Two

Spring

Colonel Richard Varick to Major General Philip Schuyler

Albany, April–May, 1777

Dear General:

It is reported here that the Enemy are preparing to come up the River [from New York City]. You may easily conceive how Mrs. Schuyler feels on the business, however, we have almost induced her to vacate. . . .

Last night brought an account of [British] frigates and transports . . . above Peeks Kill. The ladies were in a distressing situation for an hour or better and I am getting boxes made [for packing] for fear of the worst.

[We are] in very sanguine expectations of receiving some letters from you . . . but our most earnest wishes were disappointed, which induces the ladies to think that you are . . . unfortunately fallen into the hands of the Tories.

—I am Dear Sir, Your Most Obedt & Very Hblsevt, Richd Varick

“RIDER APPROACHING THE HOUSE!”

The cry by one of Schuyler’s guards sent the Schuyler family scrambling from their breakfast to the window.

“It’s an express messenger!” shouted twelve-year-old John. He pressed his nose against the glass as his younger brothers, Jeremiah and Rensselaer, climbed on his back to look. “He’s wearing blue and buff.”

“Praise God,” murmured Eliza, taking Peggy’s hand. “Maybe it’s finally a letter from Papa.” The family had been worried sick about their father now that the British had sailed up the Hudson River. There had been no word from Schuyler at all. What if he had been taken prisoner?

The horse was lathered, its breathing labored. Whatever the news, it was urgent enough to gallop. A reassuring note from their father would not necessitate pushing a horse so hard.

In the past days, they’d been bombarded by unnerving reports of British ships and troops moving quickly toward them, of Loyalist Tories torching barns in the night and kidnapping Patriot leaders. The guards placed around the Schuyler mansion to protect the home and family of the Northern Army’s commander were jumpy. Most of them were old or semi-crippled from wounds—probably of little help in real trouble.

The rider’s face was grim as he handed a packet of letters to the sentry. Then he galloped away down the drive toward the fort at the northwest peak of town, where Patriot troops were encamped. Given its strategic location near where two major waterways met—the north-to-south-flowing Hudson that stretched from just below Canada, all the way to New York City, and the west-to-east Mohawk—Albany had become the center for troops guarding against British invasion from Canada.

Peggy hoped the poor horse made it. The Schuyler estate was a mile outside the south end of town. The animal was clearly exhausted. Turning from the window, Peggy caught Angelica’s eye. She, too, was tense, obviously recognizing the delivery was unlikely to be happy news.

As Lieutenant Colonel Richard Varick left the dining room to collect the letters, Catharine shooed her children back to their meal. “Your hasty pudding will grow cold,” she chided. “Mary worked hard to make it for you.”

Already finished with her porridge of cornmeal, molasses, milk, and butter, Peggy reached for a slice of bread, made of wheat from their fields in Saratoga. Before the war, their table had also been graced with salted meats and smoked fish at breakfast. But even the richest ate more lean these days, given the food shortages made by two armies foraging. The Schuylers still had preserves made from her father’s hybrid plums, though, which he’d cultivated to be sweeter and fuller than the standard. Peggy wondered if her father would ever be able to return to the life he most loved—that of a gentleman farmer, overseeing his crops. Fighting had already dragged on for two years.

Varick reentered, sorting the mail. A gangly twenty-four-year-old, her father’s military secretary was all hotheaded idealism, a Dutchman from Hackensack, New Jersey, who had instantly thrown off his law apprenticeship to join the cause. He was fiercely devoted to Schuyler. Peggy had grown fond of him for his emotional outbursts. Right before the rider interrupted their meal, Varick had been hammering the table with his fist and damning John Adams for attacking her papa’s military judgment.

“Anything for us, Colonel?” Catharine asked.

“No, ma’am,” he answered, distracted with one of the letters. For a few moments the only sounds were silver spoons scraping against china and a rooster sounding off in the courtyard out back.

Godverdomme!” Varick bolted up out of his chair, shaking his head as he hastily reread a dispatch from Connecticut.

“Mr. Varick, what is it?” In her anxiety about its contents, Catharine forwent her usual reprimand for someone using the Lord’s name in vain.

Varick looked up from the paper, his gray eyes wide, his face pale. “The British have destroyed our supply depots at Danbury.”

Everyone moaned. The Patriots couldn’t afford to lose one musket.

“How bad is it?” Peggy asked.

“I hate to say, miss. I do not wish to alarm you.”

“You are alarming us more, Mr. Varick, by not divulging the details,” Angelica weighed in. “And pretending we are not strong enough to know facts simply insults us.”

“As you wish, miss.” Sheepishly, Varick glanced down at the paper. “They torched seventeen hundred tents, five thousand pairs of shoes, four thousand barrels of beef, five thousand of flour, sixty hogshead of rum. They also set fire to the town. Danbury’s meetinghouse and forty of its homes are ashes.”

Godverdomme indeed, thought Peggy.

“Five thousand boots burned when so many of our soldiers march barefoot?” Catharine shook her head. “How did we leave such stores undefended?”

Varick dropped the dispatch to the table. “Forgive me, Mrs. Schuyler.” He bowed formally to her and then to each Schuyler as he said, “Miss Angelica, Miss Eliza, boys. I think I’d best issue orders for Albany residents to strip all lead from Albany’s roofs and windows and melt it down for musket balls.” He saved his final bow for Peggy. “Miss Peggy,” he added with a shy smile.

Then he dashed out the door, all earnest flurry.

Her brother John made a face at Peggy and teasingly thump-thumped his hand against his heart. Eliza giggled.

“Colonel Varick is just grateful for the respect I show him,” Peggy snapped. “You should be, too, for how much he helps Papa!”

Oh, why did Congress keep their father bogged down in Philadelphia continuing to answer partisan questions about last year’s failings in Canada? He should be in Albany, readying his army! It was nonsense. Petty politics. Regional squabbling kept alive by sanctimonious, puritanical New Englanders! They just didn’t like the fact her father was Dutch!

“Poor Papa,” she said aloud. Maybe the letter said something about his whereabouts. Peggy reached for it just as John did. But Peggy snatched it up first.

“At least share it out loud,” her younger brother grumbled as she scanned its contents.

But Peggy was so stunned by the heroics described in the letter, she kept reading until the twelve-year-old hit her with a well-hurled hunk of bread—right on her forehead!

“I say, good shot!” Jeremiah shouted, as he and Rensselaer guffawed.

Peggy’s face flamed. “Oh, you’re going to regret—”

“Margarita!” Catharine interrupted. “What else does the dispatch say?”

Peggy glared at her brothers before regaining her deportment. “You remember General Benedict Arnold, Mama?”

“Of course. After his brilliant defense of Valcour Island in Lake Champlain last fall, your father considers him the nation’s bravest commander.”

“Well, he has amazed again. When he learned of the British and Tory treachery at Danbury, General Arnold rode through the night in a rainstorm to set a trap for the British as they made the march back to their ships. He and the local militia managed to build a breastwork of wagons, rocks, and dirt and then lay in wait.

“Arnold’s horse was pierced with nine musket balls during the fight. Finally it fell, the general caught in his stirrups. A Redcoat rushed toward him, bayonet ready, shouting at him to surrender.” Peggy quickly skimmed the next few lines. Holding up her fist, she read dramatically, “‘Not yet!’ the brave Arnold exclaimed, and pulled out his pistol and shot his enemy dead, before extricating himself from his horse and escaping into the nearby swamp.”

The boys jumped out of their seats, shouting, “Huzzah!”

Jeremiah skipped around the table whistling “Yankee Doodle.”

Eliza laughed and clapped on the beat.

“Thank God General Arnold is on our side,” said Catharine, reaching for more bread and plum preserves.

How could she think of eating? thought Peggy. “Excuse me, everyone, but you do know where Danbury is, don’t you?”

“Near Peeks Kill,” answered Angelica. “Right where those British frigates have been seen.”

The boys froze.

Peggy nodded. “Exactly. Presumably on their way upriver to attack West Point.”

Slowly, Angelica finished her sister’s thought. “And if they take West Point, that gives them control of the lower Hudson River . . . all the way down to New York City. The river there is deep enough for any of their seagoing sloops and men-of-war to traverse.”

“Controlling the Hudson,” added Peggy, “is the perfect way to decapitate us—cutting New England off from the rest of the states. Just like Mr. Franklin’s ‘Join or Die’ cartoon of the severed snake warns us.” Peggy considered the situation with growing alarm. “You know, if General Burgoyne comes down from Canada and manages to seize Lake Champlain . . . then heads downstream to Fort Ticonderoga and can take it . . . Burgoyne will be free to keep moving south, which brings his eight thousand troops to . . .” Peggy trailed off.

None of them had to verbalize the obvious meeting point for the two British armies—Albany. Thousands of British soldiers, bent on taking control of the country and crushing the Revolution and its Patriots, converging right where they sat.

Eliza covered her mouth, her large, soft eyes wide in fear. The boys plopped down in their chairs.

“Tush, child.” Catharine reached over to pat Eliza’s hand. “We must have faith.” Even though her voice quavered, she worked to stanch Eliza’s nervousness. “Your papa says Fort Ticonderoga is impregnable. It is shielded by cliffs too steep to climb and by the lake, which our Patriots have barred with a chain of thick logs moored by double iron links and sunken piers.”

“That’s right,” crowed John. “Papa said that the king’s whole armada couldn’t break it apart.”

“There, you see, my dear?” Catharine crooned to Eliza.

“You know the other thing that raid on Danbury would do, don’t you, Mother?” Angelica asked, an insolent edge to her voice. The tension between mother and daughter since Schuyler had banished Angelica’s card-playing suitor had been like the stinging pop and spark of fabric brushing together. “It would embolden all Tories in that district. Right along the road Papa will need to take to make it home from Philadelphia.”

“Oh, Angelica, don’t,” whispered Peggy. “Don’t frighten Mama on purpose.” When Angelica was angry, she could go for the most vulnerable part of her adversary. Peggy had experienced that plenty during their squabbles.

But Angelica ignored her. “I suppose if they capture Papa, they would take him to the British prison ships in New York harbor. Mr. Carter has written me appalling accounts—of so many Americans prisoners being crowded together into the ships’ holds that they almost suffocated for want of air. The pork and bread given them is unfit for humans, riddled with weevils. If they receive rations at all. Sometimes they go for days with nothing. Men afflicted with dysentery, dying in their own filth.”

“Angelica!” Eliza whimpered, pushing away her pudding.

Angelica didn’t pause, not even in pity for Eliza, which told Peggy just how much she wanted to rattle their mother. “The Redcoats terrorize Patriot officers for fun—condemning them to be hanged, making them ride coffins to the gallows, with ropes round their necks. Only to be told at the last minute, in front of a jeering crowd of the city’s Loyalist Tories, that they are to be spared.”

Ashen, Catharine rose slowly from her chair. Peggy expected her to rail against Angelica’s bringing their father bad luck by even suggesting his being apprehended by the enemy. She was Old Dutch superstitious that way. But instead Catharine asked, “You have been in communication with Mr. Carter?” Her voice was icy.

Angelica answered her mother’s cold imperiousness with hot defiance: “Papa only forbade him from this house. He said nothing of our exchanging letters. And you know, Mother, Mr. Carter has the ear of General Washington’s staff, a Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton in particular. Mr. Carter is to be a commissary for the army. Replacing that flour, those boots burned by the British at Danbury? That is now Mr. Carter’s job. As Papa himself said, an army that is starving or doesn’t have ammunition cannot fight. In fact, it is now rather unpatriotic to speak ill of Mr. Carter.”

She stood up as well, eye to eye with Catharine. “I still want to marry him. It is my right. Our Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal. That all of us have God-given, unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Carter makes me happy.”

Catharine snorted. “You ignore an important line in that document, Engeltje. As you just recited, the declaration says that all men are created equal. We women are still subject to the law of our husbands, and”—she emphasized the next words—“our fathers.”

She stepped away from her chair and rested her hand on the chatelaine at her waist—a decorative silver belt clasp that held all the keys to the mansion’s cabinets and doors. “Your papa has forbidden your marrying this renegade. So I will be locking up the house from now on, for your safety.” She forced a brittle, authoritative smile. “And for your future pursuit of happiness.”

She looked to her sons. “Finish your breakfast, children. In this crisis, it is a crime to waste food.” With that Catharine swept out of the room. From the hall came two loud clicks as the bolts shut on the front and back doors.

That night, Angelica reclined in one of the wide window seats of the sisters’ bedroom, silently gazing out into the darkness. Eliza embroidered one of her intricate pictures in thread. Peggy sat on the edge of their bed, swinging her legs and reading aloud to them—Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded.

Well, but, Mrs. Jervis, said I, let me ask you, if he can stoop to like such a poor girl as me . . .” Peggy broke off reading and hurled the Richardson novel against the wall. “I know you wanted to hear it, Eliza, but I cannot read this insipid rubbish again!”

Aghast, Eliza cried, “You shouldn’t throw a book, Peggy! You’ll break the binding.”

“Oh, Eliza, we should do more than just break the binding of that novel. Don’t you remember that its heroine is almost raped by the master of the house, when he disguises himself as another housemaid to climb in bed with her? Then he claims he loves her but his family won’t let him marry her because of the social chasm between them?” Peggy flopped back on the bed, kicking and flailing her arms. “For pity’s sake!”

Normally Peggy’s outrage with vacuous prose would have won applause from her oldest sister. But Angelica continued to stare out the window. Quietly, she said, “And there you have my plight.”

“Oh my goodness, Angelica.” Eliza dropped her hoop-bound cloth. “Have you been . . . have you been . . .”

“Attacked? By Mr. Carter? No. But my heart, my happiness are attacked, most assuredly. And if Mother had her way, she would marry me off to some boring idiot. Some mild-mannered Dutchman, I imagine. A Mr. Varick, for instance.”

“Oh, Angelica, Richard Varick is not that bad,” replied Peggy.

“Would you want to marry him?”

“No!” Peggy made a face. “But that’s not the point, and not what Mama has suggested.”

“Just wait. She might.” Angelica spoke without turning from the window.

“What are you looking at?” Eliza asked. “Are . . . are you watching for Redcoats? Do you think it possible they will make it up here so fast?” Eliza’s voice was climbing into an anxious soprano. “Remember New York City? Within ten minutes of the first sighting of a British gunship, the whole bay was filled with boats. Like all of London was under sail and afloat. One minute none and a half hour later, thirty-two thousand Redcoats.”

“Beyond West Point, the river is not deep enough for troop transports,” Peggy said, trying to assuage her fears.

Angelica seemed oblivious. “Well, they can certainly land at Kingston and then make the march up in a few—” Suddenly, Angelica sat bolt upright, placing her hand on the windowpane. “He’s here,” she whispered.

“Who? Papa?” Eliza scampered to the window to look out.

But Peggy guessed instantly. Not their papa. Carter.

Angelica swung excitedly out of the window seat. Her sudden movement and her voluminous skirts would have knocked Eliza over had Angelica not caught her by the elbow. “I have a secret,” she burbled with excitement. “Tonight, my dearest sisters, I elope with John Carter! You must help me escape.”

Eliza fainted.

After much fanning and coaxing, Eliza came to, propped up by her sisters, in a rainbow heap of petticoats, disheveled curls, and tears on pretty faces. “Don’t leave us, Angelica,” Eliza whimpered. “We won’t be the same without you.”

“Think about this carefully, Angelica,” Peggy urged. “Papa told you this man is a gambler, a debtor! A murderer maybe!”

“That’s rumor and Papa’s provincial opinion. No, Peggy. John told me all about the duel. It was over the honor of a lady who had fallen desperately in love with him. John was trying to protect her good name.”

“How gallant,” murmured Eliza.

“But Angelica”—Peggy continued to push for reason—“why did he have to flee England? Men fight duels all the time without having to run away.”

“For the Revolution! And he’s heading to Boston now that the port is liberated. Things are happening there. The Sons of Liberty are there.” Angelica grew more and more excited as she spoke. “Don’t you remember what it was like in New York City before the British Army invaded and occupied it? All those plays, the dance classes, the balls, the fox hunts, the concerts?

“Remember listening to all those impassioned speeches at the Liberty Pole on the Common about liberty and human capabilities? Didn’t it make your mind soar? And stir your blood? Remember George Washington’s spectacular parade through the city when he was made the supreme commander of our armies? The fife and drums, the dress uniforms, all those young men, the gorgeous horses.”

“Of course I remember!” Peggy interrupted. “Papa rode right beside General Washington in that parade. You are forgetting Papa, sister. Think how you will break his heart by doing this. Right at a time our countrymen need his full attention! Look at all the British maneuvers going on. Our city may become the critical battlefield of the war. Things will hardly be dull around here. Mark my words.”

“Blood, cannon fire, and pain, yes.” Angelica nodded, sobering. “But no glory for us. No matter how much you and I might want to fight in the war, we cannot, Peggy. Women are not allowed to lead a charge.” She shrugged. “But I could help persuade foreign dignitaries to go back to their country and send us arms, gold, ships, and men. Emissaries from France and Spain are sailing into Boston to talk to our leaders and decide whether to support us. Mr. Carter will be talking with them, too, to find supplies for our armies. You know I would be good at such conversations. That way I can be a real part of the Revolution.”

She flashed that disarming smile of hers. “Plus, if you are so worried about Papa, remember that his most vicious critics are from Boston—Samuel and John Adams. Perhaps I can charm them into relenting a bit.”

Peggy sat back on her heels. She had no retort for that.

Eliza had been looking back and forth between her sisters as they debated. “Do you love him very much, Angelica?”

Angelica laughed, almost as if she were surprised by the question. Clasping their hands, she drew her sisters to the window and pointed. Way down their hill, toward their private dock, was a silhouetted rider. He held the reins to a white horse, illuminated by a full moon that also sprinkled light onto the river’s dark waves, making them glitter and look magical rather than menacing.

“How could I not love him?” she whispered, laying her cheek on Eliza’s head. “He is like Perseus, freeing Andromeda from the rock to which her parents had chained her.” Together, Angelica and Eliza sighed—just like they did over poetry.

Peggy bit her lip, knowing she had lost the argument. This was how it was among the three of them. Once two agreed, the third must go along—not in a coerced way, but because that was the irresistible pull, the strength, the sacredness of the Schuyler sisters’ symbiosis.

It had always been that way, particularly with expeditions that required some daring—from climbing trees in the orchard to sneaking down to the Hudson to watch sailors landing at the family wharf. Typically, though, whatever aspect carried the heaviest punishment if caught by their parents seemed to fall to Peggy.

And so it was now. “Will you help me, sweet Peggy?” begged Angelica. “I must elope now, before Albany is engulfed in fighting and we cannot make our way through battle lines to Boston. Before Papa comes home. All I need is the key to the front door. The windows are all too high off the ground for me to jump. Mr. Carter cannot approach the house with a ladder because of Papa’s guards. I must slip away quietly, out the front door, timing my escape in between the sentries’ rounds. You are the only one who can move with the stealth needed to get into Mother’s room and remove the door key from her chatelaine without waking her.” She squeezed Peggy’s hand. Her radiant, dark eyes pleaded as much as her voice. “Please?”

Peggy waited an hour, until the house was asleep. Then, leaning forward, walking toe to heel, she crept silently across the broad, bleached floorboards of the upstairs hall. Her papa had once described to her how Oneida warriors could come within a few feet of deer they hunted, without the animals knowing. Wearing his moccasins, Peggy had quickly perfected the silent glide.

Creeeeeaaaaaaaaaakkkkk, the door to her parents’ room groaned as Peggy pushed it open. She froze, holding her breath as her mother rolled over. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Finally her mother gently snored again.

Peggy exhaled. Heart pounding, she tiptoed to her mother’s dresser. Atop the polished wood was Catharine’s chatelaine. Besides her keys, the ornate waist-chain held a thimble and needle case, a medicinal funnel, and miniature portraits. The tiny painting of Angelica was particularly pretty. What would Catharine do with it after her daughter so flagrantly defied her? What would she do with Peggy’s once she discovered her role in the betrayal? Oh, this was all family treason, and for a man Peggy didn’t trust at all. What was she doing?

Peggy hesitated but then shook her head to rid her mind of such misgivings. Like Caesar, she had crossed the Rubicon. The die was cast. No retreat now. She pocketed the chatelaine. There was no way to pull the door key off without rattling the chain. She’d have to slip back in again to return it before dawn, doubling her chances of awaking her mother.

Toe to heel, toe to heel. Peggy was almost safely to the door again when she heard, “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma.” Eighteen-month-old Cornelia sat up in her cradle and crooned, pointing to her big sister.

Peggy shook her head at the child and put her finger to her lips in a hushed sssshhhhhhhhhhh.

Catharine stirred. “Mmmmmmmm,” she mumbled, half awake.

Cornelia chortled. “Up, up, up, up,” She grabbed the edges of her cradle and began rocking it back and forth.

“Go back to sleep, little one,” Catharine murmured.

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma.”

Catharine groaned, nestling deeper under her blanket. “Sleep, Cornelia.”

“Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma.” Cornelia rocked harder.

She’d be caught! Hastily, Peggy scooped up her tiny sister. The toddler laughed and grabbed fistfuls of Peggy’s hair.

“Shhhh, shhh, shhh,” Peggy pleaded.

Yawning, Cornelia stretched abruptly, yanking Peggy’s curls.

“Ouch!” Peggy mouthed.

Cornelia giggled.

Taking a deep breath, Peggy forced herself to stay calm. Slowly, gently, she swung the child and hummed into her ear.

Cornelia yawned again, bigger.

“Thaaaaattt’s iiiiiit,” Peggy whispered in a singsong voice, “gooooooo to sleeeeeeeep.”

Cornelia’s eyelids fluttered.

“Gooooooooo to sleeeeeeep.”

Cornelia’s head fell back against Peggy’s shoulder. She had drifted off.

Ever so carefully, Peggy laid Cornelia back down in her cradle and worked her hair out of the toddler’s grasp. She straightened and turned for the door—and about jumped out of her skin.

Catharine was watching her.

“Mama!” she gasped.

“You are so good with the child, Peggy. So good with people when they are sick . . . or in need.” Catharine lay back on the pillows, obviously exhausted and still half asleep. “I am so tired, child. Worrying about your papa and what I should do if . . .” She almost drifted off. “Come here.” She patted the bed.

Trembling, Peggy sat on its edge, careful to keep one hand atop the pocket filled with Catharine’s keys to keep them from jangling.

Catharine took her other hand and held it. “Goodness, child, you’re shivering. You are not with fever, are you?” She held Peggy’s hand to her own face to test its temperature. Satisfied Peggy was not sick, she continued sleepily, “I remember when Eliza had her nightmares, you were the one to talk her out of . . . out . . . of . . .” Catharine’s eyes closed. After a moment, she snored again slightly, that blissful heavy breathing of deep slumber.

Peggy made herself count to sixty before slowly sliding her hand out from Catharine’s.

Her mother hadn’t questioned Peggy being in her bedroom. Clearly, she trusted that her daughter had heard the toddler cry and out of kindness and goodness came in to rock her back to sleep. Peggy felt sick to her stomach. Catharine would probably never entirely trust Peggy again—once she discovered Angelica gone and thought back to this moment. What an enormous sacrifice Peggy was being asked to make for Angelica. Choosing her sister’s love over her mother’s better prove worth it!

Angelica was waiting at the top of the stairs, wrapped in her dark cloak to conceal her in the night. But nothing could dim the shine of joy, of adventure, on her face.

Taking her hand, and Angelica clasping Eliza’s, Peggy led them in soft tiptoeing down the stairs, their arms lifted and arched gracefully as in the dozens of allemandes and reels they had danced together in their parlor.

Clllllliiiiicccckkkk. The bolt unlocked. The night air spilled in, smelling of freedom, of intrigues, of endings and beginnings.

They looked left, then right. No sentry they could see—the watch must be pacing the back of the house. Without a word, the three sisters embraced in a long, tight hug, hearing one another’s breath, feeling one another’s heartbeats. Just as they had done when they were little and jumped into the sweet-cool lake by their Saratoga country home.

Then Angelica pulled away and fluttered down the hill, knee-high fog rising to wrap her in mystery until she reached Carter and the luminous white horse he held for her. Even Peggy giggled girlishly with Eliza as they watched Carter leap off his own horse to sweep Angelica up onto hers. Their horses pranced and pawed, impatient to go. Angelica looked back to her childhood home and waved to her sisters. Her cloak fell back as she did, revealing she wore her favorite scarlet ball gown. Then she disappeared, a blaze of brilliant red rushing along the river.

“Like dawn in russet mantle clad,” whispered Eliza.

Peggy looked at her in surprise.

“I remember your quoting that once, from something. And I always liked it.” Her big sister smiled at Peggy. “Angelica has ever been our brightest light, hasn’t she, blinding us slightly to each other’s?” Eliza pulled them inside and quietly closed the front door. “Truth be told, Peggy, I thought that bear meat rather delicious myself. As much as our journey north to nurse Papa terrified me, I thrilled to some of the adventure of it, too. I just don’t have your courage to say it.”

Again, Peggy assessed Eliza’s gentle face with some astonishment. She wouldn’t have ever guessed that Eliza might define her headstrong impulsiveness or tendency to shock people as courage. Or that the vein of wild that coursed through Peggy’s soul might trickle through Eliza’s as well. In that regard, she had always felt more kindred with Angelica. Somehow that realization made the ache she was feeling at her eldest sister’s flight a little less sharp.

Peggy smiled at Eliza. “Help keep Cornelia quiet if she wakes as I put Mama’s chatelaine back?”

Eliza took a deep breath and nodded solemnly.

Peggy took Eliza’s hand and together, now a duo, they tiptoed back up the staircase.