He grinned. “Thank you.”
As a general’s daughter, I knew what soldiers liked to hear. But it seemed, these days, I never knew what to say to please my mother.
“Betsy,” she snapped from where she stood at the back gate removing an apron she’d dirtied helping soldiers in the nearby pastures. “Go in the house with the other children and clean up. Your father is expected shortly from the surrender at Saratoga. We must prepare to receive his guests.”
I winced, fearful the scout beside me would misconstrue her words. For we were not expecting guests, but British prisoners. Nor was I one of the children. In fact, I’d just turned twenty. But I knew better than to point any of this out to my mother, a stern Dutch plantation mistress who’d been exceedingly vexed with me for months now.
You’re the sensible one, Elizabeth, she’d said in the heat of our quarrel. I expected better.
As if I could stop the tides of change any more than she could. I didn’t say that, either. I merely wiped my hands, bobbed my head, picked up my skirts, and went. Broken oyster shells crunched underfoot on the drive as I passed the stables and made my way to my father’s handsome brick mansion, which stood upon a bluff overlooking the majestic Hudson River.
The house was a flurry of activity as I hurried past kerchiefed Negro slaves moving the heavy mahogany table into the grand entry hall and went up the stairs to the bedroom I shared with my sisters. Well—just one sister, now, since Angelica had run off to marry a mysterious suitor against Papa’s wishes a few months before. Now it was just me and eighteen-year-old Peggy who shared the spacious pale-green room with its wardrobes, armchairs, and canopied bed.
“Why can’t General Gates take these prisoners?” Peggy cried, yanking on a pair of stockings. “He took Papa’s victory, after all.”
“That’s true,” I said. It was bad enough that a rival had pushed our father out of command. Worse that we were now saddled with the captives. We’d shown courtesy to imprisoned British officers before, in the early years of the war, most notably to the dashing Lieutenant John André, a clever and genteel officer who’d charmed my sisters and me with his sketches and accomplished flute playing.
But my father wasn’t under suspicion then, and General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne was no André—he was a monster and no gentleman at all. How was it going to look to the Continental soldiers in our fields, not to mention our tenants and neighbors, if we wined and dined the very same British general who sent Mohawk Indians to terrorize them?
But as our black lady’s maid, Jenny, swept into the room and unfastened my apron and frock while fretting about the bloodstains, I reminded Peggy, “Even if you’re right about Papa’s victory being stolen out from under him, you cannot say such things lest you rub the salt of injustice into his still-raw wounds. And you especially cannot say it in front of the British, lest they sense disunity amongst our generals.”
“That’s no secret, is it?” Peggy asked.
Thankfully not, because Peggy was never very good with secrets. Indeed, Peggy had the habit of speaking aloud what others left unspoken. In fact, she’d quite nearly given away Angelica’s plan to escape the house and run off with her beau, though now I sometimes wished she had. I wished we both had.
“I just hate that we must go to all this trouble for the same lobsterbacks who burned our Saratoga house,” Peggy grumbled, rummaging in her tall oak wardrobe amidst taffeta, frilly petticoats, gauzy fichus, and embroidered stomachers.
On a sigh, I stepped into the petticoats Jenny held for me. “I hate it, too.”
I hated that I couldn’t be as happy about our American victory as I should have been. Hated that our Saratoga house was in ashes. Hated that Papa faced court-martial, his reputation in tatters. Hated that Angelica was gone and our mother blamed me for it. And hated most of all that it might be, at least in some small part, my fault.
Peggy harrumphed, admiring her dark glossy curls in a looking glass. “Well, we’ll at least remind these king’s men that we’re not paupers. Wear the blue robe à la Française. Oh, and the blue earbobs. I know what you’re going to say, but they’re not too showy.”
They were, for me. Angelica was the sophisticated one. Peggy the pretty one. And I was Philip Schuyler’s practical daughter. The one who, as the second child in a family as large and prominent as Philip Schuyler’s, was sometimes apt to be overlooked. There was even a story told in my family that when I was a babe, Mama was so distracted by her many responsibilities that she accidentally left me bound up in my cradleboard, hanging from a tree in the way of the natives. So it was that from the smallest age one can conceive of such a thing, I considered it quite natural to be overlooked.
And I never minded, because it allowed me to slip away to swim in the river, or stay up past bedtime without anyone noticing, and tag along after my father on adventures that were forbidden to other girls. Besides, people said very interesting things in front of girls they didn’t notice . . .
But the blue paste earbobs drew notice. They sparkled like sapphires—exactly the sort of jewelry that I did not carry off well. Still, I treasured them for their sentimental value.
“I don’t know,” I said, studying my reflection as Jenny held them to my ear.
My younger sister met my gaze in the mirror. “Angelica left them for you. She wanted you to wear them.”
Almost as one, we both sighed for her absence. Angelica. My brilliant sister. My closest friend and confidant. I sank down
