“I’m not ill,” I said abruptly, rushing to allay his fears. “I’m pregnant.”
Alexander froze. As my announcement sank in, my hands went to my belly. His gaze followed, and then he was looking at me with the purest expression of wonder I’d seen on any man’s face. “You’re pregnant.”
“You’re going to be a father,” I said, heart beating hard against my breast.
Slowly, Alexander placed a hand atop my own, and when he lifted his eyes to mine, they were glassy with joy and awe. “I’m going to be a father.”
Smiling, I nodded. And then we were laughing and embracing even as Alexander asked a hundred questions and insisted all over again that I needed to lie down. That night, I whispered into the darkness, “Whatever happens, you must come back to me, to us.”
Alexander pulled me tight against him. “Oh, Betsy. It costs me a great deal to be absent from you, but I promise we won’t be separated for long.”
I tried to believe him.
The next day, as he put me in the carriage for my father’s house, his expression a mask of regret, he said, “I miss you already.”
“As do I miss you.” Tears stung my eyes, but I wanted to be strong for him, when all his focus needed to be on the coming fight. “I love you,” I said, then insisted more fiercely. “Come back to me.”
“I will,” he whispered, his voice strained. He closed the door and tapped on the side of the carriage, and it lurched to a start.
And I could only hope that in having unleashed the forces of war, my husband would not, like Phaethon, be struck down for hubris in his quest for glory, our dreams of the future mere ashes for me to mourn.
Chapter Thirteen
August 1781
Albany
OUR ARMY WOULD risk everything in Yorktown.
There, in Virginia, Lafayette had somehow cornered the British general Cornwallis. And success relied upon the trustworthiness of James Armistead, the black spy who was posing as a runaway slave in the British camp and feeding Lafayette critical intelligence. Papa, who was privy to the strategy, seemed confident of victory. And I tried to be, too.
But we’d been losing for so long, and now, with a child on the way, I had more to lose than ever before. After seven years of fighting, we’d so many times seen victory slip away. Only for the flower of our youth to perish ingloriously for a cause that might never be won. And in my secret heart, hope became to me a fleeting mirage. No matter how desperately I reached for it, it felt always just beyond my grasp.
So I dared not believe my husband when he wrote to me at my father’s house, where I’d taken refuge with my family, to promise, Cheer yourself with the assurance of never more being separated after the war. My object to be happy in a quiet retreat with my better angel.
I felt like no angel.
I had neither wisdom nor peace nor the power to protect those I held dear. To keep me safe, Alexander had sent me home, where all I could do was await news of the war.
Until the war suddenly came to us.
“Bar the doors,” Papa said, his command punctuated by a clamor of silver and plates as we sprang from the table.
For years, the enemy had been trying to seize or kill my father. And now our fears were finally at hand. A stranger had come to the back gate, insisting my father come outside.
Fortunately, Papa had been forewarned by his spy network that they would use just such a ruse to lure him out of the house, and now he barked, “Upstairs!”
Racing like a much younger man, Papa took the stairs two at a time to get his weapons. Meanwhile Angelica grabbed her daughter and I grasped the first little one within my reach—my three-year-old nephew, who’d been dozing in the window seat—then hurried up the stairs behind my father.
At the landing, I stopped to pull the shutters closed. That’s when we heard the shrill war cry that turned my knees to water. I caught a glance in the yard below of men in moccasins and feathers—Mohawks or Loyalists disguised as Indians, I couldn’t be sure. But what I did know was that it was a war party, and a loud commotion at the back door told me that they’d overpowered our guards.
They’re in the house! I fought down the panic, for my sake, and for that of the babe in my womb. Would it all end in tragedy before I met my beloved child?
Not if the Schuyler family had anything to say about it. My seventeen-year-old brother, Johnny, grabbed muskets from the cabinet in the hall. Papa threw open a window and fired a shot from his pistol as we heard the grunts of men locked in struggle below stairs.
Meanwhile, my five-year-old sister wept, clinging to my father’s knees. “They’ve come for you, Papa. We won’t let them get you!”