“We’ll make it, miss,” Private Hines shouted to reassure her through the scarves wrapped around his head and face. A forty-year-old who’d been assigned to the easier job of Schuyler’s guard after he’d suffered a ruptured hernia, Hines always hunched with some pain. But he seemed devoted to her father, having grown up in the city of Albany. Private Hines had volunteered for the journey, crossed sheepskins across his chest to withstand the winds, and now braced himself on the rails behind her seat, ready to shoot at anyone who threatened her.
Peggy nodded, grateful, and turned around. Her feet were prickling with cold, and she knew that soon she’d be shivering all over.
Another mile dragged on with nothing but thick forest and snow.
Then, what seemed a miracle. Peggy spotted a lone, thin figure standing atop a stump, backlit by the sunset. It seemed to have wings, opening and closing, like an angel. A guardian? Or one of death? Peggy held her breath. Was she so cold she was hallucinating?
But within a few more yards of the sled sliding along, she realized the figure was a sentry. He was slapping his arms to keep warm, and the shawl of his linsey-woolsey hunting shirt was flapping up and down with the motion of his desperate flagellation.
“Ho! Stop and identify yourself!” the sentry shouted in a thin voice as three other fellows dashed from out of a lean-to they’d fashioned of sticks, and aimed muskets at them.
“Peace, lads,” Private Hines called. “We’re friends.”
Peggy flinched at the sight of the soldiers’ ragged appearance. Their breeches and wool stockings were torn and patched. Thin, worn blankets were tied as tight as possible around their bodies with twine. She could barely see their gaunt faces through the towels they’d tied over their tricorn hats and under their chins to cover their ears. One had wrapped whatever pitiable shoes he wore in scraps of cloth. Another—the boy couldn’t have been more than fifteen—stumbled in tall Hessian boots he’d obviously commandeered from a dead foe, which were far too big for his feet.
But to Peggy, they were possibly the most beautiful creatures she’d ever seen.
“This is Dr. Cochran’s niece, come to visit him,” Private Hines called out.
“What’s the password?”
“No idea, son,” Hines called back.
The soldiers didn’t move, eyeing them.
“You going to keep a lady cold and caught in nightfall?” Lisbon demanded.
Peggy was grateful for his bold question and protectiveness of her. But she knew some might not respect an enslaved man being that brave and confident. He had always been like that. Lisbon should be a soldier, thought Peggy, even though she knew her father disapproved of Black troops.
Three of the soldiers lowered their guns. The fourth kept his Brown Bess aimed.
The man on the stump asked, “What’s the name of the good doctor’s wife? Not her Christian name. What her family calls her?”
Peggy pulled the beaver pelts from her face. “G-G-Gitty,” Peggy said. The shivers now had her and she was shaking all over.
One of the sentry posts smacked the arm of the man still pointing his musket at her. “Now look what you gone and done. You must have given her fright. The poor lady is a-shivering.”
The angel-soldier jumped off his stump, landing thigh-deep in snow, and waded to the sleigh. Pointing down the hill and then to the right, he explained to Lisbon how to find the Cochrans’ house. He touched the brim of his hat to Peggy, saying, “Give my respects to your uncle, miss. He saved me from a rattlesnake bite. My skin turned blood-orange. One side was completely paralyzed. Thought I was long gone to Hades, but Dr. Cochran rubbed the bite with mercury ointment and made me drink a quart of olive oil. And here I be.”
He was standing close enough to the sled that in the eerie silence of that snow-muffled forest she could hear his stomach whine and roll over and over in a long, anguished growl. And in the fast-falling twilight, she caught the flash-grimace of starvation pain on his face.
“Oh, sir, please, let me share the dinner I packed from home. I fear I have eaten most of it on the road here. But there is a little roasted chicken and some biscuits left, and dried apples.”
Peggy nearly cried at the response on their faces. The boy swimming in those enormous boots gasped and staggered forward. The man who’d been last to lower his musket bit his lip and rubbed his eye, looked away and wiped his nose with his sleeve, trying to mask his tears. Damning herself for gluttony, she pulled a basket from under her blankets.
The head sentry’s hands trembled as he reached for her offering. “Much obliged, miss,” he choked out, and then carefully divvied up the food equally among them before handing her back the basket.
As Lisbon clucked the horses and they slid away, Peggy heard them saying grace.
Ten minutes gone and they were engulfed in darkness, but not far below and beyond them in a gentle valley, candles were being lit inside houses she couldn’t yet see, little beckoning stars. Finally, in rising moonlight they reached the village and the little white-clapboard house on its edge that held her family—just as snow, big lacy flakes, began to drift down from the heavens.
“Hello in the house!” Lisbon shouted.
The front door opened and out spilled light and warmth, relieved joyful greetings, her uncle, her aunt, Eliza, and then Angelica, too! Peggy had had no idea that her eldest sister had traveled to Morristown as well. No letters with that news had made it through to Albany.
The Schuyler sisters! All together again!
Swept up in a tight embrace of laughter, kisses, and taffeta, Peggy was scooped out of the sled, out of the night, into the little house and its glow.
“That was the cussedest, most foolhardy . . . what a nincompoopa!”
Despite her face being so frozen she could barely feel it, Peggy grinned. “Good evening, Uncle Johnny.”
“Good evening, indeed,” fussed the blunt Irish-American surgeon as Eliza guided Peggy to a chair by the fire. “Quick, girls, pull off those boots and stockings. Rub her feet down. Brisk now. That’s it. The child is like to be frostbit.”
Dr. Cochran poured a golden liquid into a glass, waiting for Peggy’s hands to stop shaking with shivers so he could hand it to her. “And what if you hadn’t made it through, and lay in a snowbank somewhere? You’d be nothing but a pretty corpse, you would. Not found until the thaw when the crocus sprouted. I can hear the poetic laments for you now. And all for the thought of basking in some sunshine of jollity!”
“But I did get through, uncle,” she answered gleefully, despite her teeth chattering.
Cochran snorted. “Aye. The faeries looked after you, sure, Miss Meaghan-fay-Meaghan.” Hearing him use his Irish endearment of her name, Peggy knew he was amused as well as worried. “Here, now.” He took her hand, blew warmth on it, and handed her the goblet. “Drink this. All of it. Straight down.”
“What is it?” Her nose wasn’t working yet, either. It certainly didn’t look like olive oil, although she was as paralyzed with cold as if she had been rattlesnake-bit.
“Rum.” He finally grinned himself.
“Rum?” she asked with surprise. She’d never been allowed spirits other than Madeira before.
“She’ll smell like a pirate, Uncle John,” Eliza whispered.
“And so she should, with the antics she’s been up to!” Cochran crossed his arms. “Drink!”
Angelica winked at her. “Go on.”
Peggy downed the searing liquor. Suddenly she felt her toes.
“Now then,” began Angelica, leaning over and taking Peggy’s face in her hands. “You have come just in time, little sister. There is a ball tonight!”
Peggy could hardly believe her good luck.
Angelica straightened back up. “No time to unpack your trunk. But I have the perfect dress for you.”
Peggy nodded happily. How many times she had longed to borrow her eldest sister’s exquisite gowns!
“Perfect dress for what?” Cochran demanded, placing the
decanter on a table and coming back to the hearth to keep watch on his patient.
“For the ball!”
“What? No, madam. This child needs to stay by a fire.”
“Oh, Uncle J,” Angelica crooned, “what better way for her to warm up than to dance?” She threaded her arm under his and squeezed it. “Eliza and I will keep watch over her.”
Peggy nodded. Angelica always made the best arguments.
Cochran hesitated, then blustered, “You are full of the blarney, you are, Mrs. Carter. And dangerously so, I might add. To think I saved the Marquis de Lafayette from his wounds at Brandywine, only to have him almost expire from merrymaking at your Boston home. There was hell for me to pay with His Excellency for letting that lad’s departure to France be delayed because of overconsumption at your table. Washington was desperate for Lafayette to plead our cause to the French king.”
“Surely the marquis will return with good news from King Louis this spring,” Eliza interrupted. “Don’t you think, uncle?”
“Good Lord willing. We are surely in need.” Cochran inspected Peggy again. “There. I see some rose in your cheeks now.” He smiled.
Peggy nodded. All better now. Always better when the Schuyler sisters were together, plotting merriment.
“Then she is absolutely fine to accompany us to the ball.” Angelica pressed her point.
Peggy nodded emphatically. “Please, uncle?”
Cochran ignored Peggy and continued fussing at Angelica. “Do you want her developing quinsy? Is good-timing that important to you that you would risk your sister’s health?”
At that, Angelica finally bristled. “It is important for morale. General Washington endorses these assemblies himself, as you well know, uncle. He and thirty officers have paid four hundred dollars apiece to subscribe to a series of balls.”
“Four hundred dollars!” breathed Eliza.
“Yes,” Angelica continued, “quite a financial sacrifice on their part to create a happy diversion for the officers in camp. Your gallant Colonel Hamilton told me just the other day that he only draws sixty-dollars-a-month salary. So this subscription has cost him more than a year’s commission. Poor man.” She looked pointedly at Eliza.
Peggy frowned. Even in the haze of the rum saturating her body and mind, she wondered why Eliza’s suitor would be telling Angelica about his wages.
“Poor man, pshaw,” Cochran snorted. “The man is living on air these days anyway—he doesn’t need money.” He smiled at Eliza, but talked to Peggy. “The lad comes to deliver a message from His Excellency and this one,” he gestured toward Eliza, “opens the door. Shot through the heart, he was, at first sight. Every night since I come home weary from the hospital and want to stretch out on the settee for a wee bit of rest before supper and what do I find? It occupied by these earnestly chatting lovers.”
Eliza’s face flushed pink. But she rose to join her sister’s argument. “Oh, uncle, if the officers are paying that much for a night of diversion from all their cares, we must all go to provide them partners on the dance floor.”
Uh-oh, thought Peggy. Eliza was already too protective of this man. Good thing she had come.
Cochran paused, softening as everyone did at Eliza’s sweet-natured concerns. He walked to the window and pressed his face against the panes. “It’s snowing again. Hard. What is this—the fourth storm this month? On top of all that came before.” He watched a few more moments. “From the way it’s coming down, it will probably drop a few more inches.” He looked back to the sisters and to his wife, who had just entered with a bowl of soup for Peggy. “Gitty, my love, talk some sense to these girls.”
“About what, my dear?”
“This infernal ball!”
“Oh, doesn’t it sound wonderful?” The plump little lady brightened. “I hear the general has asked the military bands to come with French horns and flutes. Won’t it be marvelous to have more than just a violin?”
“NO!” Cochran roared. “This child cannot go. She has been out in this below-freezing weather for days. She must go to bed by a stoked fire. Immediately!”
Peggy frowned. Now that her face was unfrozen, she felt her lips pout. She started to open her mouth to protest, but Angelica put her delicate hand on Peggy’s shoulder and shook her head slightly. Looking up into her sister’s beautiful face, Peggy recognized a look of warning that said Angelica had a salvo ready. So she stayed silent.
“Oh, uncle, it’s far too early for bedtime,” Angelica scoffed, adding, “What time is it anyway?”
“Wh-wh-what?” Cochran seemed oddly flustered by the question. He glanced out the window, ostensibly to gauge the fall of darkness for his answer. “I suspect half past five.”
He paced back to the hearth, hands on his hips, looking at Angelica with a sudden nervousness. Then he surveyed Peggy carefully before asking in a completely new tone of voice, “What think you of the outing, lass?”
Peggy hiccuped.
Instantly, Angelica gathered her up, taking Eliza’s hand, too, and danced them out of the room toward the stairs. “Wait till you see how pretty she’ll be, uncle,” Angelica chirped from the hallway.
“I’ll be driving that sleigh, I will,” Cochran shouted after them. “I’ve bandaged too many a local girl tossed into the snow out of overturned sleds, driven helter-skelter by rogues! Lovesick officers! Idiots!”
The girls giggled and swept up the stairs as one.
“Why did you ask him the time, Angelica? And why did that change his attitude?” Eliza whispered.
“Let’s just say, sister, that our beloved Uncle Johnny lost his pocket watch at gaming tables while visiting me in Boston, in a way the retelling would make him blush! He definitely would not want Aunt Gitty to know of it.”
Ten
Winter: The Same Night
The ball was opened by his Excellency the General. When this man unbends from his station, and its weighty functions, he is even then like a philosopher, who mixes with the amusements of the world, that he may teach it what is right, or turn its trifles into instruction.
—Pennsylvania Packet
His Excellency . . . danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down. Upon the whole we had a pretty little frisk.
—Brigadier General Nathaniel Greene
AS GUESTS ARRIVED, SHAKING SNOW FROM THEIR outer cloaks, Peggy hid in a corner, her back turned to the dance floor. She was desperately trying to yank up her dress and fluff out some of the lace ornamenting the neckline of the ball gown Angelica had put her into. If one could call it a neckline. Cut tight from the shoulders, the ruby-colored satin dropped to her waist in a wide-open V that was filled by a stomacher of overlapping rows of puffed, creamy lace. Along its top and from under the edges of her shoulders peeked a diaphanous fringe of neatly embroidered silk organza—floaty, gorgeous, but so . . . so revealing.
Plus, Angelica had tied her stays so tight and the stomacher was so stiff, Peggy’s breasts were compressed and pushed up in the most embarrassing manner. She was terrified they might escape during one of the dance’s bows or skipping circles. If only she could pull the stomacher up a bit, she thought, as she squirmed and tugged. Or maybe she could tuck her breasts down some. . . .
“Huzzah! Here she is—Aglaea herself.”
Startled, Peggy whirled around, her hand still stuck in the top of her dress.
The man chuckled, quickly lowering his eyes, and bowed. “Miss Schuyler.”
Peggy dropped her hands to her sides, mortified, hastily curtsying. As she rose, she realized with horror who stood before her: Alexander Hamilton.
“Finally, I have the honor to meet the last of the three Schuyler Graces.” His violet-blue eyes quickly flicked up and down her figure as he added, “I see the Greeks were right; the youngest is aptly named splendor.”
Did he think she didn’t see his amusement at her, that rapid undressing look, or his rather shameless smirk? Peggy felt her eyebrow shoot up although she kept her answer ballroom-c
ourteous. First, to let this cocky aide-de-camp know that she knew precisely the reference he was making to Greek literature. “You are too kind, sir. I would hardly claim the role of superior beauty that mythology grants the youngest of the three Graces. But Eliza is surely the middle Grace—Euphrosyne—the epitome of delight and joyfulness. Don’t you think?”
“Indeed, Miss Peggy, your sister Eliza is all that.” His smile twitched—with surprise, a tinge of admiration?—before he continued, “Her lovely portrait of you certainly captured your beauty. She did not warn me, however, of your—”
“My education?” Peggy interrupted, but her tone was light, almost flirtatious. What was the matter with her? There was just something about this man that invited such frothy repartee.
“Your quick wit,” Hamilton bantered back.
“We have met before, you know,” said Peggy.
He frowned. A moment of uncertainty clouded his smooth, fair face and then dissipated. “I think not, mademoiselle,” he said. “I would not forget you.”
Using her French to emphasize her point, Peggy told him that it was indeed true they had met and that he had called her a nymph: “Mais c’est vrai. La dernière fois que nous nous sommes rencontrés, vous m’avez appelée une nymphe.”
Hamilton crossed his arms, stepped back, and shook his head. But he grinned, intrigued. “Impossible. You are a nymph, certainement. Mais une telle beauté est inoubliable. Your beauty is completely unforgettable.”
She shrugged. “Whether you care to admit it or not, we have met.”
“Perhaps in a dream, then?” he quipped.
“Hardly. More of a nightmare, I’d call it.”
Hamilton clutched his chest. “A nightmare? Ouch! Shot through the heart, Miss Peggy.” He squinted at her a bit, searching his memory, which gave her a moment to assess him. He was trim and delicate, not much taller than she, but his lithe build kept him from seeming short. And as beautiful as those huge, intense eyes were, they were close-set. The bridge of his nose was also low, almost like it had been pressed flat by a hot poker, so that when he frowned, his eyebrows seemed to truly knit together. It was, above all else, an expressive face—his moods probably easy to read despite any efforts he might make to hide them.
Hamilton and Peggy! Page 12
