A/N: At long, long last, I'm finally back with an update! I'd apologize for how long it took and give some half-baked excuse about how wild my life has been these past six weeks, but that's a waste of everyone's time. So instead, let's jump into this chapter of sheer, unapologetic Peggy/Lafayette fluff. Because why not?

Also, I know the Treaty of Paris wasn't signed until two whole years after the Battle of Yorktown, but when have I ever let the facts of history stand in my way before? Literally never, that's when.

Also also, and I should have brought this up first, you are the most wonderful readers I've ever had in my whole life, and you're filling my days with joy. So thanks for that :)

7 October 1781

Albany, New York

Peggy craned her neck over the crowd in Hanover Street, trying to spot the shining bayonets of the returning soldiers above the heads of cheering, singing, laughing New Yorkers. Yorktown, victory, nation, America, words echoed around her head in a sugar-spun cloud of celebration, but she could not find her voice to join them.

She had never complained about her height before—unlike Angelica, her figure did not command a room the moment she entered it, but also unlike Angelica, she had never particularly wanted it to. Still, with her direct view of the shoulders of most of New York, she indulged in a rare moment of lamentation for the four inches of height she could have used.

From beside her, Eliza laid her hand gently on Peggy's shoulder and smiled.

"Don't worry," she said. "He's coming."

"You can't know that," Peggy replied, staunchly married to the idea that no news was catastrophe. "The list of casualties from Yorktown was never published. And they'd tell you if Alexander was wounded, but who would tell me if—"

"Alex!"

And Eliza was swept off her feet, quite literally, by a man in a blue coat who, in order to reach his wife, had shoved aside no fewer than thirty New York citizens in various states of disgruntledness, knocking one unfortunate man full to the ground. Peggy stepped aside, narrowly avoiding being kicked in the head as Alexander whirled Eliza in a merry, wild circle, spreading the crowd around them out of necessity. Her sister's laughter rang as high and clear as the bells in the church nearby.

"Alex, please, the baby!" she managed.

"The baby," Alexander repeated, and set Eliza down as though she were made of glass.

He bent down to one knee and, with an air of reverence, kissed Eliza's eight-months-pregnant belly.

"Hello, little one," he said, grinning ear to ear. "I'm ready to meet you any day now, my son."

"And if it's a girl?" Peggy asked.

Alexander flinched, as though he hadn't noticed she was there. As if he'd thought he and his wife were entirely alone in their own private universe, where nothing mattered save this one perfect moment, his family back within his grasp.

"Then I will be the proud father of the most brilliant daughter in America," he replied.

Eliza beamed. But then, Peggy thought, Alexander had known what she wanted to hear. He might feign indifference, but in his heart he longed for a son.

He straightened up, twining one arm around Eliza's shoulders.

"Well, Schuyler sisters? Let the rest of the battalion file into town on their own time. I've found all I need. Shall we?"

"Not yet," Peggy said tersely. Again, she cursed her limited vantage point with every oath in her arsenal.

Alexander looked at her sideways a moment, before understanding dawned nearly immediately. "Ah, of course. I forgot. I'm an idiot."

"Concurred," Eliza added, aside.

But Alexander was in too good a mood to let his wife's gentle gibes dissuade him. He drew himself up to his full height, panning the whole of the crowd, before his eye caught on the object of his search.

"You'll find your Lancelot just there, little sister. Next to the general on his white horse. Go on," he said, grinning. "My wife and I have some catching up to do."

They did, apparently—and were in no mood to wait for a private room to get started.

More happiness to them, Peggy thought, rolling her eyes, and left them as soon as she was physically able. She shoved her way shamelessly through the crowd toward the center of the street, where the triumphant soldiers of the Continental Army returned from Yorktown to the capital of their new nation.

Peggy had learned the pull of patriotism these past few years, and had learned it quickly. But now was not the time for flag-waving and shouting.

Alexander could see him, she thought, her mind racing in double time to the slow, obstructed pace she was able to force forward. And surely if he was wounded, or something dreadful had happened, Alexander would have mentioned, he would have said…

The crowd broke in front of her, parting to reveal the tall, powerful figure of a strong-featured man on a white horse, with the golden stars of a general across his shoulders. And beside him, on foot, a young man of twenty-three, handsome face nicked by two thin white scars, turned away from her, speaking quickly to the general.

Unhurt. Unhurt and alive. And the sound of his laugh as the general responded with some remark and a wry half-smile. It was enough to make Peggy want to weep, with the aching relief of it all. She would give herself time to weep, she knew. Later.

But not now.

Not when there was another course of action that made so much more sense.

Narrowly risking being trampled into the paving stones by the general's horse, she darted forward, laying one hand on the animal's withers.

"Excuse me, General," she said to Washington, who looked down at her in surprise.

"Miss?" he asked.

But had he taken the time to look at Lafayette, who had just tripped over absolutely nothing in his surprise, he would have understood.

"I need to borrow your major general for a brief moment," she said.

She was not given the chance to say more.

Lafayette abandoned all the restraint, polite propriety that had characterized his courtship until that moment. It did not matter that they were in the middle of the street, that he had not yet even said hello, that General George Washington himself was not half a foot away observing the whole affair.

Lafayette, dressed as a commander but grinning like a schoolboy, did not miss a beat. One hand nestled in her hair, the other encircling her waist, he pulled her close enough so that her body tingled with the warmth of him. She had just enough time to marvel how seamlessly their bodies fit together, as if one had been made for the other, before their lips met, and the kiss washed away her ability to think, to breathe, to act.

She did not even need to breathe. His breath in her lungs kept her body moving. The touch of his hands gave her the power to feel the world. With him and through him, one soul in two bodies, she let her mind abandon everything but the scent of him, the taste, the feel.

There was a God, she knew, as they pulled apart. And God lived in moments like this.

His dark eyes sparkled as he took in her face, his smile not faded an inch. He did not let go of her hands.

"I told you I would bring you back a country," he said.

She reached up to brush a wayward strand of hair from his forehead—a thin excuse to touch him in any way she could. "And I told you to bring yourself back."

"On both counts, I kept my promise."

A soft, small laugh caused them both to turn. Washington was watching the pair with an indulgent smile on his imperious face, the look of a godfather casually assessing his godson's life choices. It was a mark of the extent of Lafayette's happiness that not a single trace of embarrassment showed on his face.

"Am I correct," Washington remarked lightly, "in assuming that this is the Miss Margaret Schuyler to whom I am so indebted?"

Surprised, Peggy could do nothing but curtsey. "You owe me nothing, sir," she said. Her voice maintained a level of calm that surprised even herself. "You have given me a country."

"And a dashing young officer in the bargain." Washington winked. Lafayette's forestalled embarrassment could not withstand this, though he did his best. "You're right, Miss Schuyler. Our accounts do seem to be settled."

"General," Lafayette began, "might I…"

"The war is over, Major," Washington said, the same twinkle in his eye as in his words. "Go and profit from civilian life. Meet me on Wednesday morning at my lodgings," he added, before kicking his horse back into motion. "My long-suffering wife awaits me. I rather suspect she will not take kindly to waiting longer."

He was gone in a moment, a glorious figure even in departure, and resplendent on his white horse.

Peggy grinned and pulled Lafayette out of the street, toward the pair of Eliza and Alexander several yards away.

"Does the general live to torment you?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at Lafayette, who grimaced.

"What he will do to pass the time now I am gone, I have no idea."

She stopped walking, halfway to their destination, and turned back to look at him. Just to look. The face never far from the prime of her thoughts, now standing next to her, holding her hand with one callused palm, those dark eyes looking back at her with an equal measure of confusion and wonderment.

"What?" he asked, when a long moment had passed and she had yet said nothing.

"I just want to look at you," she said honestly. "Listen to you speak. I…My God, do you know how I've missed you?"

"Yes." His hand had curled around her waist again; she relaxed into his touch. "Every day. Every moment. I missed you as a drowning man misses breathing."

"As an eagle misses the wind," drawled Alexander. "As a river misses the ocean. As a flea misses a rat."

Alexander had put himself back into the conversation with the delicacy of a battering ram. He slung one lanky arm around Lafayette's shoulder, the broad gestures of a drunk though he was sober as a Sunday. Peggy sidestepped him, narrowly avoiding the urge to give him a good kick.

"I know, mon ami, I know it all.I've heard it all before," he drawled. "If a damned day went by without you sighing after my little sister, I swear to you now, I'll pack away my pen and never write again."

Peggy's annoyance melted away in a heartbeat. Suddenly Alexander's presence was not such a travesty after all.

"Oh?" she asked slyly. "And what else has he said about me?"

"I'll tell you myself," Lafayette said, disentangling himself from Alexander's one-armed embrace. "In private."

Private. Time alone, only her and Lafayette, a darkened corner somewhere with the door locked and gentle candlelight adding a soft glow to the rises and angles of his face. Had there ever been a more beautiful arrangement of vowels and consonants than those making up the word "private"?

"We'll make sure to seat the two of you together at dinner tonight," Eliza remarked, diplomatically guiding Alexander to stand at her side rather than make a wild, impetuous nuisance of himself. Again.

Lafayette frowned. "Dinner?" he repeated.

"Peggy, didn't you tell him?" Alexander's grin boded only wickedness. "Dinner tonight, at Philip Schuyler's table. Angelica and her fiancé John Church, Eliza and me, Peggy and you."

Peggy glanced at Lafayette, who had suddenly gripped her hand as though she was the only solid thing anchoring him to the earth. She narrowly managed to keep from laughing at the look of abject terror on the young Frenchman's face.

"No," he said, his accent strengthening as it always did when he grew nervous. "She failed to mention that."

The image in front of his mind's eye wasn't difficult to guess. It was the same one facing Peggy at that moment. A winter's ball years ago, and a couple whirling across the floor in the free flow of the dance, and Philip Schuyler's arms-folded, brow-furrowed glare from the side of the room. But she could feign being at her ease as well as any. A woman of her age had to be an actress in some capacity, to survive the judging, appraising eyes of the world for so much as a day.

"You fought at Trenton and Saratoga and Yorktown, and you're afraid of dinner with my father?" she teased. "I promise you, no one will aim a bayonet at you from across the table."

"To be honest," Lafayette said grimly, "that might in fact be easier."

"Come on, then," Alexander scoffed, demonstrating again the extent to which patience was not his strongest suit. "Get changed, and get ready. Look the enemy in the face. As it were."

"I haven't any other clothes," Lafayette protested, as if that would be enough to save him.

"John Church is the best-dressed man this side of the Atlantic," Peggy remarked, grinning. "Come home with me. I daresay we can find you something."

#

In the spare bedroom of the Schuyler home in the north of Albany, Lafayette frowned at his reflection. The reversed version of himself, trapped in the mirror propped up on the vanity, frowned back. If only he could make his hair behave. Then he would look respectable, and Philip Schuyler could find nothing ill to say of him, and he could survive the evening without being on the receiving end of a lecture on the audacity of immigrants and soldiers before being thrown out in the street. He smoothed a few strands of dark hair into place. They immediately sprung back into their original position with almost sarcastic alacrity.

"You look fine. Don't worry."

Lafayette flinched. He had not heard Peggy enter, but there she was, dressed for dinner in a stunning pale purple silk, watching him with an easy smile. Her hair was, of course, impeccable.

"I worry as I breathe, Peggy."

Peggy shook her head. "He's going to like you," she said. "He's already decided he'll like you."

"He has never met me."

She sighed. "You'll have to accidently knock a young child into a well on your way to dinner to turn him against you."

Lafayette turned away from the mirror in irritation. It was simply not going to get better than this. "I've done worse, to be sure. Now. The black, or the green?"

He held up two jackets, one in either hand, both borrowed from the wardrobe of John Church, like the goddesses presenting Paris with an impossible choice. Peggy had been right—the sheer amount of clothes the man brought with him at any given moment was frankly astounding. Lafayette was slimmer than Church, but not by much, and they were nearly of a height. It would do in a pinch.

"The black," she said, pointing. "Definitely the black. You look more yourself when you're not wearing bright colors. Anything more exciting and you'll start to look like Hercules Mulligan."

Lafayette laughed despite himself and slipped the black jacket over his shoulders. "And that," he remarked, doing up the buttons, "is a fate I sincerely wish to avoid."

Fully dressed, he spread his arms wide, indicating the whole of his person to Peggy and presenting it for judgment.

"Well?"

He felt Peggy's eyes linger a moment more, along with that familiar yet incredulous joy that someone as perfect as Peggy Schuyler would ever look at him in that way.

"Astonishing," she said, stepping fully into the room now. "Let's not go downstairs to dinner after all. I'd much rather stay here and appreciate how good you look in that jacket." Her fingers trailed down the length of his arm, gently teasing. "And perhaps find out how well you look under it."

Lafayette grinned and kissed her, stopping the words with his lips. A gentle, warm kiss, no time for more, not with the rest of the family waiting still for the downstairs.

"Don't tempt me," he murmured, his breath a feather-touch against her cheek, "or I will hold you to that."

Peggy laughed and kissed him again. "Shall we?" she asked, lacing her fingers between his.

"Lead on, mademoiselle," Lafayette said somewhat grimly, and closed the bedroom door behind them as they left.