Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(74)
WHEN THEY WERE alone, Alex finally spoke the words he had kept inside for so long. “Oh my dearest, it has been torture. I cannot bear the thought of you marrying him! I should have spoken sooner, but I was afraid I was not worthy of you.”
“My darling,” she said. “Do not despair, I will break it off myself.” She laid her head against his chest. “I’ll run away. You’ll find me, and we’ll elope. We’ll flee to the west and live beyond the frontier. In a cabin or beneath the open stars. I don’t care. Just as long as I’m with you.”
He tilted her chin up and looked her in the eyes. He had wanted to do this since he saw her in her simple gown in Albany at her mother’s ball. He had dreamed of this moment, and at long last, he bent down and their lips touched.
It was just a moment, but Alex felt all the fatigue and dampness leave his body.
He kissed her with all his heart and soul, and she melted under his embrace, kissing him back, so eagerly and so tenderly he thought he would die right there.
“I will be with you, Eliza,” he said in a husky voice. “Whatever happens, I will always be with you.”
32
Best of Aunts and Best of Women
The Cochran Residence
Morristown, New Jersey
April 1780
The following week passed in a blur of tension.
Eliza was able to put off the wedding by claiming illness. It helped that Aunt Gertrude was the most well-known nurse in the Continental army, and her uncle, even though he was away, was personal physician to the commander in chief. No one seemed to suspect her claim, and in fact she was so shaken, she couldn’t get out of bed the next day or for days after that. She trembled anytime she heard a loud noise.
“It is unconscionable!” Aunt Gertrude said when she heard the whole story, a bit embarrassed too many glasses of wine had seduced her to sleep through the entire encounter. They gathered in the parlor a day and a half after the incident to discuss what to do next. “In all my life I have never heard of a gentleman behaving so outrageously. And no word from him still—no apology, no withdrawal of his engagement. Nothing!”
“He is no gentleman,” Stephen declared. “I have a good mind to call him out myself.”
“Absolutely not!” Peggy shrieked, causing Eliza to jump. “This assault is terrible enough, but to lose you on top of it!”
“Nor could I,” Eliza said. “You have acquitted yourself with immeasurable dignity, Mr. Van Rensselaer, but Colonel Livingston has been a soldier these past four years and is bound to come off better in a duel. But even worse, if you were to duel, then the causes of the conflict would receive a public airing, and I simply couldn’t bear that.”
“This talk of duels is nonsense,” Aunt Gertrude said now. “Boys posturing and preening. This is a simple matter. I shall write Colonel Livingston and demand that he rescind his proposal for your hand. He will have no choice but to withdraw. Honor compels it.”
But apparently Henry did have a choice—or he had no honor—because less than an hour after Aunt Gertrude had sent a servant to deliver her letter to the Livingstons’ rented house, a note came back in Susannah Livingston’s own hand.
Dear Mrs. Cochran,
It is my understanding that some regrettable actions took place night before last when both my son and your niece celebrated perhaps a bit too much on the eve of their nuptials. It is one of the little-discussed casualties of war that the absence of our husbands and fathers lends a certain lawlessness to our households, and in this atmosphere our young people are not as well chaperoned as they would normally be. Henry tells me that when he mistakenly entered your husband’s house yestereve—one white house looking rather like another when one is in a strange town—he was greeted by your niece in rather revealing attire, which he in his impaired condition interpreted as an invitation to behavior unseemly for a lady to commit to words. It would seem, then, that the fault for the altercation lies with both parties, and the most prudent thing for us to do in the absence of either paterfamilias is to put the incident behind us, and proceed with the union as planned. I gather that Miss Schuyler has been taken ill, but as soon as she is well enough to stand it is my fervent wish that the marriage take place, and we allow our young people to get on with the important business.
Yours very sincerely,
Mrs. (Governor) William Livingston
“Of all the—” Peggy was rendered speechless by the note, which Aunt Gertrude read out loud to her and Eliza. “Does she dare to insinuate that my sister is somehow to blame for being attacked?”
“She does not insinuate it, Sister,” Eliza said wearily. “She says it straight out. Henry is her son, after all. I suppose it makes sense—”
“Stop,” Aunt Gertrude interrupted her. “Never ever, ever make excuses for a scoundrel. The fault is entirely his, and anyone—even a mother—who defends it is equally to blame. ‘Mrs. (Governor) William Livingston.’ What pretentious poppycock!”
Eliza was first shocked, and then, for the first time since the attack, amused. She had always known Aunt Gertrude to be an unconventional, independent woman, but she never guessed that she carried quite this level of bile in her. She felt exceedingly grateful that she was under this remarkable woman’s protection.