Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(27)
Eliza thought she would never be warm again and had only a dim recollection of how it was that she was finally inside, and in the comfort of her aunt’s home, not freezing on the road to Morristown still.
When Eliza’s feet were finally as pink as a newborn’s, Aunt Gertrude rang the bell for a maid to take Eliza up to her room with a brazier to warm the sheets. The maid plucked several coals from the fire and laid them in the brazier, which sizzled all the way up the stairs. She ran the brazier under the bedclothes for a full five minutes until the sheets were fairly smoking, then helped Eliza off with her dress and into one of Aunt Gertrude’s nightgowns because Eliza’s trunks were still lashed to the top of the broken carriage seven miles away.
The blanket was flannel and smelled lightly of Aunt Gertrude’s scent, a pleasant mixture of rose oil and witch hazel, and the warmed sheets were almost too hot, yet from the moment Eliza slipped into bed she was shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself and, almost against her will, recalled the heat from Alex’s body.
She told herself her chill was the result of three hours outside in silly shoes and without a coat, but she knew this wasn’t the whole truth. What plagued her was more unsettling—the memory of the light touch of his hands on her as they rode and how naturally his fingers had curled around her waist.
And how soft his voice was in her ear, all tenderness and concern, when the man was a rogue and a rake as far as she was concerned.
WHEN ELIZA WOKE in the morning, the bedclothes were damp with perspiration. Her joints ached and her face was flushed with fever. Uncle John checked in on her before heading out and pronounced her symptoms “probably not life-threatening,” but nevertheless prescribed bed rest until the fever broke. The idea of spending the day in a strange (and rather small) bedroom with neither books nor fire nor company made the prospect of a cold that much more disheartening, and Eliza was able to commute the sentence to the parlor sofa, where, though she did feel somewhat weak and light-headed, she was nevertheless able to visit with her aunt.
The parlor was a grand room with four tall windows set against rose-flocked wallpaper. In keeping with the latest French style, the plaster on its high ceilings had been worked in a rococo pattern. Servants kept the fire high and water in the coffeepot piping hot, and there were cellar pears and cheese to snack on, and strained broth to sip. It was, all things considered, the least unpleasant way to be sick that Eliza could imagine.
“This is a beautiful room, Aunt Gertrude, and the bedroom I slept in was also lovely. I am sorry I’m not well enough for a complete tour—you and Uncle John have an exquisite home.”
“Oh, pshaw,” Aunt Gertrude said. Where another woman would have busied herself with embroidering a pillow sham or handkerchief, Aunt Gertrude was sewing buttons onto military uniforms. Eliza wanted to assist her, but had been forbidden to strain herself.
“Your uncle and I found this house as it is, furniture and all. I shall say that, for loyalists, the Kitcheners—the former owners—did have rather good taste. Those are they,” she added, indicating a pair of portraits that hung in the bays to either side of the fireplace.
Eliza studied the pictures. Mrs. Kitchener looked to be in her early forties. She was dressed in high fashion with an ornate gown and elaborate wig, yet her soft chin and round, pink cheeks suggested an equal fondness for the conviviality of jokes and sweets.
Mr. Kitchener was perhaps two decades older than his wife, a somewhat distant-looking man. Eliza thought he seemed a little lost inside his elaborate suit, as if, without it, he would be like any other sixty-year-old man, weathering his twilight years with less poise than patience.
Not knowing the subjects, she couldn’t judge the likenesses. However, the paints themselves testified to professional rather than amateur ability, which made her think they must have presented a fairly accurate representation. “They seem a most respectable pair,” Eliza said. “It must have grieved them dear to have to sell a home to which they obviously devoted much labor and love.”
“Sell?” Aunt Gertrude scoffed. “I hope you do not think your uncle and I would give our money to a pair of loyalists.”
Eliza was confused. “I don’t understand. How came you to have their house, then?”
“In the same way that General Burgoyne once helped himself to your father’s house at Saratoga: It was claimed as a military prize.”
“Ah, so!” Eliza said. “Of course.”
“I’ve been meaning to take down their pictures and just haven’t gotten around to it. And I don’t have anything to hang in their stead, so . . .”
Eliza nodded. Yet she couldn’t help looking up at the couple and feeling sorry for the Kitcheners. She had been devastated when she learned that the Saratoga house had been seized, and even more heartbroken when she learned it had been burned. Though her father rebuilt it quickly, the house that held so many childhood memories no longer existed for her. Those happy times could never be re-created with a cover of wood and stone.
“Had they children?” she asked quietly.
“I would assume so.” Having had none herself, Aunt Gertrude was unsentimental when it came to the subject of children. “There was a crib in the bedroom upstairs where you’re sleeping, and another was bedecked with a young girl’s furnishings. I think perhaps they lost a son in battle, as well, for a sword tied with a black ribbon hung in another room.”