Love & War (Alex & Eliza #2)(57)
She was conscious of Violetta’s eyes on her, and Peggy’s, and the four other people’s in the room.
“Mrs. Hamilton?” Violetta prompted again.
“Yes,” Eliza said, speaking not to the maid but to the rest of the room. “I wonder if we might be a bit unconventional and serve the first course Roman style. In here.” Alex was fond of spouting forth on ancient history, with Germanicus’s campaigns a dinnertime favorite—that is, when he did make it home in time for dinner.
“In . . . here?” Violetta said hesitantly.
“Yes!” Eliza said, forcing the brightness into her voice. “I know it’s unusual, but these are unusual times, no? They call for new traditions. We need not be hidebound and stuffy. It’s just—” Her eyes turned again to the dining room.
“I think it sounds fun!” Peggy cut in. She grabbed Eliza’s hand, and Eliza knew her sister understood how important it was that their first dinner not officially begin until Alex was there to take his seat.
Peggy turned to her husband. “You will forgive me, darling, if I say that after all those four-hour meals at Rensselaerswyck I am hungry—all puns intended—for something a little less formal.”
Stephen, the youngest person in the room, was also, in many ways, the most conservative. In two years he would reach his majority and assume the Patroonship and control of his vast estates, and he studied tradition with the same diligence that Alex studied the law. He frowned now, as if pondering a difficult problem in mathematics or astronomy.
“Am I correct in understanding that you are proposing we eat . . . here?” He indicated the parlor as though it were a barn or the crow’s nest of a whaling ship.
His wife raised an eyebrow, daring her husband to object.
He did not. “How . . . how utterly fantastic!”
“Wonderful!” Peggy said, giving Stephen so a warm smile that he blushed.
“Are you certain?” asked Eliza.
“What? No? It will be exciting. Almost like camping!” he enthused.
“Camping?” a voice called from the hallway.
Eliza stood and whirled toward the door, where a moment later Alex appeared, still wrapped in his overcoat.
She had forgotten how handsome he was, and seeing him at the threshold, looking tired but happy to see her, all her frustration and worry disappeared at the sight of his crooked smile.
“Alex!” she exclaimed, rushing to him in joy and not embarrassed to show it to their guests, who looked on with amusement.
Her husband took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips in full view of their guests. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” he whispered. “Work was tiresome.”
“You’re right on time,” she said softly, and pulled him in for another kiss.
17
Don’t Forget to Take Out the Trash
The Hamilton Town House
New York, New York
January 1784
With the host’s arrival, at last the party moved to the table and food began to appear from the basement kitchen in droves. Stephen’s provisions were generous, and Rowena’s culinary skills were even more remarkable than Alex and Eliza had heretofore realized. Each successive cut of beef and pork was succulently tender and juicy, some smoked, others cured, others fresh, with just the right amount of salt and pepper and dried herbs to set off their unique, savory flavors. A medley of winter vegetables complemented the meat—tubers like potatoes and rutabagas and parsnips, along with some of the more durable squashes from the fall, butternut and sugar pumpkin and acorn and dumpling, all accompanied by pungent herbs whose names Rowena (when she was summoned to the table by Helena, whose own cook was “hopeless” from October to May) refused to divulge, lest a competing cook track down her sources.
Honey wine had given way to Mrs. Childress’s hearty ales, and the conversation flowed as freely as the spirits, by turns frivolous (which New York aldermen were attempting to pass off their wigs as their own powdered hair) to serious (the revolution being over, tea—delicate, pungent, refined tea—was at last returning to North America, and breakfast was no longer dominated by “Caribbean gunpowder,” as Gouverneur referred to coffee, which “starts the day with all the subtlety of a jolt from one of Mr. Franklin’s electric wires”).
With a start, Eliza realized that even though Alex was home at last, she wasn’t going to get to talk to him any more intimately. He took his place at one end of the table, and she, naturally sat at the other. There were a thousand little things she wanted to ask him about his day and his cases, but she had to content herself with being one more member of the conversational fray. And in such a brilliant, opinionated group, that was a chore in itself. A fun one, to be sure, but Eliza was filled with newfound respect for her mother and the deft way she had handled hundreds of such occasions.
Inevitably the talk turned to politics. Alex had visited City Hall during the day’s errands, and the place was buzzing with rumors that State Chancellor Robert Livingston was working up a scheme to create a so-called land bank to facilitate investment in New York and boost the local economy. Chancellor Livingston was among the most respected figures in the state. Not only was he descended the Lords of Livingston Manor, but he had served on the “Committee of Five” that helped draft the Declaration of Independence, and now served as chief judicial officer of the state as well as the national government’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs. In other words, it would not be easy to dismiss any proposition that came with his signature attached. Although a more direct problem to opposing the plan—or implementing it, for that matter—was the fact that no one was quite sure what a land bank was.