Angelica remained with us until late May, long enough to attend the last assembly held in honor of the French ambassadors. But finally she, too, began to worry that she might become separated from her children for the entire summer, and made arrangements with her husband’s people to return to her home in Boston.
We took one final stroll about the little town on day before she left. It was odd to see how much it had changed in the last weeks. The original owners of the houses that had been leased to the army had now returned to Morristown with their families, and were busily planting new gardens and making repairs to their properties after the long winter. To them, we represented the army and all its inconveniences and hazards, and they made no effort to acknowledge us except as unwelcome interlopers, soon to be gone. We missed the familiar faces that we’d come to know so well these last months, and the town that had earlier felt like another home now had nothing but strangers to it.
No wonder, then, that Angelica and I walked closely together on that last afternoon, our arms linked and our heads bowed beneath our wide-brimmed straw hats, and our guard following at a respectful distance behind. I was going to miss my sister mightily, and though we promised we’d soon meet again later in the summer at our parents’ house, we were both acutely aware of how our plans could be overturned at any time by the war. Most of what we’d had to say to each other had already been said, and we walked largely in companionable though melancholy silence.
“With weather this fine, you should be home in time to see the roses behind your house bloom,” I said as we passed a garden with bushes already in bud. “There were snow-filled days this winter that I doubted I’d ever see flowers of any sort again.”
“Marry Hamilton,” she said suddenly. “Now, as soon as it can be arranged. Don’t wait any longer than you must.”
I stopped walking to face her, and she stopped, too.
“Angelica, please,” I said. “You know we’re to wed in December, when he can arrange for sufficient leave.”
“And I say to wait so long is to tempt the very Fates,” she said, her expression uncharacteristically somber. “I’ve considered this with great care, Eliza, else I wouldn’t have spoken now. Marry Hamilton now, while you can.”
I sighed unhappily, for in my heart I agreed with everything she said. “Why do you torment me by saying such things now?”
“I don’t intend to torment you,” she said, resuming our walk at a slow and measured pace. “It’s what the men are saying now, of how they cannot wait to go back to war and fighting, and—and I do not wish any misfortune to befall your dear Hamilton before you’ve become his wife.”
“Do you believe I’ve not thought that for myself?” I was kicking my petticoats forward with each step, venting my fear and frustration on the new grass. “Each time I bid him good night I wonder if it will be the last. You know as well as I how perilous and sudden a soldier’s life can be, and I worry constantly on his behalf.”
She nodded, her face mirroring my own beneath the sweeping shadow of her hat’s brim. In the last weeks, she and Alexander had developed a considerable regard for each other as a true brother and sister might, and exactly as I’d hoped they would. True, that undercurrent of flirtation that Alexander had first noted occasionally reappeared on Angelica’s side, but because I knew it meant nothing, I took little notice of it, and he soon learned to deflect it with practiced ease. But that same regard meant that she shared my concern for his welfare, and that it was genuine.
“I worry for him, too,” she said. “He is still so young a gentleman, with so much brilliance and promise but at the same time impetuous to a fault. As long as he remains an aide-de-camp to His Excellency, I suppose he’s as safe as any soldier can be.”
“But all he wishes is another command, and another chance to prove his bravery and courage with no regard for his own safety,” I said, my voice breaking with emotion. “It need not even be in battle, Angelica. His blue coat could be spied by some lone British scout, and he’d be shot before he even realized it, and then—”
My sister handed me her handkerchief. “That is why you must marry him now, Eliza, to guarantee you’ll have some measure of happiness, however brief.”
“What, run off and wed as you did?” I asked, blotting the tears from my eyes. “You know I cannot do that, Angelica, not after I promised our parents we’d marry in Albany. Especially not now, when Mamma hasn’t been well. I wouldn’t break my word to her, or to Papa, either.”
Angelica raised her brows. “Don’t you realize the cause of Mamma’s illness?”
“She says it’s from having eaten so poorly, and I cannot disagree.”
“She’s told me otherwise,” Angelica said. “She believes she’s with child again. She came here to comfort Papa, and I suppose she has.”
“Angelica, please,” I said, shocked she’d be so frank about our parents. But the more I considered what she’d said, the more I realized it was true. My mother had given birth to fourteen children (seven of whom still lived) during her marriage, and by now all in our family recognized the signs of another imminent brother or sister. But Mamma was nearly forty-seven years old, a considerable age for child-bearing, and I prayed both she and the babe would survive the extended ordeal of pregnancy and childbirth.
“You shouldn’t be surprised,” my sister said, misinterpreting my reaction. “Mamma and Papa have always been ruled by their hearts and sentiments. Recall that I was born a scant five months after they wed.”
Of course I recalled it. The dates of my parents’ wedding and Angelica’s birth were noted in both our family’s Bible and our church’s registry, with no effort ever made to alter them toward more respectability. I suppose that given the lofty stature of the Schuylers and the Van Rensselaers, they had simply stood above any whispers of scandal, high and haughty, and ignored it.
“They were much younger then,” I said, striving for an explanation. “They both say they were much in love, too.”
“Mamma was the same age as you are now,” Angelica said. “Which is why again I press you to marry, even if in secret, before you return to Albany.”
I stopped again, my cheeks scarlet. “You believe that I have already granted Alexander a husband’s favors?”
She didn’t blush at all. “I would be surprised if it were otherwise,” she said bluntly. “Strong passions run in our family, Eliza, among the ladies as well as the gentlemen, and we’re a remarkably fecund lot. Consider that my dear little Philip was born scarce ten months after I wed John.”
“How you and Mr. Carter have been blessed is of no affair to me, Angelica,” I protested.
“It should be,” she said shrewdly. “I see it in your eyes whenever Alexander enters the room. Given his formidable reputation as a gallant with other women before he met you—”