Mac was decidedly less sanguine. “I don’t think you know what you’re up against, Mrs. Hamilton.”
“I doubt any of us did when we joined the revolution,” I countered, for sometimes it seemed as if it was one long war we were still fighting. And I couldn’t help but remember when we were young and hopeful members of General Washington’s military family. Alexander Hamilton. John Laurens. Tench Tilghman. Mrs. Washington. All of them gone now, only a few of us still surviving.
And I wondered if Mac was thinking of them too, because he grew wistful, adjusting himself in his seat with the use of his cane. “I know my pangs must be a wee drop in the ocean of your tears, but to this day, whenever the post comes, I somehow always think I’ll find a letter from Hamilton . . .”
I smiled softly, as it consoled me to hear it somehow. “Alas, we must content ourselves with the letters he sent in life. And I feel as if it has become the whole of my existence to hunt them down.”
“It must be wearying,” Mac said. And I didn’t think he meant only the hunt for Alexander’s papers. Like my husband, James McHenry had dedicated the better part of his life to public service and been vilified for it. Maybe that’s why he took my hand into his and clasped it tight. “Especially as you have suffered so many losses, Eliza.”
Though my eyes misted at his sympathy, I swallowed back my grief lest it consume me. “I do not forget that others have suffered, too. I was so sorry to hear of your daughter’s passing . . .”
Mac shook his head but squeezed my hand tighter. “An ailment of the lungs, it was. Nothing I could do for her . . . and your eldest daughter?” he inquired, delicately, for he was privy to Ana’s troubles. “Have they found a cure for her?”
“No,” I said, my heart bleeding even as I resigned myself to it. “We still visit Ana, but she no longer recognizes us. She’s trapped in the past, but at least she’s happy there.”
“That is a consolation,” he agreed, gazing at me with sympathy. And then we both managed a bittersweet smile. “Do you ever—” He broke off, then forced himself to start again. “You’re still very handsome, you know. Bright and lively as ever.”
I flushed to receive such a compliment in my fifty-second year.
But Mac’s purpose was not to flatter. “In my younger days, I argued the equality of the sexes,” he said. “But the world is more difficult for women now, I think. Have you never considered marrying again? Some quiet, lazy man of inherited wealth who knows nothing of politics or war? Or a fat funny fellow to talk nothing to you but business and bagatelles?”
I laughed. Of course I laughed. But I realized there was a serious question beneath the jest. Mac was the only person ever to dare ask. And maybe the only person who could ask. He’d been witness to our courtship. Attended our wedding. He knew how much I loved Alexander and only wanted happiness for me. And having contributed to the secret trust fund that had enabled the survival of my family, he understood, too, all the ways in which a new husband might secure for me an easier existence.
But I remembered what I said to Alexander when he professed jealousy that I should wear a pendant with Washington’s name near my heart.
Near to my heart, but not inside it, for there is room there for no man but you.
That was still true. And in answer to Mac’s question, I didn’t hesitate. With a shake of my head, I said, “No. I could never consent to remarry. There could never be another man for me.”
How could there be? I hadn’t married a man. I’d married a mythic hero who’d driven a carriage of the sun across the sky. No other husband could ever measure up and it would be cruel to make any man try.
“I understand,” Mac replied with a sympathetic sigh. “I only hoped to divert you from tilting at windmills.”
You think I’m a fool—a romantic Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
I smiled to hear the echo of my husband’s words. “Well, since Hamilton cannot tilt any longer, those of us who loved him must do it for him.”
“Then this is just the place to do it,” Mac said as we crossed a bridge over the Eastern Branch of the Potomac. “Welcome to Washington, Mrs. Hamilton.”
*
OUR NATION’S CAPITAL was not yet a city. At least not to my eyes.
It was little more than a loose collection of urban landmarks laid upon a rural landscape, with wide muddy lanes—a jarringly humble place for the seat of a federal government. Nothing so grand as Philadelphia, or New York, or even Baltimore. And only two sections of the proposed congressional building were complete. There was no dome as you’d see today. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder what Alexander would have thought of this place. Would my husband have seen the potential in the half-finished buildings and the architecture that recalled the ancients he loved so well? Or would he think it a clumsy, monstrous effort built upon the backs of the Negro slaves we saw in wretched circumstances upon every street corner?