As the days passed, the thought of escape became ever more tempting, especially when Hamilton rode off to Philadelphia to chase down Monroe, all to no avail. My husband felt forced now to make a public confession and therefore wished for me to have our baby in Albany.
“It’s for the better,” Alexander said. “As I imagine that you cannot much like the sight of me at present.”
I settled beside him on a trunk he kept at the foot of the bed. “You imagine wrong.” After all, it seemed as if some different man had broken my heart. And in any case, that heart was four years mended. Alexander and I had each grown, together, into new people. Better people. Though I would never reconcile myself to the cause of the change, I couldn’t be sorry for it. We’d made of our marriage vows a more sacred thing than when we first spoke them. And this child in my womb, who would join us in only a few weeks, was the living proof of that. “Though, Angelica thinks it would be easier for me to explain to Papa.”
At the mention of my father, Alexander actually shuddered. “How glad General Schuyler will be for setting aside his reservations in giving his daughter in marriage to a man of low birth . . .”
I wanted to reassure him that my father would forgive him, but I couldn’t be sure of that. What I said instead was, “Perhaps we mustn’t explain anything to Papa. Or to anyone. Your accusers are not entitled to a reply.”
Hamilton nodded, folding his hands together. “And yet, the country deserves to know its system is not a corrupt scheme to line my pockets, otherwise these Jacobins will dismantle it and the American experiment will fail.”
He’d convinced himself this was one more sacrifice he must make for his country. But I thought, Give the mob this drop of blood and it will only whet their appetite.
Before I could say as much, he added, “If I don’t answer these charges of corruption, they’ll take my name. I cannot save my private reputation, and perhaps I don’t deserve to, but at least my public honor may be preserved. Which is all I have to give our children. Our children ought to always be able to hold their heads high with pride.”
“And they shall,” I said, though I fretted at the chime of the clock that announced Philip was quite late in coming home from an outing with his friends. “Whether or not you dignify this with a response.”
My husband rubbed at his cheek, which was darkened by a shadow of stubble. Circles darkened his eyes, too. “I would like to believe that, but I remember what happened when my mother was accused in court of whoring and she did not see fit to dignify it with a response . . .”
All at once the specter of a woman long dead rose between us again. His mother had condemned her children to a life of illegitimacy by letting the accusation pass. Perhaps that is why Hamilton never, ever, let anything pass . . .
And knowing this, I would not ask him to.
He caught my fingers between his and sighed. “The rest of the children can stay here with their governess, but let Philip take you to the Pastures. For your sake and his. He’s almost a man grown, now. His friends will have heard the gossip. I do not wish for him to feel compelled to defend me. Or maybe, I cannot bear to face his disappointment . . .”
Downstairs, we heard the door open and close, then footsteps trudging up the stairs that could only belong to a troubled boy. Perhaps my husband was right. “But I worry to leave you now, Alexander. Especially now.”
My husband took a breath. Then another. “Eliza, if you stand beside me the public will eviscerate you. With such men as those hounding me, nothing is sacred. Even the peace of an unoffending and amiable wife. They will hurt you because of their fury against me.” He took my face in his hands and stroked my cheeks tenderly. “No man who loves his wife could wish this upon her. No loving father could wish his child born into such circumstances. I realize that I have forfeited my right to command you as a husband, but I command you in love to go. To take care of yourself, to keep up your spirits, and to remember always that my happiness is inseparable from yours.”
Stand by him and die, renounce him and live.
Once, I wondered what I would have done if I’d been caught in such a conundrum. I did not face death, of course, but the choice before me seemed strangely similar, and the answer no clearer or easier now.
* * *
August 1797
Albany
The river washed over my bare feet with a pleasant coolness, my petticoats bunched up at my knees. Seated on the dock next to Papa, who held a fishing pole in his hand and wore a broad straw hat upon his head, I squinted into the bright sun and imagined I was a girl again. Perhaps my father was imagining it, too, because, puffing his pipe, he put a worm onto the hook for me, as if I didn’t remember how to do it.
A week before, Hamilton had seen me and Philip off at the sloop, simultaneously solicitous and morose. And Angelica dashed off a note that same night to tell me that my dejected husband had gone to her house thereafter and stayed well into the night, unable to speak of anything but me.
Meanwhile, we all tried to speak of anything but him.
On the deck of the sloop, my fifteen-year-old son treated me as if I were made of glass. Philip had become a man already, I’d realized with a motherly pang. He took his quick wit and devilish smile from his father, but the rest of him was all Schuyler. Tall, dark, and loyal. Having been commanded by his father to watch
