I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  He raised his brows with mock outrage. “General Schuyler permits that in his house?”

  “I don’t believe he’d wish it any other way,” I said, thinking fondly of my family. “I know I wouldn’t.”

  He nodded, as if this made perfect sense. “I hope one day to have the privilege of meeting them all. If they’re anything like you, then it shall be the rarest of treats.”

  Another compliment, but an easy one to make me smile.

  “You’ve already met Peggy, when you came to our house two years ago,” I said, “and I’m sure the rest would all turn out for the chance to meet the famous Colonel Hamilton.”

  “I’m not so famous,” he said, more seriously than I’d expected.

  “You would be famous to them,” I said. “Especially to my brothers. You’ll meet them one day, and be able to judge for yourself. I cannot imagine my life without my brothers and sisters.”

  “I envy you that,” he said. “I have—or had—only a single brother, and when our mother died, we were separated and sent along different paths, and he became lost to me.”

  “Now I’ve made you sad,” I said softly, pressing my fingers into his sleeve in sympathy. There was so much of his history that I didn’t know, and each time he did reveal another bit of his past, it seemed so steeped in tragedy and loss that I wondered how he could bear it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to raise up old memories for you.”

  He covered my hand with his own, and I felt the sudden intimacy of it even through our gloves.

  “Don’t be sorry,” he said gently. “You only spoke the truth, as did I. Never be sorry for that, Betsey, or for the kindness that is so much a part of your nature.”

  Suddenly shy, I smiled and glanced down, but he took no notice, or pretended not to. He also kept his hand over mine.

  “Do you intend to read my letter?” he asked, almost teasing. “Or did I labor over those words for nothing?”

  I’d tucked the unopened letter into my muff, which was now slipped over my free arm. I’d have to take my other hand away from his to pull the letter free, and I didn’t want to do that.

  “Do those words reveal anything that I must immediately know?” I said, striving to sound as playful as he did. We had nearly reached the Campfield house, and I didn’t wish this time alone with him to end. “Are they of such great and eternal importance?”

  “No,” he admitted. “The letter is as mild and dull as new milk, and only explains my absence this evening. But I assure you, it was still a challenge to write. I didn’t know if your aunt would insist on reading it first, so there is nothing in the contents that could possibly disturb her.”

  “I was surprised that she didn’t take it from me,” I said. “That must mean you’ve won her trust.”

  Abruptly he stopped walking and turned to face me, linking his fingers into mine so that our hands were now clasped. He wasn’t teasing any longer.

  “Your aunt’s trust is secondary to me, Betsey,” he said. “What matters far more is whether or not I’ve won yours.”

  I gazed upward, searching his face before I answered. Light snow, lazy and scattered, had begun to fall around us, and the air was so cold that when the snowflakes landed on his dark cloak and hat, they didn’t melt, but held their shapes like tiny, glittering jewels.

  When I stood here with my hand in his, I longed to say yes without hesitation. He had thus far been a perfect suitor, devoted, charming, and gentlemanly. Why shouldn’t I trust him the way he desired? Why couldn’t I take that first step—or was it a leap?—toward love? Surely that was what my sister Angelica would have done, and had done when she’d eloped with Mr. Carter.

  But I wasn’t Angelica. I remembered my aunt’s tales of Alexander’s bachelor ways, and of his taste for unsavory company....

  “You’ve doubts,” he said when I didn’t answer, concern in his voice and his expression. Yet he didn’t release my hand, nor did I pull away.

  “You said before that I should never regret speaking the truth,” I said slowly. “Do you believe that in regard to yourself as well?”

  “Wisdom and truth, combined with beauty!” he exclaimed. “You are a rarity among women, Eliza.”

  “I’m likely a sorry sort of beauty,” I said, “standing here in the snow with a nose red from the cold.”

  “I admire your nose, which is quite adorably red, and I prefer it along with the rest of you over a score of powdered, painted court beauties,” he said, raising his voice loudly there in the street, and not caring one whit who heard. “I prefer your kindness and your conversation and your laughter. I especially like the way you tip your chin to look at me, the way you are doing at this very moment, as if you’re weighing and considering each word I say for merit.”

  “Oh, that’s not true,” I protested. “That’s not what I am doing.”

  “Isn’t it?” he said without pause. “Then it should be, because I want you to judge me. I am not without flaws. I realize that. But with you as my guiding star, I will strive to be all that you desire. I want you to find me worthy. That is the truth, Eliza Schuyler, my truth, and I’ll swear to it by any oath you please. I’ve never met another lady whom I could trust more than you. I would trust you with my honor, my life, and most especially my heart, and I pray with all my soul that you may in time feel the same for me.”

  My eyes widened and my heart raced, my entirety overwhelmed not only by the poetry of his words, but by the unbridled emotion and the sentiment behind them that captured me in its spell.

  There could be only one answer.

  “Yes,” I said breathlessly. “So long as you continue to be as truthful to me as you promise, then I’ll grant you my trust, freely, openly, gladly.”

  His fingers tightened around mine, and he raised my hand to his lips. The gesture was muted by our gloves, but it still seemed the most fervidly romantic thing I’d ever experienced. I sighed with the perfection of the moment, but as I began to tell him so, I glimpsed my aunt, bustling across the snowy path toward us.

  “I can’t stay here with you any longer,” I said swiftly, pulling my hand away and thrusting it back into my muff. “My aunt is coming.”

  He didn’t move. “The officers are sponsoring a series of assemblies with dancing. The first will be held next Wednesday evening. Say you’ll come, Betsey.”

  I loved how he said my name. “You’ll be there?”

  “I will be there,” he said, “waiting for you.”

  “I won’t disappoint you,” I whispered fiercely, my hand holding tight to his. “Not now, not ever.”

  It was as solemn an oath as any young woman my age could vow, and I meant every word of it. How was I to know how sorely my words would be tested over time?

  CHAPTER 4

  I attended that first assembly not with my aunt and uncle, but with a friend, Kitty Livingston. Kitty had persuaded (or more likely begged) her father to take a house in Morristown while the army was encamped there, even though their home of Liberty Hall was only twenty miles away in Elizabethtown. Kitty was only an acquaintance, but a distant cousin in the way of so many of us from New York, and I was delighted that she was in town for the winter, too.

  That night we rode together with her parents in the second bench of their sleigh, our evening finery bundled beneath thick furs as we traveled across the wintery roads. We wore quilted silk petticoats beneath our gowns, and at our feet we each had a carved oak foot warmer filled with hot coals. The skies were overcast, and we all prayed the next snowstorm—for so it seemed inevitable that one would come—would hold until after the assembly. The sleigh’s lanterns cast their wavering light across the snow banks on either side, and the tiny brass bells on the team’s harnesses rang merrily in the cold night air.

  Sharing my excitement, Kitty grinned at me, and snuggled a little closer both for warmth and in confidence. She was quick and lively and flirtatious in company, one of three sisters as was I, and always the first with fresh news from everyone and everyw
here. I soon learned, however, that for the first time I was the center of tonight’s fresh gossip.

  “So tell me, Eliza,” she said softly in a near whisper that her parents wouldn’t overhear, our conversation further shrouded by the fur-edged hoods of our cloaks. “How is it that all the talk in the town and the camp is of you and Colonel Hamilton?”

  “Then this place must be tedious indeed, if that is the best talk it can muster,” I said, surprised. “Colonel Hamilton and I have supplied very little to your mill for tattle, Kitty.”

  “I’ve heard otherwise,” she said. “In fact I’ve heard of little else.”

  I frowned, my hands twisting uneasily inside my muff. I didn’t like being spoken of, especially since I suspected most of what was being said was embellished, if not outright tales. All I could do was hope to correct Kitty, a vain hope though it might be.

  “Colonel Hamilton has called upon me at Dr. Campfield’s house in the evening,” I began, “and I’ve received him in the crowded company of my aunt and uncle as well as the Campfields. He has their approval, and my father considers him a worthy gentleman, too. Colonel Hamilton and I have walked together in the town, with my aunt ten paces behind us, and he and I have exchanged greetings in passing as he went about his duties near the headquarters. Oh, and he joined me at Sunday worship.”

  “Sunday worship?” she repeated, her voice rising in teasing disbelief. “Hamilton? I vow he’s never seen the inside of a church, the wicked heathen.”

  “He did come with me,” I insisted, “and it was by his own initiative, too. That’s all that’s happened between us, Kitty. There could hardly be anything less scandalous.”

  I wasn’t exaggerating. Alexander’s regard toward me had been so decorous and proper that, in the telling, it must have sounded almost boring, and without even a flicker of scandal. Yes, there had been times when I’d felt sure he was going to kiss me, but at the last moment he’d held back: he was that intent on proving himself worthy of me.

  And to be entirely honest, I rather wished he hadn’t. An honorable gentleman was all well and good, but if he’d shown me a bit—just a bit—of the rakish gallant that I sensed was within him, I wouldn’t have objected. I wanted him to kiss me, because I wanted very much to kiss him.

  But clearly Kitty didn’t believe me, and smothered her laughter behind her gloved hand.

  “Hardly less scandalous, Eliza,” she whispered, “and perhaps infinitely more. You can’t play the innocent with me, especially not when your dalliance is with Colonel Hamilton. Recall that he’s long been an acquaintance of mine, and that we have no secrets between us.”

  “I assure you, there aren’t any secrets for him to share,” I protested, painfully aware of how she might indeed know more of him than I did. Kitty and Alexander had in fact been friends for years. When he had first arrived as a youth in our colonies from Nevis, he had attended Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey, where he’d boarded with the Livingston family. To hear Kitty tell it (which of course she’d made sure I had), the schoolboy Alexander had been thoroughly moonstruck over her, yet she’d deftly turned his infatuation into a friendship.

  “No secrets, no.” Kitty paused now for emphasis, her upper teeth pressing lightly into her lower lip in a way that was unique to her, as if biting back what she’d say next. “No secrets, because where you are concerned, Colonel Hamilton cannot keep them. He wears his heart like another medal pinned to his coat, there for anyone who wishes to see how the name Elizabeth is engraved upon it.”

  “Hush, Kitty,” I said, uneasy with her overblown foolishness.

  “Then let me tell you this, Eliza,” she said, leaning closer. “You know how the officers are in the habit of having supper together, and how after the cloth is drawn, they will sit for hours drinking and toasting until they tumble into their cups, and their menservants must come claim them.”

  “What of it?” I said warily. Such behavior among gentlemen was hardly unknown to me; my father’s entertainments for his friends were often like this.

  “What of it?” she repeated, unable to keep the triumph from her whisper. “Because I have it on the best advice that when the officers take their turns with a toast for each wife and sweetheart, our dear friend Hamilton raises his glass to you by name, and all the other gentlemen follow.”

  I listened, stunned. Having my name toasted in the officers’ quarters would not please my aunt, but I found it undeniably thrilling to think that Alexander Hamilton would toast me as his sweetheart.

  “You are sure of this?” I asked eagerly. “You know it for fact?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you if it weren’t so,” she said. “We both know that Colonel Hamilton has left half the women in New Jersey panting for his attentions, yet you, Eliza, are the one who has dazzled him. Though it’s not surprising, is it? You’re a perfect match for a man like him. You’re a Schuyler, and you’re rich, and your father’s a friend of His Excellency’s, and—”

  “Why must everyone assume that he likes me only because of Papa and his money?” I whispered, my frustration spilling over. “Your family has power and wealth, too, Kitty, and no one says that of you.”

  Kitty gave a small, dismissive shrug to her shoulders that was also faintly pitying. “That’s because no suitor of mine has been as impoverished and without a respectable family as Colonel Hamilton.”

  I don’t believe she intended to wound me or insult Alexander, but her words still stung.

  “Colonel Hamilton possesses qualities and virtues that are worth far more than mere wealth,” I said warmly. “I value him for himself, not for his family or fortune.”

  She nodded and fell silent, and remained silent so long that I feared I’d spoken too much. I was almost ready to apologize when she finally spoke again.

  “Oh, Eliza,” she said softly. “You care for dear little Hamilton that much?”

  “I do,” I said so quickly that I startled myself. Yet it was true; I couldn’t deny it, nor did I wish to.

  “How fortunate you are!” she said wistfully. “How fortunate you are! I have yet to have such sentiments for any gentleman.”

  “That can’t be true, Kitty, not of you.” Kitty was a belle, a beauty, and always surrounded by admirers at every ball and assembly in a way that they never had been for me.

  By the glow of the sleigh’s lanterns, the edge of Kitty’s hood shadowed her face, and all I saw was her half smile, a smile that had lost all its earlier humor. Carefully she lifted her hood back over her shoulders, and the light twinkled in the paste stars she’d pinned into her elaborately dressed and powdered hair, all icy-white as if she were a snow queen incarnate. She turned, and now I could see the entirety of her face, and the concern in her eyes.

  “You asked me earlier to speak plainly, and I shall,” she said, covering my hand with her own. “Take care of your heart, Eliza, and do not give it blindly. Perhaps I know Hamilton too well, and I know what he aspires to be. He is ambitious, and he is determined, and he won’t let anything or anyone stop him.”

  “If you mean Alexander will achieve great things in his life, Kitty,” I said, “then we agree, as friends should.”

  “Hamilton charms the world and makes friends with ease,” she said, “but he also makes enemies, and the higher he rises—and he will rise high—the more hazardous those enemies shall be to you both.”

  “I don’t believe it, Kitty,” I said, the only proper answer to unwanted advice, and pulled away my hand. “None of it, not of Alexander.”

  “Believe it or not, as it pleases you.” She glanced down at her muff, avoiding my gaze. “His character is widely known among the other officers, and many of the other ladies here, too. But if your father isn’t troubled by Hamilton’s flaws and faults, then why should you be?”

  “Papa isn’t,” I said quickly. “Nor am I.”

  “Then I’ll never speak of the matter again.” She darted forward and kissed me on the cheek, her lips cold. “Of all women I know, Eliza, I pray y
ou’ll be happy, no matter which gentleman you marry. Now come, let’s dance, and break every heart we can.”

  * * *

  A dancing assembly held by subscription (I’d heard the extravagant sum to be $400 a gentleman, but that was at the inflated rate of our then-near-worthless paper bills) and supported by thirty-four of the most esteemed officers of our army sounds like a grand affair. For us wintering in Morristown, it was. But if I had heard described the conditions of this self-proclaimed assembly whilst still in Albany, I would have laughed aloud.

  Instead of taking place in an inn or private residence of the first quality, this assembly was held in a military storehouse built by the army near the Morristown Green. Now emptied of goods, the storehouse was as full of echoes as a barn, and like most barns, it had been built for rough service, without any amenities or decoration; I would venture it to be seventy feet in length, and forty in breadth. A pair of crude cast-iron stoves stoked with wood were the sole sources of heat in this cavernous room, and lanterns for light had been strung along the walls on a length of rope. Both the stoves and the inferior tallow candles in the lanterns smoked, and even this early in the evening there was a haze gathered just below the ceiling beams.

  The stables for my father’s horses in Albany were more elegantly appointed than this space, and yet the guests gathered here were as brilliant a company as any in our country. Most of the officers wore their dress uniforms, and the lanterns’ light glanced off gold bullion lace, polished brass buttons, and medals and other honors.

  Of course, we ladies were not to be outdone, and our gowns were like bright silk flowers of every color. Our hair was powdered and dressed high on our heads, and ornamented with silk flowers, ribbons, paste jewels, and even a plume or two. To be so expensively and stylishly attired in the middle of a war might seem to some to be wrong, even disrespectful, but as Aunt Gertrude noted, our finery could be wonderfully cheering to the spirits of the gentlemen in the army, and proof to the British that we refused to be subdued. We ladies were also in the minority, with more than three times as many gentlemen in attendance; there’d be no wallflowers tonight, that was certain.