Page 24 of My Dear Hamilton

Chapter Twenty-Two

September 1791

Philadelphia

A FTER A BLISSFUL summer with my family in Albany, I returned to a new house. Situated just across the street from the president’s mansion in Philadelphia, it was bigger and more majestic in every way with Corinthian pilasters, dentil molding, and arched windows. My new drawing room alone was twenty-five feet square, and Lady Washington’s voice echoed in its empty confines. “How lovely.”

It was lovely. It was also more than I thought we could afford on my husband’s paltry government salary. But when I expressed this worry, Alexander said he’d take a loan from Angelica’s husband, and that we must keep up appearances.

Perhaps Lady Washington agreed, because she leaned in to confide, “I shall be so grateful for you to entertain here, in my place.”

“I could never take your place,” I said.

Though I knew she was weary and longed for the quiet solitude of Mount Vernon when she confided, “They call me the first lady in the land and think I must be extremely happy, but they might more properly call me the chief state prisoner.”

I laughed. “Then I certainly would not wish to take your place, even if I could.”

A sparkle came to her eye. “Oh, but you’re too young to deny yourself the pleasure. When I was your age, I enjoyed the innocent gayeties of life. Thanks to the kindness of our numerous friends, my new and unwished-for situation is not too much a burden. That is why I am delighted we are closer neighbors. With a little bit of furnishing, this fine new house shall become the social center of the city.”

Should that prove true, I would rise to the occasion. I’d learned from my mother how to set a fine table and behave with decorum. I’d learned from my sister how to dress and to flatter. I now knew how to preside over a grand salon, and Hamilton expected no less from me.

“It will need lights,” I said, fretfully, hoping that my sister could send me elegant chandeliers and torchères from London. Rustic lights and lanterns would not do for the secretary of the treasury, for whom our previous abode had become suddenly unbearable. Too small for a growing family, my husband said. Too small for a man of his stature, he meant, a man whose portrait now hung in City Hall. A man whose department of government was growing every day, and whose power grew larger with it.

Certainly my husband’s physical stature had become somewhat larger. Sedentary toil had taken its toll. But I rather liked the softer lines of Alexander’s face, and the new weight of his arms around me, as if it somehow made his need for me more substantial. In truth, I liked it so well that when the winter’s snow came, I wasn’t surprised to discover I was again with child. And my husband startled at my suggestion for a name, should it be a boy. “ John ?”

“After your friend,” I said, gently, hoping to please him. But instead of it drawing him closer to me, he stared into the distance. To prevent the complete retreat that any mention of John Laurens inevitably occasioned, I quickly added, “And after my brother-in-law. If Church brings Angelica home, I could forgive him everything. It cannot hurt to remind the man of his family bonds in America...”

Hamilton nodded, slowly. “Clever. I fear I have finally corrupted you and turned you into a politician.”

“Never,” I replied, for I was still sometimes too earnest for the insincerity and idle gossip that served as currency amongst politicians and their wives. I disliked immensely the game I called Who Is Out of Fashion, in which the ladies of the town seemed to collectively decide who must be shunned for some embarrassing faux pas, exaggerated sleight—or even for wearing the wrong gown. Lady Washington’s dignity was such that she transcended the game, and my dear Hamilton teased that I was too much of an angel to know the rules. But I did know the rules of the game. I just didn’t wish to play.

Especially not now, when my husband was a man of fraying nerves.

Darting in and out of the house for meetings at irregular hours. Short-tempered with the children—even the girls, whom he doted on. If I didn’t know his urgency about the country’s business—and a vengeful obsession with keeping Aaron Burr from running for governor of New York—I might have suspected something nefarious afoot.

Especially when, one afternoon in December of 1792, my husband advised me not to answer the door to strangers when he wasn’t at home. “Are we in some danger?” I asked.

Snapping open a gazette, Alexander said, “It’s only that I have enemies in this city who would be happy to abuse my wife’s ears. And you’re too far gone with child to risk any unhappiness.”

I didn’t doubt that he had enemies. A new partisan newspaper had been started, with, as its sole aim, the destruction of my husband and his policies. And there were whispers that the paper was funded by none other than Mr. Jefferson, though I disbelieved he’d stoop to it.

All my husband’s plans, all his schemes, were working —the promises of stability and prosperity finally being realized by our countrymen. And yet, the antifederalists saw in him some manner of corrupt, power-hungry upstart intent upon crushing the rights of our states and enriching the North at the South’s expense. They used pseudonyms, but we knew the identity of at least one of the writers because perhaps no one else in the world had better cause to know Madison’s writing than we did.

And it had crushed Hamilton’s spirits to see our old friend’s formidable pen turned against us. Still, I didn’t fear little Jemmy Madison coming to my door to berate me. I couldn’t even imagine such an absurdity, and if it came to pass I should have no difficulty driving him off with a frying pan. So I couldn’t fathom my husband’s fears. “You’re sure it’s not more than that? When loyalists came to abduct Papa, we were better off for having been forewarned. If I should need to fear a tomahawk splintering our stair rail, I’d rather you tell me.”

Hamilton grimaced, as if not realizing I was making a jest. “Just don’t open the door to strangers.”

***

December 12, 1792

Philadelphia

I shouldn’t be able to remember the chill in my bones that wintry night. Or the little mewling cries of my newborn, who awakened me for milk. But I do remember. I remember how I climbed from our bed and took the candle into the nursery—only to find my daughter Ana already there, staring out the window that overlooked the street.

“Bad men are coming to get us, Mama,” she whispered, standing at the window. With a freckled nose and dark auburn hair, she was an imaginative child who invented beautiful songs and countless ways to amuse herself. But like her father, she was easily agitated.

“Why are you awake, my darling? No one is coming. It’s only your dreams.” I shooed her back to bed before I saw them— two shadowy men lingering across the way near the president’s house.

They stooped in the darkness against a low brick wall, the light of a lantern between them, their breaths puffing into the air. Then a newcomer joined—a lady—though no woman of good reputation would be on the streets alone with two men at this hour. They bent their heads, motioning toward our house.

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.

***

“ B ETSY .” K NOCKING 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 flinched, 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 ?”

Our voices awakened the baby, who gave a stretch and halfhearted cry before settling again.

My husband was too clever a man not to realize his blunder but was too hot-tempered to retract. Instead, he took me by the arms and gave me a little shake. “Let us reach an understanding, you and I. You would never betray me, Betsy. It isn’t in you. But I would forgive you if you did. Do you understand? I’d forgive you anything, so long as you loved me. For love is the power that binds us. That, and our children, and the life we have together.”

I’d forgive you anything, so long as you loved me.

He’d turned upon me the full blaze of his extraordinary blue eyes. The heat of his body. The power of his charisma and an appeal to our love, and yet, I whispered, “I don’t believe you.”

His grip tightened. “You do believe me. I’ve caused you pain, but I love you. Deep in your heart, you know it’s true.”

What did that matter? My heart, after all, had proved to be an untrustworthy instrument. The only thing I could rely upon was my head and cold, hard reason. And so I asked, “What price did you pay? You said you paid the man. How much?”

He swallowed hard and stared a long moment. “Just over a thousand dollars.”

Nearly a third of his income in any given year. A sum so shocking that I pushed his hands away. “Please tell me, at the very least, it was your own money,” I bit out.

“God. Of course. I couldn’t bear for you to find out, Betsy. Would a man who did not love you pay so much?”

He meant this to be a branch for me to cling to while I drowned in humiliation. I grasped at it, only for my sanity. “Well, now I know. So, they have nothing more to hold over you.”

He blanched. “They do. That’s why he was at the door last night. Reynolds has been released from jail, but if I don’t get him clear of the fraud charges, he’ll tell a story to the investigators. I cannot do what he wishes, but I will meet with him this morning and persuade him to keep quiet anyway.”

Now we come to the real reason for this confession, I thought. He’s been forced to it.

For there was, indeed, something Hamilton dreaded more than my discovery of his infidelity, and that was an end to his administration. He believed that in these early years of the American experiment, faith in him was the same as faith in the government he served.

That if Hamilton was thought to be corrupted, the system he built would collapse.

Alas, I couldn’t say that he was wrong.

Now, spent of his confessions, my husband eased himself back upon the bed and nestled our baby boy in his arms. Stroking Johnny’s peach-fuzz head, Hamilton whispered, “I know I’ve done wrong, Betsy. Even if you forgive me, I cannot forgive myself for risking that our children be thought the descendants of a thief who stole from the country he was entrusted to defend. I have only ever wished to give my sons an honorable name in which to take pride...”

An honorable name. It’s all my husband ever wanted. And when his father hadn’t given it to him, he made one for himself out of nothing but sweat and courage.

Now that name belonged to our children. And should our children suffer for their father’s sins?

Though I should be weeping, in that moment I was too numb to fall to pieces. For a long moment, my head was a maelstrom of confusion. But then, clarity stole through. “You cannot rely on your blackmailer to keep quiet. Better to summon the investigators, tell them the truth, and throw yourself upon their mercy, as gentlemen, to keep your private failings in confidence.”

“Summon them here ?” Hamilton’s eyes flew open. “With you and the children...”

I nodded, swallowing over fury and pain. “Invite them into our home. Let them see me and your little ones. Remind them who will pay the price for wagging tongues.”

As if apprehending what I’d have to endure, he groaned. “I couldn’t ask you to do this for me.”

“Good thing, because I would not do it for you.”

I would do it for my children.

It was, after all, the only wise, politic choice.

And Alexander Hamilton had, at long last, made me a politician.