“We haven’t,” I said, unable to bear her assumptions any longer. “I have granted him certain—certain liberties from the love I have for him, but not the last. It was his decision, too. Because his own parents were not wed, he refuses to risk the same shame for me, or for any child of ours.”
“He said that?” She was clearly surprised, though without any good reason that I could see. “Alexander has many excellent qualities, to be sure, but I hadn’t thought him to be a gentleman of such high and fastidious honor.”
“Why shouldn’t you think well of him?” I said in warm defense. The truth was that I’d been as eager in offering those liberties to my person as he’d been in claiming them: proof enough of how noble he truly was not to press for the final one. “Has he ever given you indication that he is anything less than a gentleman? Has he ever shown evidence before you of dishonorable intentions?”
“Have I ever accused him of those things?” she asked with maddening innocence.
“Even now you have done exactly that by implication!”
“Then may I offer my most heartfelt apology, Eliza, for it was never intended that way,” Angelica said. “All I wish for you both is that your marriage, whenever it occurs, is a long and happy one.”
Her apology was so abject and her manner so soothing that I’d no choice but to accept it, especially on the last day we were together. That was my sister’s nature: as Papa said, she could be the first to jab a stick into a bee’s nest, but she was also equally quick to calm the insult with a ladle of honeyed sweetness.
I gave one final sniff by way of acceptance, and returned her handkerchief, wet with my tears.
“I’m not entirely blind by love,” I conceded. “I’ll grant you that my Alexander is like every other man, and not without his flaws. He worries overmuch that he is beneath me, and can become impatient when he cannot achieve his goals as quickly as he wishes. He believes himself too slight compared to other more sizable soldiers, and he’s not as pious as I might wish for the sake of his Christian soul. But he is honorable and generous and surpassing kind, and the most honest gentleman I’ve ever known. I know in my heart that he will never lie to me, and few other women can say that of the men they marry.”
But if I expected Angelica to agree with me for the sake of sisterly cheer, I was sadly disappointed. Instead her face grew serious, even wary.
“Do not say that of him, Eliza, I beg you,” she said. “That he is honorable and generous and kind to you I will not deny, but there is no mortal man who is entirely honest.”
Although ordinarily my first reaction to this would be to fly to my love’s defense, there was this time a cautionary directness to Angelica’s manner that stopped me, and made me take note, even as I tried to divert it.
“Perhaps that can be said of your husband,” I said, hedging. “But I don’t believe my Alexander is cut of that particular cloth.”
“But he is, Eliza,” she said softly. “They’re both brilliant, worldly men, and determined to make the most for themselves of what life presents. We wouldn’t find them so fascinating if they weren’t.”
Still I shook my head, unable to reconcile Alexander’s glorious dreams for the country with Mr. Carter’s more mercenary trading.
But Angelica would not be deterred. “I cannot stop you from trusting him, Eliza, nor do I wish to,” she said. “All I ask is that you not trust too much, and guard yourself. Oh, he may not lie to you outright, but I assure you that in the course of your marriage there will be omissions that he’ll justify and half-truths that he’ll dismiss. Some shall make you laugh and others, alas, may make you weep.”
I made a great show of untying and then retying the long silk pink ribbons on my hat, snugging them close along the nape of my neck below the bottom of the cap, as if this deliberate tidiness would resolve the unsettling questions that my sister now raised. I remembered how Kitty Livingston had cautioned me regarding Alexander’s ambition and habits, and now here was Angelica doing the same. I respected them both, and I’d be a stubborn fool if I didn’t at least consider and weigh what they’d said.
And yet I thought also of the look in Alexander’s eyes when he kissed me, how when he held me I felt as if I were the most cherished of women, how he said he loved and trusted me above all others. I remembered how he had sworn he’d only make me cry from joy, never from pain or sorrow, and I believed him now as I’d believed him then. Surely a vow such as that must account for something. Surely if he loved me as I knew he did, he would not lie or tell me half-truths, as Angelica predicted. He wished me by his side always, our lives combined into a single shared future.
No, not my Alexander.
I turned to head back to our house, the late afternoon sun now bright in my face, and I looked upward to feel its warmth on my cheeks.
“All I ask is that you take care, Eliza,” Angelica said, falling into step beside me. “I pray that you and Hamilton will be the happiest and most blessed couple under Heaven, and all of this will fade away as an unnecessary caution, unneeded and long forgotten.”
“Thank you, Angelica,” I said, brushing aside my hat’s ribbons as they blew across my shoulder in the breeze. “I will take care, as you wish, even though I don’t doubt Alexander’s love for me.”
She nodded, but with resignation, not agreement.
“That’s all I would ever dare ask of you,” she said. “But remember, dear sister, that the easiest men for us to love are often the same ones who hurt us the most.”
CHAPTER 8
Albany, New York
July 1780
It was Papa’s decision that Mamma and I return to Albany in the middle of June. This was the same time that Lady Washington had chosen for her departure from the encampment, too, making it an obvious, and seemly, choice. Because Mamma was unwell, in her stead I oversaw the servants packing our belongings and (not wanting the owners of our hired house to think ill of our housekeeping) giving the house a thorough cleaning before we left it.
Most of all, I resigned myself to the inevitable separation from Alexander, with my only consolation coming from the fact that the army remained mired in Morristown, with no summer campaign as yet decided, let alone begun. Although Alexander was as restless as every other man still in the camp, I secretly rejoiced, grateful that the lack of fighting preserved him from danger.
Until, that is, the seventh morning in the first week of June.