But the colonel only nodded solemnly. “I have heard considerable praise of the Schuyler ladies, yes,” he said, answering my aunt, but looking directly at me. “There are few things to be held in higher esteem than a lady who is both kind and generous.”
I hastily lowered my gaze to the pitiful beginnings of the cap in my lap. I felt doubly, even triply, obligated to finish it now, plus a score more besides. I gathered the needles in my hands and resumed my knitting.
“You’re very kind, Colonel Hamilton,” I murmured without looking up from my work. “My mother has set the most perfect example for my sisters and me, and we all strive to emulate her goodness.”
“She is a true paragon for us all,” Aunt Gertrude said, though I couldn’t help but notice that her own hands were occupied with a china cup filled with tea. “If you please, Colonel, there is a chair for you beside my husband, who is most eager to learn of His Excellency’s latest plans for the care of the soldiers.”
My uncle’s chin jerked up swiftly like a schoolboy caught dozing at his lessons.
“Yes, yes, Colonel,” he said, patting the railed back of the empty chair. “Come tell me the news from headquarters.”
Oh, this was so patently transparent! If there were any news about the welfare of the soldiers, then my uncle, as the army’s surgeon general, would already be well aware of it.
“Yes, Colonel Hamilton,” I agreed with half a heart. “The chair beside my uncle is meant for you.”
My dismay must have shown on my face, for the colonel leaned forward again toward me, lowering his voice in a confidential tone.
“Please, Betsey, you must call me Hamilton,” he said easily. “Military ranks have no place between friends. Is that so much to ask?”
It was, and we both knew it. It was one thing for him to use my given name, but another for me to address him in such a jocular, even masculine, manner.
“If all your other friends address you as Hamilton, then I shall call you Alexander,” I said boldly, and with equal boldness I let my gaze linger with his. I was purposefully echoing what he’d said to me, long ago in Albany, and I did so to show him I’d not forgotten our very first conversation. I said nothing further, nor did he. It didn’t seem necessary, not then.
Yet if I’d realized that those were to be the only words we exchanged for the rest of the evening, I would have spoken more, much more, and I’d no doubt that he would have, too. My aunt made certain that that didn’t happen, however, keeping Alexander (for I’d now given myself permission to use his given name even in my thoughts) seated between her and my uncle until the case clock on the wall struck ten. Dr. and Mrs. Campfield rose instantly, and my aunt and uncle with them, signaling the end of the evening. The poor colonel was left with no choice but to make his farewells and leave, and that was that.
“Am I never to have a conversation alone with Colonel Hamilton?” I lamented to my aunt once the Campfields retired upstairs for the night. “How am I to become acquainted with him if all I do is listen to him discuss the quality of the soldiers’ provisions with my uncle?”
“The colonel did have a quantity to say on the subject, didn’t he?” My aunt began gathering up the tea and coffee cups and saucers to take to the kitchen, Mrs. Campfield having already sent her servants to bed. “My, that fellow can talk! You can tell he studied the law. There’s no other profession where he’d be paid for the length and breadth of his speeches.”
I collected the last cup from where my uncle had abandoned it upon the mantelpiece and followed her into the kitchen.
“I wouldn’t know how much Colonel Hamilton had to say,” I said, “because he wasn’t permitted to say more than a half dozen words to me.”
“You’ll have time enough for that, Eliza,” Aunt Gertrude said with maddening calm. “This was for the best.”
“But how?” I cried with frustration. “He will not return if all we offer him is a tedious evening.”
Aunt Gertrude raised her brows. “Oh, it was not so bad as that. You’re nearly half done with that knitted cap.”
“Aunt Gertrude, please,” I pleaded. “Knitting for the soldiers is important, to be sure, but it’s also important that Colonel Hamilton and I—”
“Hush,” she said mildly. “I shall tell you what is important, niece, and I will be blunt, so that you will listen. You and I have already discussed how Colonel Hamilton is a charming, handsome fellow accustomed to having young women and a few older ones as well smile and sigh over him, much as you did tonight. He is accustomed to that occurring without much effort or responsibility on his part, and he is also accustomed to those same women obliging him with their favors in return.”
“I know that, Aunt, and I—”
“I doubt that you do,” she said. “Do you know the colonel’s reputation about Morristown for what can indelicately be called whoring? I’ve heard him likened to a tomcat, and no wonder.”
I flushed, and made a small strangled sound in my throat. It was not the vulgar words coming so unexpectedly from my aunt’s lips that startled me, but the thought of the gallant colonel engaged in what the word described. To be sure, I wasn’t entirely certain what whoring entailed, yet I knew what a whore was, and could guess the rest.
My aunt sighed. “I didn’t intend to shock you, Eliza,” she said. “But if you believe you wish to marry a soldier, then you must be aware of what transpires in a military camp. The ways that men choose to assuage their boredom, their passions, and even their fears of battle and dying have been the same since the ancients, and it’s no different here at Morristown.”
I listened reluctantly, and realized that she was most likely right. Now that I was here at the site of the encampment, I did need to be less blind as to the lives of soldiers, and perhaps to those of men in general. I’d always prided myself on being practical, and there could be no more practical thinking than this. Surely my mother would have agreed. I’d never seen her flinch from the less pleasant realities of life, and she was as perfect a lady as was imaginable. She’d always followed the army with my father, sometimes into the very face of the enemy, and I suspected she’d witnessed far worse things than mere “whoring.”
But I myself was young in experience, and still didn’t quite wish to tarnish the golden gleam of near-perfection that I’d granted Alexander. I raised my chin a stubborn fraction higher, determined to be as forthright and direct as my aunt.
“Forgive me, Aunt Gertrude, but I do not see the sense to this,” I said, striving to sound reasonable and not petulant. “If the colonel is as much a—a rogue as you say, then I should think that a dull evening here would send him directly back to his—his—baser pursuits, and we’ll never see him here again.”
“If it does, Eliza, then you are well rid of him,” my aunt said. “If he is that easily discouraged, then you’ll know the measure of his character, and you will do well to begin looking elsewhere. He must prove himself worthy of your company, and that he is ready to put aside his bachelor’s pursuits for your sake. You are the prize, Eliza, not the colonel, and you must not forget it.”
“But how can I—”
“Hush, and listen,” she said. “In addition
