I, Eliza Hamilton. Susan Holloway Scott
Читать онлайн книгу.
How was this supposed to attract a gentleman who’d had as many sweethearts as there were days in the month?
But I’d dutifully begun to cast on stitches on my needles when the colonel was announced. I looked up eagerly, for he’d arrived with a punctuality that I soon learned was his by nature. His blue uniform was freshly brushed and his boots polished, his buff-colored breeches immaculate, his hair carefully combed and his jaw newly shaved. He wore his dress sword, too, appropriate for both a warrior and a gentleman, and which was likely at his side to make me forget that I’d seen him earlier with the turkey-feather pen. It was clear that he wished to make the best impression possible on me, just as I’d tried to do the same for him.
Yet as a soldier, he understood rank and precedence, and greeted each of the others in the room first with perfect civility. I was reminded of how respectful he’d been to my father when he’d come to our house, and this, too, impressed me, perhaps even more than his dress sword. By the time he finally reached me, I was smiling warmly and happily. I never was able to play the coy coquette, no matter how it might have helped my cause.
“Good evening, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, bending slightly over my chair with one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “Once you gave me leave to call you Betsey, but I wouldn’t presume—”
“Of course you may call me Betsey,” I said quickly, so quickly that I winced inwardly at my own lack of guile. “You’re not presuming, not at all.”
He smiled, too, and I basked in the charm of it.
“Very well, Betsey,” he said easily, as if he’d been calling me that all our lives. “What are you making?”
“I’m knitting a cap for a soldier in need,” I said, holding up my needles with only a few dozen stitches cast on. “I’ve just started.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw my aunt lean forward to draw the colonel’s attention.
“Eliza is known for her charitable acts, Colonel Hamilton,” she said, more loudly than was necessary. “In Albany, she and her mother stitch clothing for the poor, and will offer comfort and food to any needy person who appears at their kitchen door. She hasn’t been here in Morristown but a day, and yet already she has found a way to ease the suffering of the men in the camp.”
I could have groaned aloud from embarrassment. The part about Mamma and me making clothing and feeding unfortunate folk at our back door was true, but the rest was pure invention, and I rather wished my aunt hadn’t invented it.
But the colonel only nodded solemnly. “I have heard considerable praise of the Schuyler ladies, yes,” he said, answering my aunt, but looking directly at me. “There are few things to be held in higher esteem than a lady who is both kind and generous.”
I hastily lowered my gaze to the pitiful beginnings of the cap in my lap. I felt doubly, even triply, obligated to finish it now, plus a score more besides. I gathered the needles in my hands and resumed my knitting.
“You’re very kind, Colonel Hamilton,” I murmured without looking up from my work. “My mother has set the most perfect example for my sisters and me, and we all strive to emulate her goodness.”
“She is a true paragon for us all,” Aunt Gertrude said, though I couldn’t help but notice that her own hands were occupied with a china cup filled with tea. “If you please, Colonel, there is a chair for you beside my husband, who is most eager to learn of His Excellency’s latest plans for the care of the soldiers.”
My uncle’s chin jerked up swiftly like a schoolboy caught dozing at his lessons.
“Yes, yes, Colonel,” he said, patting the railed back of the empty chair. “Come tell me the news from headquarters.”
Oh, this was so patently transparent! If there were any news about the welfare of the soldiers, then my uncle, as the army’s surgeon general, would already be well aware of it.
“Yes, Colonel Hamilton,” I agreed with half a heart. “The chair beside my uncle is meant for you.”
My dismay must have shown on my face, for the colonel leaned forward again toward me, lowering his voice in a confidential tone.
“Please, Betsey, you must call me Hamilton,” he said easily. “Military ranks have no place between friends. Is that so much to ask?”
It was, and we both knew it. It was one thing for him to use my given name, but another for me to address him in such a jocular, even masculine, manner.
“If all your other friends address you as Hamilton, then I shall call you Alexander,” I said boldly, and with equal boldness I let my gaze linger with his. I was purposefully echoing what he’d said to me, long ago in Albany, and I did so to show him I’d not forgotten our very first conversation. I said nothing further, nor did he. It didn’t seem necessary, not then.
Yet if I’d realized that those were to be the only words we exchanged for the rest of the evening, I would have spoken more, much more, and I’d no doubt that he would have, too. My aunt made certain that that didn’t happen, however, keeping Alexander (for I’d now given myself permission to use his given name even in my thoughts) seated between her and my uncle until the case clock on the wall struck ten. Dr. and Mrs. Campfield rose instantly, and my aunt and uncle with them, signaling the end of the evening. The poor colonel was left with no choice but to make his farewells and leave, and that was that.
“Am I never to have a conversation alone with Colonel Hamilton?” I lamented to my aunt once the Campfields retired upstairs for the night. “How am I to become acquainted with him if all I do is listen to him discuss the quality of the soldiers’ provisions with my uncle?”
“The colonel did have a quantity to say on the subject, didn’t he?” My aunt began gathering up the tea and coffee cups and saucers to take to the kitchen, Mrs. Campfield having already sent her servants to bed. “My, that fellow can talk! You can tell he studied the law. There’s no other profession where he’d be paid for the length and breadth of his speeches.”
I collected the last cup from where my uncle had abandoned it upon the mantelpiece and followed her into the kitchen.
“I wouldn’t know how much Colonel Hamilton had to say,” I said, “because he wasn’t permitted to say more than a half dozen words to me.”
“You’ll have time enough for that, Eliza,” Aunt Gertrude said with maddening calm. “This was for the best.”
“But how?” I cried with frustration. “He will not return if all we offer him is a tedious evening.”
Aunt Gertrude raised her brows. “Oh, it was not so bad as that. You’re nearly half done with that knitted cap.”
“Aunt Gertrude, please,” I pleaded. “Knitting for the soldiers is important, to be sure, but it’s also important that Colonel Hamilton and I—”
“Hush,” she said mildly. “I shall tell you what is important, niece, and I will be blunt, so that you will listen. You and I have already discussed how Colonel Hamilton is a charming, handsome fellow accustomed to having young women and a few older ones as well smile and sigh over him, much as you did tonight. He is accustomed to that occurring without much effort or responsibility on his part, and he is also accustomed to those same women obliging him with their favors in return.”
“I know that, Aunt, and I—”
“I doubt that you do,” she said. “Do you know the colonel’s reputation about Morristown for what can indelicately be called whoring? I’ve heard him likened to a tomcat, and no wonder.”
I flushed, and made a small strangled sound in my throat. It was not the vulgar words coming so unexpectedly from my aunt’s lips that startled me, but the thought of the gallant colonel engaged in what the word described. To be sure, I wasn’t entirely certain what whoring entailed, yet I knew what a whore was, and could guess the rest.
My aunt sighed. “I didn’t intend to shock