Alex and Eliza--A Love Story Page 8

  “Now then, miss, if you will permit me to come aboard?”

  Eliza gave him the slightest nod. “You may. If you must.”

  It took a single heartbeat for Alex to maneuver himself onto the horse, declaring the space behind the saddle his own. His legs slid beneath Eliza’s ripped skirts, pressing against them. Reaching for the reins, his arms surrounded her but he felt her body stiffen as she shrugged him off.

  “I am perfectly capable of directing Hector, Colonel Hamilton. If you will let me see to the reins, then you can offer the spurs in a proper way.”

  “Indeed, my lady,” Alex said, handing over the reins. Then, with a firm kick to the horse’s withers, he started Hector up with a force that jerked Eliza’s head back against the young officer’s chest. Again, he imagined he smelled the vaguest hint of whale oil. Whale oil? And could it be that for once he found it sweet smelling if only because she was wearing it?

  THEY RODE ON for some minutes without speaking. He doesn’t know, Eliza realized. This conceited officer doesn’t believe I know how to ride. And yet, the partnership between Eliza and Hector had already begun as she held the reins like they were tiny birds, directing the bit gently inside Hector’s mouth. She watched his ears fall forward into the way of a contented horse.

  Meanwhile the young officer behind her was having some trouble maintaining his seat. Having neither stirrups nor reins to hold, he bounced on the horse’s croup like a rowboat tossed by waves.

  “Pardon me, Miss Schuyler,” he said hesitantly, “but could you kindly keep Hector to a walk? Forgive me but I’m afraid I absolutely must . . .” Suddenly his hands came to rest on Eliza’s waist.

  Eliza started, but didn’t speak. Instead, she slapped the reins against Hector’s neck, sending him into a sudden trot. Alex’s quick reflexes were all that kept him on Hector, that and his hands now gripping the saddle’s edge for all they were worth.

  “Easy, boy. That’ll do.” Eliza tightened the reins to bring the horse to an abrupt halt. She turned her chin toward Alex.

  “Sir, you may place your hands around my waist, but only with my prior consent. Is that clear?”

  “As clear as the night air, Miss Schuyler, and every bit as cold.”

  Eliza couldn’t help but smile at that.

  “Then may I assume I now have miss’s permission to remain comfortably attached to the back of this saddle—even though it involves some slight contribution on her part?” he asked.

  Eliza lifted her chin. It felt fine to be in control again.

  “You may, sir, and I trust that to mean we will continue our journey with no further breach of decorum. Agreed?”

  “You shall have no protest from me, miss.”

  They rode on in silence once more, with the colonel settled into position with his legs narrowly touching Eliza’s and his hands surrounding her rib cage like a belt.

  THE WINTER SUN was well below the tree line now. Hector stumbled on a root growth along the dark, rutted roadway. Alex instinctively tightened his grip on Eliza’s waist and was surprised when she didn’t seem to mind. The softness of her back revealed she wore no corset, no doubt because she was traveling, but until now her posture was as unyielding beneath his fingers as if she were all laced up. Her shallow breaths barely disturbed her rib cage, and he’d found himself inhaling deeply, breathing against the back of her neck as if to lend her the warm air from his own lungs.

  Now he noticed how her shoulders had dropped some of their previous tension. Something about her poise in the saddle reminded him of how she held herself on the dance floor.

  “I must say, Miss Schuyler,” he began, “I have nothing but fond memories of your family from the time of my last visit.”

  “A visit? Is that what you’re calling it? It felt more like an ambush.”

  “Miss Schuyler, I want you to know that my official relationship with your father in no way mirrors my personal feelings toward him. Indeed, I have only the greatest level of respect for him. I do apologize for having been the bearer of bad news that evening and for my strong words about Ticonderoga. And I hope you will accept a belated apology for my repeated offenses against your father’s good name the night we last met.”

  “Do go on, sir.”

  “I take you into my utmost confidence when I tell you that none other than General Washington himself believed your father to have been a patriot during the fall of Fort Ticonderoga. Indeed, he praised the way the troops defended themselves, greatly outnumbered as they were. It is to your father’s everlasting credit that he refused to let the blame rest on any shoulders but his own.”

  “For all the praise you heap on my father, you had a fine way of showing it then. Prosecuting him in a court-martial for dereliction of duty!” she retorted.

  “I assure you that if there had been any way to avoid the embarrassment of the trial I would have.”

  “If you feel that way, then why did you pursue the matter? Let me guess: You were only ‘following orders.’”

  “But I was,” Alex replied. “Your father’s.”

  “If you expect me to believe that my father insisted on his own trial, you take me for a fool.”

  “But it’s true,” Alex insisted. “I thought you knew. Your father did not want the slightest shadow of doubt hanging over his actions concerning the Ticonderoga battle. He refused to accept the resolution of censure offered by the Continental Congress and insisted on a full trial instead, where he was convinced he would be exonerated—as indeed he was.”

  “But, but why would Papa not tell his own family this?”

  “I cannot say. Perhaps he thought to spare you the ugly details of politics, or did not want his own family to think ill of the government to which he has dedicated his life.”

  “So you did not want to prosecute him? You thought him blameless in the fall of Ticonderoga?” she asked.

  “Not just blameless, but exceptionally farsighted. If your father had not instituted the measures he put in place, not only Ticonderoga would have fallen, but all of New England.”

  “You know we lost our house and farm at Saratoga,” Eliza said with injured pride. “General Burgoyne burned it all to the ground.”

  “I am aware of that. Aware, too, that your father, out of a font of gentlemanly generosity, allowed that same General Burgoyne to shelter at your house after he was defeated.”

  A heavy sigh from Eliza gave Alex a little hope that she might be warming up finally.

  “Yes, he surrendered his own marriage bed to the general for well over a month. And I must say Mama found that to be a bit too generous.” Eliza sniffed at the memory of it all. “She and Papa were forced to sleep in one of the guest rooms.”

  Alex murmured absentmindedly, “I am sure it was more comfortable than the hayloft.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Eliza’s posture went suddenly rigid.

  Alex didn’t answer, and once again they rode in silence. When it seemed clear that she wasn’t going to speak to him again, he attempted a new way in.

  “So,” he began, “may I assume it is your mindfulness of the rift between your father and me that forces you to hold back any semblance of a smile?”

  Eliza puffed her way through a laugh, leaning as far forward as she could to distance herself from him.

  But he pressed on. “You see, I have been waiting for more than two years to tell you it pleased me wholeheartedly to receive your note after the ball, and I was sorely disappointed when you failed in your promise,” he said, in a rush of sudden emotion that took both of them by surprise.

  “Pardon me? What note? What promise? If I’d written a note to every gentleman I met, my days would be wasted complimenting clumsy men on their knack for walking the line or turning a reel. Must I remind you there is a war going on? I have more pressing things to do with my time.”

  “Turning a reel—is
that what they’re calling it these days?” Alex clucked his tongue against his cheek. “Forgive me if I seem old-fashioned, but I’d imagined I was the only one to whom you had written!”

  “My word, Colonel Hamilton, you are besotted with yourself. Do you truly think you are such a fine dancer as all that? Would you be surprised if I said that I have but the dimmest recollection of that evening? Frankly, sir, of your time in my parents’ house, I remember your affront to my father better than anything that passed between us.”

  “Ah, miss. You cut me to the core.”

  “I find it hard to believe that a woman’s free speech could so unnerve you. For a man of war, you are easily shocked.”

  “It is not your speech that shocks me. It is the actions to which it refers, and the apparently trifling regard with which you consider them.”

  “Your dance maneuvers?” Eliza laughed.

  “You cannot seriously think we were to dance in the hayloft?”

  “I beg your pardon, Colonel Hamilton! I must confess myself unimpressed by any other aspect of your character other than your grace on the dance floor.”

  Alex shook his head, flabbergasted. He yanked off a glove and reached into his inner pocket to pull out one of his most prized possessions. “Do you profess ignorance of this?”

  Eliza turned and regarded the square of wrinkled cloth in Alex’s hand. “A somewhat soiled pocket handkerchief?”

  “I have not washed it for more than two years!” he said, affronted.

  “That would explain the dirt.”

  “Miss Schuyler, are you asking me to believe you have no memory of my giving this very handkerchief to you?”

  Alex could see only the profile of Eliza’s face, but it seemed clear she was mystified.

  Suddenly a fresh detail from that night popped into her mind. “Oh yes! ‘I surrender,’” she parroted. “As I recall, Angelica and Peggy and I routed you in the parlor where you were trying to impress Miss Tambling-Goggin and Miss Van Leuwenwoort with your military prowess. I had completely forgotten about it until just now.”

  “So you are saying, then, that you have no memory of returning this handkerchief to me later that evening with a note?”

  “Did I?” Eliza shrugged. “Well, that was awfully kind of me, wasn’t it? Although, given its rather sorry state, I can see why I was so eager to be rid of it.”

  Alex was doubly confused. Could it be that Eliza Schuyler—the most sensible of the Schuyler sisters, the one who was said to care more about the revolutionary cause than dresses or even books—was so featherheaded that she had no memory of a romantic missive she had sent? It was inconceivable!

  “You must forgive me, Miss Schuyler,” Alex said, his breath escaping in puffs in the frigid air. “Although I knew you were no shrinking violet, I still thought your sensibility was less jaded than this.”

  “Oh, good heavens, Colonel Hamilton. It’s just a handkerchief.”

  “Indeed it is not ‘just a handkerchief.’ It is the very foundation of the male-female connection.”

  “Once again, Colonel Hamilton, I must beseech you not to take our present physical proximity as an excuse for licentiousness. Do not assume that it is anything other than necessity alone that has caused me to compromise my physical boundaries in this manner.”

  “Oh?” Alex said drily. “And I suppose you did not send me a note with the handkerchief that said you would meet me in the hayloft?”

  Hector stopped in his tracks to snort, blowing hard enough to make Eliza lift her chin and laugh.

  “Meet you in the hayloft? I beg your pardon, Colonel, but even your loyal horse finds this a bit ridiculous!”

  “Miss Schuyler, do not play the innocent with me. Though society may think you a girl consumed with nothing more than patriotic fervor, not even you could convince anyone that you are quite as brainless as you pretend.”

  “My dear colonel, I do not know what is causing these wild insinuations, but I assure you they are as unwelcome as they are preposterous. If anything in my actions misled you to believe otherwise, I am both mortified and unapologetic.”

  “Misled!” Alex couldn’t help himself. “Far from it! It was you who never showed up, after promising to meet me for a midnight assignation!”

  Eliza gasped. She turned around in the saddle, mere inches separating her from her accuser. “As God is my witness, sir, there was never a note from my hand to yours.”

  Alex could see the truth as plain as the soft moonlight on her face.

  Eliza turned her back to him and slumped over the saddle.

  In that moment, Alex felt two years of expectation slip away onto the cold road to Morristown. In the past two years he had started to write but then discarded a number of letters addressed to this very maiden. He had stayed his hand for fear of sending the wrong message. What to write, after all, to a lady who sent midnight missives? He worried about being too presumptuous a lover, and instead had waited patiently for the right time to make her acquaintance once more, and had been champing at the bit when he’d heard she was to join her relatives in Morristown.

  But alas and alack, of course it hadn’t been Eliza who had sent him the note! She was made of sturdier stuff than that. Someone else had sent his handkerchief back to him. Someone had been playing a trick on him—a trick that happened to be at her expense.

  But who could have done it?

  A memory came to him: of John Church swabbing Peterson’s pink face with Alex’s handkerchief, and Peterson snatching it up and pocketing it.

  Eliza seemed to have come to the same conclusion that he had been pranked, and badly. “Peterson!” she said. “It must have been Peterson who sent the note. You see, Colonel, I’d lent your handkerchief to Angelica to wipe a stain off her dress, and when you were arguing, she handed it to Mr. Church, who—”

  “Gave it to Peterson! And the man decided to return it to its owner.” Alex shook his head. “Ill-minded mischief, and one I was a fool to fall for. I do apologize, Miss Schuyler.”

  “It was Peterson, for certain,” said Eliza.

  “I have half a mind to go straight back to Albany and confront the man,” said Alex grimly.

  Eliza spoke in a dull whisper. “I do not know which is more offensive to me—that you think me capable of such an action . . . or that you find this an attractive feature.”

  “Miss Schuyler, please,” Alex stammered. “I am undone. I genuinely thought the note was from your hand . . . that is to say, I would never think you, of all girls, capable of such—”

  “And yet you did,” Eliza said. “And not only that, you used it as an excuse to extend your flirtation with me. I am appalled.”

  “I assure the appallation is all mine.” Alex banged a fist against his forehead, nearly knocking himself off the back of the horse. Appallation? On top of everything else, he suddenly seemed to have forgotten how the English language worked.

  “If you please, Colonel, I would prefer if you did not speak for the rest of our journey.” Eliza sat tall in the saddle, her back stiff as a board. “Were circumstances less unwelcoming, I would run for safety. But given that I am for all intents and purposes your prisoner, I am forced to remain in such repulsive proximity to you until we reach our destination. But for God’s sake, please, cease speaking, or I really will throw you from this horse.”

  Alex opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it. There was nothing to say to make the situation any better. He could only make it worse. Alexander Hamilton, widely reputed to be the most eloquent man in the United States of America, had, for the first time in his life, been rendered speechless.

  10

  Lean in to Me

  Near the Cochran Residence

  Morristown, New Jersey

  February 1780

  The moon slipped under a blanket of clouds as the first snowflakes landed on Hecto
r’s shoulders. It had taken the big bay a mile or so to get used to the current arrangement on his back. While a warhorse is able to withstand the roar of cannon fire without flinching, tolerating the tickle and swish of petticoats behind any horse’s head is something altogether different. This brave gelding could neither see them nor shake off their bothersome lacy itch. But he quickly came to trust that the lightweight human perched on his back had the sort of skilled hands he could put up with.

  Eliza reached out and patted the bay’s strong neck. “Walk on, Hector.”

  A mile or so back, the young colonel had pointed out final directions to the encampment before lapsing once more into an abashed silence. Thankfully it wouldn’t be long before this nightmare was behind her.

  The soft clip-clop of Hector’s hooves beat quarter time to the racing march of her thoughts. It riled her to think about how Alex had accused her of the basest harlotry. The absolute cheek of the man—to think she of all people would have acted in such a way. To think he had believed her the type of girl who would send a boy notes outside of an approved courtship, with a tryst in a hayloft of all places!

  And yet the memory of taking his handkerchief was clearer now . . . the saucy way she, Angelica, and Peggy had cut the legs out from under the young aide-de-camp—that is, secretary—who was busy putting on airs in front of a posse of second-rate society girls, who were only flirting with him because they had neither fortune nor beauty enough to attract a more prestigious suitor. It was easy to see how her words could be misconstrued as flirting—pretending to cut down a boy to test his mettle. She had even felt the same thrill she got when she flirted with other boys. So maybe she had been flirting with him. Still, that gave him no right to make such gross presumptions about her.

  But he said there had been a note that he believed was from her hand. So they weren’t really presumptions, were they?

  He seemed quite disappointed that she had not met this assignation. Until he realized his mistake.