Yet I had liked him; he’d impressed me in all the ways that mattered most. That was what I remembered, that he’d been so different from other gentlemen. He’d been special.
If I’d married someone from Albany or New York as had always been expected of me, a young gentleman who was from a family similar to my own, I would know exactly what my life would be. I would oversee a large house in the country and another in the city of New York, with children and servants and a respectably dull and dully respectable husband. It would all be predictable and safe and without a whit of excitement, and the longer I considered such a life, the less appeal it held for me. Yet even after only one meeting, I knew that life with Alexander would always be exciting, because he was exciting.
So yes, I’d liked him. But as much as I respected my parents’ wishes, I wanted this decision to be mine, not theirs, and I wanted to be sure.
Papa, however, misread my silence.
“Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to go against your heart, Elizabeth,” he said with another awkward pat to my knee. “If your mother and I are mistaken and he doesn’t please you, then you’re sure to find many other fish in the sea, yes? Above everything else, we wish you to be happy. There will be officers by the score here at this encampment, and perhaps there will be another who will better—”
“He didn’t die, Papa,” I said, my head still bent. “Colonel Hamilton wasn’t killed in battle or by illness or anything else. You and I both feared he would be, and yet instead he was preserved.”
“He’s lucky that way,” Papa said easily, an explanation that I expected was popular among soldiers. “Some men simply are.”
“Perhaps Colonel Hamilton was kept from danger for a purpose, Papa.” I looked up to meet his gaze. “Perhaps he was meant to do great things, for this country, and nothing will stop him until he does.”
Papa only smiled indulgently.
“I suspect the colonel would agree with you, Elizabeth,” he said, glancing past me to the houses we were passing. “Ahh, finally, there are your aunt’s lodgings. I cannot wait for the comfort of a good fire, can you?”
To mask my disappointment, I busied myself with arranging my cloak, as if preparing for the end of our journey. I should have known better than to say such things about Colonel Hamilton to Papa. It wasn’t that Papa couldn’t understand. It was more that he wouldn’t. In his head he’d already decided that Colonel Hamilton would be acceptable as a suitor for me, and that was the end of it. The subject was done.
Mamma claimed proudly that Papa’s ability to make up his mind quickly and progress forward to the next decision was why he had been a successful general, and perhaps it was. My opinions were of no consequence, because his thoughts had already moved elsewhere, doubtless to the confidential meeting he would have with General Washington later in the evening. How could my humble opinions rival that?
I smoothed my gloves and sighed, and resolved to let it pass. But I could understand now why my sister Angelica had eloped rather than battle with Papa about her own choice of a husband.
The horses had stopped before a clapboard house, with candles already lit within against the dwindling daylight and smoke from the fires that my father so craved curling from the chimneys. The house belonged to Dr. Jabez Campfield and his wife; Dr. Campfield was an army surgeon who had agreed to quarter my aunt and uncle during the winter encampment. In a town where lodging was at a premium, the arrangement between the two medical gentlemen had become both gracious and convenient. Still, as was the case everywhere in Morristown, we would be a crowd in the house, with not only Dr. and Mrs. Campfield and their young son, their servants, and the doctor’s two apprentices, but my aunt and uncle, their two sons, their servants, and now me as well.
Aunt Gertrude must have heard the horses, for we hadn’t yet climbed from the sleigh before the door to the house flew open and she came out to greet us herself, heedless of the cold. Before long we’d been swept inside and my father was blissfully before the fire he’d craved. Soon after, we all dined together—my father, my aunt and uncle, and Dr. and Mrs. Campfield—and after so many meals among strangers in the drafty common rooms of inns and taverns it was a great pleasure to be among family and friends. But Papa didn’t linger at the table, excusing himself as soon as the cloth was drawn and leaving for His Excellency’s headquarters a half mile away.
I, too, retreated to my bedchamber to oversee Rose as she unpacked my trunks. Mamma had made a loan to me of Rose, one of our Negroes, to act as my lady’s maid and to dress my hair for me while I was here in Morristown. Rose and father’s manservant had only just arrived, having traveled more slowly in the sledge with our baggage, and she was now beginning to shake out my gowns. I joined her, trying to decide what of my belongings to unpack and which to leave for now in the trunks. As was to be expected, my room was small for all that Mamma had insisted I needed to bring with me.
We’d scarcely begun before Aunt Gertrude joined us. My aunt resembled my father, with the dark eyes and long nose of their family, as well as the same practical streak. But while in years she was the older sibling, she had always seemed much younger to me. This was perhaps because after being widowed and then remarrying, she’d surprisingly become the mother of two more sons, now aged nine and three, the younger born when my aunt was fifty-three.
“So many clothes, Eliza!” she said with unabashed approval as she sat in the ladder-back chair that was the only one in the room. “But you’re wise to have brought them, my dear. Wartime or not, the young ladies here dress to captivate the officers. The competition will be very fierce.”
I laughed uneasily, and sat across from her on the edge of the bed. I hoped she was exaggerating. I didn’t possess the necessary cattiness for ballroom skirmishes with other ladies, and I didn’t enjoy them.
“I cannot imagine that the competition will be very heated when the men so outnumber the ladies.”
“Yes, yes, they do,” my aunt admitted, picking up a mother-of-pearl fan edged with sequins from my trunk. “But there are men, and there are gentlemen, and then there are the best gentlemen, if you take my meaning. My, this is a pretty thing!”
She spread the fan and held it over her mouth, mimicking a coquette.
“It’s French,” I said, not really interested in the fan. “Which gentlemen do you mean, Aunt?”