“But before I go,” Monroe added, “there are a few things that weigh on my mind.” Thereupon he stared at my sister, where she stood between her husband and mine, laughing with the grace of an angel. And I sighed with pity, counting him as one of the many men who fell so helplessly under my sister’s spell.
“You need a distraction.” I laced my arm through Monroe’s, patting his hand with great familiarity—and he groaned as if I’d tortured him.
“Betsy.” Some emotion seemed to catch in his throat and afflict his tongue. “I would never wish for you to suffer . . .” He stammered as if unable to spit it out, until he blurted, “There are still those amongst us who give a care for propriety.”
I was beginning to form some vague notion that Angelica and my husband must have violated some rule of southern gentility.
The always stiff Monroe never did understand our New York ways. Much less did he understand my gregarious family and our close-knit relations. I was grateful that my orphaned husband fit in so easily. Monroe—the man who nearly toppled Mama’s sideboard because I offered to nurse his wound—never would have, I thought. And realizing how badly the man needed to be set topsy-turvy, I began to laugh. “James Monroe, you need a wife, and I know just the introduction to make.”
I’d spotted the Kortright sisters, with beautiful Elizabeth in their midst, as they made so brilliant and lovely an appearance as to depopulate all the other boxes of the genteel men therein. By the end of the evening, Monroe seemed at least a little intrigued by the young beauty I’d befriended at Trinity Church. And in making an introduction between them, I counted it a night’s good work done.
I believed, perhaps foolishly, that whatever misunderstanding about my husband had worked itself into his friend’s mind was wiped out in that powerful flush of infatuation with the girl who was to later become his bride.
But I hadn’t understood how stubbornly James Monroe could hold on to a thing—even a thing into which he had no business prying.
No matter who it hurt.
No matter whose life it destroyed.
Chapter Seventeen
December 1786
New York City
A BARREL OF HAM?” I asked with a long-suffering sigh, as my husband rolled his wages into the kitchen where I stirred a thin vegetable soup. With three children now—the youngest, seven-month-old Alex, upon my hip, it was becoming harder to make do, a situation resulting from the fact that my husband preferred to take on charity cases or those that established legal precedents instead of more lucrative but pedestrian disputes over trade.
“A barrel of ham is worth more than continentals,” Hamilton said in defense of himself. “Besides, we can’t eat a continental for dinner.”
That is true enough, I thought as he took the baby and held him aloft. “You make a persuasive argument, Colonel Hamilton. Tomorrow, I shall cook up some ham and potatoes for us with the butter Papa sent from the Pastures, and we’ll invite the Burrs for a feast before church service.”
At this, he frowned. “Does your father send food to all his daughters?”
I’d seen before how prideful he could be, and how much he chafed against anything that resembled dependence. So I said, “Well, Papa can’t very well send it to Angelica over the ocean or it would spoil, but he’s sent food to all his daughters before. Besides, without good butter I can’t replicate Mama’s cookies for the children this holiday.” Alexander didn’t seem appeased by this explanation, so I tried to subtly remind him that we were bickering about butter because he insisted on representing impoverished persons. “Which client paid in pork?”
“The spinster lady I mentioned.”
“The one caught stealing lace doilies, painted fans, and underclothes? Did she have some innocent defense?”
“No,” he replied with a hint of chagrin. “But I remember all too well what women must resort to when they’re destitute and desperate.”
At this declaration—at once so rare and revealing of the power his dead mother still held over him—I stopped stirring the soup and glanced over my shoulder. But the floridness of his complexion and his reluctance to meet my eyes warned me not to say any more about it. And I remembered that however spare our circumstances might have seemed to the daughter of Philip Schuyler, we lived comfortably. Far more comfortably than my husband had as an orphaned boy all alone in this world.
Our children were loved and cherished. They were fed and clothed and had a roof over their heads, thanks to Hamilton’s talents. I couldn’t call myself a Christian and resent him for using those talents to ease the suffering of others. Even the family in the West Indies of which he so seldom spoke. He’d made a loan to his estranged brother who was too disinterested in us to write except when desperate for money—money I was sure we’d never see again. Alexander even pleaded in vain for word from the father who abandoned him, so that he might render the old man assistance. That my husband also helped much more worthy persons, in my view, like impoverished spinsters, persecuted Tories, and downtrodden Negroes was a testament to his good heart—and I both loved and admired him for it.