My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  Then these plotters, these obvious ne’er-do-wells, sent her, a slender slip of a thing, to climb our icy stairs and rap at our front door.

  Don’t open the door to strangers.

  Still cradling our babe, I remembered my husband’s admonition. And a shudder ran through me as I realized how easily he might be lured outside by a young woman pretending at distress. Rushing to our room, I found Alexander already donning a robe.

  “Don’t answer,” I said, hurriedly telling him what I’d seen.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” he replied, retrieving a pistol—one I hadn’t guessed he kept in a drawer by the bed until that very moment. “But I will be cautious.”

  I stood at the landing, listening as he made some low murmuring answer to the woman at the door, sending her away. But when he didn’t come back up, I went down to find him seated on the bottom stair, his head in his hands.

  I went to him, filled with dread. “What is it? What’s happened?” I took his hand. That’s when I realized he was cold, his fingers gone to ice, and given his obvious torment, I could do nothing but guess. Good news did not come in the dead of night.

  Remembering how learning of John Laurens’s death had so devastated Alexander, I could only imagine the news was of a similar nature now. So I feared it was Lafayette, another brother-at-arms, who last we’d heard, awaited execution in a prison. Contrary to Mr. Jefferson’s sunny predictions, the French Revolution had taken a very dark turn. A political faction calling themselves Jacobins had somehow seized the reins of government, arrested the French king, and condemned Lafayette as a traitor. Our French friend had fled France but had been captured and imprisoned in neighboring Austria, last we heard.

  “Is he dead?” I asked, my throat tightening with emotion as I knelt beside my husband, preparing for bitter grief. For a time, it had seemed as if we could save Lafayette. My husband supported the president’s effort to formally request Lafayette’s release. Our ambassadors—William Short and Gouverneur Morris—tried to negotiate his freedom. In London, Angelica recruited rescuers to break Lafayette out of prison. Even Secretary Jefferson discovered a loophole by which payment for Lafayette’s war service could be sent for the upkeep of his family. Lafayette was the one thing all American factions agreed upon, but now I feared all efforts to save him had failed. “Has he been executed?”

  “Who?” Alexander asked, blankly.

  “The marquis,” I said, as much bewildered as relieved. “Have you received news?”

  “Bad news,” he said. “But not of Lafayette. There is something I must tell you, my angel.” I nodded, steeling myself, even as relief flooded through me that it was no bad news about our friend, and I hoped he still survived. “There’s been a fraud in the Treasury Department involving stolen war pensions.”

  I let out a breath, for it was merely a government matter, though why such a thing would be communicated in the mid-night and by a woman at that, I couldn’t imagine. “How terrible. I hope the culprits may be prosecuted to the full extent.”

  “They won’t be,” Alexander replied, his voice now as shaky as his hands. “Three of Mr. Jefferson’s partisans have, as a consequence of this, begun an investigation into my conduct.”

  “Your conduct?” I asked, stunned. My husband’s gaze fell away. He tried to speak, but from that notoriously eloquent mouth, came naught but silence. In the hurry to put together a Treasury Department, my husband had trusted the wrong people. His former assistant had only recently been thrown into debtors’ prison for speculation schemes, setting off a financial panic. Now, some corrupt clerk had stolen government documents right under Alexander’s nose. “They’re going to blame you.”

  Hamilton glanced at me, then away again. “They’ll blame me for the fraud and for anything else they can lay at my doorstep. Speculation. Corruption. These are the charges.” Suddenly my husband leaped to his feet, pacing, while I tried to rub the chill from my arms. “And Jefferson’s paper once called me a cowardly assassin who strikes in the night!”

  I thought to quiet him so as not to wake the children, but it was better to see him angry than anguished. Better by far. My husband was quite possibly the most combative man I knew, and if he was ready to fight, he would win. “Have a word with Madison,” I suggested. “Whatever your disagreements, he knows your character and—”

  “Madison is my personal and political enemy now,” Alexander insisted. “To think I once mistook him as being naive, but incorruptible. The sort of man who has so many slaves at his beck and call that he’s seldom had to so much as wipe himself clean in the privy.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” I said. I knew he was angry with Madison; I was, too. But I didn’t want to believe we were enemies.

  “Isn’t it? Madison has fallen entirely under the spell of Jefferson’s utopian philosophies. Either that, or Madison has always been a facile, deceitful little man. He won’t help me.”

  At a loss as to what else to do, I followed my husband into his study, where broken feather pens littered his desk and an untidy stack of books made me feel a neglectful housekeeper. My hands to my face, I shook my head. “Alexander, none of this makes any sense. Why would a woman come to the house in the middle of the night to tell you this?”

  On a groan, he braced against the top of his desk. “They must have believed it was the only way I’d open the door.”

  I heard what he said, but his explanation only added to my confusion. “But why would they use a woman to communicate the charges? Who are these investigators?”

  “Monroe is one,” Hamilton answered, bitterly.

  Well, that was some good news. Whatever the other Virginians might do, Monroe had fought in the war beside my husband. “He’ll exonerate you when he finds no evidence of wrongdoing. He might chastise you for hiring scoundrels, but he’ll see you’re not guilty.”

  Guilty. That word made my husband wince. Why should that be? He wasn’t guilty. He couldn’t be guilty. Not my honorable husband. He could never be involved in a scheme to cheat soldiers’ families and defraud the treasury. And yet, he stared bleakly out the frosted window onto the now-empty street.

  “Alexander, tell me you had nothing to do with these swindlers . . .”

  I expected he’d fly into high dudgeon at the mere suggestion. At the very least, he should have turned to shout Good God, woman, is that what you think of me? But instead, to my increasing dread, the man who was almost never at a loss for words still said nothing.

  The bottom of my stomach fell away. I could not—would not—believe that my husband would steal from the treasury, for even if he were such a knave, such a blackguard, he was a man of such brilliance and easy financial connections that he could find a thousand untraceable ways to make a fortune. Yet, in the back of my mind, a treasonous thought lingered.

  Is this why he thought we could afford a new and bigger house?

  All at once, my husband said my name with another groan. “Betsy. My God, what have I done?” With that, he sank to his knees, pressing his cheek against my belly in supplication, and I felt heartsick. What had he done? To see my husband—my strong, proud husband, who could face bayonets and cannon fire—on his knees before me was too much.

  Not knowing what else to do, I stroked his hair.

  And then, to my horror, he wept. “I’m sorry, so sorry . . .”

  “Oh, no, Alexander.” Tears pricking at my eyes in a panic, I insisted, “You didn’t betray your country. You couldn’t.”

  “I didn’t betray my country.” He made fists of my sleeping gown as he rasped, “I betrayed you.”

  It all came out then, in a pleading, impassioned confession. As if he were arguing before judge and jury. But I heard it as if through a tunnel, as if I’d floated away and watched us from a distance. A woman had come to our door more than a year ago with a tale of woe, abandoned by an abusive husband and left in a strange city with her little daughter. A story tailor-made to appeal to my husband’s sensibilities. My husband—the
bastard of just such an abandoned woman. My husband, the special patron of orphaned children.

  Suddenly, the woman sent to our door made much more sense . . .

  “It was a trap,” he explained, his eyes imploring me. “My enemies must’ve known I would feel pity for her circumstances. This woman, this Maria Reynolds, she pleaded for money, just enough to return to her Livingston relations in New York.”

  The Livingstons. Kitty’s family was somehow a part of this?

  “I took her for a respectable lady,” Alexander continued. “At least, until I delivered the money to her at her house, where she led me to her bedroom and—”

  “Oh God,” I murmured, a wave of nausea washing over me. How had it taken me this long to understand what he was confessing?

  Adultery. He was confessing adultery.

  Sweet, saintly, stupid Betsy.

  Look hard enough and there’s always a woman, my sister had said. And I’d dismissed it, smugly refusing to believe anything or anyone could ever come between us. Now, Hamilton looked up with tears in his eyes. “My darling, please—”

  “Oh God,” I said again, jerking away from the grip of his hands.

  Hands that I’d supposed to have touched only me since we’d wed.

  His hands, his lips, his . . .

  He clutched me like a drowning man, still explaining. “Mr. Reynolds discovered his wife’s infidelity and threatened to tell you if I didn’t pay him.”

  He kept talking and talking now. But I could scarcely hear a word because my mind whirled in a tornado of questions and confusion.

  Was Maria Reynolds beautiful? Even Angelica agreed that Alexander appreciated beautiful art, beautiful furniture, beautiful music. My husband had an eye for beauty in everything. Oh God, was that Mrs. Reynolds who’d been at our door just now?

  “Betsy, you must believe me,” Hamilton pleaded. “It was done by design to tempt me.”

  He wanted some answer of me. Some reply. But I was too much in a daze. Too lost in a barrage of brutal imaginings.

  Did he kiss the back of her neck, the way he kissed mine? Did she smell of sweet perfume or a lustful feminine musk instead of milk and sweat and motherhood like me?

  Hamilton finally rose and pressed his forehead to mine. “You must say something, my angel. If only to condemn me for the sinner I am. You must say something.”

  But I said nothing at all. Because words were his weapon; silence was mine. And he couldn’t win an argument if I didn’t start one.

  Instead, in agony, I slipped from his grasp and seemed to float up the stairs, light and insubstantial, as if I meant nothing to anyone. Not even myself. I’d been the woman Alexander Hamilton chose to love and was, therefore, of consequence in the world.

  What was I now?

  Inconsequential.

  If this story was true. If it was real and not some nightmare. I couldn’t shake myself awake, but perhaps if I went back to sleep . . .

  And so I scooped our newborn baby into my arms, and crawled back into bed. But then, I got back up and turned the key in the lock to keep my husband out.

  * * *

  “BETSY.” KNOCKING FOLLOWED. “Please open the door.”

  The humility in my husband’s voice—a voice that was never humble—told me it was no dream or nightmare. And in any case, I hadn’t slept. For that matter, neither had he. He’d been calling quietly for several hours now. And I’d been pretending not to hear. I couldn’t bear to see him.

  The only person I wanted to see was Angelica. The only person I could tell. The only person who would understand and keep my secret. Could I go to her? Simply wander in my sleeping gown to the docks and sail across the sea to my sister’s arms? I supposed that was a fantasy. Much like the life I’d been living, believing in a man who’d betrayed me. This man who’d allowed me to believe that I knew him so intimately.

  He was a stranger.

  It was only after nursing the baby, passing water into a chamber pot, and washing my hands and face that I finally unlocked the bedroom door to find Hamilton there, his eyes bloodshot.

  “Well?” I asked, wondering what he could possibly have to say for himself.

  “I must dress,” he whispered, apologetically. “I have an early appointment.”

  Of course he did. Alexander Hamilton was a very important man. And I was just a betrayed wife. The business of the government, and his all-important administration, would go on. So, I sat at the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb our sleeping son, and watched my husband dress.

  At the appearance of his strong, well-formed arms—his naked torso as he stripped off his sleeping garments—I felt a stab of renewed pain. He was still as handsome as he’d been as a young officer; perhaps more so now, with a little gray at his temples, wearing a mantle of gravitas. Any woman would want him. Every woman did want him. And once, at least, he’d wanted them back, an instinct I’d been naive enough to believe love and piety held at bay in the dozen years since we’d taken our vows.

  Now I couldn’t stand the sight of him, so my gaze fell to our son. “Was her child there when you made love to her?”

  We both startled at my question, for I hadn’t meant to speak. And I doubt those were the words he’d expected to hear from me. “Dear God, Betsy, it wasn’t love. I’ve told you—”

  “You said she had a daughter,” I broke in, unwilling to allow him to make a jury argument. “Where was the child when you went to this woman’s bed?”

  A flush of scarlet crept up his bared chest. “The child was sleeping behind a curtain. You must understand it was a very squalid little apartment, to give the impression . . .” He trailed off, perhaps realizing that the picture he painted didn’t make a better case. “It was a sin.” He knew adultery was against the laws of God. I’d be lying to say that the sin against the Lord pained me more than the sin against me.

  But I didn’t feel worthy enough, in this moment, to think his crimes against me merited notice. For he’d made true every ugly bit of gossip I’d ever heard or read about in the papers, and they all rushed back to me now.

  “He’s a ginger tomcat. I doubt I’m the only lady to which he has pleaded, but the war . . .”

  “He’ll surrender his sword to any pretty girl who wants it. Three by my count in the last month alone . . .”

  “He will not be bound by even the most solemn of all obligations! Wedlock.”

  I’d prided myself on being such a practical woman, but I suppose I must’ve been a dreamer to believe that ours was a marriage of true hearts. And now, as all my illusions were most cruelly stripped away, I found that I couldn’t ask the questions I wanted to ask for fear of the answers.

  Is she prettier? More interesting? Do I not satisfy him? Had I ever satisfied him? Was it only the one time? Was it only the one woman?

  I’d be a fool to ask. And I didn’t want to be a fool ever again.

  “They want to ruin me with this, Betsy.” He sat beside me. “They can’t win an argument against me. They can’t win a vote against me. So they used the only true weakness I have. You.”

  As if I were the liability! I gave an indignant little snort. “I mean nothing to you.”

  He winced. “Never say it. You’re my angel. My beloved—”

  “I’m not beloved,” I hissed, lurching off the bed, away from him.

  “You are,” he insisted, coming to take my chin and forcing me to look at him. “It would never have come to this if I didn’t love you, after all.”

  I quite nearly slapped his hand away. Was he blaming me? I was struck with a memory of the time I refused him when he bent me over the table. Of nights I’d been tired, or suffered a headache, or was preoccupied with the children. A wife had a duty to satisfy her husband’s needs, and this I’d apparently not done. But the only thing worse than to hear him blame me now would be to accept the blame.

  I simply refused.

  Faced with my quiet, defiant fury, he reached to tuck a tendril of hair behind my ear, but I fl
inched, and he dropped his hand. “Betsy. They could never have blackmailed me if it weren’t for my love for you. Your happiness is most dear to me. How could I, but with extreme pain, wish to afflict you with this confession?”

  “The confession is not what afflicts me.”

  He cleared his throat. “You’re the only person I dread to disappoint. If Reynolds had threatened me with death, I’d have faced it more manfully than the specter of hurting you. To prevent that, I would have paid nearly any price.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I whispered, seething.

  “Yes, you do,” Hamilton said. “And you must forgive me.”

  “Oh, must I?” The look I gave him should’ve turned him to stone.

  Somehow, it did not. “I surrendered to temptation, and I ask your forgiveness. Remember, Betsy, that you are a Christian . . .”

  That he should dare throw that in my face!

  Yes, God commanded forgiveness. Perhaps that should’ve been enough to soften my heart and resign me to the difficulties of this marriage that I’d undertaken in the Lord’s name. But it wasn’t. Wrapping my arms around myself, as if to guard from the chill in my own voice, I asked, “Would you forgive me if I surrendered to such temptation?”

  He reeled back like a man kicked by a horse. It was a moment before he could even muster the composure to argue. “An unfaithful husband cannot be compared to an unfaithful wife, whose actions cast doubt on the legitimacy of their children. And what man would—”

  He stopped, abruptly, before he said worse.

  But I had a suspicion as to what he’d been thinking, and rounded on him. “If you think I’ve not had need of avoiding the affections of other men, I disabuse you of that notion now.”

  “No, no, of course that is not—” His color deepening, he interrupted himself to ask, “What men? Name these men who have pressed affections on my wife and I shall call them out!”

  “Call them out?” I laughed, darkly. “You, prostrate with your own crimes, shall call for a duel of honor?”