Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)
Melissa de la Cruz
I am more and more unhappy and impatient under the hard necessity that keeps me from you, and yet the prospect lengthens as I advance. . . .
Though the period of our reunion in reality approaches it seems further off. Among other causes of uneasiness, I dread lest you should imagine, I yield too easily to the barrs that keep us asunder; but if you have such an idea you ought to banish it and reproach yourself with injustice.
A spirit entering into bliss, heaven opening upon all its faculties, cannot long more ardently for the enjoyment, than I do my darling Betsey, to taste the heaven that awaits me in your bosom. Is my language too strong? It is a feeble picture of my feelings—no words can tell you how much I love and how much I long—you will only know it when wrapt in each other’s arms we give and take those delicious caresses which love inspires and marriage sanctifies. . . .
—Letter from Alexander Hamilton to Elizabeth Schuyler,
October 1780
Part One
Storming the Walls
1
Spring Harvest!
The Schuyler Mansion
Albany, New York
April 1781
Forget Paris. The French could keep their croissants and the Champs-élysées. Who cares about London? Rome? Athens? From what she’d heard, they were just a bunch of ruins. And what of Williamsburg, Virginia? Charleston, South Carolina? New York City? As far as she was concerned, they could all fall off the map.
In all the world, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton thought there was no place more beautiful than Albany at springtime. Of course, the Pastures was dear to her as her childhood home, and even more so as the site of her wedding to Alexander Hamilton just last winter. Time had done little to dampen their affection, and she was more in love with her husband than ever. Perhaps it was this love that led to Eliza’s delight at anything and everything around her.
But rose-colored glasses or no, it was hard to claim there was anywhere more glorious than late April in her hometown. The air was warm and the sun was mellow. Bare trees had covered themselves in soft green foliage and the sharp, tangy smell of fireplace smoke gave way to the softer aromas of hyacinths and crocuses, lilac and dogwood. Swallows darted through the air, snapping up flies and gnats, and newborn calves, foals, and shoats frolicked about the fields and sties. The mighty Hudson River was wreathed in mist at daybreak and teemed with fishermen’s boats in the afternoon. Their nets hauled in plentiful catches of shad, whose roe had a delicate, almost nutty taste that paired perfectly with a salad of tender mustard greens.
But best of all was the bounty of blueberries and strawberries. All over the estate, hundreds of bushes sagged beneath the weight of thousands upon thousands of red, burgundy, and purple fruit. Every morning for a week, Eliza and her sisters, Angelica, Peggy, and five-year-old Cornelia—joined sometimes by their youngest brother, eight-year-old Rensselaer, known affectionately as Ren—traded in their sumptuous silks and bustles for simple, sturdy muslin skirts that they’d tie up high, showing ankles and calves in a bit of a risqué manner, and joined the housemaids in the fields to pick bucket after bucket of plump, sweet, juicy berries. (Well, not Ren. Ren hadn’t worn a skirt since his christening.)
By noon, their lips were as stained as their fingertips (after all, picking involved a fair bit of “sampling,” as Eliza put it), and the three oldest sisters repaired to the kitchen to do their work. Some of the fruit was packed in ice in the cellar, and some more was baked into pies, but most was simmered in rich syrupy jellies whose tart sweetness would liven up many a winter meal, slathered on fresh bread or griddle cakes or dabbed on turkey or mutton. A portion of the fruit was pickled, making for a delicious snack, salty at first, before exploding in your mouth in a burst of sweetness.
But as tempting as all these rich cooked treats were, Eliza’s favorite way to eat them was also the simplest: fresh and chilled. Each plump fruit tasted like a thimble-size dollop of liquid happiness. That early spring afternoon, standing in the dappled light by the stone counter, Eliza alternated between a basket of strawberries and a basket of blueberries, savoring them one at a time.
“I can’t decide which is more perfect!” she exclaimed to her sisters, who were gathered around the long rustic table that ran down the center of the kitchen, sorting fruit.
“Blech.” Peggy Schuyler pouted with lips that were nearly as fruit-stained as Eliza’s. “If I ever see another strawberry or blueberry again, it will be too soon!” she said as she reached for yet another blueberry and popped it in her mouth.
“Peg’s right,” Angelica agreed. “Sometimes nature’s bounty is too much. A week ago I couldn’t wait for the fruit to ripen. Now all I want are peanuts! What I wouldn’t give for freshly roasted nuts right now!” But before the words had escaped her lips, she was already rolling a red strawberry between her fingers, letting it disappear into her mouth as well.
“With this war, we can’t have peanuts till September anyway,” said Eliza.
“Stephen says the war may be over before fall,” said Peggy, referring to her fiancé, Stephen Van Rensselaer III. “The American coastline is simply too long for even an army or navy as powerful as England’s to cover, and with French forces now fully committed to the cause of our independence, King George’s men will find themselves both outnumbered and outmaneuvered.”