I, Eliza Hamilton. Susan Holloway Scott
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prayed for you ever since that first night, exactly as I promised,” I said, my fingers spreading over the front of his waistcoat. “My prayers have been answered, too.”
“Perhaps mine have as well.” He reached up to cradle my jaw with one hand, gently turning my face up toward his. “You’re kind and generous and tender to a fault, especially where my wretched self is concerned. Have I told you that you’re beautiful as well?”
“You have,” I said playfully. “But I will listen if you choose to tell me again.”
He chuckled. “You are beautiful, dearest, surpassing beautiful and unmercifully handsome, and I’ll never tire of telling you that pretty truth. You have so addled my wits that the other night when I returned to headquarters from seeing you, I could not recall the password. Of course the sentry knew me, the dog, but he wouldn’t let me pass until Mrs. Ford’s boy rescued me with the proper word. That’s all your doing, Miss Elizabeth.”
I laughed, picturing him foundering at the front door before a grave-faced guard. “You cannot fault me for that!”
“I can, when it’s the truth.” His smile faded. “You speak of the future as if you can foresee what it holds. You’re so wise, perhaps you can. Do you know how honored I’d be to have you beside me in that future, Betsey? To know you’d be with me always, as you are now?”
My heart was beating so fast that it was almost painful within my breast.
“I could wish for nothing more than to be with you like that, Alexander,” I whispered. “Nothing.” I was trembling, for I’d never spoken like this to another man, nor had I ever desired to. “I—I love you, Alexander Hamilton.”
I wish I could have preserved that moment forever, how he looked at me with such boundless emotion and regard, as if I were the most worthy woman in the world.
“I love you, Elizabeth Schuyler,” he said solemnly, and yet I was sure I heard a tremor to his voice to match my own. “My joy, my happiness, my love. Do I have your leave to address your father?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. I suspect he didn’t trust his, either, for he spoke no further.
Instead, he kissed me.
How dry and dull those words seem when writ on paper! How, in their simplicity, they lack the riches that Alexander’s first kiss held for me! At first he barely touched his lips to mine in the kind of chaste salute that would have pleased even Aunt Gertrude. This kiss was an honorable pledge meant for marriage, the most sacred of sacraments for any woman, and as our lips came together, I realized his honorable regard and devotion for me. I felt cherished, and I felt loved.
But as glorious as that moment might have been, it would not long suffice for either of us. I will be honest: I’ll include my own impatience, however unseemly for a lady that may appear, for in this as in so many things Alexander and I were already in perfect union. That first brush of his lips over mine was like a spark to overdry tinder, and at once the heat of desire washed over me.
In innocent eagerness, I pressed my lips more ardently against his, and at once he responded. He slipped his hand from beneath my jaw to the back of my head and tangled his fingers into my hair, and slanted his mouth over mine to deepen the kiss. My lips parted beneath his, and with a hunger I’d never realized existed within me I tasted him as he tasted me. The heat of his kiss burned me with its unexpected passion, and made me yearn to become his even more completely. I slid my hands around his shoulders to steady myself, and shamelessly stretched my body against his.
I am not certain how long that first kiss lasted, there in the silver-bright moonlight. It seemed both an instant, and an eternity, with the only certainty being that I did not wish it to end. Yet like all things, finally it did, when with obvious reluctance Alexander lifted his mouth from mine.
I opened my eyes, still dazed with heady bliss. He was almost frowning as he gazed down at me, his lips still parted and his breathing quick, as was my own. My thoughts were muddled: I was a lady born, a Schuyler, and not one of the slatterns who frequented the camp. I tried to push away from him, belatedly fearing he’d think ill of me for encouraging such freedom.
“I—I am sorry, Alexander,” I stammered in confusion, my cheeks hot. “Forgive me for—”
“Hush,” he said softly, placing his fingers lightly over my newly kissed lips. “It must be I who apologizes, not you, dearest Betsey, nor can I lay the fault on the moonlight. Even in your innocence, you have that power over me. You tempt me so much, when I must show more regard for the lady whom I pray will one day soon be my wife.”
I smiled shyly, liking the notion that a lady-wife could be tempting, too, and pressed my lips against his fingertips.
“One day,” I breathed, liking those words. “And soon.”
CHAPTER 5
As magical as that night had been, I didn’t see Alexander the next day, or the next after that. Winter stepped between us, as it did so often that year. By the time the assembly had ended and I was once again bound for home in the Livingstons’ sleigh, that shining silver moon—our moon—had become obscured by thick clouds. Snow began falling before dawn, and continued to fall for the entire day and the next night, too. The skies remained as dark as if the sun had never risen, with the flakes falling so rapidly that all landmarks were lost in swirling white.
Every house, shop, church, and barn in the town as well as the army’s encampment was blanketed by the snow, and the streets and roads were so thickly covered that by midday no outward signs remained that these passageways had ever existed. Even the very birds in the trees were quieted by the snow, and all around us was muffled in icy white silence.
Muffled, and cut off from the larger world around us, too. The snow was too deep and treacherous for man or horse to traverse, and I pitied the poor sentries standing guard in such weather. Everyone else kept within doors and away from the frost-iced windows, and did not venture far from their fires.
There was no question of Alexander calling upon me, yet still I was impatient to see him again. How could I not be? As I sat and knitted more caps for the soldiers, I imagined him in the crowded quarters of Mrs. Ford’s house a mere quarter of a mile away, sitting at the long table that served as a desk for the aides-de-camp and continuing to write His Excellency’s orders, transcribe his letters, coordinate his meetings, arrange his messengers, and perhaps even tally the expenses for the cavalry’s horses. The work of the army’s headquarters would not stop even in a snowstorm, though nothing could be sent until the roads again were passable.
Yet I also pictured Alexander later in the evening, after the general and the other aides had retired to their beds. Bent over his desk with a tallow candle for light, he’d be writing still, but at that hour the words would be his own.
And to my joy, they’d be meant for me.
Ever since my aunt had permitted Alexander to hand me that first letter, he had launched a veritable barrage of missives my way, so many that I could scarce keep up my replies. He was my soldier-poet, and oh, the sweet words that were in his arsenal for winning me! His letters were like him, brilliant and beautiful and rich with ideas and, yes, with love. Some were short, scarcely a sentence or two written in haste, and others were worthy of the greatest writers in our language. I cherished them all. In his letters, I was his dearest girl, his angel, his happiness, his charmer, but above all I was simply his Betsey, his Eliza. What more, truly, could I ask?
The storm’s last flake had scarcely fallen when Alexander again appeared at our door, his greatcoat covered with snow and his face flushed with the cold. As can be imagined, I greeted him as warmly as if we’d been separated for months, not days. I’d never claimed to possess a sentimental nature, but it did seem that our fondness for each other had strengthened with that first kiss, as if the very moon herself had blessed our love. From that time onward, I could not imagine myself with another man as my one love and husband, nor did I wish to.
Over the next weeks, and whenever the snows and the