Meanwhile, Angelica kissed my cold cheeks again. “You must tell me everything straightaway. Whether Peggy has learned to discipline her tongue, or Mama bought any elegant dresses, or if Papa’s gout has returned, and if our brothers are becoming little men. Or even if Jenny has learned to powder your hair without making you sneeze. I must know.”
I wanted to tell her everything straightaway, but I could scarcely feel my fingers or toes. Thankfully Aunt Gertrude made some warmed cider to thaw us. Apologetically, she also offered some sorry-looking biscuits. “The best that can be done with mealy flour, a few raisins, and the last of the spice.”
The biscuits were dry, but Kitty and I gobbled them up as if they were the finest of pastries. Then we were pleased to present some precious supplies. Flour, cheese, and salt—the latter of which, my aunt told us, was more valuable than gold. As our aunt went through the packages, Angelica put my adorable infant niece into my arms, while her little boy played peekaboo about Kitty’s skirts. I cuddled the baby close, inhaling her milk scent and feeling beneath my breast a stirring. How might I feel to hold a little creature like this in my arms, knowing she’d be mine to keep forever? If I was to live as a spinster, I’d never know.
And it seemed as if my kinswomen had hatched a veritable conspiracy to keep that from coming to pass. “As soon as you’ve warmed yourself, my dear, we must see your gowns,” Aunt Gertrude said. “There won’t be much time to make necessary alterations if we don’t start upon them at once. Surely you wish to be in fashion when you meet the most eligible bachelors in the Continental army.”
Clearly, she was addressing me, as Kitty was never out of fashion, and I must’ve looked dismayed at the idea of sorting through ribbons and lace because Angelica broke in to say, “If men were not so blind, Betsy could beguile them in buckskin or burlap. But men are truly the most bumbling of creatures. To get their blood up, you must wave a bit of ribbon and lace before them, like a matador.”
We had a good laugh at that, but Auntie protested, “They’re not rutting bulls, they’re gentlemen. And I’ll have you know, Betsy, when I told a certain Colonel Tilghman that you were coming, he said he’d be very glad to see you again.”
I very much doubted he meant it.
When I was seventeen, Tench Tilghman served with my father as an Indian commissioner, and the Iroquois had proposed to the mild-mannered Maryland officer that he take an Indian bride. Later, at a picnic that followed, our lady friends had teased him about this unmercifully. Hoping to divert their mean-spirited sport, I’d managed to humiliate him and myself by blurting that I’d volunteer to be a bridesmaid if Colonel Tilghman should, in fact, wish to take an Indian wife.
At the time, I believed that he took me for a simpleton. Now I was sure of it because my aunt went on to say, “He told me that you’re the finest tempered girl in the world.”
I groaned, my cheeks burning, for it was precisely the sort of polite thing a man might say about a simpleton. “He thinks I’m addle-headed.”
Knowing the story, Angelica laughed. “My poor sister and her good intentions.”
“Well, you are addled if you don’t take the opportunity to reacquaint yourself with Colonel Tilghman,” Aunt Gertrude said. “He’s an upright patriot from a very fine family.”
“A Loyalist family, though.” Kitty sighed, as if that ruled him out. “It is rather a wonder that Washington trusts him and keeps him so close. I cannot imagine the pain of being at such odds with your own relations.”
I couldn’t imagine it either. That night I slept with my sister and her babies in a canopied bed that took up most of the little front guest room with its corner fireplace. And as we curled round each other for warmth, I felt content as I hadn’t in years. The scent of Angelica’s hair, so familiar and comforting. The way she whispered stories in the dark that made me laugh—prompting our uncle to thump on the wall in the next room to hush us.
I felt a little guilty when, the next morning, Aunt Gertrude was bleary-eyed at a hurried breakfast. And I was nearly too nervous to eat, because it was time to meet George Washington.
*
THE BUSTLING HEADQUARTERS at Ford Mansion was only a quarter mile away. Unfortunately, there was so much snow that even with soldiers piling it into mountains on either side of the road, snowshoes were required. Which meant that we were disheveled and a little out of breath when we finally reached the large white house atop the hill where Washington’s tall, powerful bodyguards demanded that we give the secret watchword.