I nodded, quickly. “We must get you to Philadelphia.”
“Colonel Hamilton says it is not yet possible.”
Not yet possible? I couldn’t imagine what intrigue my husband was about. Or why Lafayette’s son was posing as a servant. But my heart broke at the boy’s obvious terror. “Then you must come home with me.”
Young Georges shook his head. “It is not safe.”
I didn’t care. I’d protested my husband threatening to brawl in the streets over a matter of a treaty. But if risks must be taken, then they must be taken for the son of a man we both loved. “I insist,” I said, pained to see how thin Georges was, and appalled at the shabby brown coat in which he’d been clothed. I’d have to find him new breeches and an embroidered coat. Something fitting. “I’ll make you a fine meal.”
Though hunger lurked in his eyes, he fretted, “But my tutor and our host—”
“They’re both welcome,” I said. With that I took Georges home straightaway in my carriage, though the boy insisted upon using the servants’ door in the back.
He feared he was being hunted. That there were spies in the city. That the Jacobins—and their supporters—were here, in New York. Would such men kidnap young Lafayette and return him to bloody France?
“Almost assuredly,” my husband said when he returned home to find Georges already fast friends with our Philip. The two youths ate heaps of cold mutton and buttered bread while falling into easy conversation at the table. They made a handsome pair, Lafayette’s redheaded son and Hamilton’s brown-haired boy.
After supper, Georges complimented Ana on her songs, saying she might one day sing at the opera house in Paris. And my delighted girl blushed with pleasure from head to toe.
“Why can’t young Lafayette see the president?” I whispered as we watched from across the hall.
My husband grimaced. “Because the French ambassador is refusing to attend Washington’s levees on account of the presence of exiles like Noailles. Jefferson tried to argue that these are public functions and anyone is welcome, but the new French government won’t listen even to him . . . if the ambassador sees Lafayette’s son in Washington’s presence, they might demand we return the boy to France.”
“Those murderous animals can’t have him,” I hissed.
That was something over which I would be prepared to stand and fight. And Alexander rubbed at the small of my back to calm me. “They may argue the president is violating our neutrality by harboring the son of a French traitor—”
“Lafayette is no traitor!”
Alexander hushed me. “Believe me, my love, it afflicts me with as much indignation as you, which is why I’ve been acting the part of a secret go-between. The president wants to embrace young Lafayette, but cannot take the lad in. Not yet.”
“Then we must.”
Unexpectedly, my husband wandered away from me, down into the kitchen. I found him with both hands upon the butcher block, his head hung low.
“Alexander, if the president cannot shelter Lafayette’s son for fear of offending the French, we can. We should. We must. And when I think of how you must have felt when you were his age, coming to this city alone . . .”
Alexander sighed, staring up at me. “Here you are, ready to open your arms to another desperate child for my sake—and this after I’ve done so much injury to your faith in me that you’d cross town with a scrap of paper to verify my fidelity . . .”
So he knew what I’d done. Why I’d gone to an unknown address. And I was filled with shame, wondering what sort of weapon infidelity was that it should repeatedly cut both its perpetrator and its victim long after they’d forgiven one another. “I am sorry.”
With generosity, he waved away my apology. “You’re merely testing the ground with your foot, to make sure it’s solid.” He left unspoken the question, but will you ever be sure of me?
No wonder marriage required a vow before God and witnesses. It was no easy thing. And yet, the struggles somehow made me cherish it more. Made me cherish him more. Made me cherish, too, that we could offer a home to Lafayette’s son.
And not only for my husband’s sake.
If the worst should ever come to pass in our country, I might be forced to send my own children across the sea to safety. I saw in Georges both the untrusting boy my husband had been, and my own son, if the Jacobins had their way. And it made me feel like the protective lioness I’d vowed to be.