Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(4)
Albany, New York
November 1777
It was almost an hour later when Eliza returned home. She stashed the last bundle of fabric behind a wall with the others and slipped into the house without being seen by anyone other than a garden boy raking the gravel paths of the garden and a kitchen maid ferrying foodstuffs from the kitchen in the north wing. Inside, half a dozen servants scurried up and down the stairs, but she came upon no one from the family or worse, any guests.
As she scampered down the hallway, a towheaded boy peeked out of the nursery. “You’re late.”
“Does Mama know?” Eliza asked her brother. John Bradstreet Schuyler, twelve, nodded somberly. The heir-apparent was deemed too young for the ball. Annoyed to have been left out of the festivities and stuck in the nursery with the littles, he frowned at Eliza’s carelessness.
Philip Jeremiah, nine, appeared next to his brother and tugged on Eliza’s skirts to entice her to play. Rensselaer, four, followed with glee and honey-covered hands. Cornelia, the baby, cooed from her nurse’s arms, eager to join in the revelry.
Eliza laughed, took her little sister, and kissed her on both cheeks. “You’re all getting me sticky!” she told the boys, who were running circles around her. “All right. One quick loop around the room. Catch me if you can!”
She was a favorite of the nursery, being the only older sister who would play on the floor with them or chase them around. After obliging them for one run around the chimney, she dashed upstairs and ducked into her room, which was the only dark one in the house. Inside, Dot was lighting the lamps on the wall sconces and atop the bureau.
Eliza collapsed in the middle of her four-poster bed. “I made it!”
“Miss Eliza! For shame!” said Dot. A stout woman of indeterminate middle age, Dot had once been the sisters’ wet nurse, and long years of intimacy had led to an easy—some would say too easy— familiarity of discourse between the maid and her charges. “Your sisters are ready and you look as if you had just come back from a run in the countryside.” She opened the wardrobe and reached into the thicket of clothing inside. “We don’t have much time!”
Only then did Eliza notice the gown hanging on a dress form in a corner of the room. She caught her breath. The gown was undeniably gorgeous, with a burgundy overskirt and pale green brocade petticoats. It sagged awkwardly in the middle however, without a pannier to hold up its ample skirts—which is what Dot held in her hands when she turned from the wardrobe.
Eliza did her best to focus on the tangle of straps and slats of the pannier, which looked as cumbersome as a carriage horse’s harness, rather than the gorgeous gown.
“But I told Mama I didn’t want a fancy gown,” she wailed. “It’s unseemly for civilians to be dressed in frippery when our soldiers are fighting for our freedom in rags!”
Dot shrugged. “It’s here now. And you didn’t ask her to have it made.” She stifled a giggle. “And it’s not like our boys can wear it to battle.”
Eliza frowned, unwilling to give in. “It’s not right. For the past year I have spent all my time canvassing the ladies of Albany to spend less on themselves and more on the war effort. If I appear in a gown as sumptuous as this, they’ll think I’m a hypocrite.”
“If you don’t appear in it,” Dot said, “your mother will jerk a knot in your neck.” She grabbed the loose end of the bow cinching the bodice of Eliza’s dress and gave it a sharp tug.
Eliza slid across the bed, out of her maid’s reach.
“And that hue is much, much too red for my coloring! I’ll look like a bruised peach.”
“A little powder,” Dot said practically, reaching again for the ribbons on Eliza’s bodice.
Eliza was shaking with fury. “This is so manipulative of Mama! She must know it contravenes all my principles! And she shouldn’t be wasting so much money on a dress when the family fortunes are so tight!”
Dot bit back a smile, which Eliza wouldn’t have seen, because her eyes were still glued to the gown. “Don’t put it on for your mother. Put it on for Colonel Hamilton,” she teased. Dot had been spending too much time talking to Peggy it seemed.
Eliza almost snarled. She did not care a whit what the celebrated soldier would think nor what any man would think. She dressed for comfort, not for competition.
“But, Miss Eliza . . .,” pleaded Dot. “Your mother.”
“Fine! Fine! I’ll wear it!” she said, as if she were agreeing to spend the day with her spinster aunt Rensselaer, who was so pious that all she would allow her nieces to do was to read to her from the Bible for hours on end, and so deaf that they had to shout themselves hoarse to be heard. Besides, she knew full well Mrs. Schuyler’s wrath would fall on Dot if she did not put on the dress. “I suppose we’d better get started. It will take at least an hour to put it on—”
But she was interrupted by a pair of peremptory claps from outside her door.
“Girls! Inspection time! The first guests will be arriving any minute!” Mrs. Schuyler may have been the wife of a general, but there were times when Eliza thought her mother sounded more like a Prussian instructor before a drill.
With glee, Eliza realized there was no time to put on the fancy dress now.
“Quickly, just help me look presentable,” she told Dot. She smoothed her hair and straightened her dress as Dot brushed a little powder on her face and dabbed a little color on her lips. Her maid looked back longingly at the dazzling new dress.