In fact, I wished to be more like him.
*
A FEW MONTHS later, one of my husband’s troubled veteran friends came to our house in the middle of the night, drunk and unable to care for his motherless baby, a two-year-old named Fanny. “I’m sorry,” my husband said, when the knocking awakened me. But I wouldn’t let him apologize for the tender spot in his heart reserved for the soldiers he’d fought with.
Especially not since we’d so recently learned of Tench Tilghman’s death; Tench had never recovered from the cold he’d taken at the winter encampment of the army in New Windsor. It had festered into a lung ailment that killed him, leaving behind two daughters in Maryland, one of whom was orphaned before she was born. Alexander and I had wept together at the news. For if my husband would always have a tender heart for the soldiers he fought with, I did, too.
So now by candlelight and in sleeping cap, I went down with Alexander to help his army friend and the child. I took the wailing, red-faced girl to my shoulder, trying to console her. And some time later, after Alexander had seen his drunken friend to a sofa, I asked, “Will it be debtors’ prison for him?”
Alexander’s expression was bleak. “Worse. He’s taken leave of his senses. He broke down in my arms, sobbing like a child himself. He has nightmares of the war . . .”
I peered at little Fanny where she’d fallen asleep in my arms, dark lashes spread upon porcelain cheeks. And because I still had nightmares of the war, too, I couldn’t stand for her not to be cared for as she should. “Alexander, what if . . . we took her in?” We were too far away to render assistance to Tench Tilghman’s baby daughters, but perhaps we could help this one. “We could keep her. Just until her father can put his affairs in order.”
“Oh, Betsy.” My husband pressed a kiss to my temple and whispered, “You are the best of wives, the best of women, and the best part of me. But I can’t ask you to take on such a burden.”
“I want to.” As I stared at this man who’d once been an abandoned child, I became even more certain of my decision to take Fanny into our household. “All children need love, and we are blessed to have more than enough to spare.”
*
July 3, 1787
New York City
“This is a vile slander,” Alexander said, crumpling a newspaper in a fury.
We’d joined the Burrs on a visit to the new African Free School that my husband and his fellow members of the Manumission Society had brought into being to educate black children. And on the walk back, Alexander had purchased a gazette from a passing newsboy and become incensed by what he read.
“But no one of sense believes the rumor, my friend,” Burr said in an attempt to pacify him.
In the hopes that our countrymen had finally suffered enough that they were ready to see the wisdom in forming a true government, my husband had gone to Philadelphia with James Madison in May to serve as delegate for a federal convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. What Alexander and Jemmy wanted, I knew, was more than to revise them. They wanted to draw up a new constitution altogether that would provide for a stronger central government. But after only two months, my husband had returned, more frustrated than before, complaining it was a waste of time and that he and Jemmy were thwarted at every turn.
And now this newspaper article accusing him of conspiring to summon the Duke of York from England to start a new American monarchy.
It was ridiculous. Burr was right that no one of any sense believed Alexander was trying to bring an English king over us again. But I already knew how much damage people with no sense could cause. And so did my husband.
“Ladies,” Hamilton said abruptly to Theodosia and me. “Please excuse me. Burr, will you see my wife safely home?”
“Where the devil are you going?” Burr asked before I could.
“To find out who started this rumor,” Hamilton grumbled, waving the crumpled newspaper as he strode away on the cobblestone street.
“Hamilton,” Burr called after my hot-tempered husband to no avail.
“Will you go with him?” I asked, exasperated, but hoping that Burr’s measured approach to life would keep Alexander from trouble.
When Burr hesitated, Theodosia reassured him, “Oh, go, for goodness’ sake. Betsy and I can find our way without a guardian.”
Burr chuckled, kissed his wife’s cheek, then rushed after my husband.
Watching them go, Theodosia sighed. “With rumors like that in the papers . . . sometimes I fear people are looking to start a civil war.”