Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(37)
But Eliza was thrilled to hear it, even as she noticed Peggy looked a little green around the gills.
“Please, Sister, take a seat before you faint. Lieutenant Larpent, I’m afraid our Peggy is not used to such fantastic stories. Why don’t we get on with the less disturbing task of the inoculation treatment, shall we?”
Eliza was aware of the mortality statistics surrounding the smallpox inoculation and knew there was some truth to what the frightened young fellow was saying. For every hundred inoculations, one or two people did in fact develop full-blown smallpox, sometimes fatally. But given that the fatality rate among uninoculated individuals was thirty times higher, she understood that it was a more than acceptable risk. Still, she was too honorable to lie to the worried young man.
“Be of good cheer, soldier. You are far, far more likely to die of the pox without this treatment than with it. For that matter, you are more likely to die on the battlefield than from this treatment. Now then—” She laid the poultice over the scratches and wrapped it in place. “It’s in God’s hands now.”
Larpent blanched.
“I’m teasing you, Lieutenant,” she said as she knotted the wrapping in place. “Everything will be fine. You’ll be arm wrestling again in no time.”
16
Officers and Gentlemen
Continental Army Headquarters
Morristown, New Jersey
February 1780
Just as Eliza finished, Corporal Weston returned to the room with eight men. Most were younger than twenty-five, though a couple were older. Eliza scanned the faces eagerly, telling herself she wasn’t looking for one face in particular.
The officers were surprisingly much more nervous than the enlisted men, and to the degree that Eliza and her sisters could bring themselves to converse with any of them, they gathered that it was because the men had been told just enough about the procedure to fear it and not enough to understand it. A little education, Eliza reckoned, could sometimes be more dangerous than no education at all.
But Eliza had no time for idle talk. The men were mostly young, and all of them extended chivalry to the point of flirtation. They were besotted with Peggy and intimidated by Angelica. It was clear that they didn’t get to spend much time in the company of females other than dowagers and servants, and all were eager to make them laugh or secure some promise of a future dinner or perhaps even a dance at some point.
Eliza tried to answer them in kind, but her words were listless. She had to admit it; she was disappointed that Colonel Hamilton wasn’t there. She told herself that she wanted the opportunity to chastise him yet again for his gross assumptions of her imputed behavior two years ago, and to call him out in front of an audience. But that argument was losing steam. More than anything now, she wanted to know what it was about her in the first place that would make a young man think she was capable of such wanton actions and whether those assumptions stood for a more complex affection on Alex’s part, or if it was only a baser emotion at the heart of it.
She felt a flush spread over her cheeks as, for the hundredth time that week, an image of Alex waiting for her in her father’s hayloft appeared in her mind.
Just yesterday, she had agreed to let him take her on a sleigh ride, if only to see his horse, Hector, once more. Although as much as she wanted to admit it, she was feeling a welling of affection toward Hector’s master lately as much, if not more, than for Hector himself.
Her current patient, a Colonel Martins, tried to escape.
“You look flushed, Miss Schuyler. Please, allow me to fetch you a glass of cold water!”
Eliza held on to his arm and kept him in his chair.
“I am quite comfortable, Colonel. Please remain seated until I’ve finished the procedure.”
She was just administering a final dose to the genially named Lieutenant Colonel Friendly when she heard the door open in the hallway behind her, and a jovial male voice exclaimed:
“Where is he—that scoundrel, Hamilton! Tell him to come downstairs with his saber drawn! His fate has caught up with him at last!”
At the sound of Colonel Hamilton’s name, Eliza’s heart tumbled over in her chest in delight.
“Nope, not here, sir!” said Corporal Weston, getting out of the loud officer’s way.
Eliza did her best to hide her disappointment once more. She glanced up at the three men still in the room who had come up with excuses for not going to work (or whose rank was high enough that no one could order them to stop flirting with the doctor’s pretty aides). But none of them seemed particularly bothered when a pair of flamboyant figures appeared in the door.
Both were about Eliza’s age, or a year or two older, and both wore particularly smart uniforms cut from the finest wool. One’s sleeve declared him a lieutenant colonel, while the other was a major general, and it was hard to say which of the men was the more dashing specimen. The general had dark wavy hair combed forward over pale cheeks tinted rosy from the cold. His nose was long and thin and aristocratic, but he smiled in real pleasure when he saw Eliza, who was alone in the room, having sent Angelica and Peggy to search the house to make sure there were no more officers hiding in a cupboard or wardrobe.
“Well, I have certainly come to the right place today! I just passed two stunning beauties in the hall and now find myself face-to-face with a third! A good day, indeed!”