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 the one who seized the cannon shouting Victory or Death?”
With endearing humility, Monroe swirled a silver fork upon Mama’s floral china plate. “Well, I don’t remember what I shouted. All I heard was the whiz of a ball as it grazed my chest.”
Now this was entirely too much humility. “Grazed!” I exclaimed. “Why, I read that it hit an artery and blood bubbled up like a geyser through your uniform. Or wasn’t that you?”
Peggy’s pallor turned a little sickly green at my vivid description and Monroe’s eyebrow shot up, as if he couldn’t fathom that a lady might say such a thing at the dinner table. He stammered, “That—that was me . . .”
I started to explain that I took a keen interest in medicine but was saved from myself when Peggy raised a glass, as if it were proper for her to propose a toast. “To the Hero of Trenton!”
I started to raise my glass, but in catching the darkening jealous gaze of Benedict Arnold, I quickly added, “And the Hero of Saratoga!”
Mama frowned at our antics from her end of the table. But from the other, Lafayette raised his glass, too. “While we remember our worthy brothers-in-arms, I toast Mrs. General Schuyler, our gracious hostess, whose husband must soon be acquitted of these ridiculous charges made by stupid men who, without knowing a single word about war, undertake to judge.”