Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(54)
“I believe you said I was too fat, too,” Church said, laughing and rubbing his belly.”I have grown very fond of your softnesses,” Angelica said coyly, “though take care that they remain firm softnesses, as it were, and do not begin to sag. I should not like it if I were seen on the arm of a man who . . . drooped.”
“Oh, Angelica, you are too saucy!” Aunt Gertrude said, though it was unclear whether she was amused or outraged. “You would not speak so if Dr. Cochran were here.”
“What did she say that was so saucy?” Stephen asked. “She just said she didn’t want a man who—” He clapped a hand over his mouth, less than quick on the uptake in social settings.
“I don’t know,” Alex said now. “I don’t think a man should presume too much. A proposal isn’t a battlefield charge, after all. It’s much more a game of diplomacy.”
Eliza smiled at him when he said this, but Alex’s gaze was caught by Angelica’s. She had the strangest look on her face. Of determination, mixed with chagrin. It was as if she were determined to put him on the spot, yet she also felt guilty about it.
She is under some external pressure, Alex said to himself. I can only hope she manages to resist it a little more effectively than she has been.
Alas, after another moment of hesitancy, Angelica drew a deep breath, as if preparing a second salvo.
“The more significant absence tonight is that of our parents, who, though they have some knowledge of Colonel Hamilton—you remember he tried to have Papa thrown in jail last year—do not know nearly enough about him to judge whether he is a suitable candidate for one of their daughters.”
“Angelica, please,” Eliza said now. “You are being too bold.”
Another pause on Angelica’s part, another flash of pain on the tightly drawn features of her face. “Sometimes boldness is necessary,” Angelica said. “You have never had any sense when it comes to men, and if someone else doesn’t look out for you, you will end up penniless and cooking your own food.”
It is the parents, Alex said to himself. It must be.
“I assure you that I would cook for Miss Schuyler, if it came to that,” he said, attempting levity.
“I have no doubt you would,” Angelica said, “by which I mean that I have no doubt that you probably do know how to cook, as you were raised without benefit of servants or, if I understand correctly, without benefit of family.”
Alex’s eyes widened. He did not know that he had ever been spoken to so bluntly in his life—or at least since he had arrived in the north—and certainly not by a lady.
“My father . . . traveled,” he said, choosing a word that was not, at the most literal level, a lie, “and my mother was taken home when I was quite young. I was raised by friends of the family. My family were but recent immigrants to the West Indies, and alone there, and it was impractical to send me back to Scotland.”
“Well, one certainly can’t fault your resourcefulness,” Angelica admitted. “You have certainly made a name for yourself, and done great service to your country, despite the fact that you come from, well, nothing.”
Alex startled and coughed. “I must say, Miss Schuyler, I have never had a compliment feel quite so much like a knife in the bowels.”
Angelica colored beneath her powder. “Oh, damn it all!”
Peggy tittered. Eliza gasped. Aunt Gertrude reached for glass and downed it in a single quaff.
“Good God, Miss Schuyler!” Stephen said, the urgency of his words undone by a squeak in his voice. “Have you quite lost your senses?”
Angelica put her left hand on Eliza’s right and squeezed visibly, but her eyes were trained on Alex.
“You must know, Colonel Hamilton, how inordinately fond we all are of you. Even my father, whom you tried to imprison, has nothing but praise for the alacrity with which you performed your duties. But I am honor bound to remind you that the Schuylers are one of the oldest families in New York, with connections to the Van Rensselaers, the Van Cortlandts, and the Livingstons on our mother’s and father’s sides. Your own people do not have the same depth as do ours, neither of blood, nor, more pointedly, of pocket. To see my sister wedded to a man whom she loves and admires would give me nothing but joy, but you can’t possibly expect to claim her with a bag of oranges, can you?”
Alex glanced at Eliza to see how she reacted to her sister’s words. She was clearly aghast, and Alex took this as a sign that Angelica’s words, if ostensibly on Eliza’s behalf, were not also at her behest. Peggy and Stephen looked embarrassed, whereas Aunt Gertrude’s eyes, when they met his, were positively heartbroken. But the most unhappy person at the table (save perhaps him) was clearly Angelica, and Alex was once again convinced that she spoke on behalf of someone else. It could only be General and Mrs. Schuyler.
“Miss Schuyler,” he said then, turning back to the eldest sister, “at the risk of public hubris, may I remind you that I am the chief aide-de-camp to His Excellency, General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental army. On his behalf and on behalf our country, I have corresponded with the representatives of no fewer than four kings, thirteen princes, twenty-one dukes, forty-seven earls, and more marquesses and counts and knights-errant than you could fit on the island of Manhattan. Further, in my defense, my name—my name, I tell you, and not my father’s or my grandfather’s or some other moldering ancestor—my own name is known to every American of any distinction whatsoever, from Ambassador Franklin to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to John Adams, and John Hancock to John Jay. Why, even Patrick Henry and Robert Morris know me by name, and it is by their high standards, and not by a list of names in a kirkyard, that I judge myself, and expect others to judge me.”