He raised my hand and kissed the back of it, a bold demonstration in a place so crowded with witnesses and ripe for gossip. But no one was taking any notice of us whilst the general was dancing, and I did not pull free.
Gently he turned my hand in his and kissed my palm. I blushed at his audacity, but it was far more than that. I felt my entire body grow warm with sensation, melting with the heat of his touch. This was what I’d wanted, what I’d longed for. When at last he broke away, an unfamiliar disappointment swept over me, and I felt oddly bereft.
If I felt unbalanced, then he must have as well, for his expression was strangely determined and intense. Within the General’s Family he was called “The Little Lion,” and for the first time I understood why. This was not the Alexander I’d seen this last fortnight sitting politely in Mrs. Campfield’s sitting room. This was a different man altogether, and while part of me turned guarded and cautious, the larger part that contained my heart, and yes, my passions, was drawn inexorably toward him.
“Orders had nothing to do with why His Excellency and I were detained,” he said to me, his fingers still tight around mine. “It was instead the matter of my future, my hope, my very life, and yet he will not listen, and refuses it all.”
I glanced at the general, dancing as if he’d no cares in this world or worries for the next.
“Then tell me instead,” I said.
“Come with me outside,” he said, leading me toward the door. “We cannot speak here with any freedom.”
Venturing outside alone in the dark with a gentleman was one of those things that virtuous ladies did not do. But for the first time in my life I didn’t care what anyone might say or think. I fetched my cloak and he his greatcoat, joined him at the storehouse’s rear doorway, and together we slipped outside.
“This way,” he said softly, leading me behind the storehouse and away from where the sleighs and horses were waiting with their drivers gathered for warmth around a small fire. “No one will see us on the other side.”
Most times when a gentleman and lady leave a ball or assembly, there is a moonlit garden with shadowy paths and bowers to welcome them. But here in Morristown, all trees and brush had long ago been cut by the army for firewood and shelters, and the only paths were ones trodden by others into the snow. There was no pretty garden folly or contrived ancient ruin; instead we stood beside the rough log walls of a military storehouse. The only magic that Alexander and I had was the moonlight, as pure and shining as new-minted silver spilled over the white snow and empty fields.
But that magic, such as it was, held no charm for Alexander now.
“The general still refuses to promote me for an active post, and will not consider a command for me to the south,” he said, his voice taut with frustration. Despite the cold, he hadn’t bothered to fasten his greatcoat, and the flapping open fronts only exaggerated his agitation.
“Oh, Alexander,” I said, for I’d heard this from him before, though not with such vehemence. “Did you present your case for a field command to His Excellency again this evening?”
“I did,” he said. He was pacing back and forth before me, the heels of his boots crunching over the packed snow. “He claims he cannot grant me a command without giving offense—offense!—to other officers who surpass me in seniority. Instead I must be mired here in endless drudgery without any hope of action or glory.”
Dramatically he flung his arms out to either side, appealing to me. “Do you know how I passed this day, Betsey? Can you guess how I was humbled?”
I suspected there would be no acceptable answer to this question, not whilst he was in this humor, yet still I ventured one. “I should guess you were engaged in your duties as ordered by His Excellency.”
“Oh, yes, my duties,” he said. “Such grand duties they were, too. I tallied and niggled the expenses incurred for the feed of the cavalry’s mounts, horse by horse. My duty was to count oats and corn and straw like any common farmer in his barn.”
I sighed, my feelings decidedly mixed. I knew he was dissatisfied with his role in the winter encampment. Although he was the general’s most valued aide-de-camp, he chafed under that honor and the duties with it, and longed for a posting where he’d see more active duty and combat with the enemy. I wished him to be happy, yes, but I also wished him to stay alive, and I dreaded the very thought of him in the reckless path of mortal danger.
He took my silence as encouragement, and continued on, his voice rising.
“The general would unman me completely, Betsey, and replace my sword forever with a pen,” he said. “There is a sense of protection to the position, of obligation, which I find eminently distasteful. How can I be considered a soldier? Each day that I am chained to my clerk’s desk is another that questions my courage, my valor, my dedication to risk everything for the cause.”
This, too, I’d witnessed before. Alexander was a gifted speaker, and once he fair had his teeth into an argument, he could worry it like a tenacious (but eloquent) bulldog for hours at a time. His skill with words was a wondrous gift and one that left me in awe. But beneath my cloak tonight I was dressed for a ball, not an out of doors declamation beneath the stars, and I needed to steer him gently toward a less furious course before my teeth began to chatter.
“His Excellency knows you’re not a coward,” I said, tucking my hands beneath my arms to warm them. “Your record in battle has already proven your courage. But there are no battles to be fought by anyone in the winter season, and—”
“There are in Georgia, in Carolina,” he said, the words coming out as terse small clouds in the cold air. “Laurens has written me of brisk and mortal encounters with the enemy.”
I sighed again. John Laurens was another lieutenant colonel and former aide-de-camp, and Alexander’s dearest friend in the army. Laurens had left the General’s Family before I’d arrived, but I felt as if I knew him from Alexander’s descriptions of his friend’s character, handsomeness, and daring; he’d also been born to wealth and privilege as the son of the wealthiest man in South Carolina, accidents of fate that greatly impressed Alexander. His fondest reminiscences of Laurens, however, involved hard-fought battles, gruesome wounds, swimming rivers under enemy fire, and having horses shot from beneath them. These tales I found terrifying, even though I understood from Papa that this was how soldiers behaved during wartime. Little wonder that I also believed—though I’d never say so—that Colonel Laurens was responsible for much of Alexander’s restlessness.
“You’ve told me before that those are random skirmishes,” I said as patiently as I could. “Colonel Laurens admits that himself, does he not?”
He grumbled, wordless discontent. “He does, on occasion.”
“And you’ve said yourself that they’re risky ventures,” I continued, “and of no lasting value to the cause.”