. It was a way of saying good-bye to Caesar, good-bye to the dream, however dubious, that he had given her of escaping the diminished woman she had become.
    Liar , roared Caesar from his cold box, and the words froze on her lips. All right, she whispered to him. I will not sing it in French I will never sing it in French to anyone but you. Not good enough , roared Caesar, and she heard herself choosing another song.

    The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
    Sing all a green willow;

    Her