At least he would have been able to do so if he’d already completed the required law studies and three-year apprenticeship before he could be examined for the bar. While the legislature had created a special dispensation for those gentlemen who’d had their legal studies interrupted by their war service, the closing date for this was late January, an unattainable goal even for Alexander. Along with many other aspiring lawyers, he argued for a six-month extension. Knowing his abilities, I wasn’t surprised that it was granted to him, but I was interested to learn that only one other veteran who likewise received an extension was Colonel Burr.
There remained another obstacle that to most men would have been insurmountable, but was only a passing challenge to Alexander. He had never formally studied the law while a student at King’s College before the war. But he had read voraciously on his own, and had learned more of British law than many other so-called scholars. Instead of relying on a lengthy apprenticeship with an established lawyer, he decided he could learn better and faster on his own. This was confidence, not arrogance, and I didn’t doubt he’d do it.
Throughout the rest of the winter and into the spring, he toiled many hours each day, reading and taking notes. He was often awake, dressed, and at work before I awoke, and I always retired to bed before he was done, a pattern that continued throughout our marriage. There was no rich library in Albany such as he’d had at King’s College; instead he relied upon the books in my father’s collection, and those in the private law library of James Duane, a well-respected lawyer and jurist, and an old acquaintance of Alexander’s from his early days in New York City.
Also making use of my father’s books was Colonel Burr, pursuing the same profession as Alexander. Occasionally I would pass him in the hall, or he would dine with us by Papa’s invitation, and he was always cordial enough, even charming, to me. But I could never entirely forget what Alexander had told me about his intrigue with Mrs. Provost, and it made me uncomfortable in his company. Mrs. Provost’s husband had since died in the Caribbean, and she now was a widow. Colonel Burr was expected to marry her, which, I suppose, would make her position more honest, if not honorable. And once when the colonel saw Alexander with me and Philip, he’d smiled, and praised him for a superior child. That sweetened my impression of him considerably, as it would with any mother.
My sister Angelica, however, didn’t trust him. “Have you noticed how little Colonel Burr speaks of himself?” she said after they’d met during one of her visits. “He smiles and asks many questions and practices his wit most admirably, but he never speaks anything of substance. It’s remarkable, really.”
I frowned, thinking. “He has always seemed to be pleasant company.”
“Which is exactly what he wishes you to think,” she said, nodding sagely. “I imagine he’s the very devil with women. You can tell from his eyes. He’d flatter a woman to agreeable distraction, and then be under her petticoats before she realized it.”
I laughed, for my sister was every bit as accomplished at flattering gentlemen to agreeable distraction, though of course without the same consequences. Lately, however, she’d other matters on her mind. During her visit, she had announced that her husband Mr. Carter was now to be called Mr. John Barker Church, his true name. Apparently the rumors that had always followed him about a fatal duel had been true, and he had in fact shot a Member of Parliament some years before, precipitating his hasty departure from London and the assumption of a false name once he’d reached our shores.
But now he’d learned that the man had only been wounded and had fully recovered, and any charges against Mr. Carter—that is, Mr. Church—were dropped, and thus he had decided to end his guise, especially with the war between our countries done. It was odd to hear my sister now addressed as Mrs. Church, but she seemed so blithely at ease with it that I suspected she’d known all along. As can be imagined, my father was thoroughly displeased by Mr. Church’s duplicity and the reasons behind it, but to my surprise, my own ordinarily truth-loving husband didn’t disapprove at all.
“Church did what was necessary,” he said, unperturbed when I told him. “He preserved his honor by the duel, and his life by assuming another name. Besides, if he hadn’t done either, he wouldn’t have come to our country, and we’d all have been deprived of his excellent acquaintance.”
“But a duel, Alexander,” I persisted. Duels were not common in Albany. To me, they were against both the laws of man and God, and a tragic waste of life. My husband, however, did not agree, and in fact during the war he had acted as the second to his friend Colonel Laurens in a duel with General Charles Lee.
Even knowing this, I could not leave it alone. “To think that Angelica’s husband would fire at a man in such a murderous fashion!”
“From what I have heard, it wasn’t the first time, either,” Alexander said, either not sensing my disapproval or choosing to overlook it. “Church doesn’t take affronts kindly. You know that of him. He’s also an excellent shot.”
Seeing no future to this conversation, I only sighed with exasperation and turned my eyes toward the Heavens. Clearly this was no more than another example of the occasional blind foolishness of men, to be found even in my own dear husband.
Yet in all, it was a blissful time for Alexander and me. Although he continued his interest in the affairs of Congress and politics in general, he seemed to be far more focused on passing the bar, and together we’d often speak of a future that now appeared quite tangible. It rankled him that we were compelled to live with my parents, but the truth was that since he’d left the army, he had no income, and wouldn’t until he could begin taking cases. I accepted my parents’ hospitality as an interim solution and no more, but for Alexander it was a disagreeable humiliation.
“The British are expected to leave New York by the end of the year,” he said one Sunday afternoon in May as we walked beneath the apple blossoms in our orchard. We’d left Philip asleep with my infant sister Catherine, the pair of them watched over by the nursery maid, and had stolen this time alone for ourselves.
“The instant the British ships sail away, Betsey,” he continued, “we’ll move to the city ourselves. The courts will be overflowing with new cases, and I’ll have my choice of the plum ones. I mean to find you a house on Wall Street, the finest house that can be procured, because that’s what my delightful wife deserves.”
“I should think we might wish to wait a few months, until the city is once again put to rights,” I said. “I’ve heard the war has ravaged the streets and houses no end.”
“All the more reason we should move quickly, before rents have a chance to rise.” He reached up to pluck a blossom from a hanging branch, and presented it gallantly to me. “The last time I was there, many of the houses were still of the old Dutch model, but I’d prefer a fine house of brick.”
I twirled the blossom’s stem between my fingers and smiled, pleased that he was thinking such domestic thoughts, if improbable ones. I was looking forward to living apart from my family and being mistress of my own establishment, but it needn’t be a fine house of brick on Wall Street.