Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(12)
“As a mother,” Mrs. Schuyler continued, “I am quite honestly relieved that my sons John and Philip are too young to go to battle, but I am also equally proud of the remarkable contributions to the war effort made by my three eldest daughters.”
“Hear, hear!” The murmur of her guests’ approval interrupted her. But not for long.
“Angelica, Eliza, Peggy—would you please join me?”
Just as Mrs. Schuyler called her name, Eliza spotted her card and snatched it up without reading any of the names written on it. She hurried into the ballroom where the crowd was dutifully applauding the famed Schuyler girls, and skipped out into the open space near her two sisters. As she took her place between Angelica, resplendent in her amber gown, and Peggy, dazzling in sea-foam green, she felt a small pang of regret for not deigning to wear the burgundy gown. Between two such fierce beauties, she felt a little like a servant girl, and only her sisters’ hands in hers kept her from cringing into the shadows.
When the applause died down, the sisters began to move back to the sidelines.
“Peggy,” Mrs. Schuyler called, “would you wait a moment.”
Peggy pretended to gasp and look surprised, but it was clear she knew what was happening.
“Angelica and Eliza have both made their official appearances before,” Mrs. Schuyler said to the crowd, “but as this is Peggy’s first ball as a young woman, I am forgoing my right to have the first dance to give it to my daughter. It is not quite a coming-out ball, for such a celebration would be untoward in times of war. Nevertheless we can at least let her have her turn in the lights. Peggy, pray tell us the name of the gentleman who has the honor of sharing your first dance.”
Peggy eagerly pulled her card from her reticule, a beaming smile on her face. Her smile flickered as she looked at the name at the top of the page.
“Ste-Stephen,” she stuttered, “Stephen Van Rensselaer.”
A great roar of applause went up, even as Eliza found Angela’s and Peggy’s eyes and shared in their shock. Stephen Van Rensselaer III was the eldest son of Stephen the second. The Van Rensselaers were distant cousins on Mrs. Schuyler’s side and the wealthiest family in northern New York State. In every way, Stephen III was the most eligible bachelor north of Albany—every way but one, that is.
A tall, thin boy in an exquisitely cut suit of midnight-blue overcoat and dove-gray breeches detached himself from the crowd. Despite his height, however, and the color of his coat, he was no soldier, for one simple reason: He was barely into his teens.
The eighth patroon of the largest estate in all of New York was all of fourteen years old.
Eliza felt a hand on hers and turned to see Angelica.
“I sense Mama’s handiwork here,” her older sister said, even as the band struck the first notes and Peggy and Stephen took their places at the end of the room.
Stephen’s face was fine enough and might one day be handsome, but at the moment he looked like a stick doll in a suit. And Stephen had always been quiet and fumbling for words. A curious sort of fellow with a fondness for birding, he had earned himself the reputation of a loner.
“Stephen is at least four years younger than Peggy!” Eliza said indignantly. Their families had sat across from each other at the Dutch Reformist Church for years as the children grew up.
“Four? I think it is more like five. Isn’t he only a year older than Johnny?” sniffed Angelica.
Eliza nodded, thinking it was a bit strange indeed, watching the gawky young man dance with the belle of the ball in front of a cheering—or was it jeering?—crowd.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? He is the richest single male in our circle, and we are the three marriageable daughters of a family fallen on hard times,” said Angelica. “Oh dear,” she gasped, as Peggy and Stephen danced past them down the line, a strained grace on her sister’s face, a look of dogged terror on Stephen’s. “She is leading him. She. Is. Leading. Him,” she hissed.
“Let’s hope the engagement is a long one,” Eliza said with a sad laugh. She pulled out her own card to see whom her mother had arranged for her to dance with first, and soon she was as aggrieved as her sister. A small gasp escaped her lips. “It can’t be!”
“What?” Angelica asked. “Who is it?”
“Major André!”
“John André? That is insane, even by Mama’s standards!”
Major John André was a British loyalist, born in London to wealthy French Huguenot parents, whose ancestors, like so many Americans, had fled religious persecution in France. Before the revolution began, he and General Schuyler had served in the British army together, and André had been a favorite of their father’s. Indeed, he was said to charm everyone he met, with his easy conversation in English and French and his ability to dash off the most remarkable likenesses in pen and ink, and above all, with his guileless brown eyes and open, honest expression set in a broad, handsome face.
But when the Colonies declared independence he had chosen to fight for the country that had taken in his own family when they had fled France. Such was General Schuyler’s honor and fond memories of serving with André that he said he could not condemn the major’s decision, and even went so far as to declare that he would be “most aggrieved” if circumstances forced him to shoot the dashing young officer. But that still didn’t explain what he was doing on Eliza’s dance card.