Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(10)
Alex was about to step out of Rodger’s way, but instead the valet reached his hands to Alex’s head and, before Alex quite knew what was happening, had deftly slipped his fingers beneath the wig and began to knead his itching scalp.
“Oh . . . my . . . stars,” Alex said, when he could speak again. “That . . . feels . . . wonderful!”
“It is a task I have performed for the general on occasion,” Rodger said, his fingers giving Alex’s scalp one last squeeze, then slipping out from the wig and quickly, professionally, fastening it back in place. “There you are, sir. You look like you could conquer anything now, whether it’s the British or”—he nodded his head at the room behind Alex—“a ballroom full of belles.”
Without another word, he slipped past Alex and disappeared into the house.
A burst of laughter from the door beyond him shook Alex from his trance and he reminded himself: There was a ball to get to. Smoothing his jacket, he squared his shoulders and marched into the party.
The jovial roar of voices struck him as soon as he entered. There were at least thirty people in the grand hall and, judging from the sound, at least that many scattered in the pair of opulent parlors that opened off each end. About a third of their number were men, equally divided between gray-haired ancients too old to fight and young men like him in smart blue uniforms, who were on leave or perhaps stationed to the local garrison. But the bulk of the party guests were women—seated grandes dames who spread their billowing skirts around their chairs and ottomans like fountains spilling over their basins and forcing their conversation partners to stand well back. The eyes of these half-dozen femmes d’un certain age scanned the room as if hawks in search of prey, looking for suitable mates for their daughters.
And then there were the young ladies themselves— their waists cinched and their cleavage pushed up high and proud—who made up almost half the room’s number. Elaborate skirts cocooned each one of them in a richly colored aura, all of which set off their ghostly powdered complexions and the mountainous silver wigs perched atop their heads. Yet no amount of powder and makeup could hide the desperation in their eyes. With so many of the local boys away at war, there was almost no prey for this pack of fierce and brightly colored predators to track down and capture. Alex felt at least a dozen pairs of eyes fasten on him as he walked into the room.
He stood up a little straighter, glad that his wig was on right.
Perhaps the night wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
A HALF HOUR found Alex seated in a parlor whose tall windows offered a spectacular view of the Hudson River and the lights of Albany on its far bank. Six girls stood in a fan around him, their colorful skirts arrayed like a mountain range decked out in fall foliage topped by the first dusting of winter snows. If only their names were as delicate as their faces and figures: Alas, they all seemed afflicted with strange Dutch and English names like Van der Schnitzel or Ten Broek (pronounced “break,” which is what his fingers nearly did when the girl shook his hand with a grip like a milkmaid at her chores) or Beaverbroke, which Alex had made its owner repeat three times to see if she were having him on.
“Oh, Colonel Hamilton,” said a Miss Tambling-Goggin, or Tamblin-Gogging, he wasn’t sure which. “How utterly fascinating it is that you work with General Washington himself! It must be so exciting.”
Alex shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it’s exciting as much as . . . dangerous,” he said, his bright blue eyes flashing. He knew how to play to this crowd.
A collective gasp from the gaggle of girls.
“I can’t imagine anything more frightening than a battlefield,” cooed a Miss Van Leuwenwoort, whom Alex was calling Liverwurst in his head. “The roar of the cannon and the smell of smoke and the cries of men in mortal ecstasy!” (Alex didn’t mean Liverwurst as an insult, by the way; it was one of his favorite foods, and he hadn’t had any in ages.)
In fact, while Alex had been in battle, he mostly served away from the front lines. Though the general always risked life and limb with his men, he often left his less-experienced aides-de-camp behind, a fact that made Alex feel like he was shirking his duty. But that wasn’t his fault, and the image of his taking notes while fellow soldiers dodged musket fire and cannon balls or rushed toward the enemy with drawn swords wasn’t going to loosen any of these ladies’ bodices.
“Ah yes, mortal ecstasy,” he said, looking into the middle distance as if recalling unsayable scenes of carnage. “It can indeed overpower the senses.”
“As does the rich odor of India ink filling the nostrils with its terrible intimations of sealing wax and postage stamps!”
Alex looked up just as a new wig appeared among the peaks, looming like an iceberg emerging from an ocean fog. It crowned a long, magnificently sculptured face that would have been almost too severe but for the exuberance of a set of full, richly rouged lips, which were set in a smirk of private amusement.
“It is indeed a rich, ah . . . what?” he asked.
“Oh, one can imagine the terrible pain of a hand cramping after measureless hours curled around the barbarous scimitar of a raptor’s quill!”
Alex turned to see a second new face, her glorious emerald eyes set off by a sea-foam gown. This beauty was without a wig, though the dark locks had been piled nearly as high as any of the other girls’ pompadours. Her face was softer than that of the India ink jokester, yet there was a familial resemblance. He began to get a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, as sweat beaded beneath his own laughable wig.