9

Flirtations and Fancies

The Hamilton Town House

New York, New York

July 1785

“Mr. and Mrs. John and Sarah Jay!” Drayton announced from the living room doorway. The footman, resplendent in new blue livery trimmed with gold at the collar and cuffs—and looking, Eliza couldn’t help noticing, similar to John’s new suit—stood aside to let an elegantly dressed young couple enter the room. The expression on their faces was half confused, half amused. John Jay paused as if awaiting further fanfare, then bowed low to the room, to Sarah’s obvious mortification. He kissed his wife, then immediately went off to a circle of men clustered around Gouverneur Morris and his brother-in-law, John Rutherford.

Sarah Jay scanned the room until her eyes met Eliza’s.

“Eliza Hamilton!” she called as she pushed her way through the crowd with the kind of rudeness that only a patrician can pull off. Her father was the governor of New Jersey, after all. She had a whole state at her beck and call. “I heard a rumor and—yes, it’s true!” she exclaimed, all but jumping in the air as she pointed at Eliza’s not particularly different stomach, then threw her arms around her friend. “Oh, my darling, I am so very happy for you!”

Eliza felt her cheeks were going to burst from smiling so much. This was her twentieth congratulations tonight, and her twentieth hug. The men embraced her gently, as if her condition implied a new fragility, but these dainty women, powdered, wigged, and corseted within an inch of their lives, wrapped surprisingly strong arms around her torso and clutched her as if they were trying to squeeze the baby out six months before it was due.

“Alex and I are unbelievably happy,” Eliza said when she could breathe again. “We were starting to wonder if it was ever going to happen.” Just a few weeks ago, the doctor confirmed it as well—everything was in order, and she would be a mother very soon.

“Oh, I always knew you and Alex would be blessed with children. God would not have made you such a warm, loving person only to deprive you of the gift of motherhood. I tell you right now, I am setting aside Ann and William as potential mates for whatever comes out of you.” Ann and William were her and John’s youngest.

“It will be a boy,” Eliza said in all seriousness. “His name will be Philip.”

“Lovely!” Sarah said, without questioning the source of Eliza’s surety. “Ann it is then. I’ll start getting her ready now. Oh,” she interrupted herself, “thank you,” she said to Drayton, who had appeared at her side with a tray of glasses filled with amber liquid. “This is some of Mr. Van Rensselaer’s honey wine, yes? Do see that Mr. Jay gets some of this. He has been talking about it ever since he received your invitation.”

“Already done, madam,” Drayton said in a voice that would have seemed supercilious had it not been so clearly deferential.

“Oh, well, there’s a good chap! Find me in about, oh, nine minutes, and I’m sure I’ll take a top off,” said Sarah.

Drayton nodded and backed away with a serene expression on his face, as if Sarah had given him a profound reason to go on living. Sarah watched him walk away for a moment before turning back to Eliza.

“So, your new footman,” she said, a little smile on her face.

Eliza shrugged helplessly. “Yes,” she said, knowing just what her friend was referring to. “I found a guide to protocol in the courts of Louis Quatorze among his books. It explains a lot.”

“Really?” Sarah said. “That’s almost . . . admirable. Odd, and perhaps a little off-putting, but sweet in its way.”

“I was joking actually,” Eliza said. “But he does have a fondness for a certain kind of chivalrous novel of the type Cervantes made fun of in Don Quixote. Men who are stripping off their coats and laying them on puddles for women to walk on, when the ladies could have just as easily walked around them, that sort of thing.”

“I think Señor Cervantes might have rethought his position if he met . . .”

“Drayton. Drayton Pennington.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow. They turned to watch him across the room, where he was refilling the emptied glasses of a cluster of young male guests including John Schuyler and DeWitt Clinton, John’s school friend, and the nephew of the governor of New York. The college boys were making Drayton’s job difficult by sliding their glasses back and forth, either because they were too drunk to hold them steady or because they were actively teasing the footman. Though contemporaries, the young men were obviously of a different rank than Drayton, thus leaving him unable to respond to their tomfoolery in kind. However, Drayton acted as if he didn’t realize they were teasing him. His decanter followed their wavering glasses effortlessly, and one by one he refilled them all without spilling a drop, then bowed and walked away. The boys gave him a standing ovation as he departed, obviously impressed with his skill and his poise, and one of them called out an invitation to play cricket at the weekend.

“Such talent,” Sarah said, eyeing Drayton’s retreating form appreciatively. “And it doesn’t hurt that he is easy on the eyes.”

“Sarah!” Eliza swatted her friend with her fan. “You’re incorrigible!”

“My dear, when you’ve been married as long as John and I have, you learn to take your jollies where you can.”

“Not with my footman, you don’t. He is a nice young man, practically a godsend, and I have no plans to part with him anytime. Although . . .”

Sarah whirled to her. “What’s this? I smell a plan. Spill it.”

“Oh, it’s probably just the excitement of pregnancy, but I am feeling particularly maternal. I long to play matchmaker!”

“Oh, really! Let me guess! It’s that sweet Emma Trask whom I have heard such talk about, isn’t it? They say she has the air of a girl educated in a convent. Quiet as a mouse, subservient as a courtier to the tsars, and also quite lovely. She would make a good match with young Mr. Pennington.”

“Emma?” Eliza said in a dismayed voice. “Oh no. I mean, yes, but not with Drayton.”

“Let me see if I follow this. There is a single woman and a single man living in your house, both of the same age and station and worthy of a portrait by Titian, yet you are not planning on fixing them up together?”

“It’s just too obvious, don’t you think? Two penniless gentlefolk. Their opportunities are so very straitened. And Emma had an unfortunate childhood. She deserves a chance at a easier life.”

“Aha! So you will fix Emma up with some rich middle-aged bachelor who desires a pretty, meek helpmeet to brighten the latter half of his life, and find some slightly older widow with a fortune she needs must lavish on a golden boy like Drayton!”

Eliza laughed. “It seems like Drayton isn’t the only one reading the kind of novels Señor Cervantes made such fun of. Emma and Drayton are both too young and vivacious to be saddled with aging spouses. I have all but succeeded in maneuvering Emma and my brother together, and as for Drayton, I have heard tell that a certain heiress will be in town for the season, and I plan to make it so that she and Drayton see a lot of each other.”

Sarah’s eyes went wide. “My goodness, you are scheming. I don’t know if this is extraordinarily liberal of you or if you are setting back the goal of American freedom by half a century.”

“Sarah, please,” Eliza protested. “I am not forcing them to marry against their will. I am only creating . . . opportunities, as it were, for nature to take its course.”

Sarah laughed. “Well! I don’t know who to ask about first. John? Or the identity of this ‘heiress.’ Spill!”

“My lips are sealed,” Eliza said, mostly because she enjoyed watching Sarah squirm. “But look: There is Emma now, all but hanging on John’s every word.”

Sarah looked over and saw the girl, who was indeed standing mutely before John and his cronies. Her face was as serene as a saint’s in a painting. It was impossible to tell if she was bored or rapt by the conversation unfolding before her.

“Is she hanging on his every word?” Sarah said after watching the scene for a moment. “Or merely unable to get in a word edgewise? Though he has only been in the city a month, your brother’s so-called skill as a raconteur has already made the rounds.”

“Sarah Jay, my dear friend! Are you making insinuations about my brother?”

“What, no, of course not! I am merely saying that he has a reputation as a bit of a loudmouth.” She laughed, and patted Eliza on the shoulder in a placating manner. “But what firstborn teenaged son of a rich man isn’t a loudmouth? Their fathers teach them that the world belongs to them, and their mothers—or their mothers’ maids—wipe their mouths and their bottoms until they’re eight years old. They can’t help being rather self-centered. They grow out of it eventually. The first time they lose their shirt in a business deal, usually, or when their wife turns her shoulder to their touch. Like colts, they must be taken firmly in hand, but any resourceful wife can handle the task with ease. I wonder if Emma has had quite that training though. She seems a bit too . . . docile for the job.”

“Emma is an extremely steady young girl, which is just what John needs to settle him away from the distractions of the big city. I think they will make each other very happy.”

Sarah frowned. “It is a lovely sentiment, but methinks you are being a bit naïve. And the other victim? I’m sorry, I mean the girl you have picked out for Drayton?”

Eliza merely mimed locking her lips with a key.

“No matter,” Sarah said, “I’ll get it out of Alex when he arrives. I know you cannot keep anything from him.”

“I probably would have told him if I ever saw him these days. He is so busy though, that lately we only ever seem to see each other at parties and other social occasions.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps you’re just trying to throw me off the scent. At any rate, here is the man in question himself.”

For at that moment, Alex had appeared in the doorway, looking a little tired but clearly happy to be home. Before he could enter, however, a panicked-looking Drayton hustled toward him through the crowded room, a silver tray sporting a cluster of empty glasses perched precariously on his fingertips above the heads (and wigs) of the guests. The footman darted in front of Alex, blocking his way, and spun toward the guests in the room. His tray whirled with him, but the glasses didn’t even rattle, let alone fall.

“Mr. Alexander Hamilton!” Drayton shouted in a voice whose volume shocked the throng of revelers into silence. He stepped aside like a carnival barker about to reveal a trained bear or a bearded lady, revealing the stunned face of his employer.

“Well, uh, yes,” Alex said to the staring audience, one eyebrow lifted in an amused arch. “That’s me. Alexander Hamilton, at your service.”

Without missing a beat, he snapped into a deft little jig, clapping his heels on the floorboards and ending with a spin and a heel click. He whipped off his hat as he bowed low to the applause of the crowd.

There was much laughter as he began to make his way through the room toward Eliza. However eager he was to join his wife, his progress to her was slow. As he moved through the crowd, everyone had to shake his hand or stop him to ask a question about trade tariffs. Still others made him pause in order to make a comment about the rumors of a constitutional convention to create a document that would replace the Articles of Confederation, or to inquire if there were any shares left in the Bank of New York, which Alex had helped found last year, throwing the scheme together before his law practice really took off.

Alex, a born politician, answered each question genially but tactfully, taking thirty seconds or two minutes to say what could have been said in just two words: No comment. It took a good ten minutes before he was at his wife’s side.

When he finally arrived, he gave Sarah Jay a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned and embraced Eliza. His hug was different from the tentative touches of the male guests or the unfettered enthusiasm of the female. It was a hug that knew her body, for one thing, but it also wasn’t about her, or, rather, wasn’t about the baby (whose existence he had already celebrated many times). There was an urgency in his grasp—Alex clung to his wife as if she were the only thing holding him up.

“I miss you,” he whispered in her ear.

“I miss you, too,” she said. “You have been at the office far too late of late.”

And Sarah, who could be as tactful as she was brash—she was a politician’s wife, after all—immediately melted into the crowd, calling out for Drayton to “top off” her glass of honey wine.

“My love,” Eliza said when the coast was clear, “is something the matter?”

Alex shook his head as if he were trying to clear it, then took a deep breath. “No, no, everything is fine, once I’ve unburdened myself—and loosened this damned cravat.”

But Alex’s words did nothing to quell Eliza’s worries. She reached for her husband’s lace and adjusted the knot herself. “Has something happened?”

Alex accepted her ministrations meekly. “No, not really. Only I have told a little fib and I feel absolutely terrible about it.”

Eliza stiffened slightly, then took a sip of her drink to calm herself. “I’m sure it can’t be too serious.”

“No, it’s not. Only I don’t know why I did it, and I feel just awful. You see, I took on a new client today.”

Eliza frowned. “I thought you were in court today. The Gunn case.”

“No, that was the fib. The Gunn case is still scheduled for Monday.”

“I see,” Eliza said, though she didn’t at all.

“The client is a young married woman,” Alex continued. “Her husband—” His voice caught in his throat. “I’m sorry, my darling, I don’t know of a gentle way to say this.”

“It’s all right, Alex.” Eliza squeezed his arm tenderly. “I am aware that not all men hold themselves to a gentleman’s code.”

Alex’s lip curled in a grimace. “Well, this man is as far from a gentleman as Moll Flanders is from a lady. I’m afraid he—he strikes his wife.”

“Oh!” Eliza’s hands flew, not to her mouth but to her stomach, as if this simple act could protect the growing child there from the horrors of the world. “The poor woman!”

“Indeed.” Alex took a moment to pat Eliza’s hand, then, as if that weren’t enough, leaned forward to give her a little kiss. “And, well, it soon emerged that she had neither a place to go to escape the brute, nor money with which to do so. So I took her to Caroline Childress’s inn and ensconced her in a room there. She was so distraught, though, that I didn’t feel it was safe to leave her for some time, lest in a panic she run out into the streets, or perhaps even back to him.”

“I understand completely,” Eliza said. “Only, why did you feel the need to hide it from me? Is she pretty?” She tried to make her voice light, but it sounded awkward to her ears.

Alex seemed about to say something, then stopped and grinned, tiredly but with the first real cheer since he had arrived home. “Why, Mrs. Hamilton! Are you jealous?”

“Jealous? How uncharitable of you, Mr. Hamilton! No, I only thought that, faced with the prospect of, shall we say, an extended period without romantic intimacy, you might find your eyes flitting to other, more beautiful vistas.”

“Oh, you are jealous!” Alex crowed. “How perfectly delightful! No,” he continued quickly, not quite able to wipe the smile from his face. “It has nothing to do with her looks. It’s just that she is unable to pay me anything, and I know we’ve talked about me taking on more lucrative clients so that we can move to a bigger house and raise our children in a manner befitting the Schuyler name. And here I am paying for a room for her out of my own pocket.”

“Out of your own pocket!” Eliza said quickly, then stopped herself. Now who’s being uncharitable? she thought. “How very gentlemanly of you,” she corrected quickly, though her tone didn’t sound very convincing. “This Mrs. . . .”

“Reynolds.”

“This Mrs. Reynolds is lucky that she found a man as chivalrous as you to see her through her time of need. Why, you make young Drayton here look like a proper boor.”

She nodded at Drayton, who was pouring and bowing and clearing and bowing and serving and bowing like some cleverly manipulated marionette.

“Yes, I was going to ask you about him. That shouting thing . . . ,” said Alex.

“It is rather jarring, but the guests are amused by it, and if I’m being honest it saves me the trouble of introductions. I can see why they do it at court.”

Alex smiled. “Whatever my princess wants.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sorry about fibbing. It was a lapse.”

“Hmph,” Eliza said. “Princess? I don’t see my mother around. That makes me the queen.”

Alex laughed, and she could tell he felt forgiven.

There is nothing to forgive, Eliza said silently, though she wondered if she were trying to convince herself. It was understandable that Alex should feel the need to drop everything and come to this woman’s rescue, after all, but why lie about it? Clearly she had touched some kind of nerve in him. Eliza didn’t think it was something she needed to be jealous of—she knew her husband adored her—but what, then, had so rattled him?

Who was this Mrs. Reynolds? And was she pretty? Eliza felt a little sick at the thought of her husband with another woman without telling her about it. But he did tell her about it, didn’t he? He told her about it just now. There was nothing to worry about. She knew he loved her completely. But they had been married now for several years—she shook the thought from her head irritably. She trusted her husband.

Just then Drayton took up his post at the door. “Miss Elizabeth Van Rensselaer and Mrs. Cornelius Jantzen.”

He stepped aside to reveal a pale blond girl of perhaps sixteen and a rather rotund matron of about sixty swaddled in widow’s weeds.

“Elizabeth Van Rensselaer?” Alex turned to her. “Stephen’s sister?”

“Her parents have sent her down for the season,” Eliza nodded.

Alex groaned. “Please don’t tell me she’s staying with us.”

“Ha!” Eliza said. “I gather Stephen has purchased a ‘city place,’ as he calls it, on Mulberry Street. It has six bedrooms and a ballroom large enough to contain our entire house. It is we who should be staying with them. But I will be seeing a fair bit of her. Peggy has asked that I chaperone her.”

“Isn’t that Mrs. Jantzen’s job? And is that the same Mrs. Jantzen who accompanied you to Morristown all those years ago, when I so gallantly rescued you from a wrecked carriage?”

“You mean ruined my favorite frock and insinuated that I snuck into your hayloft at my parents’ party?” Eliza teased, to Alex’s consternation. “And yes, that is the same Mrs. Jantzen. Widowed now, the poor thing, so we must try to be accommodating. But still. She is a bit much for any young girl to have to deal with for six months.”

“So it’s Eliza Hamilton to the rescue again, is it?”

“What can I say?” Eliza said. “It’s a calling.”

“I sense there’s more to this than a mere ‘calling,’” Alex said, “but I’ll get to the bottom of it later. Let’s go greet our guests.”

“Perhaps,” Eliza said coyly as they made their way across the room. “By the way,” she added. “You still haven’t told me if she’s pretty.”

“If who’s pretty?” Alex said, eyes wide in feigned innocence.

Eliza snapped her fan open and waved it coquettishly in front of her face and décolletage. “Just remember, it’ll be a year before I am again your blushing bride, as they say. Indeed, I’ve heard sometimes the recovery takes as long as two.”

“You will always be my blushing bride, no matter what,” said Alex softly. “You have never been more beautiful.” He lowered his face to hers and kissed her tenderly.

Eliza gave in to the deepening kiss, hiding them behind her fan, as Alex drew her even more tightly to him. So many couples lost their spark once children entered into the picture, yet to her he was still the dashing young soldier she first fell in love with, and she fervently hoped what he said was true. That she would always be his blushing bride.

“We’ll see if you’re still singing the same tune in a few weeks,” she teased, pulling away to catch her breath.

In answer, Alex kept the fan firmly in place to kiss his wife again.