Written partly because I've had a really awkward crush on Lafayette since I was 10, partly because I self-identify as a Peggy, partly because I wish I could tell you what was happening in my brain tonight. A few more chapters are planned, but I haven't exactly been writing non-stop lately, so we'll see how it goes.

14 December, 1777

It was Eliza's day, really. Not hers. She was only there to be supportive. To look pretty in the bridal party (not too pretty, of course, but not slovenly enough to attract attention). To pretend it didn't bother her in the slightest that Eliza had chosen Angelica to be her maid of honor, even when it could not be more obvious that she'd been making eyes at Alexander from across the church during the entire ceremony.

Of course, that was none of Peggy's business.

It didn't even make sense—Alexander was handsome, of course, but there was hardly a shortage of men at the ball thrown in celebration of his marriage to Eliza. One of the perks of a dashing brother-in-law: an absolute surplus of equally dashing bachelor friends.

But she was there to be supportive.

"Supportive," in this instance, meant waiting a full hour after Eliza and Alexander had finished their first dance before sidling toward the group of young soldiers laughing and drinking near the window. It was almost literally the least she could do.

Peggy wondered if the dark-haired lieutenant hadn't positioned himself among this group of perfectly ordinary-looking men to set himself off better. Like the Schuyler mansion itself, she thought, glittering in the middle of Albany among its unremarkable red brick neighbors. He was athletic-looking, lithe in his navy uniform with gold braid, and eye-catchingly tall. He leaned easily against the wall, but when he stood straight he would tower over Peggy by at least six inches. Unlike most of the other soldiers in Albany striving to look more aristocratic than they were, he wore no wig, and wore his hair simply tied back out of his lean face.

As she watched, he drained the rest of his glass and spoke animatedly to the stocky young man beside him.

"Qu'est-ce que tu penses, donc? J'sais pas s'il faut se marier aussi vite que ça, mais si c'est nécessaire, c'est pas le pire choix du monde…"

It took Peggy a moment to realize the soldier was not speaking the schoolgirl French her mother had taught all three sisters almost as soon as they'd learned English. This was the French of Paris, of a man who'd grown up speaking this way and had to make a conscious effort to speak otherwise.

The tall lieutenant's companion nudged him in the side, then nodded—to Peggy's manifest horror—in her direction.

"On te regarde. Vois."

Someone's watching you. Look.

He did.

Peggy wished the floor would swallow her alive.

He grinned at his companion, then set his empty glass on the window-ledge behind him and excused himself from the group with a few quick words Peggy couldn't hear. The idea that she might flee the ballroom occurred to her briefly, but by the time she'd fully considered the notion, there he was. Standing easily beside her, a smile on his face that somehow seemed neither inappropriate nor insincere.

"You are Margaret Schuyler, are you not?" he asked—seven words and she knew she'd been right about Paris. He spoke English well, but there was still the faintest misplaced emphasis, the slight drag on his R's and U's that proclaimed French to be his mother tongue.

She dipped a small curtsey. He bowed, almost ironically.

"Yes, sir. Do you know me?"

The brilliant whiteness of his smile took her aback. She had always heard such dreadful things about Continental soldiers and their teeth. Lies, apparently.

"Alexander has talked of nothing but your family for the past month. I may know you better by now than I know myself."

She felt herself blush again, which only made her blush worse out of embarrassment.

"That hardly seems fair, sir. I don't even know your name."

He looked genuinely surprised, as though he'd been sure he'd told her already.

"Forgive me, Mademoiselle Schuyler. Lieutenant Lafayette, at your service."

She frowned. "Lafayette? Do you have a full name, or do you simply like to cultivate an air of mystery?"

Lafayette grinned again. "Not at all. It is only that Americans tend to find my full name rather … overwhelming."

Peggy raised her eyebrows. "Try me."

"Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, in full."

She blinked twice. "Lafayette will do nicely."

He laughed, then wrinkled his nose in irritation at a freckled young man, also in Continental Army blue, who presumably had been making wildly inappropriate gestures of encouragement from behind Peggy's back.

"You will forgive my friends, I hope," he said. "Most of us are not used to behaving in polite company."

"The battlefield and the drawing-room require different skills, I imagine."

"There is some gentility to war, or at least there can be. I am hoping that your family's influence will have the same transformative effect on the regiment as it has had on Alexander."

"You don't seem to need any transforming to make a good impression."

Peggy's boldness surprised even her. She'd only had one glass of wine—surely not enough to justify this. Flirtation had always been Angelica's forte, the ability to catch the eye of a room without trying, to say just the right thing to make companies and battalions of men fall in love with her. But something had changed tonight. Angelica was preoccupied by the only man in the entire room she could not have. While Peggy was here with this debonair French lieutenant, who had abandoned all his friends to speak with her…

And who now kissed her hand respectfully and asked her, "Might I request the pleasure of the next dance, Mademoiselle Schuyler?"

Her entire body warm and her heart beating fast, Peggy had never before been so grateful that her parents had insisted on giving their daughters a worldly education. If she'd known what thrilling use she'd put those endless French lessons to, she would have resented the educational tenacity of Madame Dufarge infinitely less.

"Avec plaisir, monsieur," she said, paying as careful attention to the placement of her vowels as she could. With pleasure.

The tall young Frenchman smiled and spun her onto the ballroom floor with the rest.

The orchestra had just begun a waltz Peggy had not heard before. Faster, almost mournful, in a minor key, entirely inappropriate for a wedding. It suited her perfectly.

She had seen the way Lafayette's fellow soldiers danced, had even graced a few of them with a song until their hands started drifting in directions hands should not drift, at least not with her father and sisters in the room looking on. Lafayette, on the other hand, was intimate but chaste. One hand on the small of her back and no lower, the other gently holding her hand—she had to reach up to take him by the shoulder, tall as he was, but somehow even that felt natural. He danced so well, not like someone who had learned it as a tool to seduce ladies, but as someone who danced often, and well.

She smiled, could not stop smiling, and let him lead her through the steps. For the first time that evening, she did not have to do the leading.

"You dance extraordinarily, mademoiselle."

Even though she knew he was self-translating and the words perhaps did not mean so much in French, she allowed herself to take them at face value.

"Not so well as you. Where are you from?"

He laughed and spun her through a series of graceful steps. "I would have thought that was self-evident," he said wryly, making no effort to hide his accent.

"I meant where in France," Peggy replied. "It's a large country."

"Not nearly so large as this will be," Lafayette said thoughtfully, before answering. "I grew up in Chavaniac, not far from Lyon. But I spent most of my life in Paris. And you? Were you born in Albany?"

"I've lived here all my life," she answered, just as carelessly as he had. "It's not terribly exciting."

"Excitement is not always as desirable as it seems."

"Oh? You seem to court it relentlessly."

She immediately regretted her use of the word "court," but Lafayette graciously pretended not to have noticed.

"All Frenchmen are reckless fools, I fear, and I am worse than most. My mother, while she lived, despaired completely of what to do with me."

They both realized it at the same time, the absolute crush of eyes following their motion in the ballroom. Angelica with nothing short of shock. Eliza with faint, amused curiosity. A broad-shouldered soldier she'd heard called something-or-other Mulligan, winking exaggeratedly at the Frenchman with both thumbs up—Lafayette winked back and then pretended he hadn't. And others, from both sides of the wedding party, watching as the youngest Schuyler sister and the elegant immigrant soldier put every other couple in the ballroom utterly to shame.

Peggy had never been the subject of so much attention. At seventeen, her coming-out had been overshadowed by the ever-present threat of skirmish and armed violence. She had simply appeared on the scene, and, thanks to Lafayette, Albany was finally starting to take notice.

Lafayette grinned, suggesting a thought both thrilling and stupid.

"Am I wrong in thinking there is some recklessness to you as well?" he asked.

"What?"

"Shall we give them a show, mademoiselle?"

She briefly remembered the fluid way she had seen him throw back a glass of wine—but no, he was as sober as she was. He was French, after all. Doubtless a well-aged merlot flowed through his veins instead of blood.

"This is my sister's wedding," she reminded him.

"And one of my closest friends is the groom," he replied lightly. "Why are we here, if not to have a little fun?"

She grinned back and took the lead of the dance.

The orchestra had struck up a polonaise, giving her more room to flow with the rhythm, shun the prescribed steps for where the music took them. Lafayette followed just as elegantly as he led. She imagined he probably put on his boots with that same air of unstudied elegance. Breathless they danced, close enough to feel one another's heartbeat, the warmth of his body against hers, and when he lifted her and spun her aloft without missing a beat of the dance, she thought perhaps they had died and this was heaven, where handsome lieutenants speaking perfect French whisked you away to dance all night.

But of course it could not last.

Lafayette gave her two dances, then three. As the violin let fall one last lingering note, he bowed and again pressed the back of her hand to his lips.

"Mademoiselle Schuyler, thank you for doing me the honor," he said, still smiling. "But I am beginning to notice that your father is conspiring ways to have me murdered."

Peggy looked. Lafayette was not wrong. Phillip Schuyler sat unsmiling at a table to the side of the ballroom floor, arms folded and brow lowered. He was glaring daggers at the slim silhouette of Lafayette, whose back was currently to the father of the bride.

"First Eliza, now me," she said. "It's been a difficult day for him, so many of his daughters dancing with immigrant rebels."

The way she said it, "rebels," it almost sounded like "heroes." Why had she ever thought going to war a bad idea?

"I hope we will see each other again very soon, mademoiselle," Lafayette said, still smiling with the afterglow of the dance.

Peggy was alone again, amid the whirl and crowd of the dance.

Only she wasn't. Not really.