Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)(26)
“He wrote me several days ago. He was on the march to Williamsburg, where they will stage the invasion of Yorktown. He should be there by now.” She was glad for the letters—as long as they arrived, it meant he was still alive.
Angelica plucked idly at the fabric bunched in her lap. “Do not worry, nothing will happen,” she said soothingly to her sister.
Of course, Eliza was worried, but she didn’t want to say it out loud and give voice to the fear. “I am rather more worried about what is going on right here,” she said, nodding at the bed. Their mother was in the throes of another contraction, which was lasting longer than the previous ones.
“Dot says that childbirth has a way of taking care of itself.”
“Not that. I meant the idea of Mama . . . intoxicated. It rather changes my whole picture of her.”
Angelica let out a little laugh. “Oh, I like her this way. I think we should conspire to get Mama to drink more often.”
If their mother heard them, she didn’t answer. Eliza noticed that not only were the contractions lasting longer, they were also occurring more frequently. Dot’s hands were busy beneath the sheets, working in trancelike precision. Though neither she nor Mrs. Schuyler spoke, it was clear the two women were in harmony with each other, working to bring another Schuyler sibling into the world.
“But tell me,” Eliza said. “Why were you visiting the Van Alens? You have never seemed overly fond of them previously. And why on earth are you wearing that shawl on such a hot day?” she added as her sister fussed yet again with the long wrap of cloth.
Angelica’s hands froze as if she had been caught doing something improper. Eliza turned and saw that her sister’s face had gone ashen, yet with bright spots of color in the cheeks. She looked back at Angelica’s hands again, and thought that they seemed to float slightly above her lap. But it was not that, exactly. No, it was as if Angelica’s lap were somehow . . . thicker. Now that she thought about it, she realized Angelica had been eating rather more than usual lately, extra servings of bacon at breakfast (well, who could blame her?) and, more oddly, extra portions of fiddlehead ferns for dinner. Angelica had always hated fiddleheads—said they tasted as bitter as poorly made vinegar. But now she ate them ravenously. It was almost as if she had a . . . craving.
A strange realization came over Eliza. She looked again at Angelica’s hands dancing over her thickened lap. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to articulate the word, even mentally. Angelica was her sister, after all. Even if she was married now, she still couldn’t be . . . Could she?
A heavy sigh came from the bed. “Oh, Eliza, my sweet, sweet, na?ve girl. Don’t you realize you are going to be an aunt?”
Eliza laughed nervously. “Don’t you mean sister, Mama?”
“I am in labor, my dear. I am not ill, nor have I lost my wits, nor my words. I mean aunt.”
“Aunt?” Eliza repeated dumbly.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Dot said from the opposite end of the bed. “Open your eyes, girl. Your sister is pregnant!”
Eliza turned to Angelica, who was looking at her with wide eyes, her face a mixture of exultation tinged with fear. She nodded to Eliza’s unvoiced question, and then the sisters threw their arms around each other in glee, the sound of their merriment filling the already overcrowded bedroom. And as she held her sister’s body and felt the soft mound of Angelica’s stomach press against hers, all the arguments that she had conjured against children during her walk home evaporated. She realized she, too, longed to be a mother. To raise a family of Hamiltons with her Alex. She hoped that she, too, would soon be similarly blessed.
Dot looked up and found Mrs. Schuyler’s eyes. “I must say, I’ve been in some rather peculiar birthing rooms. But this takes the cake.”
Mrs. Schuyler smiled wryly down at her midwife. “You know the Schuyler sisters,” she said. “There is no situation so august that they cannot find a way to have a laugh. Why, I bet this new one will be born with a smile!”
10
Into the Fray
The Trenches
Yorktown, Virginia
September 1781
Alex made his way slowly up the ranks of men, nodding at this one, shaking hands with that. The setting sun was behind him, bathing his men’s faces in golden tones, but every time he stepped close to one of them his shadow would cast the man into darkness. Alex did his best not to think of that as an omen.
“You wanted stories to tell your sons, Enright,” he said to one. “We’ll give him a good story tonight, I promise!”
“Private Carson! Are you really eating soup at a time like this? Let’s hope it’s not leaking out a bullet hole a few hours hence!”
“No, Corporal Fromm, we will not be taking British scalps as trophies of war. Feel free to pilfer a new pair of boots, though. Those look about as solid as cheesecloth!”
The men—his men—looked at him with sardonic yet resolute expressions, the forced jocularity of soldiers pretending they weren’t frightened of the death that might very well be awaiting them in the next hour or two. Their faces were streaked with mud, which Alex had jokingly told them not to wash off. “A paler bunch of boys I never saw! Two weeks in the sun and you still have cheeks like fish bellies! A little mud’ll help to hide you from British eyes once the moon is up!”