Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(18)

Instead she pulled aside the window’s heavy curtain and looked out over the snow-covered fields glittering in the late-afternoon sun. Her seat faced backward, so she could only see where she’d been, not where she was going. Here and there a farmhouse sat in a cluster of smaller work sheds, but these were few and far between.

Morristown, New Jersey, her destination, was a city of several thousand inhabitants, but so far there was no sign of any kind of life.

“Miss Schuyler, please!” Her chaperone, Mrs. Jantzen, cried, a nervous woman who always seemed to be huffing at something. “You are letting out all the heat!”

If only I could, Eliza thought. The temperature inside the carriage was akin to a hot stove. But worse than the heat was the smell.

Squared away behind Mrs. Jantzen was a supply of lamp oil and scrimshaw, gifts sent along to General Washington from her husband, an Albany merchant who specialized in whale products. The collection was rounded out by the good lady’s personal bottle of whale oil perfume, a cloying scent she had grown overly fond of. She rubbed it on her skin the way other women used soap.

Eliza took a deep breath, then let the curtain fall. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll be stinking of whale oil myself. She turned to her chaperone with a sigh. “How much farther is it to Morristown?”

Mrs. Jantzen rolled her eyes and huffed once more. She reached into the folds of the fur spread over her lap and pulled out an imaginary map, unfolding it with theatrical fastidiousness.

“Let me see, let me see. Yes, here we are,” she said, stabbing a gloved finger into thin air. “It is exactly seventeen miles and three feet.”

Mrs. Jantzen pressed her lips together just so, tucking the imaginary map back into her blanket.

Eliza fell silent. Her mother was to have accompanied her on the trip south, but Mrs. Schuyler had fallen ill with a violent cough, serious enough to make it unwise for her to travel. Eliza was willing to make the trip on her own, but her mother wouldn’t hear of the notion of a girl her age making a journey without a chaperone.

“The roads are overrun with soldiers too long denied women’s taming influence,” she said from her bed, propped up by pillows and swaddled in down.

“But, Mama,” Eliza insisted, “I can take care of myself.”

Mrs. Schuyler waved her handkerchief in the air, ending the discussion. “I’ll not have my daughter be the first feminine face they see in who knows how long.”

Eliza wasn’t convinced the presence of Mrs. Jantzen would safeguard her, but if that’s what it took to make this trip, then she was willing to bear it. Perhaps her mother had realized her chaperone’s abominable perfume was weapon enough against a soldier’s advance.

She stifled a laugh and smiled to herself.

The fragrant Mrs. Jantzen tightened the fur pelt around her knees. “I beg your pardon, Miss Schuyler. Did you just say something?”

“Oh. Why, yes. I-I was just wondering whether you had ever met my aunt Gertrude?” Eliza hid her smile behind her hand. “Yes, that’s it.”

“Her that married Dr. Cochran, General Washington’s personal physician? She is sister to your father, is she not? I can’t say that I’ve had the pleasure of making her acquaintance, but I have heard the kindest things about her character.” Mrs. Jantzen, an accomplished gossip, mumbled to herself, “Imagine the stories she’s privy to . . . surrounded by all those soldiers and what-not.”

“Indeed, she is a remarkable woman and a great inspiration to me. Aunt Gertrude insisted her husband train her in the ways of a nurse so that she could remain at his side to assist in the recuperation of our brave patriots.”

Mrs. Jantzen’s pinched face took on a saintly look. “Just as I have spent many a day swabbing the sweat from the brow of a feverish soldier.”

And suffocating those poor invalids with your ghastly perfume, Eliza supposed. Aloud, she said, “But my aunt Gertrude does so much more! She washes the blood from wounds, and runs the threaded needle through lacerated limbs as calmly as stitching together a torn overshirt. Why, she’s even held the hand of a soldier while Dr. Cochran saws off the other—”

“Miss Schuyler, if you please!” Mrs. Jantzen held up a gloved hand. “I do not consider such subjects fit conversation for a lady!”

Eliza smiled a tepid apology. Of course the details were gruesome, yet she found them fascinating. It was bad enough that women weren’t allowed to fight for their freedom. But to be denied the knowledge of what fighting cost its soldiers seemed too much to bear. How could one help the country’s bravest young men if their needs were kept silent?

The carriage hit another pockmark in the road, sending Mrs. Jantzen’s bottle of whale oil perfume sliding across the coach floor.

“Begging your pardon yet again, ladies,” hollered Mr. Vincent from the coach box. The coachman was one of General Schuyler’s retired old soldiers, now employed as the trusted family driver. “It’s a bit of a rough go out here.”

Eliza reached down and caught the bottle, which leaked onto her hands. But by the time Mrs. Jantzen could tighten the lid and settle the bottle more securely under her seat, a fresh wave of whale oil perfume had filled the coach.

Aching to be done with this journey, Eliza decided to look on the bright side. “Well, at least there’ll be no fighting this winter while the army shelters in Morristown. Aunt Gertrude will be working alongside Dr. Cochran inoculating the local population against smallpox. I believe it is heroic work.”