It was a high price. But in the wake of yellow fever, I loved Alexander with such a terrifyingly renewed passion that I believed I might choose him even at the expense of my own soul. And I told her this.
Whereupon she embraced me with gratitude and a tearful little laugh. “Perhaps I will agree to marry him. I fear I never had the soul of a Quaker anyway. Or so Senator Burr tells me.”
Burr.
I’d forgotten that he was boarding here. I was too much a Schuyler to have forgiven Burr for ousting my father from the Senate. But because word had recently reached us that Theodosia had died, the victim of a lingering cancer, I softened. “How is he bearing up?”
Dolley shook her head. “He’s in a terrible grief . . . it would do the sorrowful man some good to hear kind words before he goes off to New York for her funeral.”
My friendship with Theodosia had once been close, so I mourned her loss. How much worse for her husband, now facing alone the care of their eleven-year-old daughter. I couldn’t think it disloyal to offer condolences. Politics be damned. “I shall call on Senator Burr, if he’s in.”
Pointing the way, Dolley said, “He sits on the balcony overlooking the street while reading. All day, sometimes.”
I mounted the stairs and found Burr, his boots propped up on a chair, his eyes shadowed by the brim of a hat. Always of a languid air, he looked up from his book with obvious reluctance, and blinked. “Do my eyes deceive me, or do I see the wife of the secretary of the treasury?”
Despite the playful words, Burr’s tone was lifeless.
“Your eyes do not deceive you, Senator Burr. I wanted to tell you how much I regret to hear of the passing of your wife. I remember Theodosia so fondly.” When he didn’t respond, I went on. “In those early days when I was a new mother, she offered me friendship, companionship, and advice. I remember how she watched over my children, and helped at dinner parties, and . . .”
Burr said nothing to this litany but instead stared down at the street, as if he couldn’t look at me. And perhaps he couldn’t. At the time, I thought that perhaps my condolences weren’t welcome because he couldn’t see me as anything other than the wife of a rival. But now, I know that Burr was already becoming an empty vessel, more able to separate politics from the personal than any man I’d ever known.
Into the awkward silence, I added, “Theodosia was a very interesting conversationalist and had a very great spirit.” Still, he said nothing, and I wished I hadn’t come on this errand. “Please take comfort in knowing that Theodosia loved you.”
Hoping that was enough to extricate myself, I turned to go.
He stopped me with a chuckle. “And do you consider yourself an expert in love?” For a moment, I knew not what to say. What an odd creature Burr was. I attributed it to his grief, but then he said, “Mrs. Hamilton, I know.”
Confused, I peered back at him, and the shrewd cast of his eyes turned my blood to ice.
He wasn’t responding to what I said. He knew. Somehow, Burr had learned of my husband’s infidelity. And he was laughing. For a moment, I dared not move a muscle lest I betray my horror.
Steadying myself, I looked to the street below. Horses cantered. Wagon wheels clacked. Men called to one another. But I heard not a sound but the beating of my own heart.
Then Burr’s cough. “That was ill-done of me,” he said, with what might have passed for chagrin in any other man; I realize now that he wasn’t entirely capable of it. “My wife’s death has apparently stolen my capacity for subtlety. I assumed you were aware of your husband’s indiscretion, and because you’re not an actress of any talent, I see that you are aware.”
For a moment, I considered whether I could throw him from that balcony. Responses flashed through my mind, one more horrible than the next until he forestalled any reply with his next revelation.
“Mrs. Reynolds has retained me as a lawyer in filing for divorce.”
It was all I could do to blank my expression. To think that we’d convinced Monroe and the other investigators to keep quiet, only for my husband’s harlot to tell tales. And because I was, more and more, learning to think like my husband, I worried it might become a matter of court record in a divorce proceeding.
Burr seemed to read my mind. “I’ve advised Mrs. Reynolds to mention nothing of her connection to Hamilton. She will, instead, accuse her own husband of adultery, and the scoundrel doesn’t dare contest it. So I think the matter that concerns you has a good chance to remain a private one and I will do my best to keep it that way. I hope that gives you some peace of mind.”