Sweet, stupid, Eliza, still the fool.
Always the fool.
And now I was left to wonder, who were Alexander and Angelica? Who were they really?
Chapter Forty
June 1814
Harlem
HOW WILL YOU get on here by yourself, Mother?” William asked while I unlatched the shutters to let fresh air into the long-neglected house at the Grange.
On leave from the academy at West Point, my nearly seventeen-year-old son had worked himself into a lather carting chairs and lamps and personal items into the house. But now, red-faced and dripping with sweat, William looked ready to pack it all back into a wagon if I should change my mind.
None of my sons approved of my decision to move to the home we once more owned, away from the city, our friends, and my work at the orphanage. Yet in the aftermath of my sister’s death, I welcomed the isolation of the country where no one would see the darkness that had crept into my heart.
“I won’t be alone,” I reassured William. “I’ll have Lysbet and Little Phil. And there’s no reason to waste money paying rent in town.”
That much was true. Having only the youngest two children in my care now, I could undertake their education myself and hire back Mr. and Mrs. Genti to help me keep up the place. Because at least this house was mine, even if the man who built it was not . . .
Who was Alexander Hamilton?
A traitor or a patriot? A visionary or a fool? A gentleman or a fraud?
That’s what I wanted to know, and now it kept me awake all night reading the mountain of letters, pacing in fits and starts. Like Hamilton. Though my project was at once humbler and more ambitious than a pamphlet or a treatise or a book defending a new form of government. Mine was simply to learn the truth.
And there was more to read now than ever. Because I’d never stopped collecting my husband’s writings. For the biography and for myself, I needed them. And in the ten years since he’d died, I’d hunted down thousands of letters, pamphlets, and reports from everyone and everywhere. Political essays and financial treatises. And, of course, account books, in which I now found that in the year Angelica came to New York without her husband, Hamilton paid her expenses. Not just those I’d known about, for which Church was to have reimbursed him—but unspecified expenses, too, as if Angelica had simply presented him with receipts for her shopping trips. He’d also rented rooms for her, in addition to her house.
What rooms? Where were they? And why had she needed other rooms when she’d had that luxurious town house? I couldn’t fathom it.
And, then, in the very next entry in the ledger, I found that Hamilton had purchased himself a closed coach.
Ugly images rose to my mind.
I’d never been to Europe, where it was common for noblemen to keep mistresses, but I could guess how a gentleman might plan clandestine meetings. Secret rooms reached by a closed coach with curtains drawn. A beautiful woman inside whispering in French to a man hungry for her appreciation . . .
I remembered precisely how Hamilton was that year as secretary of the treasury. He’d likened himself to a veritable prime minister with all the powers and privileges. He’d believed himself in command of a whole nation, so why should he be denied the caresses of any willing woman?
But that was before the yellow fever, I told myself, trying desperately to salvage anything from our life together. Alexander was changed after the fever. A different husband. A better man. And Angelica, when she moved back to America, was a changed woman. The most reliable, generous, and loyal sister that any person could have.
Because they were guilty, the devil inside me whispered. And they lied to you. They lied to you all your life and all of theirs. To their very last breaths.
Blinking back acid tears, I realized these poisonous doubts could put the lie to my whole life. Yes, I had evidence, but it didn’t prove the case. Where, but in death itself, might I ever confront either my husband or my sister and have an answer?
I needed to stop this mad inquiry.
Like my father before me, I needed to exert the self-discipline Hamilton lacked, the ability to let a thing alone when pursuing it could end in despair.
But in the end, and perhaps inevitably, I’d become more like Hamilton than Papa.
For I carried Angelica’s box of letters, and my inquiry, up to the attic, where, assailed by a cloud of dust motes that floated in the light of my lamp, I made of the private space a makeshift office for my investigation. There, amidst crates of papers in the stifling heat, I sat hour after hour, hunched over yellowed pages, sneering at Angelica’s coquettish missives, taking satisfaction that at least Hamilton hadn’t bundled her letters in a sentimental ribbon.
Perhaps he hadn’t loved her. But had he loved me? Had either of them ever loved me? Or had Alexander and Angelica clung to each other in the fevered sweat of lovemaking, laughing at me all the while?
When there was nothing left to read, I spied the engraved wooden strongbox with leather buckles where Alexander kept his old military uniforms and ornamental swords.
His glory, I thought, with a contemptuous snort. And all at once, I wondered if that was where I’d find the definitive evidence I was seeking. Perhaps my husband kept some treasured token of his love affair with Angelica just as she’d kept that garter. Perhaps I’d find a matching ring, with a clipping of her
