“Well, I like Hamilton,” Angelica said, rising to my defense with my nephew in the crook of one arm, and a book in the other. “He’s an ambitious and clever fellow. Should we win the war, there is no limit to his future. And if Betsy wants him, she should have him.”
Kitty shrugged, as if she didn’t care one way or the other. And I hoped she didn’t care, because I did want him. Quite shamelessly, it would seem. For on a particular evening when he pressed the advantage of my family’s distraction gossiping over mulled cider in the dining room, I made only the faintest protest against his fevered embrace. One in which he seemed to be trying to forget the horrors of the war.
“God,” he groaned into my hair. “I am Phaethon, undone.”
“Who?” I whispered, my head thrown back, too much wishing to forget the horrors of the war myself. But as much as I desired him, I didn’t wish to be just one more girl with whom he could forget.
Hamilton seemed dazed, entirely intent on kissing and nibbling the flesh beneath my ear—which was very pleasant indeed. But my question seemed to pull him back to himself. “Phaethon. I mentioned him in the letter I sent when I refused to take you to the sledding party. He was a figure of legend. The bastard of the Greek sun god. He died trying to prove his parentage by driving his father’s chariot, and set the world aflame. ‘And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.’”
It sounded as if Hamilton admired the boy’s hubris.
And it made me remember that he had, at least three times in our acquaintance, alluded to easy acceptance, if not a wish, for death. He’d done so first at the ball. Then in our walk home from the hospital. Then again in his note about this fabled bastard boy who died trying to prove himself. And now he was again comparing himself to that boy.
Which was what gave me the strength that propriety didn’t to withdraw from his arms. “Colonel Hamilton,” I said, forcing him to look at me. “Alexander . . .”
He blew out a long breath, then appeared as if he was considering an apology.
Before he could manage one, I laced my fingers with his and hastened to say, “I am too much a general’s daughter not to understand that a soldier’s courage is found in overcoming his fear of death.” I swallowed, mustering my own courage to broach this, for I was keenly aware that in giving my heart to a soldier during wartime, I might lose it—and him—at any moment. Especially since I’d already heard tales of how Washington’s aides seemed to try to outdo one another in brash acts of battlefield bravery. Perhaps Hamilton was no different, in this respect, than Tilghman or McHenry or even their idolized, nearly mythical, John Laurens, about whom they never ceased to boast. “But—but surely you know there are other paths to glory besides death.”
A little spark of surprise lit behind his eyes. And I hoped . . . what exactly? That he would stop saying such things? That he would stop feeling them? That he would promise to never act on them? Or maybe, instead, that he would unburden himself to me, so that he never entertained any imaginings of the glory of death ever again?
But he only seemed to retreat a little behind a facade, affecting an insouciant smile and a careless tone. “Not many other paths, it would seem, since General Washington pleads I am too indispensable to do anything but write his letters.”
My sister’s words returned to me then, and I said, “With the right connections, there would be no limit to your future.” Fighting the blush against what I implied, I hastened to add, “You’re so witty and well read, and you speak French, and you understand finance, and you’re curious about seemingly every idea and philosophy. You remind me very much of . . .” I trailed off there, in embarrassment.
His eyebrow rose in question. “Major André?”
I blinked. “Pardon me?”
“John André,” Hamilton said. “I suppose he was a lieutenant when you knew him. Sometimes we must treat with the enemy. And when we do, you’ve occasionally been the toast of the table.”
It’d been some time since I’d given any thought to that British officer, but I flushed to know he remembered me kindly. And to sense that Hamilton felt some jealousy. “Oh,” I said, a little flustered. “I am—I mean, I was—very fond of Major André and flattered to think he, or any of his officers, toast me. And he was—or is—a very accomplished gentleman. But, no, that’s not who I was going to name.”
“No?” Hamilton asked. “Some other beau then?” I shook my head in denial, but he continued on. “I shall be cross if you compare me to my good friend Monroe, who speaks French well enough, but has a much slower wit.”