Alex and Eliza--A Love Story Read online

  “Has he proposed?—oh, do tell!” Kitty urged, jumping ahead of herself. “I know he is not yet of age to access his fortune, but you could always elope like Angelica did and wait until he is twenty-one. That is, assuming his parents don’t disinherit him.”

  “Disinherit him?!” Peggy said.

  Eliza was unclear if her sister was outraged or merely pretending to it.

  “For marrying a Schuyler!” Peggy laughed out loud. “The Van Rensselaers should be so lucky as to join their family to ours!”

  “Aren’t you already related to the Van Rensselaers? On Mrs. Schuyler’s side? Or perhaps Mr. Schuyler’s? Or both?” asked Kitty.

  “Mama was a Miss Van Rensselaer, and of course a Livingston on her mama’s side. Papa’s mother was a Van Cortlandt, not a Van Rensselaer.”

  Eliza couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh dear, we are so related, it is a wonder that we do not turn into those poor Habsburgs, marrying cousin after cousin until we start giving birth to misshapen idiots.”

  Eliza had meant her words to come out in jest, but there was enough truth to them to cause Kitty and Peggy to stare at her in incredulity.

  “Oh, Eliza, you are too morbid, even for yourself!” Kitty said at last. “Come let us have a bit of fun, as I know my brother certainly is!”

  KITTY WAS REFERRING to Henry’s festivities, which were going on in full force near the officers’ barracks several blocks away. Henry had invited every officer from the rank of lieutenant on up—some one hundred men, most of them under the age of twenty-five, and all eager for one last party before the war went hot again with the return of warm weather.

  Earlier in the day when she was out for a stroll, Eliza had seen dozens of casks of beer, cider, and sherry being rolled into the long stone barn that housed the C infirmary.

  Curious enough, she had peeked in, only to find that all the beds had been cleared out. The four cast-iron stoves had doubled to eight, and large stacks of firewood were piled beside each of them—enough to heat the large space moderately for a week, or to keep a single party raging all night long.

  “Pardon me, Corporal,” she’d said, pulling aside one of the enlisted men setting up the party. “But—where have all the patients gone?”

  The corporal had blushed deeply. “You will forgive me, miss, if I decline to answer that question on the grounds of decency.”

  “And you will forgive me, Corporal, if I tell my fiancé, Colonel Livingston, that you declined to assist a lady.”

  “Ah, Miss Schuyler, I didn’t know it was you. I do apologize.” He blushed. “Colonel Livingston had us take the sick to the house on Whitelawn.”

  “The house on—” Eliza’s jaw dropped. “You mean, the one on the corner of Farrier Street?”

  “Aye, Miss Schuyler. Now if you’ll excuse me, Colonel Livingston said that if we get the party set up by sundown he’ll let us have a cask of cider for ourselves.”

  “ELIZA?” KITTY’S VOICE cut through her reverie. “Are you all right? Or is just the thought of the momentous cusp you stand upon that has you so preoccupied?”

  Dazed, Eliza looked up at her friend—her cousin, her dreadful fiancé’s sister.

  “Cusp?” she repeated. “A cusp is the top of a hill whereupon one can see clearly in every direction. This is not a cusp. It is a . . . it is a cliff, a drop into some unfathomably deep and foggy abyss. And, and—and below it all, I hear the thunderous roar of waves crashing upon rocks, like those that dashed Prospero and Miranda upon Caliban’s island!”

  “Eliza!” Kitty said sharply, placing her hand on her friend’s knee. “You are overwrought! I tell you, you must calm down, dear. It is a marriage, for God’s sake, not a shipwreck!”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Eliza said glumly.

  “Sister!” Peggy spoke up. “You insult our cousin!”

  “It’s . . . acceptable,” Kitty said, though the color had come into her cheeks, visible even beneath her makeup. “I-I understand that you haven’t known Henry long enough to love him. I even know that Henry can be . . . difficult, but I promise you, I know all his secrets and his weaknesses, and once I’ve shared them with you, you’ll have him under your thumb in no time. And Papa is grooming him for a career in politics, which means that he’ll spend most of his time in Philadelphia or New York or wherever they decide to place the capital, so you’ll hardly have to deal with him at all!”

  “But is that what a marriage is?” Eliza said. “Learning how to ‘manage’ your husband so that he doesn’t oppress you? Praying for his departure rather than yearning for his return?”

  “My word, Eliza, everyone always said you were the sensible Schuyler sister!” Kitty laughed. “And here you are, mooning about romance like some latter-day Juliet. Listen to me, Cousin. We live in a new country—a country that will be larger than any in Europe by three times, and with unlimited possibility for expansion. And we are our country’s gentry—its kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, its barons and earls and—”

  “I am quite familiar with the order of ranks,” Eliza snapped. She did not appreciate the turn this conversation had suddenly taken.

  “Then you are also familiar with our responsibilities.” Kitty fluffed up her enormous flounces. “Yes, we command great prestige and power and wealth compared with the rank and file. But we also owe a duty to our position in society. The common man and woman are free to marry whom they choose based on nothing more than base physical attraction, but we are bound to make unions that preserve our fortunes and estates, which provide the structure and indeed the occupation on which plebeian lives depend.”

  Peggy tittered.

  “Indeed,” Eliza said, turning to her sister. “And no offense intended, Peggy, but I’ve heard Stephen wax on about his holdings and tenants more than once.”

  “No offense taken. He does tend to go on and on about out the patroonship.”

  “But,” Eliza continued, turning back to face Kitty, “isn’t that what we’re revolting against? The unfair advantages of aristocracy? The tyranny of a distant king deciding one’s fate based on what suits his interest, rather than one’s own?”

  “You talk of politics, Eliza. That is men’s business.” Kitty took a long pull from her glass and banged it down on the side table. “We are women. We tend to the home front.”

  “And why should that be?” Eliza demanded. “This is a new country, as you say. Why shouldn’t it have new laws, new customs? And why should not those customs extend to the home itself. To—to love!”

  For the first time this evening, Kitty’s expression cracked, though her makeup almost managed to conceal it.

  “I sense your heartache, Eliza,” she said finally. “The news of your flirtation reached us, too. You mourn the loss of a great love that you think could have surmounted the difficulties of rank and fortune. And I agree, he is quite a charming bastard—in every sense of the word. However, I must point out that Colonel Hamilton never proposed to you. You may have thought love conquers all, Eliza Schuyler, but he knew the rules of the game.”

  Eliza steeled herself for Kitty’s next words.

  “And the truth is, dear sister-in-law, even Alexander Hamilton realized he wasn’t good enough for you.”

  29

  Tortoise and Hare

  Continental Army Headquarters

  Morristown, New Jersey

  April 1780

  The meeting with General von Knyphausen had been a wash. Alex was unsure whether the acting commander even bothered to come to Amboy, but when it was conveyed to the British contingent that Colonel Hamilton would be negotiating in General Washington’s stead, a terse note arrived from the British warship docked so boldly offshore: General von Knyphausen would not meet with anyone other than General Washington. To parlay with an underling was beneath him. It was, Alex reflected, the same language General Washington ha
d used when he refused to meet with General von Knyphausen.

  These aristocrats! Alex thought with some annoyance. Their infatuation with rank and face make their own lives ridiculously difficult! And even worse, they don’t recognize how it inconveniences the lives of the rest of us.

  Although in the case of thousands of prisoners of war, inconvenience seemed like a deeply inadequate term. While generals and colonels jockeyed about whose sleeves were decorated with the most epaulets and tassels and stripes—as if rank were measured in gold thread!—their privates and ensigns and corporals huddled in rags in prison cells and work camps.

  All in all, not a great day for diplomacy.

  But what made everything worse was that now he had no excuse to stay away from Morristown, which meant that he would be in town when Eliza married that Livingston bounder—not in the actual church, perhaps, but it was right across the square—and he would hear the bells ringing and see the throngs of well-wishers cheering on the new bride and groom from his windows. He tried to delay the journey back to headquarters, but Lieutenant Larpent was in such high spirits about making the night’s entertainments that he wouldn’t be held back, and Alex, though miserable, was not so mean-spirited that he could spoil his assistant’s fun just because he himself was not going to partake.

  It rained the whole way, adding insult to injury. The roads were a soup of mud, and even though their mounts were as eager to be out of the chilly drizzle as their riders, they refused to move beyond a canter, lest their hooves slip out from under them in the mire. The journey to Amboy had taken but three and a half hours. The slog back to Morristown took more than six. By the time the men arrived, they were sodden and iced to the bone. Alex charged the grooms at the stables with brushing out their weary mounts until they were thoroughly dry and serving them a double ration of oats, and then he and Lieutenant Larpent hurried as fast as their chilled bones would carry them to the Ford mansion. Despite the exhaustion of the journey, Larpent was still excited for the party, but all Alex could think about was grabbing a few bites to eat and crawling beneath the covers.

  Alas, when Alex and Larpent entered the Ford mansion, they found it deserted and frigid, the fires gone cold in their grates. The larders had been stripped bare of comestibles and beverages. Even the bottle of cognac Lafayette had given him before he went off had been pilfered from its hiding place beneath a loose floorboard in his bedroom.

  When Alex was absolutely certain that there was not one thing to eat or drink in the house, nor even a single coal to start up a fire, he turned to Lieutenant Larpent with a rueful smile on his face.

  “Permission to speak freely, Lieutenant.”

  Larpent looked at him with confusion. Alex was his superior officer. He need ask for nothing from him.

  “Uh, permission granted . . . sir?”

  “God damn his soul to hell!” Alex said, and collapsed atop his bed.

  “Oh, sir!” Larpent cried out. “Buck up, sir, it’s not so bad. Here, look, just let me get some tinder and I’ll have a fire going in no time.” He raced from the room and down the stairs, returning shortly with a tinder and twigs.

  Alex hardly noticed him. He had shucked off his wet coat and rolled himself in his blanket like a caterpillar wrapping itself in silk, his head buried beneath his pillow. With one half-open eye he watched as Larpent knelt before the grate, expertly arranging wood shavings and splinter into a neat cone, and then striking the flint against steel in steady streams of sparks.

  The men had lit a lamp when they came in, yet Larpent seemed content to start the fire from scratch, and on just his fifth spark a little glow appeared in front of him. He blew on it gently. The glow grew and sprouted a little tongue of flame. Larpent fed splinters of wood to it, with the delicacy of a farmer feeding an abandoned weanling, then twigs, then small branches. Within minutes a small fire was crackling in the grate, and a pile of larger logs suggested that the blaze would grow to a conflagration quickly.

  “I must say, Lieutenant, you light a fire with admirable alacrity.”

  “We didn’t have servants to light fires for us when I was a boy on the farm, sir. As the younger, I was charged with lighting the stove in the mornings while my father and older brother tended to the cows.”

  “No mother to attend to the task?”

  “Alas, sir, my mother died giving birth to me. My father never found a suitable replacement.”

  Alex could feel the fire warming the tip of his nose, which was all that poked from the covers. He pushed the pillow back, feeling the warmth on his cheeks, his forehead.

  “I, too, lost my mother when I was very young, though I was blessed to have her in my life for its first decade.”

  Larpent nodded. “I sometimes think that’s worse. Having a mother, then losing her. My older brother and father miss her to this day, whereas I only wonder what she would have been like. Excuse me, sir,” he said then, and walked quickly from the room. He was back a moment later with a pair of towels.

  “If we don’t get out of these wet clothes and dried off, we’ll catch our death of cold.”

  Alex knew he was right, but part of him didn’t care. He had failed at today’s mission, had failed at securing a command, had failed at winning the hand of the girl he loved. When he came here as a fourteen-year-old, he had been told by everyone he met that he was going to be a great man. But all he had managed to become was the secretary of a great man.

  Larpent went to look for dry clothes and came back several minutes later dressed in a mismatched and somewhat ill-fitting uniform.

  “Cadged from Weston’s, Tilghman’s, and McHenry’s tack, I’m afraid,” Lieutenant Larpent explained. “Not even General Washington himself could command me back into my own uniform. Now, let me see if I can find us some provisions,” he said and left the room.

  Alex changed out of his wet garments and into the dry ones. He was a miserable human being still, but at least one who didn’t feel like a drowned rat.

  Larpent returned with a frown. “Not much here but salt beef and crackers,” he reported.

  Alex didn’t respond. A moment later, Lieutenant Larpent cleared his throat.

  “I say, sir, why don’t you come along to the party? There’ll be food there and wine and good cheer, and you look as though you could use all three.”

  Alex couldn’t help but laugh. “Go to my rival’s pre-wedding celebration. Yes, that does sound like a fine time.”

  “You won’t have to see him, Colonel. The party’s in the barn by Gareth’s Field. It’s a huge building. You can keep as far from him as you like.”

  Alex just laughed again. But then something came to him.

  “Wait. You said the barn by Gareth’s Field. The stone barn?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Larpent answered.

  “But that’s the barn being used as the C Infirmary, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s my understanding Colonel Livingston had the wards moved to Miss Jane Dawdry’s establishment for the evening.”

  “To . . . a . . . brothel?!” Alex roared. “Are you joking with me, Lieutenant?”

  “Ah, no? Sir? Colonel Livingston said that even the sick and injured need to have some fun.”

  “This is outrageous!” Alex said, jumping up and dropping his blanket and rushing to his wardrobe. I’ll have him court-martialed! I’ll have him flogged! I—” He stopped in front of the open doors. “I’ll call him out.”

  “Sir?” The shocked word dropped Lieutenant Larpent’s lips like a dribble of chaw.

  “I’ll call him out!” Alex hurriedly pulled on his pistol. “I’ll challenge him to a duel. Don’t you see, if he’s dead he can’t marry Eliza!”

  “Sir, please,” Lieutenant Larpent said. “Calm down! I don’t know that a breach of protocol, if that is indeed what you are calling him out for, necessitates a duel, sir. Isn’t it simply somethin
g for a military tribunal?”

  “Then I’ll make him call me out,” Alex declared. “I’ll go to his own party and insult his honor and integrity in front of his own guests. He’ll have no choice but to challenge me to a duel. You know these milquetoast aristocrats! They cannot bear to lose face in front of their peers, but even less so in front of their inferiors.”

  “Sir, please,” Lieutenant Larpent pleaded as Alex stuffed his feet into his boots. “I don’t think this is a good idea. It will look like—”

  Alex turned sharply on the lieutenant. “Like what, Lieutenant?” he demanded.

  Larpent’s chin trembled as he answered. “Like you are manufacturing a reason to duel him. Like—” Larpent bit back a gulp. “Like murder.”

  “It’s not murder if he calls me out,” Alex said, striding from the room. “It’s proof of how unsuitable a mate he is for any gentlewoman. Arrogant, quick-tempered, foolish . . .”

  “Forgive me, sir.” Larpent panted as he hurried along after Alex. “But do you not see how all those words could describe you in this moment, sir? She chose him, sir. For whatever reason, she accepted his proposal, and not yours.”

  Under ordinary circumstances Alex would have wheeled on the man and dressed him down until he was a quivering ball of jelly. But Larpent was right; Eliza had accepted Livingston’s proposal, while he, Alex, had never even proposed. It suddenly dawned on him. That was it! He had never told her what he felt about her. He had never formally presented his suit, never courted her properly.

  He had let her sister cut him to the quick, and Angelica was right. He was penniless. Without a name or family. Who was he to think he could be worthy of such a girl as Eliza Schuyler? An American princess.

  But the thought of that bright, wonderful girl marrying that slug filled him with an intoxicating brew of anger and hope that he picked up his pace, grabbing his damp hat from the tree in the hall and dashing out the front door.