Thankfully, my uncle, Dr. Cochran, had helped to inoculate our troops against the dread disease and Mama assured me that Hamilton had no symptoms of smallpox. Moreover, despite the breakdown in his stamina, Alexander remained in good humor. And I will confess, with some delight, that not all the time he spent in our bed was as an ailing convalescent. Despite my being eight months along, I was only too pleased that the comfort he required was not entirely of a medicinal nature . . .
“Is the war finally over?” I asked in the early days of his recovery as he wolfed down a breakfast of hot tea, eggs, ham, and my mother’s spiced pastries. My question was put softly, in a voice that struggled not to tremble, because even though everyone seemed to think the victory decisive, there had been too many disappointments to put my faith in it.
“Perhaps a few skirmishes are left,” he said, reaching for my hand and brushing his lips to my palm. “But if there should be another occasion to fight, it will not fall to me. For us, my charming wife, the war is at its end.”
How blithely he said it, and I was foolish enough to believe him. Foolish because I was desperately in love and puffed with pride. “And you’ve won it,” I said, having cut out every mention in every newspaper to keep as tokens of his glory. So many others had worked to achieve this victory. Many had died for it. But I believed—and still believe—what I said to him that day. “You are a hero, Alexander.”
And, to think, even Burr had once called him that.
“A small feat in this family,” Hamilton said with a smile that attempted, but failed, to be self-effacing. “Why, after seeing that tomahawk gouge in the staircase, I’m ready to recommend Peggy for a commission in the army. And yet, if you are inclined to reward me as befits a hero, I shall not mind.”
“Oh?” I asked, delighted at the sparkle in his eye. “How shall I reward you, Colonel Hamilton?”
In answer, he trailed his fingers over my swollen belly. “Present me with a boy.”
I laughed, kissing his face. Every inch of it. “Won’t a girl answer that purpose?”
He grinned. “By no means. I protest against a daughter. I fear that with her mother’s charms, she may also inherit the caprices of her father, and then our daughter will enslave, tantalize, and plague every man on earth.”
“I do see your point,” I replied, feeling a bit enslaved by the charismatic pull of his eyes, and tantalized as he drew me under the covers.
I knew that in the coming weeks I would be called on to exhibit a sort of heroism of my own. Though my mother had assured me that giving birth was not to be feared in a family such as ours with such hearty Dutch constitutions, I remembered how sick she’d been after the birth of the little brother who died in my arms. And lest I dismiss that as merely a function of Mama being a matron of nearly forty-seven years, my sister Angelica’s most recent birth had also gone hard. Even now, after two months, Angelica had not quite recovered her health, and the little boy was sickly. So my fears for myself were eclipsed by my fears for the child inside me, whom I loved already, boy or girl.
I would love my child with every breath for as long as I lived, whether it obeyed its father’s commands to be born male or no. And that gave me courage. Then, in the new year, after a whole day’s labor, my child emerged from that first breath, a culmination of all his parents’ wishes and desires, and a reflection of all that was best in each of us.
A son. A little boy with eyes like his father’s and thick, dark, unruly hair like mine. Ten fingers, ten toes, with wondrously fat little legs. Papa affectionately called him a piglet, but in my eyes, my son was perfect in every way!
And if he did inherit Alexander’s caprices, he would undoubtedly enslave the fairer sex, for he’d already captivated me. In truth, my baby stole my heart upon his first little cry.
While Mama oversaw the birth, my sisters had been attending me, Angelica on one side, and Peggy on the other, holding my hands through the screaming while Alexander paced the black and white floor downstairs, knocking back glasses of my father’s best imported wine as if he could not be sober while my sisters forbade him from the birth room. But once the baby was cleaned and swaddled and put into my arms, my sisters finally gave up their vigil, and abandoned their posts so that my husband could meet his son.
Tears sprang to Alexander’s eyes the moment I surrendered the child into his arms. I knew my husband could be tender—there was a softness in him that others might have taken for weakness. But these tears, as he stooped to kiss me and our baby, were fierce expressions of love. “We’ll call him Philip,” he decided, choosing to honor my father rather than his own.
Then he vowed that he would never abandon me, or our son. And I believed him.
* * *
I FELL IN love with my son that spring. In truth, I fell in love with the entire world. Because with the war nearly over, everything seemed new. And in my baby’s eyes, everything seemed possible.
Philip was as sunny a child as ever lived. One who so commanded my heart that I could refuse him nothing. And I knew my indulgence was not to be remedied by the influence of a stern father. Because in those delightfully domestic months, one might be excused for thinking that—like Ben Franklin and the lightning rod—my husband had invented fatherhood.
Fractured by our son’s every cry and transported to
