Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)(40)

With a huge grin, Alex literally swept her off her feet and carried her over the threshold. Eliza giggled in his arms, giddy to think that they were all alone at last—with no servants, sisters, little brothers, or parents in sight. So what if the house was practically empty! The lack of tables and chairs, china and silver, candles and ale and compote and even such banal necessities as salt and pepper were more than made up for by the blessed privacy she and Alex finally shared, not to mention that the one piece of furniture they did own was an enormous, overstuffed feather bed.

It was on this bed that he laid her down now, and Eliza felt almost coquettish, gazing up at Alex from her dark lashes as she slowly divested herself of all her layers, enjoying the ragged breathing coming from him as he quickly stripped down and joined her under the covers. His blue eyes glittered in the dim twilight, as he held his body above hers.

“Two years ago, when you were in Virginia, I was so worried,” she whispered, craning her neck upward to kiss him on his. “Part of me wondered if you would ever come back. I don’t think I ever told you that.”

“My dearest, bravest girl,” he murmured, bending down to kiss her on the soft spot near her ear. “I am home now. You are my home.”

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes as he covered her mouth with his.

And then there was no more time or desire for conversation, as even the most articulate statesman in America found words paled in comparison to the sublime experience of being with his beloved.



* * *





THE MARRIED COUPLE spent the first two days strolling the frigid streets of New York, hand in hand, oblivious to the cold and marveling as the abandoned storefronts and town houses filled overnight with newly-minted Americans, some of them returning to a city they had thought lost forever, others taking advantage of the hundreds of empty houses and shops to establish a toehold in a major metropolitan area at prices that would never come around again.

By night they dined at the beautiful walnut table that had at last arrived from Albany, covered with a gorgeous muslin tablecloth whose delicate blue-and-gold tracery Eliza’s great-grandmother Rensselaer had embroidered more than half a century ago, set with the Crown Derby china dinnerware they had found at a local shop, along with a lovely set of silver that Stephen Van Rensselaer had given them as a wedding present, and that had slept in its velvet-lined case for the past three years.

For the first few days they drank from a pair of mismatched, battered pewter steins Alex had brought home with him from Yorktown (“That dent was caused by a bullet aimed at my heart,” he said with a twinkle in his eye), but on their third day of New York residence, he returned home with a pair of truly exquisite crystal goblets. The taller one was etched with a brilliantly lifelike depiction of Zeus visiting Dana? in the form of a shower of gold, while the shorter showed the hapless nymph Echo spying on Narcissus, who was too busy staring at his own reflection in a pool of water to notice her. They were the finest glasses Eliza had ever seen, let alone held in her hands—and she had taken many a meal in the Van Rensselaers’ magnificent manor house—and, though Alex could tell she didn’t want to seem ungrateful, she was unable to prevent herself from asking how much they had cost. Alex blushed, then pulled a potato out of his pocket and said, “Let’s just say we’ll be eating a lot of these for the next few weeks.” Fortunately, he had had a bottle of wine in another pocket, and Eliza’s momentary start of alarm was quickly ameliorated.

In fact, the goblets, like everything else they bought for the house, had been a steal. But when you had six large rooms to furnish, and food to be purchased at black market prices, plus rent on top of that—and no income coming in!—the debts were starting to pile up. Alex’s valise was stuffed with bills of sale and IOUs and promissory notes for dozens of different vendors. Fortunately, conditions were tough all over the island, so that pretty much everyone was living on credit and willing to be generous in their terms. Even so, Alex knew he needed to find clients soon, or their first stab at independence would be over before it had ever really begun.

Eliza decided not to chide Alex for his expenses. He would set up his law practice soon enough, and soon everyone would want him as their counselor. She had great faith in her husband, and her frugal nature would serve them well until he was established.

As their habit, in the morning of the second week of their residence, they headed out for their daily walk, arm in arm. The air was cold but crisp, and pleasantly tinged with the smell of wood smoke and, faintly, the salt of the sea. Just a few doors up from their new house they came to a much larger building, a handsome Palladian edifice with a four-columned portico jutting out from the second floor. The street was relatively quiet, and what traffic there was centered around the building, where official-looking men marched determinedly in and out, trailed by retinues of assistants and clerks. A simple plaque affixed to the building’s white stone front told the reason for so much activity:

CITY HALL

Eliza stared across the street at the building, which was on a par with the Van Rensselaers’ manor house in size and grandeur. Yet, unlike the country mansion on its wide lawns and manicured gardens, this was surrounded by other buildings, from the two-hundred-foot-tall spire of Trinity Church up the street, to the upright elegance of town houses like the one she now occupied with her husband.

“It is strange to me, who grew up surrounded by acres and acres of garden and field,” she said, “to live in a house that is located not just on the same street but the same block as a municipal building, let alone City Hall.”