ETA: Some lovely reviewers have informed me that I've messed Peggy's full name up like a hundred times in this story. So, um, whoops :) I'm just gonna roll with it now, though, because while it bothers me getting it wrong, it would bother me more having it inconsistent from chapter to chapter. Just another reason why you should not use this story to study for your US history exam.
XI.
"Peggy. Peggy, wake up."
Angelica might as well have been speaking to a brick wall. Peggy made a soft grumbling sound and pulled the blankets farther up around her ears. Through the thick curtains of her bedroom, late morning sunlight fought to sever the darkness, but within Peggy's nest it might have been the dead of night. Angelica rolled her eyes, then crossed the room to stand half a foot from the bed.
"Peggy," she said, louder.
"Go away."
"Peggy, get up."
"I can't," came Peggy's muffled voice from beneath the blankets. "I'm asleep."
A wicked grin dawned on Angelica's face. "Fair enough. Shall I tell Monsieur Lafayette that he should see himself out, then? Clearly you're too tired to see him."
It took less than a second. The blanket was hurled to the floor. Peggy dove out of bed, her hair an absolute disaster. She fled in her nightdress to the wardrobe, flinging the door open with a wail.
She hadn't seen him for two days. Not since the letter from France had interrupted their intimacy and replaced it with awkward, nervous silences and averted eyes. And now that he'd finally come, she was wearing a nightdress. God in Heaven.
"How long has he been here?" she demanded, yanking out the first dress she could lay hands on.
Angelica smirked and sat on the edge of the bed. "Five minutes? I've been trying to wake you."
Peggy swore. The nightdress sailed across the room to land in a crumpled heap beneath the window.
"Damn. Damn. Damn. Father isn't downstairs, is he?"
"No, you're safe there. If you—"
Before Angelica had time to finish saying the word "hurry," Peggy turned around, fully dressed, and ran her hands backward through her hair. With a vigorous shake of her head, she looked at Angelica and spread her arms wide.
"Well?" she asked. "How do I look?"
Angelica laughed. "Well enough. Considering. Now go on, before your heart explodes."
Without another word, Peggy tore out of the bedroom.
As she descended the stairs, her breakneck pace causing her skirt to stream out in a pool behind her, she realized suddenly she did not even know if Lafayette came with good news or bad. It could easily be bad. He could have come to say goodbye. Could have come with his suitcase in hand, on his way to the harbor. For all she knew, this could be the last time she would ever see him.
But she would not let herself think that way. These were the shadows of a bad dream she hadn't yet shaken off. Nothing more dangerous than that. It couldn't be.
On the last step, skidding around the corner, Peggy felt her feet slip out from under her. Too fast. She swore and flailed for the banister, jolting her spine but avoiding the fall. Lafayette, she saw now, stood in the entrance hall. He watched her with his head cocked slightly to the side, a small wry smile at the corner of his mouth.
He still wore his coat. But he did not have a suitcase with him.
"Graceful, as always," he remarked.
She pulled a sarcastic curtsey. "I wasn't expecting you so early in the morning."
Lafayette raised his eyebrows. "It is half past eleven," he reminded her. "I waited as long as I possibly could."
Peggy heard the hint of something unsaid in the angles of his words. Warily, she descended the last stair and stood near him, taking him in. A bright, reckless look in his eyes. Both hands in his pockets. Skin chapped from the cold. Unless she was very much mistaken, the Marquis de Lafayette had not been in bed at all last night.
"Waited to do what?" she asked slowly.
"Peggy," he said—his words came too fast, tripping over one another in their own eagerness to be said. "I do not want you to feel obligated to respond in any way. You may say yes, or you may say no, and I would understand completely in either case, but if I do not ask you, my God, if I do not ask I will never be able to live with myself—"
"Lafayette," she said sharply, a wild hope beginning to rise from with in her.
He skidded to a sudden verbal stop, looked up at her in surprise. "Yes?"
"Ask me the question."
Lafayette flushed, fiddled with something in his pocket. "It is not as easy as the poets make it sound, I, merde, the words, what are the words—"
"Ask me the question."
He took a deep breath. She had never seen him so excited, or so in need of a drink.
"Peggy," he began again.
His hand emerged from his pocket. Opened, palm spread out. A white-gold ring, square diamond encircled with sapphires, glittering against his hand. He bent to one knee.
"Peggy Schuyler, will you do me the impossible honor of being my wife?"
She tried to say "yes." She really did. Every part of her brain told her mouth to say "yes." But her mouth, with a mind entirely of its own, forewent words entirely and let out instead a scream like a child. She threw her arms around Lafayette, who rose to his feet to return the embrace, and felt a joy fizzing from the bottom of her heart that defied words and logic and everything. She didn't know if she began the kiss herself or he did. All she knew was that she did not ever want to stop. Did not ever want to let go of this awkward, noble, charming, handsome, kind man, her fiancé, the man who would soon be her husband.
And would not have to. Not ever.
"Was that a yes?" Lafayette murmured softly in her ear.
She laughed, a merry chime like sleigh bells. "Yes, you idiot. Of course."
He kissed her again, more slowly this time, savoring the moment.
She felt her heart contract as the metal band of the ring embraced her finger.
"Did you…did you just have this lying around?" she asked incredulously, looking at the ring.
He grinned. "It was my mother's. I could not leave it behind in France."
"And now we'll bring it back to France together."
Likely, she should have been afraid. Peggy, after all, had never left New York, except for a journey with her father to London when she was too young to remember. Maybe she would be afraid, still, later on. Now, with Lafayette's ring on her finger, there was nothing in the world that could frighten her.
"What is going on here?"
The pit dropped out of her stomach. Nothing could frighten her.
Except for this.
Philip Schuyler stood in the doorway to the front parlor. He held his hat in one hand, had one arm into the sleeve of his coat. But at the sight of his daughter and the French soldier embracing in his entrance hall, all thoughts of whatever business would have taken him out of the home fled his mind in an instant. Lafayette looked at Peggy as if he were facing death by firing squad. She looked back at him, the joy in her eyes transforming instantly to accusation.
"You didn't ask him?" she hissed.
He opened his mouth, about to begin a helpless sentence, but Philip Schuyler was not in the mood to wait for him to finish.
"Come here," he said, and pointed into the parlor. His hat, still in his hand, quivered as an indignant signpost.
Lafayette and Peggy shared a glance. Her lips pressed tightly together, she interlaced her fingers in his and led him into the parlor.
She took a seat beside the fireplace, crossing her legs at the ankle beneath the chair. Lafayette stood unmoored at the center of the room, vulnerable as the primary target of Schuyler's ire. He interlaced his fingers behind his back, legs slightly apart in parade rest, waiting for the explosion of verbal gunfire both he and Peggy knew Schuyler was building up to.
Peggy looked at Schuyler. Schuyler looked at Lafayette. Lafayette looked at his feet.
"So," Schuyler said, letting the poison of the syllable fester. "So."
"Sir," Lafayette began. Peggy had never heard his voice quite like this. "I am sure you understand the difficult position I—"
"I'll admit, Monsieur Aristocrat, I didn't think you had this kind of deception in you," Schuyler interrupted. He had not taken a seat either, and held his hat still before him like a sword. "I thought you'd run out on my daughter the moment a wealthier piece of skirt caught your eye. Or you'd make her false promises and then skip out to the Continent to spend your family fortune on drink and women. But this, sir, this, fraternizing in my very hallway, this goes beyond—"
"Sir," Lafayette tried again, but he didn't know how to speak to Philip Schuyler and be heard. Only one person in this room knew how to do that.
"Father," Peggy said sharply. "We weren't fraternizing."
"What would you call it, then, my worldly daughter?" Schuyler snapped.
"Sir," Lafayette said a third time, finding his voice at last. "I have asked your daughter to marry me. And she has accepted."
The room went deathly silent. So silent Peggy heard the slight rustle of Lafayette's coat as he shifted his weight uncomfortably to the opposite leg. Schuyler's eyes narrowed.
"Marry you," he repeated. His voice lacked any identifiable tone. "Marry you. You want my daughter to marry you, so you can leave her when you sail across the ocean in a harebrained, doomed revolution, where you'll be dead in a week and leave her a widow on the other side of the Atlantic—"
"Sir, forgive me," Lafayette interjected—he looked taller now, Peggy realized, a side effect of sudden daring—"but I do have some experience winning harebrained, doomed revolutions."
"And he's not leaving me, Father," Peggy said. "I'm going with him."
She rose from her chair and laced her arm through Lafayette's, a visible show of unity. From this close, she could feel his hand shaking, but he stood straight and met Schuyler's eye. Maybe the Frenchman would be able to siphon some of Peggy's courage through her touch. Suddenly, she felt as though she could do anything. Wrestle a bear. Summon a ghost. Challenge the world.
Schuyler took a step forward, his right hand unconsciously wringing the brim of his hat.
"You're asking my daughter to leave her family and her home and her country, and for what? For you? You think you deserve…"
"I have never thought I deserve her." Lafayette spoke carefully, measuring the hope and consequence of every syllable. Peggy swallowed the words like ambrosia. "She deserves better than me. She deserves everything. I was so ashamed of the life I would be asking her to lead in Paris that I almost did not ask her, would have let her find happiness with someone else here."
"But I would never have let him," Peggy interrupted.
Lafayette gave Schuyler a small, rueful smile. "And, as I am sure you know, sir," he added, "it is very difficult to argue with your daughter."
Schuyler had been listening to this speech with the same deliberately expressionless look, but at this, he gave a short, sharp bark of a laugh. The hat, Peggy noticed suddenly, he had set behind him on the arm of the chair.
"Yes," Schuyler said, "I had noticed."
He sat back in the chair, folded his fingers together, and rested them on his belly. A relaxed, comfortable pose, were it not for the icy regard with which he watched them both.
"Is this true, Peggy?" Schuyler asked. "Are you determined to throw away everything for this wild crusader?"
"Father," Peggy reminded him patiently, "we'll be living in Paris, not Hell."
Plainly Schuyler had not missed the tense of Peggy's verbs. Will be living, not would live. He sighed deeply, let a moment pass, then two. No one spoke. The clock ticking the seconds on the mantelpiece seemed unbearably loud.
At last, Schuyler sighed. "Monsieur Lafayette," he said, "I think you know that I don't like you."
"You have given me no reason to doubt it, sir," Lafayette answered. Under other circumstances, Peggy would have allowed herself to laugh.
"You're everything we fought against in '76. You're aristocratic. Landed. Titled. Rich. And, worst of all, European."
Peggy groaned. "Father, he fought on your side," she hissed. Lafayette gently touched her arm, as if to say let him finish.
"If American boys aren't good enough for my daughters, I weep for my new nation. If I had my choice, I would send you packing for Paris and keep Peggy in New York when she belongs. But—" he said, holding up a finger for emphasis, "but I do not have my choice."
Peggy tightened her grip on Lafayette's hand. Hope. A dangerous feeling, but a difficult one to avoid.
"You love her," Schuyler went on. "So. As well you should. You say you'll take care of her. As you must. And she loves you. So there's that too."
Schuyler sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at Lafayette with something that was not quite acceptance, but closer to it than he had ever come.
"If it's my friendship you're looking for, Monsieur Lafayette, you'll never have that. My respect, well, that remains to be seen. My permission…"
He paused, clearly relishing the chance to cultivate a sense of drama. Peggy wanted to take her father by the shoulders and shake him. Say what you have to say, Father. Yes or no. Say it.
"Yes, my permission you can have."
Peggy felt all the sensation rush from her knees. She rushed forward and threw her arms around a deeply startled Philip Schuyler, who after a moment to compose himself embraced her back.
"Thank you," she said, over and over, for what other words were worth saying? "Thank you."
"Promise you'll write, that's all," Schuyler said gruffly. If Peggy had been paying attention to anything but her own happiness, she might have seen the old general blinking rather more than was usually required. "And see you keep your velveteen courtier in check. See he doesn't run through your dowry in six months and cast you aside."
Peggy pulled back to look at her father, exasperated and amused. "Father, he owns his own chateau," she reminded him. "I doubt he's marrying me for money."
Schuyler summarily ignored her. He hoisted himself from the chair again and faced down Lafayette, imposing still despite the shifted atmosphere of the room.
"And you."
"Yes, sir." Lafayette wisely decided not to press his luck into calling Schuyler "father."
"Remember what you told me. My daughter deserves everything. See you manage to stay alive long enough to give it to her."
It was perhaps the most insulting, antagonistic way Peggy had ever heard anyone tell another person to be careful. It was touching, somehow, despite itself.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
Schuyler extended a hand, and Lafayette shook it, unable to repress the grin that slowly spread across his face. Peggy could sympathize; she had no doubt she currently sported a similar expression.
It was, she thought, wholly impossible that one woman should be possessed of so much happiness.
#
Alexander looked up from his third beer and glanced over his shoulder. The door to the Cross and Crown opened, admitting Lafayette in a snow-dusted overcoat, Peggy following half a step behind. Alexander shared a meaningful look with Hercules Mulligan, seated on the other side of the table. Mulligan rolled his eyes and faux-retched. Plainly he was not enthused at the idea of what two people so plainly infatuated with one another could do to his evening.
"Well met, Monsieur Lancelot," Alexander said lazily, leaning back in his chair, as Lafayette and Peggy took the two remaining chairs at the table.
"Better met than ever," Lafayette agreed. He reached across the table, took Mulligan's glass of beer, and drained its contents in a single fluid motion. Mulligan began an irritated protest, more indignation than actual words.
Alexander looked at the Frenchman in surprise. He had never seen Lafayette in a mood like this, not even after the British surrender at Chesapeake Bay. It captivated his interest, so much that he did not even notice as Mulligan switched their glasses, giving Alexander the empty one and taking a swig from the full.
"Well?" Alexander asked pointedly. "What's happened? The second coming of Christ, by the way you're smiling?"
Lafayette did not answer. Instead, he glanced across the table at Peggy. She raised her left hand, smiling ear to ear. The ring on her fourth finger caught the tavern candlelight, glittered like a meteor.
Mulligan choked on Alexander's beer.
"May I present," Lafayette said, beaming, "the soon-to-be Margaret du Motier, Marquise de Lafayette."
Alexander grinned. "Like I've always said," he began. "Immigrants—"
He and Lafayette finished the sentence together.
"We get the job done."
Across the table, Alexander and Lafayette high-fived.