So Hamilton was a foreigner. That explained his slight accent—or rather, the way in which he suppressed one. That he wasn’t from the colonies was of no consequence to me whatsoever, but I noted the bitterness. “And yet, your origins have not prevented you from a trusted place in Washington’s inner circle. Does that not fill you with hope for your future?”
“I try not to think of a future. When I was a child, I wished for a war to improve my circumstance, and now war has been the whole of my life since the start of the revolution. So, I expect to mingle my fate with America’s should she lose her struggle.”
It was an admirable sentiment, if expressed with almost a sadness that made me wish to reassure him. “But what if we win?”
He gave me an indulgent look, as if he thought me hopelessly optimistic. “Then I will turn away from the corruption of the world and retire to a frugal life in the countryside roasting turnips, like the general Manius Curius Dentatus.” Another old Roman, I guessed. He seemed fascinated by them. But when he saw the name meant nothing to me, he smirked. “I begin to think I should loan you some books.”
“A musty tome will not tell me what I wish to know.”
“Which is?”
“Whether you could be content planting turnips.”
He dug with the toe of his boot in the snow. “It sounds like a lonely business.”
Now I couldn’t help but twit him. “Didn’t Dentatus have a wife to help him plant his turnips?”
He grinned. “I suppose he must have.”
“What was her name?”
Hamilton paused for a heartbeat. “Aquileia. A sweet and devoted woman—no coquette, not fickle in the slightest.”
“Would it be unkind to think you invented that name?”
His eyes lit with mischief. “You would have to delve into one of those musty tomes to find out.”
We had, by this point, reached the door of my uncle’s lodgings. But instead of opening it for me when we climbed the steps, Hamilton leaned against it to bar my way.
And he sighed.
“Why do you sigh?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Not precisely. “I suppose you really are a perfect little nut-brown maid with eyes like a Mohawk beauty . . .”
“Do you mean that for a compliment?” I asked, fighting the blush that surely stained my cheeks.
“It does me no credit that you should have to ask.” He inched closer to me, and as the bow fastening my hood had come loose, he took the liberty of unraveling it completely. “I suppose your beaus in Albany have paid you better tribute. And that, like a coquette, you’ve shunned them and gloried in their broken hearts.”
With the ribbons of my hood in his hands, he tugged me until we were so close I thought he might kiss me. And caught up in the spell, I wanted him to. Desperately. “Sir, I hope you will believe me when I say I wish to be a mender of hearts rather than a breaker of them.”
It was so revealing a comment that I could have cursed myself. How cloying and hopeful and obvious. He must have taken me for a perfect child.
For in that moment, he stared. Then straightened up again, patronizingly fastening my hood tightly beneath my chin. “I can see why Tench fancies himself in love—and also why you should accept his courtship. He is the right sort of man for you, Miss Schuyler.”
“I scarcely know him,” I said, not liking the turn in the conversation or how the spell had broken. “I scarcely know you, for that matter. Which makes it all the more confounding that you should presume to guess what sort of man is right for me.”
“You’re a very earnest girl,” Hamilton replied, as if this fact made him angry. “My friend Tench is a very earnest fellow. From a good family. He has money. You’re well matched. He’s almost as much a saint as you are.”
I had the distinct impression he was making a case, as if before a jury. But he didn’t like his own arguments. I didn’t like them either.
Abruptly, he tipped his tricorn hat. “Good day, Miss Schuyler.”
Thereafter, our every encounter was inexplicably strained and abrupt. We crossed paths at headquarters, where I went to help Mrs. Washington mend socks and hats and breeches for the soldiers, and Hamilton stood dumbly in the doorway of the anteroom. A ball of wadded paper had rolled at his feet, no doubt pitched by one of his laughing comrades from where they labored with ink and quill pens. And without acknowledging me, Hamilton stooped to pick it up, then walked away without another word.
A few days later, he even begged off taking us to the sledding party with a very curious note.
Colonel Hamilton’s compliments to Miss Livingston and Miss Schuyler. He is sorry to inform them that his zeal for their service made him forget he is so bad a charioteer as hardly to dare to trust himself with so precious a charge; though if he were to consult his own wishes, like Phaethon, he would assemble the chariot of the sun, even if he were sure of experiencing the same fate. Colonel Tilghman offers himself a volunteer.
“This is just the dance that takes place outside a ballroom,” Angelica said when I told her what had happened. “Men advance, they withdraw, they advance . . .”
What she didn’t say, but I instinctively knew, was that Alexander Hamilton was not in the category of men that ought to concern me as dance partners in or out of a ballroom. He had already blazed a brilliant career. He was a prodigy, an ambitious man. A peacock who ought to be matched with some society bird of showy plumage.
He’d been perfectly clear about his hostility toward marriage. Any flirtation between us was merely
