All for One

by Melissa de la Cruz

  They were saved by the timely arrival of Mr. Murray, a genial man with a bald head and a red mustache. Murray was well-known as one of the most successful merchants in the city, and kept Inclenberg largely as a country folly, but still took its stewardship seriously. He had just returned from his monthly survey of his extensive holdings and was tired and eager for his dinner.

  “Have ye made your request yet?” he said, slipping into polite but brisk Quaker dialect. “You’re here about the orphanage, are you not?”

  Eliza nodded. “Of course I am. But it is also a great pleasure to finally see the inside of Inclenberg. It is such a lovely house. I have heard it praised many times, but the accolades don’t do it justice.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, my dear,” Mr. Murray said. “But so will social pressure. Your orphanage is a hotter ticket than the opera, which, being Quakers, Mrs. Murray and I do not subscribe to. But I told her that she should offer ye fifty pounds a year. I gather that is the going rate, and we would not wish to be seen as skimping.”

  “Oh, Robert, it is for the unfortunate children! Not for our reputations! Besides, there will be time for business talk later,” Mrs. Murray said here. “We were just getting acquainted!”

  Eliza did her best not to blanch. They had already been here nearly two hours and had still to travel on to Mount Pleasant. To her relief, Mr. Murray let out a raucous laugh.

  “Yes, I know all about your ‘getting acquainted’ afternoons. General Howe, is it?” he said, turning to Eliza. Then, in a pitch-perfect imitation of his wife: “‘I must have told him the story of every foal, calf, lamb, shoat, or chick that was ever born.’ What she didn’t tell ye was that she tells every guest that story, and not just General Howe. The only thing different that day was the wine, which is like poison to her constitution, but she braved it nevertheless. She’s a stout, brave lass, my Mary is, but ye’ll never make it to Mount Pleasant if you don’t flee now.”

  Mrs. Murray bore all this with a serene smile on her face and the good humor of one-half of a long-married couple to whom the other’s moves are as familiar and impotent as a game of naughts and crosses.

  As she took in the natural comfort between Mr. and Mrs. Murray, Eliza hoped she would be as placid one day when her husband teased her so. But their recent argument still festered like a wound. They should not have said those things to each other. She missed him and wished suddenly that she could turn back home right then, instead of waiting an entire week. Thinking of her beloved, she wondered what they would be like when they were as long-married as the Murrays.

  “Send the bill to Mr. Murray’s office on Vesey Street,” Mrs. Murray said wryly. “I do hope you’ll come back soon. I hardly had a chance to tell you about our prize ewe, who bore us not one, not two, but three sets of twins, all as jet black as a moonless night. And the milk! It has the earthiness of fresh-mown—”

  “Run!” Mr. Murray said. “She’s warming up, and there’ll be no stopping her soon! Sheldon!” he added in a louder voice. “Come get these boots off my feet, my man. And bring me a slice of bread while ye’re at it!”

  Eliza and Emma shared a conspiratorial glance, and after thanking their hosts profusely, hurriedly took their leave out the front door to make their escape. There, they were joined shortly by Rowena, who came around from the back, and Drayton, who rode up from the barn in the carriage. His face lit up as soon as he saw the group, though Eliza thought there was a particular gleam in his eye when it landed on Emma. He all but leapt from his seat trying to assist the ladies into the carriage instead of allowing Sheldon to do it, as protocol dictated.

  “Allow me, Mr. Sheldon,” he said, practically elbowing the Murrays’ footman out of the way to help Eliza into the carriage. “I have had an idle afternoon, and feel I need to earn my bread. Emma,” he added then, extending a hand to her, which she took almost shyly.

  Soon enough they were on their way. All in all, Eliza was pleased with how the visit had gone, though she found herself oddly tired. Perhaps the rollicking carriage was a bit more trying than she remembered? Or perhaps it was her pregnancy. She had to conserve some of her energy for the baby growing inside her. She allowed her eyes to fall closed during the ride to Mount Pleasant, which was hardly an hour away.

  Like Murray Hill, the Beekmans’ estate was located on the east side of the island, though rather closer to the river, and about a mile farther north. The light had begun to slant noticeably as the sun sank when the rambling mansion first came into view. It was larger than Inclenberg, though somewhat less formal in nature, being built into the side of a hill, with the stone foundation of the basement fully exposed on the west and south sides of the house, and the front door opened to an unadorned wooden staircase that led to a broad veranda. Still, it had a hominess to it that Murray Hill did not possess, reminding Eliza more of the Schuylers’ summer home in Saratoga than the refined elegance of the Pastures. Despite its vast size, its facade was charming and warm, inviting rather than standoffish. The barns and paddocks and outbuildings all spoke of agricultural industry and gentlemanly indolence in equal measure.

  “Oh, what a delightful-looking house!” Emma exclaimed.

  “Is it not?” Rowena agreed. “Though it pains me to be so far separated from my beloved Simon, when I saw that he would be living here I could not be completely sad, for I knew that he would be happier in this place than in the crowded confines of the city.”

  “You sound as if you do not enjoy your current living situation,” Eliza said in alarm, rousing herself. She could not bear the thought of losing her cook. It wasn’t just that her artistry with meat and vegetables and seasonings was unparalleled. She had been with Alex and Eliza since they first lived on their own, and felt like a part of the family.

  “Oh, I am a city girl, never you fear, Mrs. Hamilton. I do not need to chase the deer out of my garden or shoo the foxes from my hens, and I am perfectly content to let someone else slaughter and dress my beef and ham. But my Simon cannot be penned in. He needs his space to roam, and here he has it in spades.”

  Just then, a horse galloped up the road toward the carriage, ridden by a slight figure who appeared to be hatless and jacketless to boot. Despite the blond locks, Eliza did not recognize him until he pulled up alongside the carriage shouting, “Mama! Mama!”

  In the past year Simon seemed to have added four inches in height, and his skin had acquired the healthy glow of one who works in the sun much of the day.

  “Simon!” Rowena called ecstatically. “Oh, my only boy!”

  At this heartwarming display, Eliza felt her hand search for her stomach and the new life taking shape there. It seemed impossible that in four or five months she too would be calling someone her “only boy,” and that one day soon after he would be calling her “Mama.” She felt a lump in her throat. She was so looking forward to meeting him.

  “I don’t care if Mrs. Murray is a Quaker and saved the republic,” she said under her breath to Emma. “She is a terrible snob. It would take a heart of coal to deprive mother and son of such a joyous reunion.”

  Emma didn’t say anything in response, but she clasped Eliza’s hand in hers and squeezed it.

  “Drayton Pennington, if you do not stop this carriage immediately I will leap from it and you’ll be the cause of my death!” Rowena was saying now. Where a few hours ago she had complained that the ride was too rollicksome, now she was standing up and fiddling with the door of the carriage as if she would indeed fling it open and jump to the road.

  In fact the carriage was moving at a fairly restrained trot, and it was but a moment before Drayton reined the horses in. Simon had already leapt from his mount, and now he yanked the carriage door open so suddenly that his mother almost fell into his arms. A moment later, mother and son were locked in an embrace while tears of joy rolled down Rowena’s cheeks.

  “Come, Mama,” Simon said, without even acknowle
dging Eliza. “I have my apartment now that I share with the head groom, with a couch and table and bed and a proper stove! We shall spend the week there and it will be like when we lived in our own house when Papa was alive.” Tugging at her arm with one hand, while holding his horse’s reins with the other, he attempted to lead her down the hill.

  “We’ll not go anywhere, my young lad, until you greet Mrs. Hamilton properly,” his mother remonstrated. “Without her kindness, we would not be having this happy reunion!”

  Simon looked up to the carriage with a bright if distracted smile. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Hamilton! It is so nice to see you again and thank you for bringing Mama to see me. Hello to you, too, strange lady, and to you, strange man! Mama, I have said hello,” he said, turning back to Rowena, “may we go now?”

  “Please, Rowena,” Eliza said, laughing, “allow the young gentleman to lead you away, or I fear he will tear your arm off with his newfound strength.”

  The happy pair tottered off, their laughter and shouts floating to the carriage as, with a flick of Drayton’s whip, it started back up the hill. As the main drive came into view, Eliza could see a pair of carriages on the gravel. One was an elegant gold-paneled brougham, the other a simple chaise like the one Eliza, Emma, and Drayton occupied. In fact, Eliza realized, it was all but identical, as if it had been rented from the same stable that the Hamiltons had acquired theirs. She didn’t understand the significance of what she was seeing, however, until they had alit from their own carriage and were shown up the stairs to the verandah, where a pair of figures was emerging from the front door.

  “Hello, sister!” a winking John smiled at her. “I thought you would never arrive! Mary Murray must have sucked you in like she sucked in General Howe.”

  “Oh!” Eliza said, surprised. Her eyes darted between her brother and—

  “Oh, don’t mention General You-Know-Who,” Betty Van Rensselaer said. “You know he’s a touchy subject around here.” She smiled coyly then—not at Eliza, but at Drayton.

  “Oh, hullo, Pennington,” she said in accent that was so posh it sounded common, and getting his name correct for once. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Eliza turned to see Drayton’s face go red as an apple. To her surprise, she saw that Emma was blushing as well.

  Her brother leaned over to greet her with a kiss, but Eliza pulled him to her in a rough embrace. “John?” she hissed into his ear. “What is going on? What are you and Betty doing here?”

  “What do you mean?” John said innocently.

  Now Eliza stepped back, and, heedless of James and Jane Beekman, who were emerging from the house to greet her, she pulled her brother aside. “What are you playing at, John Schuyler?”

  “Nothing more than you are, Eliza Hamilton.” He tried to smile, but a mischievous impulse twisted it into a smirk. “You wanted to play matchmaker, so we’re letting you!”

  18

  All-Night Diner

  Ruston’s Ale House and Inn

  New York, New York

  August 1785

  Alex rushed from Saint Paul’s back to his office, where he labored late into the night. He pored over the church’s records of its holdings, totting up figures on page after page, double- and triple-checking his math until he was convinced he’d come up with the right number. He pulled his statute books from the shelf, cross-referencing British and New York law to see if there had been any major changes since independence had been declared. After nearly six hours of labor, he was convinced that the solution he’d come up with was not only legal but ethical, which is to say, Reverend Provoost wouldn’t balk at it the way he had rejected Alex’s previous proposals. More to the point, he was certain it could win in court. And if he did win, the benefits—to his reputation, to his practice, but perhaps most pertinently to his finances—were monumental. Neither the church nor his family need ever worry about money again.

  Jubilant, he closed up shop and headed home, eager to share news of his victory with Eliza. It wasn’t until he was halfway down Wall Street that he saw his darkened windows and remembered: His wife wasn’t in. John had gone to stay with the Livingstons for a spell as he could not imagine life without servants.

  He chuckled to himself but couldn’t deny the pang of sadness he felt. He had, as Eliza herself had pointed out, left his wife home alone a dozen times and more since they’d been married. Not just when he went to war, but when he went to Congress in ’82 and ’83, and who knows how many more occasions on business, for a night, a week, a month, three. How dare she leave him by himself just once!

  If he had a thought to try to stop her plans, thinking traveling was a bit rough on her condition, their argument the weeks before had held his tongue. Who was he to tell her what to do? Still, he was worried about her and hoped she was taking care of herself. There was certainly no one to take care of him at the moment.

  “Oh, what helpless creatures we men are!” he muttered aloud as he let himself into the darkened, chilly house. With Drayton and Rowena gone as well, every single fire had burned out, and even the coals in the kitchen stove had gone cold. It took Alex an embarrassingly long time to light a fire in the dark—he had grown too used to having a servant take care of such quotidian tasks. All the while he worked the flint over the tinder, he was thinking how Eliza’s face would light up when he told her his news. (Light up, he groaned inwardly, as spark after spark failed to catch flame.) He knew once he’d communicated the gist of it—and got her to understand how much money was involved—she was sure to be as ecstatic as he was. More so, even, because she would not only be happy for the family but for him. No one had ever celebrated his triumphs more than she had. Certainly not his family (what little he had); nor General Washington, who had always admired him, yet also seemed to look on him as Kronos had looked at Zeus: as a son whose natural abilities presaged far greater accomplishments than the father could ever hope for.

  At last the tinder caught, then twigs, then logs, and soon heat began to radiate from the stove. Alex lit a lamp and inspected the larder, where half a dark loaf of bread and a crock of butter were all that greeted him. Rowena was an excellent baker, and Alex knew that her bread was as satisfyingly rich as a slice of beef, yet it was still . . . bread. Not exactly the most celebratory dinner in the world.

  “Hang it all, I’m going out,” he said aloud.

  He sealed up the larder and stoked the stove—he wasn’t going through that ordeal again!—looked in vain for his coat for nearly ten minutes before he realized he’d never taken it off, then locked up and headed back down Wall Street toward Water Street. In fifteen minutes, the curtained but still-lighted windows of Ruston’s Ale House came into view.

  A man Alex didn’t recognize was behind the bar when he entered. It had been nearly two weeks since his last visit, and though Alex thought Caroline might have hired a new barman, it was more likely that it simply wasn’t seemly—or safe—for a woman to be working at this time of the night. There were four patrons scattered around the tables despite the late hour. All salts from the look of them, hoary gentlemen who were probably staying at the inn until they shipped out again, and seemed, to a man, to be deep into their cups. Alex thought he would ask to join one of them. He would trade his war stories for their tales of adventure on the high seas. Who knew? Perhaps one of them was from Nevis, or had stopped there, and would have tales of his home island.

  Then he caught sight of her.

  She sat in a shadowy booth in a corner of the restaurant. She was wearing a black dress like a widow and had probably dressed that way to repel the kinds of men who ate dinner at eleven at night. She herself was not eating, but reading a book, with a steaming cup beside her.

  Alex considered ducking back out, not wanting to draw her attention, and not particularly desiring her company. Especially not while Eliza was away. But before he could, she had looked up and seen him. A smile crossed her face, but tentative
ly, as if she could sense his own hesitance, or simply because he had not been in touch with her in nearly two weeks.

  Steeling himself, Alex walked across the room, his hand extended stiffly in front of him like a bayonet. “Good evening, Mrs. Reynolds. It is very nice to see you.”

  His voice rang hollowly in the quiet inn. He wondered whether she could tell he was lying.

  * * *

  • • •

  TWO WEEKS AGO the investigator Miguel de La Vera had reappeared in Alex’s office. He showed up in his usual way: Alex let himself into his locked office only to find Miguel sitting calmly in a chair just beyond the door. A grimace split his dark curly beard, which was the investigator’s way of smiling. “So. As I suspected, this is not your usual case of a British loyalist who had his property seized from him by Governor Clinton.”

  Alex chuckled. “As you know, Señor La Vera, it is you who delivers information to me and not the other way around. For me to tell you anything about my clients would violate their confidentiality.”

  Miguel’s grimace widened into a snarl of amusement. “Somehow I doubt James Reynolds is a client of yours. Perhaps it’s his wife, who has been missing for almost a fortnight?”

  Alex spread his hands in mock helplessness. “I can neither confirm nor deny your supposition, Señor. I only ask that you tell me everything you’ve been able to ascertain about Mr. Reynolds, including any material that pertains to his marriage.”

  Miguel snorted. “Marriage is a fancy term for his union. I find no records of a marriage certificate in Boston or New York in church or courthouse, nor could I find a clergyman or justice of the peace with any memory of Señor Reynolds. So whatever union he has is sanctified, if that is the right word, by a more provisional authority. If that, too, is the right word.”