say that now,” I warned. “You may feel otherwise once you see the stacks of marked linens and barrels of porcelain and crystal that she vows are absolutely necessary for us to begin to keep respectable housekeeping.”
“Somehow we shall make do,” he said, lightly stroking my hair. “Imagine a battle royal of supreme tidiness between your Dutch grandmother and my Scottish one, aprons flapping and brooms flying.”
I laughed, and he did, too, and the silence that fell afterward was warm and companionable, and reminded me again of all the reasons that I loved him.
“My dearest girl,” he said softly, quietly. “You do know I won’t be granted leave to go to Albany with you in June.”
I took a deep breath. I did know. I’d known for weeks, from everything I’d heard and witnessed in the encampment and from what he’d already told me that the general would not be able to spare him from his duties, but to hear Alexander speak it aloud was the final blow to pretending I didn’t.
“I do,” I said, unable to keep the sorrow from my voice. “I wish it were otherwise, but I—I understand.”
“Late autumn,” he said, “or December at the latest. A wedding in the Christmas season would be a merry thing, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded with my cheek pressed against his chest, not trusting my voice to agree. It wasn’t simply postponing our wedding that upset me. Certainly, my mother could, and would, use the extra months for preparations.
It was how and where he’d spend the summer. He could well be ordered to join the Southern Army with the others. The general could finally relent, and send him to a regiment that would see battle. Even if he weren’t killed or maimed outright, he could equally succumb to the myriad of fevers found in the Carolinas, fevers that could kill a man as surely as British guns.
How could I explain? I could so easily lose him before he’d truly become mine, and I slid my hands inside his coat, striving to burrow beneath the layers of wool and linen to the warmth and the flesh, the bones, the sinews, and the heart of the man.
“We could marry now,” I whispered with feverish urgency. “We needn’t wait.”
He groaned, even as his own caresses across my body grew more fervent.
“No, Eliza,” he said. “I’ve given my word to your papa, and I’d not betray him—or you—that way.”
“But he needn’t know,” I pleaded, my words tumbling fast over one another. “No one else would. We could pledge our love to ourselves now, with only God as our witness, and be bound by that until we stand before a minister. Think of it, Alexander. It would be our secret, and only we would know that we were already man and wife.”
“Oh, my love, if only we could.” Despite his words, I heard the rough edge of desire in his voice, and with the increasing freedoms he was taking with my person—freedoms that I made no attempts to stop. He kissed me deeply, and my heart fluttered with longing, believing that love had triumphed.
But I was wrong. With a muttered oath, he forced himself to ease away from me and rose from the bench, going to stand some feet away, his back to me as he struggled for control. I sat forlornly alone on the bench and waited, struggling as well, with my hands twisting in the corners of my shawl.
Finally he turned, and I saw the anguish in his face.
“My mother was not married to my father,” he said. “I’ve never hidden that from you before. My mother loved my father and he loved her, and I’ve no doubt they made the sort of pledges to each other that you describe.”
“Then why won’t you—”
“I won’t,” he said, “because in the end, what mattered most was that they hadn’t made those vows before a priest, or minister, or magistrate, or any other august personage that society demands. Not only did my mother suffer for it, but my brother and I were labeled as bastards, a sin that was no sin, but that shall always be pasted over my name. And I will not do that to you, or to our children.”
I had no answer. He was right, and I knew it, and yet that rightness was not easy to bear. I felt myself wilting beneath its weight, huddling into myself as I sat on the hard plank of a bench.
He understood my misery and returned to me, gathering me into his arms with great tenderness.
I would not cry. I would not cry. “I know you will be brave and honorable wherever your duty may lead you,” I said, my voice husky with emotion. “All I ask, God willing, is that you return to me unharmed, Alexander. Return to me, and be my husband.”
He kissed me, or perhaps I kissed him. It didn’t matter which. Until we could wed, this would have to be enough.
* * *
Good news will come in fits and starts, like the bright bursts of shooting stars in the night sky, but bad news is often relentless in its progress, one unhappy event after another. It seemed that Nature herself had even conspired against our cause. Even the most venerable and aged persons in the region declared this to have been the worst winter in memory, and no one quarreled with them. As grim as Alexander’s fears for our army’s future had been, the truth as it unwound that spring was far worse than even he could have predicted.
As expected at the end of April, those men whose terms had expired left, leaving gaping places in the lines that could not readily be filled. But there was more: the shortages of food had reached a true crisis, with the forage in the area long exhausted and months before the new season’s crops could be expected. Men stole not only from one another, but left camp without permission to steal what they could from the outlying farms. No threats of punishment deterred them; they were that hungry.
When my mother had traveled from Albany, she had brought with her provisions from our farms. These we rationed out for our own use, and never left untended in our kitchen. In fact I suspected that the sentries that His Excellency had posted outside our house, day and night, were as much to guard our provisions as our persons, and from her own generosity of spirit, my mother made sure to give each of these men a share from our own dinner when his station was done.
The word that reached us in May from the Southern Army was nothing short of disastrous. As feared, the British had laid siege to Charleston by land and by sea. The Americans under Major General Lincoln fought bravely and for as long as they could, but they were grossly outnumbered and outfought. When the British cannon began to rain heated shot upon the city, causing fires to homes and public buildings alike, the army and the city had no choice but to surrender.
The British victory was more costly than anyone in the North had expected. Nearly five thousand Continental soldiers surrendered and were made prisoner, and the British also captured more than three hundred cannons, six thousand muskets, and several tons of gunpowder—a grievous loss in every way.
The British now had possession of the largest city in the south with the best harbor, and further, by their decisive actions, they had won back the allegiance of many of the citizens who’d wearied of the long war. As Alexander told me in gloomy confidence, General Washington himself could have gone to Charleston and met only defeat, the odds were so much against the Continental troops.
At the same time, there was misfortune in Morristown, too. In May, a number of the Connecticut troops fomented an out-and-out mutiny against their officers, citing the lack of pay, food, and respect from Congress. The mutiny was quickly
