No fever. No chills. No aches. Not a trace of them.
I’d gone to sleep so weak I couldn’t walk, much less dress for breakfast. But now I had the appetite for a hearty meal and the energetic desire to cook it. Doctor Stevens forbade that we should exert ourselves in such a way—but he said that no harm could come of a gentle stroll, to stretch our limbs. So I gingerly donned a muslin chemise and Alexander pulled on only a shirt and breeches. And together, warily, we emerged blinking into the bright yellow sun, walking together to a quiet field where lingering wildflowers dotted the dried stalks, and where yellowing leaves rained gently down upon us from the trees.
I couldn’t remember a time walking anywhere with my husband when the world was so quiet and peaceful and beautiful. A portrait of nature painted by a divine hand. Perhaps we’d already died. Perhaps this was the quiet and peace of heaven. But then, where was God?
Matching my husband’s stride, I asked, “How do you feel?”
“Much recovered,” he said. “And you?”
“Much recovered, too.” And though I feared to speak the words aloud, I thought it best to face it bravely. “Which means we are soon to die.”
“Betsy,” Alexander scolded with enough sternness to tell me that he had his wits about him and knew the strange progress of the disease as well as I did.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked, knowing he hadn’t made his peace with God.
And yet my husband, who’d once seemed to crave oblivion, asked, “What have I to fear? A pleasing calm suspense. Let the Earth rend. Let the planets forsake their course. Let the Sun be extinguished and the Heavens burst asunder, were it not for the dread of our children to be left alone.”
I crossed my arms at an answer that could only be made by a man who had given the matter some thought. “So, you fear that we’re dying, too.”
“But I wouldn’t have said it.”
This hardly seemed the time for him to finally learn to govern his tongue. “I’d rather not waste time pretending all is well.”
His eyes squinted in vague amusement. “Do you know that is the first thing I loved about you? You’re entirely without guile.”
Now I felt vague amusement. “Such flattery.”
His shoulders rounded defensively. “It’s true. I didn’t want to love you, Betsy. In truth, I tried not to love you. But your sincerity allowed me to trust you. And I’ve never completely trusted in anyone else.”
“Surely that is to overstate it.”
In answer, he stared far away down the dusty road. “I was too often the victim of bad characters in my childhood. Unscrupulous persons happy to make a dirty, hungry, begging, bastard boy imperil his soul for a bit of supper.”
He never told stories about that childhood. Never explained how he’d been made a victim of unscrupulous persons. Certainly, he’d never revealed anything he’d done to imperil his soul for a bit of supper. “Will you tell me how?”
Hamilton’s jaw tightened, released, then tightened again. “Only if you insist, because it’s deeply humiliating. It will also likely vanquish anything that remains of your love and make me hate myself as an inveterate sinner besides.”
I didn’t insist. I only walked beside him in silence.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Poverty leaves a tarnish on a boy with no parent to guide him. An indelible stain. But when I met you, a pure angel without pretense, I was vain enough to hope that loving you would cleanse me instead of spatter you with the muck of my past. And I am sorry, Elizabeth. I am unworthy of you. I am a creature of a mud pit that I never can seem to climb out of, no matter how hard I try.”
Yet, he did try. Everything he’d done had been a mad scramble to escape. To persuade the world that he was not that dirty, hungry, begging bastard boy, but a man of true stature.
To persuade me of it.
I’d watched him climb and claw his way back again when he slipped. And I loved him best when, in cold adversity, he’d find within himself the spark of his genius and stoke it to an inferno. But I didn’t need him to blaze with glory. I only needed his love.
Anger, after all, does not obliterate love, I thought.
And I still loved him as strongly as the day I first consented to be his wife, perhaps stronger now that I knew him better. In these moments, which might be my last, I had to honor that love or die bitter and alone. “You were never unworthy of me, Alexander. If anything, I’ve been unworthy of you. I’ve not been the wife that you’ve needed. I hope you’ll forgive it.”
“You have been the best of wives and best of women, beyond what I deserve—”
“Alexander,” I broke in, belatedly realizing that though he’d failed me, I’d failed him, too. I’d known how to be a soldier’s wife. I’d grown up knowing. Be strong, be brave, be like my mother. But I’d had no inkling of how to be Alexander Hamilton’s wife.
And how could I? How could any woman know how to be the wife of a lightning rod? A man who electrified his enemies as well as his friends. He was not merely a soldier nor a statesman. He was a man who was, almost single-handedly, forging an economy, a government, and a nation. He didn’t need the Finest Tempered Girl in the World.
He was a lion who had needed a lioness. And I had been a lamb.
I’d been too attached to our friendship with the Burrs to have foreseen or prevented that betrayal. Too awed by Jefferson’s reputation and eloquence to suspect him for the cold-blooded Jacobin that he was. And too fond of James Madison to suspect he might be an
