Smoothing the fine sky-blue silk of my new gown, my fingers running over the embroidered flowers and tiny hand-stitched beads and pearls, I took a breath and reached for both of my sisters’ hands. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Well, silly, you shall never have to find out,” Peggy said, sniffing, and I caught her swiping at the corner of her eye when she turned away. Papa knocked again just as the tall case clock in the hallway struck noon. My heart thundered in time with the deep chimes, and it felt as if my knees might go soft. But, somehow, I made it to the door to find Papa dressed in his best dark gray velvet suit, the one with the high collar, silver piping, and matching waistcoat.
“My lovely child,” he said as Angelica and Peggy gave me one last hug and kiss each before they rushed downstairs. “Why, it’s like looking at your mother on our wedding day all over again.”
“Oh, Papa,” I said, the emotion in his voice making my eyes sting.
And he sighed, as if he were looking at me for the last time. “My little Betsy—though I suppose, as a married woman, we shall now have to call you Elizabeth or Eliza.”
It was the custom to give up childhood nicknames upon marriage, but I didn’t wish for Papa to ever look at me differently than he did now. “Betsy will do. I’m accustomed to it.”
My father gave a rare grin and held out his elbow. “Well then, I do believe there’s a very eager young officer waiting to marry his bride just downstairs. It wouldn’t do to keep him waiting.”
I took his arm, and down we went. Just outside the doorway to the formal blue-and-gold parlor, the members of our procession stood assembled—the minister, Mama, my sisters with the hand-painted silk fans I’d given them for the occasion.
And Alexander.
My fiancé cut a fine, dashing figure in his dress uniform. His smile beckoned me to come to him until Papa was relinquishing my hand. When the harpsichord began to play, the minister led us up the aisle of chairs filled with family and friends, the whole assembly brightly lit from the winter sunlight pouring in through the windows. The service was conducted in Dutch and English, out of respect to the groom, but I barely recalled a word because I’d never seen such unbridled joy shine from Alexander’s countenance.
With love, yes, I believed that. But there was something else, too. In wedding, my family became his, too, and I sensed that gave him a sense of belonging.
I promised myself that I would always ensure that for him. My parents would be his parents, my sisters would be his sisters, and my brothers would be his brothers.
He’d never be without family again.
I wanted to be alone with him to tell him so, but after the ceremony there commenced an open house of visitors who nibbled on honey cakes, marzipan, candied almonds, and my mother’s famous olie-koecken—sweet dough fried in hot lard until golden brown. Then a sumptuous wedding feast of roast duck with dumplings, pork with cabbage, and baked apples and raisins. For dessert, imported chocolates, cinnamon bark, and spiced koekjes—or cookies, in English.
Alexander and I never had time for more than an affectionate smile or a stolen kiss. Until, suddenly, we were alone in my childhood room, now turned into a bridal chamber, lit only by a warming fire.
Music and laughter reached us from below stairs, but it felt as if it came from a thousand miles away when Alexander looked at me with desire. “You’re finally mine,” he said, his voice tender but full of a gravity that hadn’t been there before. His hand clasped mine, and his thumb rubbed over my wedding band, a ring made of two linked circles of gold that swiveled to join as one. Alexander had engraved them with our names. “And I am yours, too.” He spoke as if he were trying out the premise, drafting an argument and seeing if he could make it work.
I was determined that he would. “Show me . . .”
He unwrapped me as he had my gift the night before, with eagerness and curiosity and hunger. And I found that the more ardently he touched me and kissed me, the more I shared his hunger. When he wore only his shirt and I only my shift, he guided us to the bed, under covers that his ravenous hands and body quickly made warm.
That night, Alexander’s heated whispers were in French as he made love to me. I didn’t know enough of the language to decipher the words, but his meaning had never been plainer.
All my life, I’d been the boyish sort of girl who preferred climbing trees and hiking through the woods, or the veritable spinster, more concerned with nursing sick soldiers than landing one for a husband. I was the general’s daughter who’d inherited the fervor of his warrior’s heart. But Alexander’s lovemaking found the woman in me, and the more claiming his touch, the more ecstatic my escape. He was as relentless in bed as he was in everything else, craving my surrender and winning it again and again.