*
HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!
That’s how our guardsmen stirred the household to hail my conquering hero.
In his haste to return to me and our unborn child that autumn, Alexander had ridden so hard from Yorktown to Albany that he’d exhausted four horses, and himself. I ran out the door to meet him and found him stumbling toward the house, his face slathered in sweat and grime, his clothes smelling of horse and the road. I didn’t care—not one bit.
Under a canopy of yellow, orange, and red leaves, I grasped my husband and kissed him on the mouth like the most brazen harlot who ever lived.
Shocked at my conduct, Hamilton startled but didn’t pull away. Instead, he threaded his hand into the hair at my nape, his teeth grazing my lower lip in gentle threat of sweet reprisal.
Behind us at the door, Mama gave a shocked gasp and Prince a disapproving harrumph. But I didn’t care about that either. Let the whole world disapprove, for in that moment, the only thing that mattered was seeing my husband alive and whole. And because I had no words to express it, only the language of a passionate kiss would do.
But once spent of those kisses, and having marveled at the changes nearly six months apart had wrought on my body, Alexander was tired in a way I’d never seen him tired before. As if he’d been feverishly staving off exhaustion with his talents and superlative industry for all the years of the war, and only now, in victory, did his body succumb to its toll.
Once he was bathed and fed and put to bed, he stayed there. Not for a day, or even two. In truth, he scarcely rose from bed for two months. I began to worry he suffered from some contagion, for Cornwallis, exposing a deranged lack of character in his desperation, had infected liberated slaves from southern plantations with smallpox, forcing them to approach enemy lines in the hopes of spreading the illness to the American army. And this, from the man who’d offered them freedom!
Thankfully, my uncle, Dr. Cochran, had helped to inoculate our troops against the dread disease and Mama assured me that Hamilton had no symptoms of smallpox. Moreover, despite the breakdown in his stamina, Alexander remained in good humor. And I will confess, with some delight, that not all the time he spent in our bed was as an ailing convalescent. Despite my being eight months along, I was only too pleased that the comfort he required was not entirely of a medicinal nature . . .
“Is the war finally over?” I asked in the early days of his recovery as he wolfed down a breakfast of hot tea, eggs, ham, and my mother’s spiced pastries. My question was put softly, in a voice that struggled not to tremble, because even though everyone seemed to think the victory decisive, there had been too many disappointments to put my faith in it.
“Perhaps a few skirmishes are left,” he said, reaching for my hand and brushing his lips to my palm. “But if there should be another occasion to fight, it will not fall to me. For us, my charming wife, the war is at its end.”
How blithely he said it, and I was foolish enough to believe him. Foolish because I was desperately in love and puffed with pride. “And you’ve won it,” I said, having cut out every mention in every newspaper to keep as tokens of his glory. So many others had worked to achieve this victory. Many had died for it. But I believed—and still believe—what I said to him that day. “You are a hero, Alexander.”
And, to think, even Burr had once called him that.
“A small feat in this family,” Hamilton said with a smile that attempted, but failed, to be self-effacing. “Why, after seeing that tomahawk gouge in the staircase, I’m ready to recommend Peggy for a commission in the army. And yet, if you are inclined to reward me as befits a hero, I shall not mind.”
“Oh?” I asked, delighted at the sparkle in his eye. “How shall I reward you, Colonel Hamilton?”
In answer, he trailed his fingers over my swollen belly. “Present me with a boy.”
I laughed, kissing his face. Every inch of it. “Won’t a girl answer that purpose?”
He grinned. “By no means. I protest against a daughter. I fear that with her mother’s charms, she may also inherit the caprices of her father, and then our daughter will enslave, tantalize, and plague every man on earth.”
“I do see your point,” I replied, feeling a bit enslaved by the charismatic pull of his eyes, and tantalized as he drew me under the covers.
I knew that in the coming weeks I would be called on to exhibit a sort of heroism of my own. Though my mother had assured me that giving birth was not to be feared in a family such as ours with such hearty Dutch constitutions, I remembered how sick she’d been after the birth of the little brother who died in my arms. And lest I dismiss that as merely a function of Mama being a matron of nearly forty-seven years, my sister Angelica’s most recent birth had also gone hard. Even now, after two months, Angelica had not quite recovered her health, and the little boy was sickly. So my fears for myself were eclipsed by my fears for the child inside me, whom I loved already, boy or girl.