What on earth have I gotten myself into?
Just then there was a knock on the door.
“Enter,” Alex called, adding sotto voce: “And please save me from myself.”
The door opened and Nippers stuck his whiskered, sallow face in.
“A lady to see you, Mr. Hamilton.”
“Please tell me it’s my wife.” Alex needed to see Eliza’s smiling face right now, needed to hear her tell him that everything would be all right.
“I could tell you that, sir, but then you would fire me for lying.”
Alex grunted out a little laugh. “Nippers, you should take that show on the road; you’d make a fortune.”
“More than you’re paying me, no doubt,” Nippers said.
Another groan from Alex. “Please, send in my visitor.”
Nippers disappeared. A moment later a female form, rather smaller and less hirsute than Nippers’s, appeared in his place, standing hesitantly at the edge of the room. She was in her early twenties, with a slight figure and auburn hair peeking out of a simple, pleated bonnet that shaded a delicate, pensive face, rather heavily powdered for the afternoon. She was wearing a sober workaday dress in midnight blue, and Alex was almost relieved: If he had to fight off yet another love-starved Revolutionary War widow, he didn’t know what he would do with himself.
“Please, do come in, if you can make your way through the mess, Miss, ah—”
“Missus,” said the woman. “Reynolds. Maria Reynolds.”
A married woman, Alex thought. I’m safe.
He didn’t know how wrong he was.
7
A Lady and A Gentleman
The Hamilton Town House
New York, New York
July 1785
Eliza knew only the briefest details about Alex’s new case. When he had first set up shop she had followed his work eagerly, and prided herself on the legal knowledge she absorbed both from her husband and from the massive tomes he left around the house. But running a household is as demanding a job as any attorney’s, and Eliza had her own interests as well, not the least of which was the plight of the hundreds of orphans who had lost their fathers to the war and their mothers to societal neglect. And now she had her pregnancy, too.
The truth was, though, the work of appointing a nursery went surprisingly quickly. The furniture was bought or ordered, the fabric purchased. In four or five months they would move John into Columbia College quarters, after which they would paint and paper the room for baby Philip. Until then, there were just quiet hours with Emma spent knitting, sewing, and embroidering: swaddling clothes and nappies, christening gowns and bedsheets, booties, blankets, beanies.
And while all this was happening there was the miracle of her body, which was not just hers anymore, but shared space with the new life taking form within her womb. The changes were minuscule, yet Eliza could feel them every day. First, there was a general swelling. It wasn’t like gaining a few pounds after a week of dietary excess. It was more like she was becoming bigger, more powerful, like a Titaness preparing to bring a Zeus or Poseidon into the world. After the initial lethargy and stomach discomfort, she found herself ravenously hungry and full of energy. As a little girl, she had marveled at the mares on the Pastures, who, minutes after foaling, were back on their feet and keeping a wary eye on their newborn, ready to defend it from any threat. She had seen deer and sows and even chickens display the same zeal, and once she had even seen a wolf charge a pack of her father’s hunting dogs and drive them away from her pup single-handedly. Eliza felt like that: fierce, wild, braver than she had ever been. The anxiety around conception was already a distant memory. She was suffused with calm—which left her free to concentrate on other things. Like her new charges, Emma, John, and Drayton.
* * *
• • •
ELIZA KNEW BEFORE the voice came from the other side of the door that it was Drayton. In the past month she had come to recognize his unique knock, which, though quite firm, was somehow . . . polite, as if he wanted to make sure you knew that he didn’t want to disturb you, but also didn’t want you not to hear him, lest you miss whatever information he was conveying.
“Come in, Drayton,” she called.
Drayton’s door opening was similarly forceful yet controlled. Unlike Loewes, the footman at the Pastures, who was wont to nudge the door open with his hip, Drayton never risked banging the door against the wall by such a maneuver. He always kept one hand on the knob and walked through the door as though he were setting a puzzle piece in place; if he was delivering a large tray, he would have set it down on the hallway credenza, and retrieved it after. On this occasion, however, he held only a small salver, on which, presumably, sat a letter or calling card.
“This came—” Drayton’s voice caught in his throat. “Oh, pardon me, Mrs. Hamilton. I didn’t realize that Emma, that is, Miss Trask, was attending to your toilette.”
For a boy raised in the wilds of Ohio, Drayton had acquired an extraordinarily courtly manner, although his French accent was an approximation at best. Eliza had to fight back a giggle at his pronunciation of toilette, which sounded like “wallet” with a “t” in front of it. Even Emma, standing behind Eliza but visible in the mirror over her vanity table, couldn’t quite suppress her smile.
Her own eyes were staring out of a face that was only half made up, the powder applied but no color as yet painted onto lips or cheeks or eyes, so that she seemed a ghostly visage in the lamplight. Above her, Emma’s face was a vision of youthful purity, free of paint or powder, her hair worn in simple braids that coiled around her head like a tiara. Emma’s eyes flickered to Drayton, then quickly shifted back to the top of Eliza’s head. For a girl who had helped raise her brother and taken care of her father, she was remarkably skittish around boys.
Eliza found Drayton’s eyes in the mirror now. “I hope I’m not shattering any illusions about the nature of female beauty. I’m afraid that there is more than a little artifice to it.” She glanced at the tray in Drayton’s hand. “Please tell me that’s not from Mr. Hamilton.”
Drayton’s mouth opened, then closed. “I, I—” he stuttered. Then, in a voice that sounded almost defeated, as if he hated to disappoint his mistress: “Yes, ma’am.”
Eliza sighed. “If you don’t mind, Emma?”
“Of course, Mrs. Hamilton.” Emma stepped across the room to Drayton. There was a little awkwardness as Drayton held the salver out to her, then pulled it back and instead handed it to Emma, perhaps thinking it inappropriate to proffer a letter to Emma in the same manner as he would the mistress.
“Thank you, Drayton,” Emma said pertly, and curtsied.
Even in the lamplight Eliza could see Drayton’s blush.
“Y-you’re welcome, Miss Trask. Mrs. Hamilton,” he threw in, backing from the room like a courtier.
“Oh, Drayton, I was just teasing,” said Emma gently.
Drayton turned even redder as he closed the door.
“Be kind to him,” said Eliza. “The Penningtons come from good stock, even if they did decide to set out for the frontier like pioneers. Rowena herself always says that her sister was much more interested in decorum than she is, and no doubt she inculcated those values in her son. He is perhaps trying too hard, but we should attribute that to an eagerness to do his job well, rather than an affectation to a station not his own.”
“You mean, like me?”
Eliza whirled around on her stool, nearly getting a brush in her eye. “Emma! Whatever do you mean?”
Emma resumed her work, keeping her eyes fastened on her brush rather than Eliza’s. Her voice was modest, bordering on self-deprecating. “I mean that, while I appreciate your invitation to tonight’s soiree, Mrs. Hamilton, I do not think it appropriate for a servant to mix with gentlefolk as though there were no difference in their stations.”
E
liza sat back, then took Emma’s hand in hers. “But you’re not a servant, Emma. You’re more like a, a houseguest who helps out, as it were.”
Emma smiled wryly, her hand limp in Eliza’s. “That is kind of you to say, Mrs. Hamilton, and I hope you know how very grateful I am to you and Mr. Hamilton for taking in a strange girl of somewhat dubious origins. Nevertheless, it is you who sits in the curule and I who applies the paint.” She twirled her brush in her fingers, though she didn’t pull her hand free.
Eliza smiled warmly. “No servant would know the word curule,” she said.
“Servants can read, Mrs. Hamilton. Why, just the other day I saw Drayton curled up beside the kitchen stove, engrossed in a volume of Don Quixote. ‘The Smollett translation,’ he told me, as nice as you please.”
“Well, it is far superior to the Ormsby,” Eliza said.
Emma shook her head in bewilderment. “Which only proves my point, that servants like me and Drayton can have a certain amount of discernment. Yet it doesn’t change our class. Now, please turn, or we shall never finish.”
Eliza turned obligingly, and Emma resumed work on her maquillage. Like her husband, Eliza had signed on to the idea that in the new America class was nothing more than an indication of income, not values or, even worse, social station. On some level she knew that it was easy for her to think this, being wealthy and well-educated herself. She knew, too, that it was more an ideal than an actuality, since the amount of money one’s parents possessed determined so much about one’s opportunities. If you were born poor there was a good likelihood that you would remain poor, no matter how hard you worked, not least because you would be working in the fields or at the hearth from an early age, and not learning the kinds of skills that would lead to more remunerative opportunities. But even if it was only a goal, Eliza still felt it important keep it in mind, lest the United States end up reproducing the hidebound ways of the Europeans.
“Well,” she said now, “and will you still be a servant if you become my sister?”
Emma had to step away to laugh, lest she splatter Eliza. “Oh, Mrs. Hamilton, please! Do not tease me so, or you will leave this room looking like a child’s drawing of a lady”
“Who is teasing? I have seen the way John dotes on you. Why should that not blossom into romance?”
Eliza’s words only prompted more laughter from Emma. “Mr. Schuyler? Flirt with me? He certainly enjoys teasing me even more than you do, but he is hardly interested, I assure you.”
“Oh, Emma Trask, you adorable naïf. What do think teasing is? It is but a boy’s subterfuge for affections he is not yet ready to give voice to. With a little encouragement from you, John will surely speak his mind.”
Emma stepped back a bit. “Oh, Mrs. Hamilton, I could not flirt with your brother. I would feel . . . forward.” She pronounced the word in the softest tone, yet one would think Eliza had asked her to pose nude for some French painter re-creating a Roman bacchanal.
“My dear,” she said gently, “you are much too polite and modest to ever be forward.”
Eliza looked for some sign on the girl’s face that she was interested in her brother, yet Emma’s visage was as serious as it was when she weighed a roll of fabric in her hands. Well, the girl certainly did love sewing.
Still, Eliza thought she heard just the tiniest bit of steel in Emma’s voice, which she found almost refreshing. The girl was so afraid of giving offense that she could sometimes come across as a bit of a wet blanket.
And why shouldn’t Emma be interested in John and John in Emma? They would make an excellent match! Emma’s modesty and thrift was just the antidote to her brother’s carousing. She would settle him and he would raise her station, proving that the newly formed United States was truly the land of equality. Their love would be patriotic, Eliza decided, and she was determined to do everything in her power to encourage the suit.
She was about to say something on that topic, but Emma spoke first. “Mr. Hamilton’s note still awaits your attention,” she said quickly, and, pointedly handing it to her, resumed work on Eliza’s face.
Yes, the note. Eliza hadn’t forgotten about it. She just had no desire to open it, since she was pretty sure she knew what it said. Sighing, she broke the seal and unfolded it.
Darling Eliza,
The Gunn case has been moved up from Monday to today. I will be late at court but should be home before 9. 10 at the latest.
Love, A.
Eliza didn’t remember which was the Gunn case. Another of Alex’s beleaguered loyalists, no doubt, from whom he would realize a ten- or twenty-pound payment when all was said and done. Sometimes Eliza wished that Alex had never won the Childress case. His office was constantly full of sad-faced petitioners hoping to recover their home or job or pony, and would it be permissible for Alex to collect his fee from the settlement rather than in advance? Perhaps he would accept a nice suckling pig or a clutch of eggs in lieu of coin? Alex was certainly making money, but not “hand over fist,” as they said, and she wondered if it was worth the endless days at the office and at court.
But if she didn’t like his busy schedule, she had certainly grown accustomed to it, and forty-five minutes later, when Emma had gone off to her room to change into what she called her “party frock,” Eliza headed downstairs to make sure everything was in order and to prepare to greet her guests on her own—again.
As soon as she got downstairs, however, she realized she wouldn’t be on her own tonight. “Well, well, you don’t look half bad,” said John.
He was sitting on the yellow sofa in the living room, his white-stockinged ankles crossed on the lacquered top of a low table before it.
“First, dear brother, thank you for the compliment, as it were. Second, if you don’t remove your filthy shoes from my table, I will be forced to have Drayton remove them for you.”
“Filthy?” John laughed as he sat up and moved his feet to the floor. “Why, these shoes have never touched pavement. I only wear them to at-home parties.”
Eliza had to admit that the shoes did look pretty immaculate. They were powder-blue silk with gold and silver embroidery, matching his suit. That suit, Eliza saw as John stood up, was of a rather affected European courtly cut, with exaggerated cuffs that reached nearly to the crook of his elbow and lapels that folded open all the way to his shoulders and a veritable Niagara Falls of lace spilling down from his throat. Eliza still remembered when John was loath to don naught but coarse woolen breeches and linen tunics. This foppish apparition in front of her was something entirely new. It was not unhandsome, albeit in a ridiculous way. It just wasn’t the John who used to throw snowballs at her.
My little brother is growing up, she thought. And turning into a dandy.
“That is a . . . shiny suit,” Eliza said.
“Thank you—I think,” John replied. “I assumed you would be wearing one of your ‘handsome’ dresses in burgundy or ruby or emerald or some similarly dark jewel. I thought I’d stand out.”
Eliza laughed. She was in fact wearing a burgundy dress, although it was lightened by a pale green bodice—uncorsetted, of course, so as not to squeeze the baby. (This might have been her favorite part of being pregnant—no corsets for months and months and months!) The bodice was, however, heavily embroidered with a dark thread, so the effect was not exactly bright.
“This is a lovely dress,” she protested.
“Indeed,” John said. “I can see Mama wearing it.” Eliza gasped as John continued: “You’re lucky you’re so beautiful, sister. You can get away with a sober dress. And of course you’re married—and ‘with child,’ as they say—so it doesn’t really matter,” he added with a wink.
“And you’re lucky you’re my brother, or my husband would surely be calling you out for speaking to his wife in such a manner.”
“Just as long as it’s not swords,” John said. “This jacket must weigh twen
ty pounds. It is all I can do to lift my glass to my lips. Speaking of which—” He turned to a cabinet on which a decanter of amber liquid sat next to an array of crystal goblets.
“Do not dare, John! That is the last of Stephen’s honey wine. It is for our guests.”
“Never fear, I just want a glass.” John grabbed a goblet and pulled open the door to the cabinet, revealing a plain bottle filled with a dark brown, slightly sinister-looking liquid.
“This is brewed by a man over on Vesey Street,” he explained as he opened it. “It doesn’t have a name, but the fellows at Columbia call it Rite of Passage, since every freshman has to drink a bottle of it on his first day at school.” He smiled proudly as he poured a healthy dose of the evil-looking medicine into his glass. “I’m the only one who was able to do it, and I finished James Frantz’s and Frederick McAdams’s bottles as well.”
“God save us,” Eliza said. “I can smell it from here. You must have the constitution of an ox.”
“It has nothing to do with constitution,” John said, downing his shot in one gulp. “And everything to do with practice, practice, practice.” He topped off his glass and proffered the bottle to Eliza. “Want to try?”
“No thank you,” Eliza said, waving her hand in front of her nose. “If you applied yourself half as much to your studies as you do to your carousing, you would be top of your class.”
“I’m already top of my class. Professor Lewis called my paper on Paradise Lost ‘commendable, if unconventional.’”
“Let me guess,” Eliza said, “you took Satan’s side?”
“But he has all the best lines! ‘Farewell happy Fields / Where Joy forever dwells: hail horrors, hail / Infernal world’! How can you not root for someone who says that?”
Before Eliza could answer, John turned to someone behind her and brightened considerably. “And who have we here?
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