Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(50)
“I do! I like him!” Eliza exclaimed, admitting what she had felt for a while now.
“I can’t believe it! At last, a suitor the Schuyler parents will approve of. Washington’s most-trusted aide! And neither too British nor too young nor—”
“Nor too rich. Mama will not like that, I fear.”
“Pshaw,” Peggy scoffed. “Stephen’s fortune will more than make up for any deficiencies in Colonel Hamilton’s accounts. And Church is not doing so badly, either,” she added as Angelica joined them.
“Is there more news?” asked Eliza, turning to her older sister, whose beau had left town for a few days.
“Yes, He arrives on the morrow. He writes that he comes with ‘a question in his heart.’”
“A question? But he has already asked you to marry him, and you have already accepted. What other question could he have for you?” asked Peggy.
“He has been pressing me to get Papa to bless our union. I have mentioned it to him several times, but Papa always shuts down the subject. He says that it’s bad enough that John is British, but his past is simply too shady. He has heard rumors that John left gambling debts behind him in England, and he couldn’t bear to see him do the same with my dowry.”
“But Papa knows what you told me the other night, does he not? That John is—how did you phrase it—running guns? For our troops? An activity that is both lucrative and honorable,” said Eliza.
Angelica shrugged. “You know Papa. Once he’s made up his mind about someone, it never changes.”
“So then what do you think Mr. Church’s question will be?” Peggy persisted.
Angelica looked at her sisters nervously. “I think he is going to ask me to elope.”
“What?” Eliza gasped as Peggy literally clutched her pearls. “You cannot be serious! Surely you did not lead him to think that you would accept—oh, Angelica!” Eliza stopped herself when she saw her sister’s face. “You’re not going to run off with him!”
“I think—” Angelica broke off and was silent for a long time. “I think I am.”
Peggy grabbed her sister’s hand. “But does this mean you love him?”
More silence from Angelica, who smiled whimsically and stared off into space. “I think I see us as Mama and Papa are. Not enthralled with each other, but respectful and supportive. Two people joined together in a partnership to create something enduring. A family. A legacy.”
“But do you love him?” Eliza pressed. “You are too young and too beautiful to give up on love yet. There are more young men out there!”
“Are there?” Angelica said, getting up and heading to the door. “Or are they all ending up in the infirmary, or the kirkyard?” She paused at the door. “Mama and Papa raised us to expect a certain lifestyle. You were always less enamored of material comforts than other girls, but Peggy and I, well, we like our things, don’t we? And John will provide me with all the things I want, and adventures as well.” She smiled at her younger sister. “Dearest Eliza, you’ll have to have the romance for us.”
And she slipped into the hall, letting a shiver of cold air into the room.
22
Sweet Nothings
South Street
Morristown, New Jersey
February 1780
Being that Alexander Hamilton was a man of many words, he decided to put them to use to win over his Eliza. He began with a series of letters to her sister Peggy, where he poured out his feelings, knowing the sentiments would be transferred to Eliza forthwith. Since confiding in him at the dinner party, he and Peggy had a sibling-like friendship, and it was to her that he entreated his courtship of Eliza.
When he wrote, he appealed both to Eliza’s vanity and her practicality. “She is unquestionably lovely, yet she lacks the petty affectations of women who believe themselves very beautiful.” He admired her love of nature and the outdoors. “Eliza’s face glows with the expectation of morning sunshine and I happily imagine her as a rollicking, good-natured tomboy as a child.” No woman, he wrote, could match her sister’s unlimited passion for reading. He even begged Peggy to encourage her sister to continue studying French so one day they might share secrets in their own private language.
These, Alex wrote in reams and reams of pages, were all things he would choose to champion in the perfect woman.
Peggy wrote him back with a much simpler plan. “My dear Colonel Hamilton, if you want to win over my sister, why not simply tell her so yourself?”
THE COOL BLUE evening under the pine trees smelled sweet, and the air called for a thick coat, even standing in front of a roaring bonfire. Alex had taken Peggy’s hint and invited Eliza to step out with him along the Morristown green where a seasonal lighting of the bonfire on South Street was set to begin at dusk.
Alex and Eliza squeezed toward the front of the crowd where a tall boy with long fingers and thin beige bangs played his mandolin. People began to cough and clear their throats after two songs. In due course, somebody tossed a turpentine-soaked rag into the bonfire’s brushwood and lit a match. There was a wind-sucking VA-roomph and the faces of fifty awed souls flashed orange in the firelight. The bracing, sweet smell of the burning pinewood surrounded them.