* * *
You know Monroe to be a man of honor, a sensible man, and a soldier.
—LIEUTENANT COLONEL ALEXANDER HAMILTON TO LIEUTENANT COLONEL JOHN LAURENS
We’d endured British officers in our house, but now we made ready to welcome the French.
“I worried Mama wouldn’t leave us time to dress,” Peggy complained, throwing herself down upon the damasked canopied bed we shared.
For our mother had not been warned to expect guests—much less a French general and twenty officers. If my father had a blind spot, it was his assumption that my mother was always ready to graciously entertain at a moment’s notice. Even when noticeably pregnant, as she was now. Papa had, unwittingly, thrown her into a frenzy of preparation. With keys jingling at her hip, she marched from kitchen to larder to washhouse and back again, issuing orders to the servants and to us until the very last moment.
While I hurried to dress, Peggy propped herself up on her elbows to ask, “Are any of these French officers handsome, Betsy? Because if not, I’ll wear my old flowered frock and leave my best brocaded gown for a better occasion.”
“Wear the brocade.” Then, a little guiltily, I added, “And please sit next to Benedict Arnold tonight.”
Peggy groaned. “Why can’t you? I’d rather sit near someone who isn’t twice my age.”
I dared not meet her eyes, especially as I scarcely acknowledged to myself that I wished to sit beside Major Monroe. Slipping into dainty blue heels with bright rose ribbons, I confessed, “I told Arnold that you asked after him.”
“I only asked after his recovery,” Peggy grumbled, rising from the bed so that Jenny could brush her curls up into a tall coiffure.
“Well, don’t say anything to him about his slow recovery or his leg,” I told her, because Peggy was the sort who needed to be told such things. Sometimes more than once. “Arnold is very sensitive.”
Peggy merely shrugged in answer.
Fastening the blue paste earbobs, I was reminded again of my older sister. “We’ve still had no letter from Angelica in Boston . . .”
Sighing, Peggy nodded. “I suppose someday we’ll become accustomed to not having word from her.”
I didn’t think so. I could never add up all the ways in which our painful separation imposed its scars on me. A part of me felt guilty for feeling this way when I had yet another sister at my side, but I sometimes thought I could never be happy without Angelica’s protectiveness and the way she’d made me feel a needed part of her schemes. For as long as I could remember, we’d had a bond based on sharing confidences and sisterly advice. But my relationship with Peggy had never run as deep. I had fun with Peggy, and she made me laugh. But without Angelica I was left to figure out who I was—as a woman and a sister.
And since her elopement, I’d begun to think of myself differently.
No longer the middle sister, trying to mimic and falling short. Now, as the eldest daughter in the household, I felt a greater responsibility and confidence. So I pushed away the notion that the dazzling jewelry didn’t suit me and made for my father’s table.
Downstairs, beneath the chandelier and gilded portraits of my ancestors, Lafayette supped at one end of the glittering table next to my father. My mother presided at the other end near Baron de Kalb. Peggy squeezed between General Arnold and Major Monroe, which led to the happy circumstance of a space next to the latter for me.
It was surprisingly restorative to have friendly soldiers again in our home, and I listened intently for anything else Lafayette might reveal either about a plot against Washington or a suspected traitor amongst us. My attentions were so riveted on the Frenchman, in fact, that Peggy felt the need to twit me. “I thought perhaps a certain British Lieutenant André had already captured your affection,” she whispered. “Or have you finally set your cap for a French nobleman?”
I forced down a swallow to keep from choking on my buttered bread and embarrassment. If she’d been closer, I’d have kicked her beneath the table. As Major Monroe was sitting between us, he only stopped shoveling food into his mouth long enough to interject, “Alas, the marquis already has a wife. I’m afraid you ladies will have to aim a little lower.”
Peggy laughed. “To you?”
Reluctantly slowing his efforts to wolf down what might have been the first good meal he’d had in ages, Monroe blushed. “That would be more than a little lower. When it comes to marriage prospects, from the marquis to me, is a drop from a cliff.”
I smiled at the major’s self-deprecating nature.
Meanwhile, Peggy mused, “Lafayette is so young to be a general . . .”
“A year older than me,” Monroe replied, loyally. “And in any case, I think we’re better off under rising young officers than we are under Granny Gates.”
Granny Gates! It was a highly insubordinate thing for a junior officer to say of a general. We should have upbraided Monroe for it. And yet I don’t think he could have found any words that would have sounded sweeter to the daughters of Philip Schuyler.
I liked Monroe. I liked him very much. And that was even before Prince served our dessert course, when I noticed Monroe wincing as he rubbed at his shoulder.
“Are you injured, Major?” I asked.
“I was. It’s all healed up now.”
“Whatever happened to you?” Peggy batted her eyelashes at him.
Monroe flushed. “I was foolish enough to get myself shot at the Battle of Trenton.”
We’d read newspaper accounts of that battle, and Peggy all but squealed. “Are you
