“Oh, to confront Monroe!” She put down her shears and the basket of roses and drew me down onto a marbled bench. “I would applaud if I didn’t know this will come to no good. That half-wit fancies himself to be a useful acolyte in Vice President Jefferson’s destructive ambitions.”
Her habitual contempt for Monroe didn’t surprise me, but her contempt for the vice president caught me by surprise. “I thought you counted Mr. Jefferson your friend.”
“Semper Fidelis, Eliza. I am a Schuyler, too. I will always take my family’s part over that of even the most charming friend. If Mr. Jefferson wished to stay in my good graces, then he ought not to have set his partisan lackeys against your husband. Now it’s war.”
I laughed, a little darkly, but for once, she was the one in earnest.
“My dear, it is war. Other women have suffered the pain of infidelity. But you’re suffering the penalty of being the wife to the greatest man of his generation and perhaps the greatest of our age. You’d never have suffered this if you hadn’t married so close to the sun. But then you would have missed the pride, the pleasure, the nameless satisfactions.”
I knew how much my sister admired Hamilton. How the two of them shared the same interests and more traits of character than a casual observer might expect. I’d predicted she’d take his part. And I thought I might bristle when she did, but in the balance of things, she was quite right.
She took my hand. “Let the children stay with me a while longer. You should go home to Papa. Away from the heat of this city. Away from the malice of society. Trust me, you don’t want to be here while tongues wag in every coffeehouse, people tittering behind the pages of their gazettes as you pass by.”
As the days passed, the thought of escape became ever more tempting, especially when Hamilton rode off to Philadelphia to chase down Monroe, all to no avail. My husband felt forced now to make a public confession and therefore wished for me to have our baby in Albany.
“It’s for the better,” Alexander said. “As I imagine that you cannot much like the sight of me at present.”
I settled beside him on a trunk he kept at the foot of the bed. “You imagine wrong.” After all, it seemed as if some different man had broken my heart. And in any case, that heart was four years mended. Alexander and I had each grown, together, into new people. Better people. Though I would never reconcile myself to the cause of the change, I couldn’t be sorry for it. We’d made of our marriage vows a more sacred thing than when we first spoke them. And this child in my womb, who would join us in only a few weeks, was the living proof of that. “Though, Angelica thinks it would be easier for me to explain to Papa.”
At the mention of my father, Alexander actually shuddered. “How glad General Schuyler will be for setting aside his reservations in giving his daughter in marriage to a man of low birth . . .”
I wanted to reassure him that my father would forgive him, but I couldn’t be sure of that. What I said instead was, “Perhaps we mustn’t explain anything to Papa. Or to anyone. Your accusers are not entitled to a reply.”
Hamilton nodded, folding his hands together. “And yet, the country deserves to know its system is not a corrupt scheme to line my pockets, otherwise these Jacobins will dismantle it and the American experiment will fail.”
He’d convinced himself this was one more sacrifice he must make for his country. But I thought, Give the mob this drop of blood and it will only whet their appetite.
Before I could say as much, he added, “If I don’t answer these charges of corruption, they’ll take my name. I cannot save my private reputation, and perhaps I don’t deserve to, but at least my public honor may be preserved. Which is all I have to give our children. Our children ought to always be able to hold their heads high with pride.”
“And they shall,” I said, though I fretted at the chime of the clock that announced Philip was quite late in coming home from an outing with his friends. “Whether or not you dignify this with a response.”
My husband rubbed at his cheek, which was darkened by a shadow of stubble. Circles darkened his eyes, too. “I would like to believe that, but I remember what happened when my mother was accused in court of whoring and she did not see fit to dignify it with a response . . .”
All at once the specter of a woman long dead rose between us again. His mother had condemned her children to a life of illegitimacy by letting the accusation pass. Perhaps that is why Hamilton never, ever, let anything pass . . .