The night of General Arnold’s party arrived, and Stansbury had gone all out. He needed the Patriots’ business, and I was to be a walking advertisement for his work.
“You’re trembling like a thoroughbred longing to bolt.” Stansbury smiled, smoothing the fabric over my back.
A fair analogy for the amount of agency I felt over my fate.
“Is it irrational to fear the party might be a trap, a lure to round up anyone still feeling the smallest misgiving about Patriot tactics? It wouldn’t be difficult to eliminate us all in one place—and would only be in line with Reed’s rhetoric about routing every last neutral and Tory from the continent.”
“Don’t confuse Arnold’s Patriotism with Reed’s brand of it.”
Even if not immediately dangerous, was it sickening that the city seemed in such a hurry to kiss the ring of the new regime?
As Stansbury made the final adjustments, he tried to calm me by making me laugh with impressions in a dozen regional accents of accounts he’d heard about the disabled general from veterans in the tavern:
“He was our fighting general, and a bloody fellow he was. He didn’t care for nothing; he’d ride right in. It was ‘Come on, boys’—never ‘Go, boys.’ He’s as brave a man as ever lived.”
“He was active as lightning, he was, and with a ready wit always at command.”
“The excitement of danger has for him an irresistible charm.”
I laughed. “He sounds a proper old Hotspur.”
“America’s Hannibal, they call him. And on water? He’s unmatched as a sailor—”
“Reed can’t welcome such a star as his counterpart. How do the two of them get on?”
“Reed will see this party as a provocation,” Odell warned. “Lavishing Patriot funds on Philadelphia high society. Known Loyalists among them. He’s calling it ‘extraordinary,’ and you know he won’t let it go.”
“I call it consoling,” Stansbury said. “We’re all residents of the same city.” I noticed how much older he looked, the worry of recent weeks taking its toll.
Uncle William was in town, now chief medic to the entire Continental Army, and he and my father, along with Neddy, were to join us at the party. My mother’s rheumatism was troubling her, and Betsy stayed home to keep her company.
I was grateful for Stansbury’s finery when it came to seeing my uncle again. “My dear Peggy.” He bowed and took my arm. “Shall we? I’m curious to see how the general’s leg’s healed up.”
“Was the injury very terrible?”
“Hessians shot his horse from under him, piercing his leg with a musket ball, and as the horse fell, it landed on the wounded leg and splintered his thigh bone. Tried to wrestle me from his bed to not amputate. It was months before he could even sit up without splitting the stitches.”
He glanced at my expression. “Too many specifics?”
I laughed. “I am curious to meet him.”
“I was glad to see you invited. Maybe my brother knows what he’s doing after all, tacking this way and that across the water.”
I smiled back at my father, proud of him, and grateful. Perhaps asking me to sacrifice the Meschianza had been a wise strategy—it wasn’t a bad calculation, as it happened—and I did love to trust him.
“Where’s Mrs Shippen?” William asked him.
“Home with swollen joints. Been creeping about the chamber on her crutches all winter.”
“You should let me see what I can do—”
“A disciplined diet should see to it. That’s the best medicine.”
William looked at me, tongue between his teeth.
“How are conditions in camp?” I asked.
“Better since General Arnold’s arrival. Farmers are making deliveries again. Our young warriors look sturdier every day.”
“I’m happy to hear it.”
I lifted my skirts to avoid tripping and smiled at the barely restrained excitement with which William and Neddy looked out for our host. I scanned the small crowd at the top of the stairs, expecting an old duffer with a powdered wig, high color, and a peg leg.
As the new military governor of the city came into view, I almost laughed. My friends had made the man sound an ancient mariner, an invalid widower, near dead from a lurid litany of injuries. Instead, an elegant crutch was the only hint he wasn’t at full force.
“Note the epaulettes, a gift from Washington,” Neddy muttered.
I nodded, more interested in the chiseled muscle definition than his shoulder ornaments. He projected a great, lean strength. My glance reached his face. His smiling eyes beneath dark winged eyebrows were an unusual sapphire blue. Why had nobody mentioned the man was Greek-god handsome?
His hair was thick and dark, drawn in a good, clean ponytail back from his face. His skin was the sort to age well, and the line of his jaw highly inviting. When my turn came, and he took my hand in his, I felt enjoyably small.
He murmured his compliments to the “legendary Miss Shippen”—extravagant gallantry, given his own earned celebrity. His voice conjured cannons and sea shanties. He was greeting me a little as if I was his captive Queen—his manner acknowledging I had known more power and freedom, but that fate had seen fit to deliver me here. His deep blue eyes told me I was welcome and had nothing to fear.
He turned to William and slapped his back.
“This man’s pieced me back together more than once.”
“Oh, we’ve seen a thing or two,” William said, bashful and happy.
“I’m afraid your uncle could tell many tales which wouldn’t speak well of me, Miss Shippen. I am not the most patient patient.”
He was welcoming my father and Neddy now, directing them to his personal supply of good whiskey.
He gave me one last smile, eyes like warm inviting water, before gently pressing me into the party, my whole body abuzz.
He was so entirely a general, but much younger than a man twenty years my senior had any right to seem.
All evening I willed him to come to me, but he had the entire city’s who’s who to meet. Nobody talked of anything but him—his magnificent exploits and irresistible wit. He couldn’t have set it up better if it had been his intention to seduce every woman in Philadelphia.
Effusive with champagne, Uncle William testified at increasing volume to “his noble and Christian command and useful knowledge of apothecary.”
“He thought nothing of abandoning prosperous business interests—a successful store, ships, and stables—the minute soldiers were wanted,” he continued. “And he paid his own soldiers for months on end when Congress failed to furnish funds.”
“I heard he forbade inoculation on penalty of death,” my father said.
“Only to prevent devastating spread. Soldiers were self-inoculating without quarantine—which led to rampant rates of infection. You could never accuse Arnold of not having his men’s best interests at heart, Edward. He’s the men’s favorite of all the great generals. And Washington loves him like none other—like a brother.” My uncle seemed in danger of moving himself to tears. My father clapped his shoulder. I turned away to hide my delight. If Arnold had the power to unite these two, he was already a hero to me.
Later, I sat beside my father watching the dancing and feeling full of goodwill.
“If my going to the Mischianza would have prevented this—our safety—I’m glad you stopped me, Papa. I’m sorry I worried you.”
He nodded, taking my apology as overdue.
“I was hurt at the time that you didn’t trust me.”
“We never said that.”
“Well?” Neddy asked, as we watched Arnold surrounded by women vying to show him more cleavage. I watched him share a moment with May—who was flirting up at him from layers of unapologetic taffeta, his on a silver platter. Not again, surely. She could have anyone!
A mild-mannered young man with a great head of hair, Major Franks, came to refill my glass and talk of Arnold. He described crazy experiments with gunpowder, adventures with pistols, barrels, constables, and criminals. The drinks were liberal and with a small audience egging him on, Franks acted out Arnold keeping his feet on a waterwheel while it was turning full circle! Even as a small child the general had been a baby Hercules, with “few, if any, superiors as a marksman.” By Franks’s account, the man was never not running, fencing, boxing, or leaping.
“Even after he recovered from his wound received at Quebec, at Fort Stanwix, he’d vaulted over a loaded ammunition wagon without touching hand or foot.
“He ran away twice from home, the first at fifteen to enlist as a soldier in the 1755 war between France and Great Britain, and soon after being returned safely home, left again to join the provincial troops in Albany and Lake George.”
If he hadn’t been in the room, I’d have dismissed all the talk of his preternatural abilities as propaganda. Looking at him though, I dared hope God had produced the man to win peace. And if he was to lead us, it was a relief his spirit felt the furthest thing from Reed’s.
I found myself meeting, just fleetingly, Arnold’s vivid blue gaze as he passed. It was almost unfair, the advantage those eyes gave him. The attraction I felt was so insistently physical—primal—it carried me faster than any water could have moved me. I was ready to be swept over his shoulder while he waded to Quebec, let him build me a shelter and then stare at me across a campfire before taking me to bed.
Neddy brought me a drink. “I swear I counted nine admirers using tales of the general to woo you.”
“He has the city eating out of his hand,” I observed, watching him deflect all the flatterers with affable modesty. Though sorry to think of him suffering, I liked the fact of his injury. He had given everything a man could, and lived. That put him beyond contest, and the way he shrugged off the heroism, and welcomed citizens others—the Militia Man—would swear were enemies, made him as reassuring a presence as I’d met.
“Peggy, do I see old attachments loosening?” Neddy teased.
I was never such a Loyalist I had trouble seeing the merit in a Patriot. Uncle William had been nearly as dear to me as my father, all my life. But looking at the general, and thinking of André, a hot lightning fork ran through me, the burning enormity of all I wanted reconciled impossible to escape. I laid a grateful hand on Neddy’s steady arm.
“Let’s get home.”
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From Mrs. Benedict Arnold by Emma Parry. Used with permission of the publisher, Zando. Copyright © 2026 by Emma Parry.
