Unless I did something about it . . .
*
IT WASN’T A far walk to Monroe’s lodgings on Wall Street, where I handed a Negro slave my calling card and was shown into a gilded parlor to wait. The hour was late for a visit, but none of the usual rules of propriety seemed to matter to anyone else, so why should they matter to me?
I hadn’t told my husband of my intention for fear he might attempt to prevent me, and he wasn’t entitled to. I’d taken no part in the decisions that brought us to this place, but I wanted some choice in what happened now.
I didn’t ask permission. I just went.
And waited.
It’d been four years since I’d last seen James Monroe, but when, at length, the Virginian strode into the parlor, he was as tall and strapping as ever. Though he eschewed pantaloons in favor of old-fashioned knee breeches and stockings, he’d acquired a new elegance to his gait in Paris. In truth, I might’ve been intimidated by the personage he presented if I didn’t still remember him as a blushing, stammering boy of a soldier, with a dimple on his chin just like mine . . .
Monroe cleared his throat and drawled, “I would delight in your company, Mrs. Hamilton, under other circumstances. However, as your husband has sent you, and my wife is with her family, I cannot invite you to stay.”
“Hamilton didn’t send me,” I said, unfastening the bow of my bonnet and laying it upon the chair beside me to signal that I had no intention of leaving. “Though I’ve been made aware of your quarrel.”
“Quarrel?” Monroe snorted. “Your husband launched into a lengthy diatribe, filled with accusations—”
“I’m not here to accuse you.” I looked directly into the gray eyes of the southern gentleman who had, in a dark time, once been my only confidant, and felt as vulnerable to him now as I did then. “Four years ago, I didn’t doubt your word when you swore you’d spare me humiliation. I don’t doubt it now. Tell me that you didn’t give the Reynolds letters to the newspapermen and I will believe you.”
Monroe’s shoulders rounded. My faith in him plainly pierced his puffed-up sense of outrage. He seemed relieved that I pledged to trust him, but his encounter with Alexander had left him still in an icy cold fury.
“Of course I didn’t give the letters to the newspapers,” Monroe finally said. “When I was sent to France, I entrusted my official documents to a friend in Virginia under seal. I’ve only just returned to the country and had no idea of their publication.”
I believed him. Truly, I did. “Then the blame must go to your friend in Virginia . . .” Who could be none other than Thomas Jefferson.
But Monroe set me onto my heels by saying, “I presume John Beckley published the papers in question.”
Beckley was a name I knew only slightly. A one-time indentured servant who had, through the grace of his populist political leanings, risen to be a clerk in the House of Representatives. “How should a mere clerk come to have possession of these papers?”
Monroe could no longer hold my gaze. “Because I commissioned him to copy them, never suspecting he’d make a set of his own to do mischief with.” A crimson flush swept over Monroe as he admitted to me, however obliquely, that the situation was at least partly his fault.
And all at once, I felt a cold fury of my own. “Mr. Monroe, for what purpose would you have a clerk copy papers that you swore on your honor to keep confidential?”
I should not have said the word honor. Not to a Virginian. “It was your husband who demanded copies!”
Then—perhaps in the horror of having shouted at a lady—Monroe went silent. Perfectly silent. Meanwhile, I marveled at the folly of my husband, who had, like the lawyer he was, apparently asked for copies of the most damning evidence against him.
Oh, Alexander.
When Monroe finally broke his silence, he seethed. “Did Hamilton think I would stoop to set my own hand to the wretched task of copying his lengthy treasons against you?” His gray eyes caught mine again with a meaningful stare that recalled the moment, years ago, when he pressed my hand to his heart. “And if you think me capable, then you’ve never understood my attachment to you.”
Once, such words might’ve touched me, but now my chest heaved with indignation. “Mr. Monroe, how can you claim any manner of attachment when I entrusted to you my fragile happiness, only to find it carelessly disregarded so as to save you a cramp in the wrist and—”
I cut myself off, remembering my purpose. It was not to antagonize James Monroe. It was to enlist his aid. I was becoming too much like Alexander—infected by his short temper. I struggled to regained my composure.