From the doorway, my nine-year-old son, Philip, asked, “What will you do now, Grandpapa?”
It was a question I’d dared not ask of my fifty-seven-year-old father who’d already fought enough battles—political and otherwise—for a lifetime. So I was surprised to see Papa smile as he summoned his grandson forth and ruffled his hair. “Why, I’ll return to Albany and wait for an opportunity to retaliate.”
That was Papa’s way. He was as patient a politician as he’d been a general. Taking no time to brood over a lost battle, but slowly and steadily moving to gather allies about him and obstruct his enemies’ progress until he was ready for another fight.
Unfortunately, patience was very much not my husband’s way.
With the gratifying support of Madison in Congress, my husband had already moved to levy a tax on whiskey, much needed to fund the government’s debts. And we were all relieved that the two architects of the government were once again working in good harmony. But Madison’s support was no longer a thing upon which my husband could rely.
When Alexander proposed chartering a Bank of the United States, Madison wouldn’t go along. Prickling with every word, my husband explained, “I think Jefferson has him convinced that by establishing a bank in Philadelphia, I mean to go back on the bargain to move the capital.”
It was, of course, an affront to my husband’s honor to be thought to have negotiated in bad faith. And I wondered why Mr. Jefferson, so cordial in mixed company, claiming to view us as old friends, would suspect Alexander of perfidy. Perhaps Jefferson’s time in the French court had led him to look for intrigue behind every damasked curtain. But there seemed, to me, a remedy that ought to put Jefferson’s mind at ease about my husband’s intentions. “Why not, then, charter the bank on the Potomac?”
“We need a bank now,” Alexander snapped. Each new loss of a friend and ally had set him ever more on edge, and made him dig in his heels until he was nearly insufferable. “Madison is a fool not to realize it.”
I took a breath and cautioned, “If you express such sentiments in public, of course Madison will oppose your bank. It will be harder for southerners to invest if it’s located in a northern city.”
“I don’t need Madison or the southerners.”
It unnerved me to hear the hubris in his voice. “Remember, husband. Madison is the most important man in the Congress.”
Hamilton’s mouth opened as if to list a hundred ways in which I was wrong. But then, all at once, his temper broke, and he laughed, drawing me into his arms. “My angel, you are too good, and innocent, and tender-hearted for me to burden you with this business.”
His kisses, which rained down upon my face, ought to have been enough to distract me, but something in the way he brushed my concerns aside made me insist, “You need Mr. Madison. You brought the Constitution into existence together. And now you must govern together. You need him.”
Hamilton’s eyes gleamed with triumph. “I don’t. I have the votes. Even without your papa in the Senate.” More kisses trailed down my neck. “So, you see, I don’t need Madison. Or Monroe. Or Jefferson. Or Burr. I don’t need any of them.”
His sense of power and confidence was a heady erotic thing, and I would be lying to say I didn’t feel its intoxicating pull. In truth, my husband seemed drunk on it, turning me in his arms so that I was forced to brace myself against the table.
Then he raised my skirts.
What he wanted, I knew. I wanted it, too.
It was not only out of a reluctance for more children that I stopped him. I told myself it was also a concern for decency, that he should try to make love in the middle of the day. But there was something else, too—an instinct that he was attempting to master me, and not only for mutual pleasure. I felt suddenly as if, in bending me over this table, I stood in place of all the other frustrations and obstacles in his way.
A part of me wished to give in, to be for him a relief and comfort.
Certainly, it was my duty as a wife to do so.
But I felt some inexplicable assault to my dignity to be taken this way, by him, in such a mood. I don’t need any of them. There was a recklessness in his words that I felt in his hands, and both unleashed a foreboding in my heart that I wished I’d better heeded.
So I turned him away.
And perhaps if I hadn’t, everything would have been different.
*
February 1791
Philadelphia
“I won’t be coming to bed tonight,” Alexander said, scarcely looking up from his desk.