Alex and Eliza: A Love Story(83)
Alex found he couldn’t look her in the eye. “Oh, my pretty damsel, when I think of the match you could have made—ah! And here you have chosen me, one who has so little to offer. If happiness were all that it took to make a thing such as marriage work, we would be set for life. But how can you be sure that ours will not turn into one of those tragic unions that unhappy couples share?”
Eliza laughed. “Perhaps you forget I was raised by a thrifty Dutch woman who managed an entire household while raising a large brood of children. Surely, there is something of practical value in all of that!”
“You make light of it today, but I entreat you. Consider me decades from now. Will you be as satisfied then as you are at this moment with being a poor man’s wife?”
“Silly man. I know the man I am marrying is destined for great things, as the many remarkable things he has done thus far have brought him to such a high point already. Mark my words, Alex. You are a man whose future lies before him for all to marvel at one day. And you, Colonel Hamilton, are mine, and I am yours always.”
He scooped her into his arms once again, his doubts quelled. “I shall never be worthy of you, my angel,” he said. “I know I shall disappoint you in a thousand ways before our time on earth is through. But I hope that you will always see the good in me and know that this unworthy heart of mine will always be yours, no matter what obstacles or failures I bring to your life.”
Eliza pulled away and looked him right in the eye. “I know you, Alex. I know you and I love you, and I shall always love you, come what may. I shall be yours, always.”
37
Wedding March
The Schuyler Mansion, Also Known as the Pastures
Albany, New York
December 14, 1780
At long last, it was time for the wedding. Life being life, and war being war, the heady romance of the proposal endured a nine-months interregnum before it was consummated at the Pastures in Albany. For one thing, Eliza wanted to be married as far from the debacle of Morristown as possible—wanted only to remember Morristown as the place where she had fallen in love with Alex, and not where she had almost lost him, and herself. For another, it was the place where Alex had had his command of the 3rd New Jersey abruptly mooted when General Clinton of the British army stepped up his invasion of Charleston, which after a six weeks’ siege, had fallen in mid-May.
It was altogether a disastrous turn of events, one that left General Washington scrambling to recover and unable to part with his most trusted aide. The Benedict Arnold affair proved even more tumultuous—General Arnold was one of the brightest stars in the Continental army, who had once served with General Schuyler. Thanks in part to Alex’s discovery of his correspondence with Major André, the Continental army was able to foil Arnold’s plan to hand the fort at West Point over to the British. General Arnold himself managed to escape but Major André had been caught and imprisoned. Though Eliza remembered him fondly as the dashing swain who had danced with her on the very night she met her future husband, Alex realized there had been something sneaky about him that night they bumped into him in Morristown at the bonfire.
Though General Arnold had initiated the plan and John André was merely the officer he managed to contact, everyone on both sides of the conflict thought Major André one of the most honorable men in either army. Yet the law was clear, and General Washington’s position inflexible. Though Alex himself asked General Washington for clemency, on October 2, the dashing young officer was hanged for espionage behind enemy lines.
The death shook Eliza deeply, and it was some weeks before she felt ready to move forward with, as she said, “the rest of my life.”
But at last there was a lull in Alex’s duties, and by the end of November, he was able to escape north to the Pastures.
The wedding was on for December 14 at noon.
CATHERINE SCHUYLER STOOD in front of her looking glass, rocking her enormous belly. She was visibly pregnant for the twelfth time in her lifetime and decidedly cranky, but today at noon she would paint a smile on her face and play hostess at the Schuyler family’s grand wedding feast for her second-eldest daughter, Eliza.
A second glance in the mirror did little to calm her nerves. “I look like a stout Dutch milkmaid,” she groused. As the noontime wedding hour approached, there was nothing for it but to lift her chin high and wear a dazzling shawl. She chose a green-and-burgundy-velvet piece, patterned with feathers that spread across her shoulders and ended in gold threaded tassels that dropped below her hips.
Once a striking dark-haired beauty with a long elegant neck, she could hardly remember the pert figure she had been so careless with, but the vanity created by the overheated praise from her groom on their wedding night had stuck with her forever. But as the years passed in a lifetime spent raising her large brood, Mrs. Schuyler had developed a habit of rocking herself to generate a moment of peace. Now she caught occasional murmurs of being called the Rocking Horse by her children and routinely found her husband disappearing into his study each evening after dinner.
Nevertheless, for today—Eliza’s special day—Catherine Schuyler would make every effort to be gracious.
It was to be a small family wedding in the Schuyler home, as was the Dutch custom of the day. Of course, there was nothing small about the Pastures or the extended Schuyler clan. And with the Schuylers, there were always songs to be sung and games to be played inside and out. The general recruited Mr. Vincent to ferry guests back and forth over the ice-packed Hudson in an open sleigh rigged out with the jangling bells of two liveried horses.