Alexander’s jaw clenched, though he knew what it had cost me, that night, bleeding with near fatal humiliation. “Well I regret to report that you prevailed upon his friendship in vain.”
I still didn’t want to believe this of Monroe. I rebelled against believing it. I was no longer naive about the sins men were capable of—even men I’d loved—but there seemed some part of the story untold.
I’d taken solace in the idea that there ought to be no reason for anyone to attack us if only Hamilton stayed out of the public eye. If he stayed out of politics.
“Why now?” I asked. Monroe had kept the secret four years. “With you in retirement, what possible advantage—”
“I don’t know,” my husband said, hanging his head, the weight of his guilt forcing the slump of his shoulders. “Revenge, maybe. It was upon my advice that the president recalled Monroe from France.”
At hearing this, I was overcome with the urge to reach for the bowl of shucked peas and throw it. Into the yard, at the house, maybe even at my husband. I didn’t know which. I’d never guessed, not even once, that the wreck of Monroe’s diplomatic career was my husband’s doing.
And as I struggled to calm myself, Alexander took my hand. “I promise you, my darling, I wasn’t the only one urging the president to revoke Monroe’s credentials. Our foreign policy must be spoken in one voice. Monroe in France and Jay in England were at cross-purposes overseas. I gave the president my best advice.”
Reeling, I yanked my hand away.
He met my eyes, beseechingly. “Eliza, I didn’t think it right to risk the good of the country, all for fear of a secret any man held over me. I didn’t want to think that Monroe—who’d been a friend to me and a fellow soldier—would prove to be both a man mistaken in his political beliefs and also without honor as a gentleman.” As I listened, his voice softened. “Would you have me done differently?”
I paused to think about it, but I was not, in the end, so bad a patriot. “No. You did precisely as you should have.” There was a moment of grace between us that I could admit this. I think he felt it, too. “What will we do now?”
Bringing my fingertips to his lips, he said, “I fear I must confess my wrongdoing.” And as panic tightened my throat, he explained why. Callender claimed that my husband invented an imaginary infidelity to cover up his real crime of having enriched himself at the taxpayer’s expense.
As if we’d been at all enriched!
How often had I accepted gifts from my parents to put food on our table? How many years had I borrowed and bartered and scrimped to make ends meet? My husband had left the service of our country poorer than when he entered it, deeply indebted to my brother-in-law and without any real property of his own.
But as I wrestled with my anger at the injustice of this accusation, I also realized the perversity of the situation. “You can’t defend yourself against charges of corruption without confessing the affair . . .” Worse, he couldn’t defend himself without convincing the public of the affair.
“I’ve no choice but to expose everything.”
But I saw a way out of the corner he’d been backed into. “If Monroe will explain to the public that he investigated the matter long ago and believed your innocence, surely that will put an end to it.”
“He won’t,” Alexander replied.
“He might, if you asked him.”
“Not after our quarrel this morning . . .”
I startled. “You’ve seen Monroe?”
There in the stifling heat, Alexander bit out a laugh. “By happenstance he’s here in New York visiting his wife’s relatives. I deduced his part in this conspiracy and confronted him.”
“And?” I asked.
Alexander’s gaze darkened, as if in stormy remembrance. “And some words were said that ought never be said amongst gentlemen. If it hadn’t been for Church breaking us apart, we’d have come to blows then and there.”
My baby kicked inside me, as if to express its own dismay at this revelation. Church had been there? My brother-in-law knew everything then. Maybe Angelica did, too. And soon, so would the whole country know about my husband’s infidelity. Though I had little idea of the extent of it, I realized that my marriage was to be sported with. That I was soon to be a laughingstock, my children subject to mockery. That our enemies were going to destroy all the happiness we’d fought so hard to find—the happiness that we’d earned.