Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)(20)

“Speaking of which,” Eliza said, standing, “I should be getting home. Mrs. Schuyler is very close to her own time, and she grows unsettled when she does not know where all seven of her children are.”

She took her leave hastily, but as she passed through the front hall, she peeked into the opposite parlor again. Anne had finished singing and now sat with a book in her hand, turning pages with the idleness of one who is not reading but merely glancing at old familiar words, as if to remind herself of a favorite world but not sink too deeply in it.

“She wants for playmates her own age,” Mrs. Bleecker said. “When hostilities cease and regular schooling resumes, we will arrange for her to study with some of her peers. But until then I’m afraid she has to make do with two middle-aged companions.”

Eliza stared at the girl a moment longer, thinking in part of her orphaned husband and in part of the family she hoped they would have together, then took her leave and began the long walk back to the Pastures. It was not too far a distance—perhaps four miles—but she did not want to overtax herself in the heat. As she leisurely made her way along the well-packed soil, her mind began to race ahead, faster than her feet. How odd that her mother’s pregnancy had not made her think of children of her own, whereas a single comment from a family acquaintance awakened slumbering feelings she had not realized she possessed.

The truth was, she and Alex had hardly spoken of starting a family, even as they enthusiastically did all they could to start one (ahem). But they had not yet been blessed, and perhaps that was a blessing in itself for now. Eliza knew Alex’s own childhood had not been happy. He had never said as much, but Eliza suspected that he doubted if he was temperamentally suited for fatherhood. He was an exacting man and a perfectionist, a trait that endeared him to an authoritarian like General Washington (when it wasn’t annoying him), but did not exactly inspire love from one’s children. Respect maybe, but not love. And Eliza knew Alex wanted to be loved by his children, not because he was their father, but because he was lovable.

And she? What did she want? Her primary experience of motherhood had been through Mrs. Schuyler. Her mother had been pregnant an astonishing twelve times, and seen no fewer than four of her children, including a set of triplets, die before they could even be baptized. Perhaps even more sadly, she lost three others before their first birthdays. True, seven lived and provided their parents with all the joys that children can impart, but one death for every life? It seemed almost too high a price to pay. She wondered how her mother had endured such loss without succumbing to despair or morbidity. Eliza didn’t know if she had that strength.

And if her children-to-be lived? What then? To be responsible for another life, from its food to its clothing to the shaping of its mind. It was an awesome responsibility, and here Eliza was, barely a woman herself. How could she expect to rear and mold a brood of her own, when she was still trying to decide not only who she was, but how she would be in the world? She recognized that motherhood was indeed an awesome profession, but just as fatherhood was not the whole of man’s life, she didn’t think that raising children should be all a woman concerned herself with either.

She couldn’t “take a job” in the conventional sense, but still, there were fulfilling endeavors to which a respectable woman could devote her energies. There were charities—hospitals, schools, orphanages—that were bigger and more complex than many businesses, and did arguably more good in the world. But if she were to saddle herself with children, it might be twenty years or more before she could begin to do any real work of that nature.

And as their less-than-smooth parting indicated, she and Alex still had a lot to learn about who they were—as individuals and as a couple—before introducing children into the recipe. Plus, now that he had his own command on the battlefield, who even knew if she would still have a husband at the end of this war.

“No!” she said out loud, horrified at the very thought, just as she rounded the last hill and the Pastures came into view on its promenade. “Alex will come home to me. He must and he will. And children can wait for now.”

Even as she spoke, however, she saw a boy running toward her. She recognized him as Lew, who worked in the barn with his father, Llewellyn, a Welshman who served as the estate’s ostler.

“Miss Eliza! Miss Eliza! Come quick!”

“Whatever is the matter, Lew?” Eliza said, catching up the panting boy.

“Miss Dot sent me! She said to fetch you as soon as I saw you!”

Dot was calling, and it could only mean one thing. For Dot was not only a ladies’ maid but a handy midwife, who had brought all fourteen of Catherine Schuyler’s children to the world.

The baby was coming.





8





War at Last


   On the March


    White Plains, New York, to Yorktown, Virginia


   September 1781


The 1st and 2nd New York Regiments, along with a pair of patchwork Connecticut divisions, set off for Yorktown, Virginia, on September 7, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton. The three-week march was grueling, even for the mounted officers. Ten-hour days in scorching heat, the sun beating down on their tricorne hats and turning them into little furnaces atop the soldiers’ heads, dense wool coats draped around shoulders and arms growing heavier and heavier with each step. The occasional cloudburst brought rain and brief respite from the heat, but any relief was offset by the burden of marching in sodden clothing through muddy roads churned to slurry by hundreds of booted feet.