Perhaps Alexander hadn’t believed his sweet, docile wife could contemplate such a thing because he paled. “Betsy, of all times to even muse—”
“Papa would take me back at the Pastures,” I said, idly twisting the interlocked gold bands of my wedding ring as my voice gained strength. “And his grandchildren, too. I am not without options. There’s only one thing that compels me to live with you, to cook your meals, to tend your house, to warm your bed. To admire your brilliance. To stay with you, at your side, even against a mob. And that one thing is a love you have sorely abused.”
In a flash of temper, he snapped, “There is also the matter of marriage vows.”
“Vows you failed to honor,” I shot back.
My shot must have hit its mark, because he buried his guilty face in his hands. Still I gave him no quarter; he was, after all, the one who taught me that if blood must be drawn, you must strike at the most vulnerable place.
“You say you were lured to that woman’s bed. Maybe you believe it. But I know better.” His shoulders tensed, as if he would argue, but I stopped him with one word. “Reynolds.” I spit the name, dragging in a few ragged breaths. “I couldn’t place it at first. It buzzed about like a gadfly, stinging me until at last I remembered, all those years ago, how you went to taverns seeking out the man who’d passed a slander about you . . .”
I stood up from the sofa, arms crossed over myself as I paced.
“A nobody, you said at the time. A ne’er-do-well named James Reynolds, from whom you could have no satisfaction. And yet, you wish me to believe it’s only by happenstance that, years later, you fell into bed with that man’s wife?”
Alexander colored. “How can you believe otherwise?”
“Because there’s one thing I know about you.” I whirled on him. “You never forget an offense. Maria Reynolds was the wife of a man upon whom you wished revenge. And a relation to the Livingstons, too. She was an opportunity to strike a blow against several enemies at once, so you took it. Never mind the blow you dealt me. As long as you had satisfaction.”
A long silence followed. One so long that I didn’t know whether to fear the chasm between us or welcome it. In the end, he denied nothing. “Betsy, I can never cease to condemn myself for this folly and can never recollect it without disgust, but you cannot wish to subject our children to a childhood of separation and insecurity.”
His childhood, he meant. The one that had left him with these dangerous vulnerabilities and destructive compulsions.
But I wasn’t the one to subject them to such a possibility, so I said, “I wouldn’t wish that. Yet, in trying to cure you of your fear of abandonment, I’ve somehow convinced you that you may do and say anything, and your Betsy will stay loyally at your side. I convinced myself, too. But I think it better, in times like these, for us to acknowledge that marriage is a choice, one made, every day, anew. And trust me when I say I don’t know which choice I shall make come morning.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
August 1793
Philadelphia
BRING OUT YOUR dead!”
In the high stink of summer, when Philadelphia’s outhouses overflowed gutters and dammed up alleys filled with trash, an outbreak of illness emptied the streets of rioters. An illness that may well have prevented the overthrow of the government. For now, instead of mobs shouting in front of our house, we heard only clacking carts carrying fly-bedeviled corpses.
Yellow fever.
The same horrible illness that had killed Jenny.
The fever started, they said, amongst the dock workers. They suffered chills and tremors that eventually gave way to blackened, bloody vomit. The illness spread swiftly, with fatal effect and without known cure. People in good health one morning would drop dead the next day. In the hurry to stop the spread of the contagion by getting the victims into a grave, some were likely buried alive. And when vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs and garlic offered little safeguard against the disease, everyone who could flee the city did so.
Everyone, it seemed, but us.
As late summer turned to early autumn, Hamilton believed that the business of keeping the government going in the face of anarchy was more vital than ever. “Jefferson will make much of my supposed cowardice if I leave now. I have to set an example. If I flee, it will only increase the panic, which is depopulating the city and suspending business. But you and the children should go.”
He looked away when he said this, his profile a study in agony. And I realized that he was giving me permission. Acknowledging my power to abandon him, as I had so recently threatened to do. All of it under the face-saving cover of exigency.
No one would blame me for leaving the capital at a time like this. And after the crisis had passed, we could say Mrs. Hamilton simply can’t abide Philadelphia, but the secretary visits his children at the Schuyler home from time to time . . .
That’s how it was done in high circles. Perhaps I could make that choice. Perhaps I would make that choice. But I was not ready to make it today. “We can rent a summer house a few miles outside the city,” I suggested. “Close enough that you can return for work if need be.” Encouraged by his nod of agreement, I added, “And I could ride with you, some days. Except for the few free blacks in the city who volunteered, nurses in Philadelphia cannot be had for any price. I’ll help tend the sick.”
“I cannot allow that. You’re a mother with small children, and there’s no known immunity to the disease.”
Alas, he had no immunity to it either.
The next day, returning from his
