“Let them wait,” Lafayette said, offering me his arm. “Hamilton is more important.”
Having no way to refuse him without exposing myself, I took his arm, but anxiety seized me as we made the short carriage ride to Trinity Churchyard. “For your itinerary,” I said, hoping to distract myself from the clawing dread, “there are other benevolent societies you might visit, almshouses and the great hospital, too. You might take in the Trumbull painting at the Academy of Arts, and I’ve no doubt the Society of the Cincinnati would host you for—”
“Dear sister, is it so strange that I wish to visit graves?”
“Oh. No, of course not,” I said, swallowing down the nerves that had me rambling.
Lafayette’s shrewd gaze told me he sensed something amiss, and I was relieved he didn’t press the point. “As a young man, I would have thought so. But then, I did not expect to live this long.”
“Considering the way you’ve habitually thrown yourself into danger for the cause of liberty, it is rather a miracle that you’re still alive.”
“You are not the first to say so.” He chuckled, but then his smile faded. “Is it too painful for you to visit Hamilton’s graveside?”
“No.” I folded my gloved hands in my lap. Then, unable to withstand his scrutiny, I finally admitted, “Yes, it’s painful. But a duty too long neglected.”
“I understand,” Lafayette said with a sympathetic nod. He couldn’t possibly understand, but I smiled politely. “After all these years, I go too little to visit where my Adrienne sleeps her final sleep.”
I realized, almost with a start, that he’d been a widower nearly as long as I’d been a widow. “Is your wife buried far from where you now reside?”
Lafayette nodded, his eyes going to the window. “She wanted to be buried with her family. A mass grave in Paris, where, after being guillotined for the misfortune of noble blood and a relation to me, the bodies of her loved ones were dumped. It is sometimes too difficult for me to go where I must bear the weight of it upon my shoulders. Instead, I made a shrine of Adrienne’s room, still as she left it, and where it seems I am less separated from her than anywhere else.”
This sentiment was familiar to me, having myself sought in vain for the essence of Alexander in this world. And I was moved by the raw pain in his voice for a loss experienced nearly twenty years before.
Unfortunately, his embarrassment at having betrayed that pain was obvious and he pleaded, “S’il vous pla?t, pardonnez-moi. It is only that I wished many times to show my wife this country, and now, here I am without her, welcomed in a manner that exceeds the power to express what I feel. Thus I cannot resist an opportunity to confide my anguish to a friend who can understand.”
I could understand. I once pored over my husband’s letters every night, trying to recall the inflections of his voice. And every morning, gazed upon his portraits and bust, trying to remember the lines of his face. “General, you must never ask forgiveness for confiding in me. I know this same unhappiness well.”
He let out a breath of relief. “It was worse in the beginning. Having married so young, I was so much accustomed to all that she was to me that I did not distinguish her from my own existence. I knew that I loved her and needed her. But it was only in losing her that I finally see the wreck of me that remains. Now, I am not unsatisfied with my excellent children or friends, but I recognize the impossibility of lifting the weight of this pain. This irreparable loss.”
“Yes,” I whispered, because emotion rose like a knot in my throat as he eloquently echoed my own feelings. My whole life had been fused with my sister and my husband, and having lost them both to death and betrayal, I also lost myself. I put my hand upon Lafayette’s and whispered, “You must believe that your loving wife wouldn’t wish you to carry this weight.”
Though Lafayette didn’t look at me, the corner of his lips hinted at a smile. “No, she would not. My sweet companion was a forgiving woman and an angel who, for thirty-four years, blessed my life.”
It was the word angel, spoken so reverently, that triggered a memory of Alexander whispering it against my hair, my ear, my neck. And my mind threw up a now familiar defense against these memories whenever they assaulted me.
It was all a lie. You never knew him. You never knew him at all.
Perhaps that was why I murmured, with something akin to envy, “You may at least take consolation that after so many years of happy marriage, you achieved perfect knowledge of one another.”