Touch the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

small window to admire the view. The entrance to the circular drive looked out over miles of surrounding countryside including the majestic two-mile-wide Potomac River which divided Virginia from Maryland. The water was still and bright in the afternoon sun, while all around were woods, cliffs, meadows, and neighboring plantations.
    "Isn't it beautiful?" she sighed, turning to find a panic-stricken Meagan pulling at the loose tendrils of hair around her face.
    "Dear God, Priscilla, you are both frightened and blissful at the wrong moments! Now is the time to be wild with terror, you ninny! He's taking us to Mount Vernon!"
    Priscilla gazed back at her blankly. "Why, I shall be very pleased to see General and Mrs. Washington. After all, he is going to be the President soon—everyone says so. Perhaps Lion intends that we should lodge here tonight!"
    "How can you be so dense?" Meagan cried. "The Washingtons know me! They have known me since I was a child! They were at my house just this past Christmas to offer their sympathies! What will I do?"
    The question was purely rhetorical, for any advice Priscilla might offer would be worse than useless. As the carriage rolled up the long drive, Meagan decided she would be ill and suspected there would be no problem convincing Lion of this. Her face was chalk white and the look in her eyes could easily have been interpreted as pain. When Lion opened the door to the carriage, waiting for the coachman to put up the steps, he looked her over critically. Privately he thought that her conversion to female attire had done little to alter her disheveled appearance.
    "Miss—ah—"
    "Meagan!" Priscilla supplied immediately. Meagan felt like choking her again, for she had told her a dozen times that her new name was to be Eliza.
    "Yes, well, Meagan, I'm going to ask that you remain in the carriage due to your—ah—state of disarray. We shouldn't be long, for I cannot spare much time. We shall pay our respects as speedily as possible."
    Meagan watched as Lion helped Priscilla down the few steps to the ground, her heart thudding with relief. She noticed absently that they made a handsome couple; even the colors of their clothes, complexions, and hair were complementary. There was another coach ahead of theirs on the drive and Meagan recognized it as James Madison's. She had visited Montpelier many times with her parents and felt a fresh chill at the thought of his presence here.
    By the time they had been inside half an hour, Meagan's uneasiness began to lessen. Mount Vernon in itself had a quieting effect on her. She knew that the Washingtons were contented in their home, and their love for it was reflected everywhere. Meagan was personally quite partial to the house, for it lacked the overt luxury of her parents' mansion. The perfect simplicity of the huge, white, red-roofed dwelling lent it an elegance that excessive ornamentation could never achieve, while the network of outbuildings which fanned out from the mansion had a clean charm all their own. She had spent many happy hours in her youth walking in the hanging wood which grew down to the river and riding through the surrounding meadows. It was common knowledge in Fairfax County that General Washington was heartsick at the thought of becoming President, and Meagan pitied him for having to leave his home again for the service of his country.
    Her thoughts skipped back to Lion Hampshire and she wondered idly why a sea captain should be so interested in paying his respects to the future President, especially when the day was so far advanced. She vaguely recalled James Wade saying that Hampshire had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention over which Meagan knew General Washington had presided. That seemed a partial answer, but she was still mulling it over curiously when the red front door opened and Nelly Custis appeared. Laughing, she tossed her brown curls and called to Washington, her younger brother, who followed her outside.
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