I, Eliza Hamilton. Susan Holloway Scott
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shared by His Excellency and Lady Washington, and where that good lady received her friends and acquaintances. Since I’d arrived in Morristown, I’d been honored to become a regular visitor. Each week, I joined my mother, my aunt, and Lady Washington as we sat with our handwork and conversed genteelly, pretending we were still in our own neat drawing rooms in our various homes and not in a military encampment.
It was my mother’s idea to include Angelica, so she, too, might pay her respects to His Excellency’s wife. Now my sister was not given overmuch to needlework, but she did wish to be presented to Lady Washington as the first lady of our young country. Angelica was also vastly amused at the notion of visiting headquarters, where the men so outnumbered us women, though she was also wise enough not to voice it to our mother. I was myself always conscious of that fact, and took extra care with the neatness of my dress because of it whenever I visited Mrs. Ford’s house.
There was no mistaking my sister’s love of an admiring male audience as she swept through the front yard to the house in her bright red habit. Angelica had countless ways to draw the male eye, small gestures and mannerisms that made her impossible to ignore, exactly as she wished. I couldn’t begin to emulate her, nor, really, did I desire that kind of attention, but it was a wonder to watch her effect on most every soldier and officer we passed.
“How cheerful everyone is, Eliza,” she said to me as we sat waiting on the bench outside Lady Washington’s chamber. “From your letters, I thought all I’d see were long faces and grim miens, but everyone here is exceptionally agreeable.”
“Hush, Angelica, not so loud,” Mamma said mildly, not truly scolding. “Recall how I cautioned you to be discreet. In these close quarters, everything you say here may be heard, and repeated.”
Angelica smiled, unperturbed, as she smoothed the leather of her gloves. “I only said that everyone was exceptionally agreeable, and where’s the harm in that?”
“There isn’t any,” I said, daring to agree with my sister over our mother. “Not at all.”
Mamma only sighed and shook her head with the resignation of mothers with grown daughters. But I didn’t care, for I was more occupied in glancing about at the usual crowd of officers, visitors, waiters, and servants that crowded the upper hall, hunting for Alexander. Word spread quickly through the house whenever I called on Lady Washington, and if Alexander could be spared from his duties, he’d appear as surely as if I’d summoned him myself.
Today was no exception. As soon as I saw his familiar golden-red hair (glossy with pomade and clubbed with a black bow, but not powdered) appear over the edge of the landing as he bounded up the stairs, I smiled, and I was smiling still as he hurried toward us. He was looking exceptionally handsome today, dressed in the new uniform he’d recently had made. His Excellency liked his Family to be as spruce in their attire as he was himself, and he’d grown so unhappy with the motley state of his aides’ uniforms after the winter that he’d had a tailor brought to the camp from Philadelphia for a general refurbishing. Now Alexander stood resplendent in a new blue and buff coat with double gilt buttons and epaulets, fresh breeches and waistcoat of cream-colored corded dimity, and the light green sash of an aide-de-camp. He cut the very figure, and I could tell from the way that my sister drew back her own shoulders beside me that she’d taken notice, too.
“Mrs. Schuyler, your servant, madam,” Alexander said as he bowed dutifully before my mother, always taking care to address her first.
He turned next to me, his eyes instantly so full of love that I felt it as surely as if he’d embraced me outright.
“Miss Elizabeth, my own,” he said softly, taking my hand and lightly pressing my fingers. That was all he said, and all he needed to say. There was nothing sweeter to my ears than my name on his lips, and I loved that he wasn’t embarrassed by showing affection to me here at headquarters the way many men would have been.
“We’re here to call upon Lady Washington,” I said, my own voice turning breathless as it did whenever he was near, even whilst delivering this most mundane explanation. I was so rapt in the simple pleasure of his nearness that I nearly forgot my sister’s presence beside me, and would have, too, if she hadn’t shifted pointedly beside me as a reminder.
“Colonel Hamilton, may I present my sister, Mrs. John Carter?” I said. “Angelica, Colonel Hamilton.”
My sister held her hand up to him, and reluctantly he abandoned mine to take hers. But before he spoke, she addressed him first, and to my enormous surprise, she did so in French.
“Enfin, enfin, le fameux colonel Hamilton!” she said, her chin raised at the perfect beguiling angle. “Je vous ai tellement entendu parler des lettres de ma soeur, que j’ai l’impression de vous connaître déjà.”
He frowned, yet he answered her in kind, without the slightest hesitation.
“Bonjour, madame,” he said, bowing over her hand. “Que je suis enchanté et honoré de faire la connaissance de la soeur de ma belle, bien-aimée Eliza.”
I stared, speechless. I could comprehend his name and my own, but beyond that none of what they said meant anything to me. My sister was beaming at Alexander as if this were all delightful, while Alexander continued to frown politely, if such a thing were possible. What had she said to him? How had he replied? I’d never before given much thought to learning French or any other foreign language—I’d not the patience for it—but in that moment I would have given much to have been able to understand what had just occurred. Uncertainly I glanced from my sister to Alexander and back again, desperate for any clues as to the meaning of their conversation.
“Je comprends tout à fait pourquoi ma petite soeur est si dévouée à vous, monsieur.” Angelica delicately slipped her hand free from his and with her fingers smoothed a lock of her dark hair (which did not require smoothing) around her ear. “Votre charme ne con-naît aucune limite! Quelle chance—”
“In English, Angelica, if you please,” Mamma interrupted with a touch of irritation. “My grasp of French is slight, and not so firm as once it was.”
“Pray forgive me, madam, I’d no intention of being so ill-mannered,” Alexander said contritely as he bowed again to my mother. “When Mrs. Carter addressed me in that language, I returned her compliment without thinking. It was barbarously wrong of me—”
“It was wrong of me, Mamma, and I claim full blame,” Angelica said, though with none of Alexander’s contrition. “I should not have led Colonel Hamilton into that impolite snare.”
Now I wondered exactly what he had said that required so much apologizing, that he called “barbarously wrong” and she described as “impolite,” with my name in the middle of it.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Schuyler, I am the one, and not Mrs. Carter, who is entirely at fault,” Alexander began again. I knew how much he valued my mother’s good regard, and her rebuke, mild as it had been and in no way intended toward him, must have cut him to the quick. His usual ease in company had deserted him, and his cheeks had turned endearingly pink, the curse of his fair complexion. “There was nothing impolite in our conversation. That is, ah, I am certain—”
“No one is to blame for anything,” I said quickly, rescuing him and absolving them both, even as my own confusion continued. “What pleases me is that you discovered so much in common worthy of conversation.”
“What we have in common, my dear little goose, is you,” Angelica said, looping her arm fondly into mine. “I told Colonel Hamilton that because of your letters, I felt as if I knew him already, and he in turn told me how honored he was to meet at last the sister of his beautiful, beloved Eliza.”
I glanced quickly back to Alexander, my own cheeks growing warm. How could I have ever doubted him? “You said that of me?”
“Ma belle, bien-aimée Eliza,” he repeated solemnly, his gaze beseeching. “My beautiful, beloved Eliza.”
“Ohhh,” I sighed, overwhelmed to hear such a sentiment, in French and in English, here in the middle