“Oh, I have better pretensions than most in this country who plume themselves with ancestry. I am the grandson of the Laird of Grange. Unfortunately, my mother was a divorced woman when she married my father. Unluckily, her divorce was later deemed to be unlawful.”
He’d said this soberly and swiftly. And there was good reason for it. Divorce was nearly unheard of. Certainly scandalous. And yet, I said what I believed to be the plain truth. “Colonel Hamilton, no matter the circumstances of your birth, anyone with eyes can see your merit. Why, the blemish upon your birth is merely a wrinkle in the law.”
Hamilton’s guarded expression softened. “You’re kind to cast it in that light. Others are not so generous.”
“Perhaps they envy you, since your story unmasks you as an aristocrat with a family coat of arms.”
I thought I said this very handsomely, but was rewarded only with dark amusement. “One with only lint in his pockets and alone in the world. Nothing to envy.”
“You haven’t any family?” I asked.
His fingers wrapped around mine, tentatively, then tighter and tighter as if he feared I would pull away when he went on to explain that in the West Indies he had a brother, and an estranged half-brother, but that his father abandoned the family and that his mother died when he was only twelve.
My heart pounded in an agony of sympathy for him, wondering how he’d made his way, a veritable orphan, left to fend for himself. I couldn’t fathom it. In no circumstance, either prosperity or wreck, would my own long-suffering father leave us to the vagaries of fate. And I realized anew how fortunate I was.
“You must pardon me, Miss Schuyler. I do not speak of these things often. And in such specificity, never. It dredges up . . .” He didn’t finish but seemed to sense my welling pity. “I do not mean to paint a picture of me as a barefooted street urchin. Before my mother died, we had books, a silver tea set, and a covered bed.” How miserable an inventory he felt compelled to make. “What you must think . . .”
“I think that I wish to know you better.”
He smiled softly. “A saintly answer from a saintly girl.”
For no reason I could understand, I was desperate to disabuse him of this notion. And between what I’d seen outside that camp and all that Hamilton had just revealed, I felt nearly overwhelmed with an urgent mix of emotion. Sadness, helplessness, pity, attraction, and desire. Obeying an impulse I could scarcely comprehend, I leaned forward to kiss him.
He actually startled, his hands grasping at my wrists as if he meant to push me away. As if he was the sort of man who never allowed an intimacy that he didn’t initiate. But then his grip on my wrists tightened and held me fast. It was as if my boldness had thrown a spark that Hamilton ignited into an all-consuming fire, for his mouth claimed mine and demanded to be claimed in return.
It was no tender kiss we shared, happy and sweet. It was a kiss that tasted of grief and desperation. But also, unmistakably and forcefully, ardor. I forgot the cold. I forgot the soot and darkness of the cabin. I forgot the rank smell of the camp. Everything vanished except for that kiss and the stark terror of realizing that I was falling in love.
At length, we broke apart, and Hamilton traced my lower lip, a little dazed. “Not a saint, it would seem, but an angel . . .”
“Colonel Hamilton—”
“Alexander,” he insisted. “I do believe we are on a footing for Christian names now . . .”
“Alexander,” I said, enjoying the sound of it in my mouth. “You should know something about me and Colonel Tilghman.”
He frowned, deeply. “Tell me.”
“In all the years your friend allegedly harbored feelings for me, he never confessed them to me. And I never felt more than friendship in return. He has no prior claim to my affections.”
“Then to the devil with Tench Tilghman,” Hamilton said, stroking his knuckles along my cheek. “For I have serious designs upon your heart, Miss Schuyler, and I flatter myself that I am no bad marksman.”
After that, Hamilton was nearly every evening in my uncle’s parlor, with conversations that lasted so late into the night that my uncle groused about wishing to take his ease upon the settee and my aunt was forced to all but oust the young officer from the house.
When Aunt Gertrude had finally shooed Hamilton out the door, she’d shaken her head and said, “Oh, Betsy. Of all Washington’s fine young officers, you choose the—”
“Stray,” Kitty broke in. “There’s no help for it. Betsy has always been too softhearted.”