“At first, the violations were confined to the nights,” Maria continued. “But as time went by and I grew less afraid of him, he grew more jealous of me and constantly accused me of flirting with other men, or worse. If truth be told, Mr. Reynolds had so soured me on the male sex that I wouldn’t care if I never saw another one again, let alone courted one’s affections. He punished me anyway, always with his words and sometimes with his hands as well, and as sometimes happens in these cases, I grew insensitive to his curses and his slaps, and taunted him with transgressions that I had not, in fact, committed. I soon learned that my husband’s sadism was vested in my fear. He liked me to cower, not carp, and the more I showed him that his threats didn’t hurt me, the less inclination he seemed to administer them. And so we persevered in this uneasy truce with but occasional eruptions, and I in my naïveté thought that somehow I could eke out an existence.”
She paused again, turning her face to the window, which washed it in a golden glow. Alex saw with a start that the light had deepened considerably. The sun was going down. He was due home soon. Yet he was riveted to his chair.
“Alas,” Maria said after nearly a minute of silence, “a villain’s nature cannot remain sated forever. Mr. Reynolds’s greatest pleasure was in my fear, but if I would not give him that, then he would take what he would get. After more than a year of relative tranquility, his outbursts suddenly redoubled and grew more pronounced. There were days, weeks, when I was not fit to be seen outside my own house or to entertain visitors within it. Here was Mr. Reynolds’s new joy: making me a prisoner of my own politesse, my own shame. I realized soon enough that if I did not flee I would die in his house, and what’s more, I would not even be missed, because I had not been seen outside it for so long by ought but shopkeepers. Even then it took months before I worked up the nerve to flee. And . . .”
Alex remained silent, waiting to see if she had reached the end of her story, or the end of her ability to tell it. Her face in the evening light was as serene as a Madonna’s in some Italian painting, unlined, ageless, as if time had frozen for her five years ago, when she was sixteen and sold off to the highest bidder like a piece of chattel.
“And here we are,” he said at length. “I must ask,” he added after a moment. “How did you choose me?”
Maria turned from the window to look at Alex for the first time in some minutes. Her eyes, he saw then, were not ageless, but filled with bitter experience, and even cunning. Suddenly Alex remembered that he was in shirtsleeves before a woman he barely knew. Again he had to fight the urge to cross his arms over his chest.
“I had seen your name, of course, and knew of your reputation for taking on lost causes. I did not connect it with my own situation, though, until I saw an engraving of you in court in the Journal.” She shrugged. “I thought you had a trustworthy face.”
Alex couldn’t help but smile as he thought of the image in question, which had appeared a few weeks ago. “That engraving looks nothing like me. In fact, it seems that the artist mistook opposing counsel’s assistant for me. He’s not a bad-looking man, I admit, but I do have rather more hair than him under my wig.”
Maria cracked a little smile.
“I realized something was amiss as soon as I walked into your office.”
Now Alex had to laugh. “I hope I haven’t disappointed you.”
Maria returned his laugh with a small but somehow self-assured chuckle. “No,” she said in a soft voice. “I am not disappointed at all.”
13
Tempest in a Teapot
The Hamilton Town House
New York, New York
August 1785
When Alex finally got home for dinner—to which he was an hour late for the fourth straight night, or perhaps the fifth, or fifteenth—Eliza found him unusually silent.
“It’s Mrs. Reynolds, isn’t it?” she said simply as she helped him off with his coat in the front hall and handed it to Drayton. The footman had a stricken look on his face, as though, by not getting to the door first, he had committed some heinous sin, like coughing up the Eucharist or dropping a baby on its head.
“It is rather damp, sir,” he said, inspecting the coat. “I shall take it downstairs and hang it by the stove to make sure it dries without mildewing.”
“Thank you, Drayton,” Alex said, as the footman scurried off with the garment, fluffing it with his white-gloved hand as he went.
Alex nodded his head and closed his eyes as he pulled Eliza into a tight hug and held her closely for several seconds.
“I have felt sympathy for my clients before,” he said into her hair. “I have wanted to win their cases for their sake as well as my own. But no one has ever touched me quite like this woman. Her plight is truly heartbreaking.”
After the party the other night, Alex had alluded to the strife that plagued Maria’s marriage, though he had said he did not yet know all the details. Eliza sensed that he knew more now, though she wasn’t sure if she should ask about them, or if she wanted to know. She stepped back and took his hands in hers and fixed him in the eye with a compassionate yet steely gaze.
“If you need to unburden yourself, I am here,” she said in a voice that was at once diplomatic and full of sympathy.
Alex seemed to contemplate this, then shuddered. “I would not . . . I could not inflict such violence upon you. There are things that your sex deserves to be sheltered from.”
Eliza gave her husband a little kiss on the cheek. “Men always think they are sheltering us females, but it is usually we who are sheltering you. We are not as delicate as you think. If Mrs. Reynolds can survive the transgressions committed against her, I can surely survive hearing about them. But,” she added quickly, as Alex seemed ready to protest, “I am not asking to be told anything. I am only letting you know that if you wish to share your burden rather than carry it alone, I am here to listen. Come, let us go in to dinner. I think a dose of family would do you well. I should tell you, though, we have a guest.”
“A guest?” Alex said as they walked into the front parlor, brightly lit by a profusion of lamps.
“There you are,” a female voice sang out as they entered the room. “I was just about to tell John to go look for the two of you!”
Betty Van Rensselaer sat in the wingback chair Eliza usually claimed as her own, as it commanded the best view of the room. John had brought her home with him again. John and Betty had resumed their childhood friendship and had been out on the town together many a night. Eliza found the girl by turns charming and trying, immature and spoiled to be sure, but full of spark and not bad-hearted. John doted on her a little too much for Eliza’s comfort, although Emma seemed not to notice, but Eliza thought she might be able to turn Betty’s presence to her advantage.
Her brother was seated on the yellow sofa, closest to the open windows, while Emma had taken what was easily the hardest chair in the room, despite the fact that there were several more comfortable perches from which to choose. She had her embroidery hoop in her hand and was using a white thread to add incredibly realistic froth to ocean waves (she was still working on the liberation of Andromeda).
“And I was just about to tell Betty and Emma,” John chimed in with a wink, “that we should head to table on our own while you two canoodle in the front hall.”
From the corner of her eye, Eliza saw Alex color. Though they had been married for five years, and John was nearly a decade his junior, such was his respect for the Schuyler name that even the intimation of intimacy between himself and a Schuyler daughter could turn him back into a blushing fifteen-year-old. She expected him to say something, but clearly he was still caught up in whatever had transpired with the unfortunate Mrs. Reynolds.
“How funny!” she said, coming to her husband’s rescue. “I was just about to tell Mr. Hamilton that we should head to table while you ride to Virginia to replace his bottles of whiskey.”
“Touché!” said John with a grin.
The fivesome made their way into the dining room, where Drayton stood at the foot of the table as stiffly as a suit of armor in a musty old European castle. As soon as the diners appeared, however, he sprang forward to pull out Eliza’s chair, which she sank into gratefully. In the last week it seemed that she had gained ten pounds, and she was starting to feel it in her feet. She noted that someone—presumably her all-attentive footman—had added a pillow to the seat as well. Grateful for his foresight, she looked up with more than the usual politeness. “Thank you, Drayton.”
“Very good, Mrs. Hamilton,” said Drayton, easing her chair in, then rushing to seat Betty. As he moved to Eliza’s right, though, she saw him catch sight of Emma, and he pulled up short.
“Oh ho!” John chuckled beside Emma. “We have a situation! What is a poor hapless footman to do when there are two ladies to be seated and neither has clear standing over the other? On the one hand, we have Miss Trask, who would seem to have precedence as a beloved long-term guest of the hosts rather than an actual resident of the house. But if Miss Trask is in fact a resident of the house, then precedence would be granted to Miss Van Rensselaer, who is most definitely a guest here. Oh, it is a pickle! That’s Shakespeare, by the way.”
Eliza thought John was laying it on a bit thick, no doubt trying to impress the girls. Drayton wavered for another moment, but before she could say something, Alex, who was standing behind his chair waiting for the ladies to be seated, started toward Emma’s chair.
“What should have happened, John,” Alex said in a voice that was half scolding, half mocking, “is that you should have seated Miss Trask, whose place is beside yours, leaving Drayton to assist Miss Van Rensselaer.” He pulled out Emma’s chair, and Emma took her seat.
“Oh, it’s all such a bother,” Betty said from the other side of the table. “A veritable tempest in a teapot. It’s just a chair, after all. It’s not a chest of drawers or a marble bust. I can pull it out myself.” Which is just what she did. “You are a pretentious ass, by the way,” she said, turning up her nose at John.
Drayton caught his breath.
“So close!” John said, plopping into his chair and looking at Drayton with feigned sympathy. “The chivalrous host had almost saved the evening, and then the boorish—or whatever the lady equivalent of boorish is—”
“Common, I think,” Betty said drily. “Or maybe slatternly.”
“The slatternly guest—”
“John Bradstreet Schuyler! Don’t you dare!” Eliza shouted, but it was plain she was trying hard not to laugh.
“By which I mean, of course, the misguided guest loused everything up by pulling out her own chair. Will decorum ever recover?” John added in a stricken voice. “Is the evening lost to chaos over a footman’s mistake?” He collapsed into laughter.
Eliza saw that Emma’s eyes were flashing but that she kept silent, perhaps cowed by the presence of a guest, especially one as distinguished as Miss Van Rensselaer. Although “distinguished” is putting a fine spin on it.
Why did John take every opportunity to tease Drayton? It was as if he were jealous of him somehow. Was he? Jealous of the footman? Whatever for?
“Drayton, please tell Rowena to plate the roast,” Eliza said finally. “It’s nearly nine. I’m famished.”
“Oh, darling,” Alex said to his wife as Drayton hurried off. “You should have eaten something!”
“What makes you think I didn’t eat something?” Eliza laughed. “My appetite has positively doubled in the past couple of weeks. As has my waistline.”
“Oh, pshaw,” Betty said. “You will be one of those despicable creatures who is delivered of her child and a week later is back in a corset, outshining everyone else at the ball. Whereas I, like my mother and aunts, will somehow manage to look fatter after I’ve had my baby! It is the other Van Rensselaer inheritance,” she added. “The one we don’t like to talk about.”
“Why, Miss Van Rensselaer!” John said, turning his wicked attentions to her. “Are you thinking of having a child? Hadn’t you ought to find a husband first?”
Betty rolled her eyes. “What do you think I am doing here, you silly goose?”
John coughed and sputtered, and Eliza bit back a chuckle. But it was Emma who cleared up the confusion.
“She means in New York City, Mr. Schuyler,” she said in a quiet voice. “Not here in this house.”
Betty looked aghast, then burst into laughter. “Oh, you thought I meant you! Little Johnny Schuyler? My husband? Oh, that is the best joke you’ve told all night!”
John glared at Betty. “As if I would ever wish for a wife like you,” he said.
Betty arched her eyebrow and looked him up and down. “I think that is exactly what you wish.”
Drayton walked back into the room just as everyone at the table burst into laughter. John laughed so heartily he had to wipe his eyes. Everyone was laughing except Emma, Eliza couldn’t help but note, and of course Drayton. Their shared sober countenances seemed almost conspiratorial.
After pouring some whiskey for Eliza and Betty, Drayton turned to Emma. “Some whiskey for you, Miss Trask?”
Emma started to shake her head but stopped herself. “As a matter of fact, I will,” she said, “but only if you call me Emma as I have asked.”
Drayton hesitated but soon nodded regally. “Very good, Emma,” he said, in a voice that made it sound as though he were greeting a queen.
“Just a taste,” Emma said, putting her hand up after Drayton had poured little more than a drop in her glass. “Thank you so much.”
Drayton bowed once again, so that his ears turned a little pink. He poured Alex some whiskey next, before leaving fetch the roast.
“How interesting,” Betty said once he was gone. “Is there a little cross-class romance going on, Emma?”
“What? No, I—oh,” Emma interjected then, cutting herself off. “You are too forward, Miss Van Rensselaer.”
“Betty, please. Call me Betty. So, you have no interest in Drayton?” she asked pointedly.
“Of course she doesn’t. Don’t you know? Everyone’s in love with me,” John said drolly. “Even Emma, who disapproves of me but still finds herself vulnerable to my many charms.”
“Oh, John, don’t tease Emma,” Eliza said now. “She has every right to disapprove of you. You have been acting like a total dissolute since you arrived in New York City.”
“Hmmm. I thought ‘dissolute’ was an adjective,” John said. “I guess we are using it as a noun now.”
Eliza turned to her husband. “This is why people who didn’t go to college despise people who did.”
“Oh, I don’t think we need to single out this instance,” Alex said merrily. “There are so many reasons to despise John.”
“I don’t despise Mr. Schuyler,” said Emma. “I like him very much. He is a good friend.”
“That I am,” said John with a wink.
“Is he now?” asked Betty. “Is that all he is?”
“Of course not, I am also her beau,” John said with a grin. “Jealous, are you?”
Betty huffed and ignored him. Emma shook her head and reached nervously for her glass and took a deep draft. She immediately bit back a cough as beads of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. “Oh! Whiskey!” she said in a shocked voice. “I forgot!” She opened her mouth and fanned her tongue. “I did not know it would burn!”
Alex, meanwhile, was staring at Eliza quizzically. His eyes flashed between Emma and John, clearly asking if there was something going on between them. Eliza just smiled her best wouldn’t-you-like-to-know? smile and leaned back in her chair.
“He is joking; of course he is not my beau. He is Mr. John Schuyler, whose father is General Philip Schuyler, and I am but Emma Trask,” Emma said meekly.
“Nonsen
se!” Betty said now, sounding a bit irritable all of a sudden. “Who cares who was whose father anymore? Aren’t these the kinds of crusty old European ideas we’re trying to shake off? Not inheritance or anything so radical—do not think I am giving up my fortune so easily. But why shouldn’t I marry, oh, let’s say, Drayton here? If we followed the old rules, Emma would marry Drayton, and John and I would be wed. But why should Emma get the hale and handsome lad, while I am left with the inbred stripling? And, yes,” she added, looking at John with narrowed eyes, “I was definitely talking about you this time.”
“I cannot protest,” John said self-deprecatingly for once. “I am skinny as a rake. As for inbred, well, when you don’t know whether to call someone at a party aunt or niece, you know that too many cousins have married one another.”
“You are not cousins with Emma,” said Eliza with a smile.
“Indeed he is not,” said Betty, coloring from the whiskey or the conversation; it was hard to tell.
“And you are singing quite a different tune from our last party, Betty,” said Eliza.
But before Betty could reply, Drayton arrived with the roast. Conversation lulled while he served it, the odors of Rowena’s cooking so delectable that wit was made superfluous.
“Speaking of marriage,” Betty said, inhaling the steam coming off the succulent slices of meat and glistening potatoes and carrots Drayton placed on her plate, “I would marry the person who made this meat regardless of class or sex.”
“Whereas I would marry the meat,” John said, wafting the steam toward his face. “God bless Cook,” he said, “but she thinks water is a spice.”
“Thank you, Drayton,” Eliza said after everyone had been served. “You may leave the platter on the sideboard and we’ll help ourselves if we want seconds. You should take dinner with Rowena now. It is getting rather late.”
“Very good, Mrs. Hamilton,” Drayton said, bowing and heading downstairs.
Eliza sat stiffly, expectantly, while Drayton made his exit. To the fellow guests, it probably looked as though she were merely waiting to eat, but she had something far different on her mind. “And why shouldn’t you marry Drayton?” Eliza said to Betty as soon as the footman was gone.
All for One Page 15