So, there it was. Finally.
I swallowed as competing reactions fought to be voiced. I was proud, of course, but also worried about how we could manage as his duties became more demanding. As it was, he was so often gone, leaving me almost always alone to bear the heavy burden of our domestic responsibilities—not just the children but also our occasionally insufficient means.
But even more, and perhaps ridiculously, I nursed a little ache that he was only now telling me something others already knew. Going back to our little shack at De Peyster’s Point, he’d always brought me into his work. I’d helped him in the writing and publishing of The Federalist. So I suppose I’d taken the liberty of thinking that we were partners in the enterprise of his career.
“That’s a great honor, husband,” I managed. “Am . . . am I the last to know?”
Alexander blew out a breath and pulled my back to his chest. “I didn’t wish to concern you with it until the details were confirmed, and now they are.”
So it was decided, then. It was a decision that would determine my future, and the happiness of my family, but I wasn’t consulted as a partner would be. I was told. And it made me feel childish and naive and small, not like the prime minister’s wife, which I was to be, after all.
“I should like to have known you were considering it,” I murmured, knowing Robert Livingston also wanted that job, and if it went to my husband it would create an even deeper rift between our families.
“You know why,” Alexander said, frustration causing his voice to rise. “I brought this government into being and I’m now obligated to put the machine into some regular motion.”
It didn’t escape my notice that he hadn’t actually responded to what I’d said, and that turned my hurt to resentment. “May I ask the salary?”
“I predict about thirty-five hundred dollars.” It was so far below our already stretched income that I feared to take a breath. Perhaps sensing my panic, he said, “It is a financial sacrifice, I know.”
“No. I don’t think you do know.” I’d kept the burden of that knowledge from him, well aware of how he resented dependency. So while he went about accepting payments from clients in barrels of ham and sending money to his ungrateful and dubious relations in the West Indies, I’d made certain that he didn’t know about the loans from Papa or the extra shipments of food from Mama. Dinner came to his table on plates given to me by my sisters, and he never asked how it got there. Alexander didn’t know how I patched clothes for one child to pass down to another, how I stretched our stores of root vegetables from season to season, or how I traded homemade preserves and table mats in exchange for wine to serve important guests.
He turned me to face him, and his eyes were an ocean storm. “Before we married, madam, I asked you countless times if you could be happy—”
“As a poor man’s wife, yes. And have I or the children once complained? That is not my concern, Alexander,” I said, my heart aching that he would question my loyalty.
“Then what is?” But he didn’t allow me to answer before sitting up and charging on. “I’ve shed blood, Elizabeth!” Though he burned hot, he wasn’t often a man to shout, but the moment I mentioned the little ones, something seemed to have snapped in him, as if he felt I’d impugned his honor as a father. “I’ve killed men in the cause of this country. And how shall I answer my children—or God for that matter—if it should all be for nothing?”
God? That he—who had only reluctantly consented to baptize our children at Trinity Church—should fling salvation at me!
You are not the only man who shed blood in the cause of this country, I wanted to say. And having been forced so often to listen to chatter about forms of government, I knew the point of a republic was that nothing should rest entirely upon one man. Surely the whole enterprise would not fall to pieces simply because thirty-four-year-old Alexander Hamilton did not have command of its accounting books.
But I didn’t say any of this for fear he would bury me in an avalanche of arguments. Instead, I kept quiet, and what he mistook for submission seemed to ease him. Heaving a breath, he pulled me to him again. “My angel, the treasury is where I can do most good for the country. And this consideration must outweigh every consideration of a private nature.”
It was a reminder that I was a general’s daughter. A colonel’s wife. That ours was a family that had led soldiers in the cause of the country and must see it through troubled times to safety.
Perhaps I was more saintlike than I’d wanted to admit, because I found myself softening to the one approach that had the power to cut through my anger—patriotism. Moreover, I knew what a godly woman would do. A saintlike woman. She’d resign herself to the will of her husband and master, and devote herself with resignation to his decree. Besides, if Church could stop loving Angelica, who was so charming and agreeable that she’d fascinated royalty, how easy might it be for Hamilton to stop loving me?
Suddenly, the hurt I felt that he hadn’t consulted me felt petty, so I didn’t give voice to it. Not when I wished to right the wrong I’d caused between us. I gave a little nod. “Of course, Alexander. I understand.”
His expression softened and he fastened those irresistible eyes on me. “This position is what I’ve been hoping for—planning for—all along.”
And all at once I knew it was true. All those treatises on economic policy. All the late-night conversations with Papa and the powerful financiers of New York. All the books
