I was no young bride anymore, confronted for the first time with the terror of her union being torn asunder, of losing a man who’d become a part of her to the vagaries of war. I was older and wiser. Wise enough to say, “But you’re the secretary of the treasury, not the secretary of war.”
“Regardless, Jefferson is calling this Hamilton’s Insurrection. And in a government like ours, the proposer of a measure which involves danger to his fellow citizens should partake in that danger.”
“So now you admit, there will be danger?” I wanted to know the truth of what we faced. All of it. “Is Jefferson our Robespierre?” I asked, searching my husband’s eyes, wondering how scared I should be. “Would he cheerfully condemn us to the guillotine and lap up our blood?”
“No,” Alexander said, stroking my cheek. But lest I think he said it only to comfort me, he added, “That philosophical fool would be forced to mount the scaffold behind us. A victim of the same mob he’s emboldened.”
Alexander wouldn’t allow a repeat of the Citizen Genêt affair, with mobs threatening us on our doorstep. He meant to take the fight to the rebels this time.
But what if he doesn’t return?
I shook the thought away. If I was sick with worry it was because I was with child again. Proof of our love and mutual desire. Proof of forgiveness and grace. This baby represented something new and hopeful between Alexander and me, and it pained me to think that after such a long struggle, everything remained so fragile.
But I was determined to be his lioness now, so I asked no more questions and said nothing more about my fears. Instead, I drew him back to our warm bed, and climbing astride, reminded him of that intimate day in a faraway field when we made love like a sacrament.
At my boldness, Alexander’s hands gripped my hips, his heated interest making me wish I’d been bolder in love before. “A new start indeed, Eliza . . .”
Later that day, I saw him off on Market Street where he prepared to ride out to war with the aging president. I didn’t care what anyone else said, the sight of even an aging George Washington still inspired me and stiffened my spine. And so I teased my husband, “At long last it seems I have persuaded you to return to the side of your general.”
We’d come far enough that Hamilton smiled. “It seems you shall always have your way.”
“Then come back to me,” I said, fighting my own battle against foreboding and kissing him farewell.
Martha Washington and I clasped hands as we watched them go. Then I spent the next two months trying to keep the children from missing their father as much as I did. The boys had their schooling, but as my daughter was ten years of age and Fanny only a few months younger, I took them for lessons from the French dance master. And while they danced, I collected donations and delivered them to the needy.
“Voici le chapeau idéal pour Monsieur le secrétaire, Madame,” said Madame le Grand from behind the hatter’s stall in the market. She held up a black felt riding hat with a black cockade.
“Yes, I’ll take the hat. Merci,” I replied, fishing money from my purse as Madame le Grand’s two barefooted children wrestled in the cold street over a loaf of bread.
Not old enough to help their mother look after their hatter’s stall in the market, they were lean as wild dogs and dressed in rags that offered them no defense against the weather. And though I knew it shamed Madame le Grand, and the other refugees, to rely upon charity, they had little choice unless they would starve.
“Take this as well,” I said, pressing into her hand a pouch of donations I’d collected for her. “And if you come by the house on Sunday morning before church service, I’ll have some warm clothes that my children have outgrown.”
“Merci,” Madame le Grand said, clutching the pouch against her faded linen dress, worn without stays, her eyes lowered. She’d had a little cottage outside Paris. With a flower garden. A fine tea service.
Now, without a husband, she had nothing. Alone and desperate. And I had cause to imagine myself in her miserable condition as Madame le Grand thanked me again and again, boxing up a hat for my husband that he might never wear.
“Mrs. Hamilton!” I turned to see Dolley in a swish of red cloak, a veritable rainbow of ribbons flowing from her fancy bonnet. Freed from Quaker restraint, she was never plain now. “Is that a surprise for the secretary?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “When my husband returns home, I should like to present him with a little gift.”