But as far as I was concerned, the best part of having New York City as the country’s new capital was that there was no further need for my husband to travel in the service of his country. He had resigned his place in the state Assembly, and had every expectation of a position in the new federal government here in New York once President Washington was inaugurated.
In the time since we’d first moved to Wall Street, I do not believe that Alexander and I had passed an entire month together without him having to make a journey away from home for one purpose or another. Now he slept in his own bed beside me every night, and we both were much the happier for it. The last time I’d seen Alexander this exhilarated had been before he’d departed for Yorktown, and the final battle of the war, though how relieved I was to think that there’d be no such further bloodshed and mayhem in his life.
We waited not two hours for Angelica’s ship, but nearly four, yet those long hours were swiftly forgotten when I was at last able to embrace my dearest sister. We both wept with joy, and she clung to me laughing because her legs were so unsteady on land after the long voyage. Then it was Alexander’s turn, and fresh joy and tears and laughter combined. I kept touching her arm, her shoulder, her hair, reassuring myself that she was truly with me. Even after weeks aboard ship, she was beautifully and expensively dressed, with an enormous plumed hat that must have been anchored with countless pins to keep from blowing away with the harbor’s breeze. But I thought with concern that she looked tired, doubtless from traveling, and older, too. I reminded myself that she’d lost a child; that would be reason enough to have caused the new web of fine lines about her eyes.
Because she had traveled with only her lady’s maid, we insisted that she stay with us. I feared our house might seem unbearably humble after Down Place, their estate near Windsor, as well as their sizable house in London, but she declared our home to be delightful and snug, and made herself instantly at ease. Of her niece and nephews, only Philip remembered her, yet she quickly won over the others, including Fanny, with dolls and toys from the best shops in London. For Philip, she’d brought a set of specially painted lead soldiers.
“Do you see his blue and buff uniform?” she asked, leaning close to Philip as she stood one of the soldiers on her open palm. “He’s dressed in the same uniform as your father and his men wore at Yorktown.”
Philip’s eyes shone bright with awe, and so did Alexander’s, too, and I knew our son would not be the only one playing with the soldiers.
But my sister had brought gifts for us as well, a set of French histories, luxuriously bound in gold-trim leather for Alexander, and a gold necklace set with honey-colored citrines for me. I gasped when I opened the case, and glanced swiftly at Alexander. He had always declined my father’s generosity, and I worried that Angelica’s costly offerings would vex him as well. But I suppose because they’d come from Angelica, he only nodded, and urged me to put the necklace around my throat now. I did, with Angelica fastening the clasp for me.
“Most handsome, Betsey,” Alexander said while my sister beamed. “You must wear that to the ball.”
“Oh, yes, Eliza, you must,” exclaimed Angelica. “The color favors your coloring to perfection.”
I smiled, and touched my fingers lightly to the necklace. In truth the necklace was much more to my sister’s taste than my own, and the large stones were weighty and chill against my skin. I would rather have worn the strand of garnet beads (much like those worn by Lady Washington) that Alexander had given me to the ball as I’d planned, but now, to please them both, I knew I’d no choice but to wear my sister’s gift.
Later, when the children were finally asleep, the three of us settled into the parlor, and of course the talk turned at once to politics. Falling back into the patterns of our girlhood, I preferred most often to listen while my sister conversed with my husband, and content myself with stitching a new dress for my daughter while their quick, clever words darted back and forth around me.
“There was never any doubt that His Excellency would become president, was there?” Angelica asked. After dinner she had changed into a loose-fitting sultana of shimmering pale blue silk, and now she sat comfortably curled on the sofa with her feet tucked beneath her. “But Mr. Adams as vice president! How being second—even second to His Excellency—must gall that insufferable man.”
“If Adams believed he’d win the presidency, then he was likely the only one in the country who did,” Alexander said. He, too, had changed into more comfortable dress as he often did in the evenings, replacing his coat and waistcoat with a banyan over his shirt and breeches, and his favorite and thoroughly disreputable slippers on his feet. “I suppose you must have crossed paths, if not swords, with Adams in London to have conceived such an ill opinion of him.”
Angelica sighed dramatically. “Mr. Church and I knew him in Boston, and we knew him in Paris, and then there he appeared again in London, and now you tell me I must know him here in New York. Will the man give me no peace?”
I glanced up from my needle. “Mr. Adams may well say the same of you, Angelica.”
At once Angelica puffed out her cheeks and squeezed her brows together, the very picture of Mr. Adams.
“Preserve me!” she said in a querulous voice. “It’s that odious creature Mrs. Church, traipsing after me clear across the ocean and back!”
We all laughed, for it could well be true. The dour and fussy John Adams was perhaps the one American abroad who’d find nothing to recommend in my endlessly agreeable sister.
“I cannot have you ridiculing the man in my hearing, Angelica,” Alexander protested, even as he still was laughing. “He seems a good enough man, and I must find a way to work beside him.”
“You will, my dear,” I said, soothing. “Mr. Adams is another attorney, and you attorneys always manage to find a way to cooperate with one another.”
“You won’t win him through his wife, Hamilton, the way you usually do,” my sister warned. “Have you met the lady? She is shrewd, in the way of Boston ladies. She will be suspicious of you on pure principle, and refuse to be charmed.”
“Is that a wager, ma chère soeur?” Alexander said, addressing her fondly in French. “That I cannot charm Mrs. Adams?”
“No, it is not a wager,” Angelica said sternly. “To offer such a wager would be no better than picking your pocket. Mrs. Adams shall judge you to be a coxcomb, Hamilton, and compared to her husband, she’ll be correct.”
Alexander feigned incredulity, even as he laughed. “A coxcomb?” he repeated. “That’s a bit strong.”
“It’s the truth,” insisted my sister, and I couldn’t disagree. With his French tailor and his love of bright silks, my handsome husband always stood out amongst a crowd of more soberly dressed gentlemen, particularly the ones like Mr. Adams and Mr. Madison who dressed all in black like stout crows. Still, I could sense my sister preparing to skewer poor Mr. and Mrs. Adams further, and thought it best to divert her.