Her face was flushed with agitation, and she paused to compose herself before continuing.
“I shall arrange lodgings for myself at once,” she said, “and leave this house before—”
“Hush, Angelica, I beg you,” I said, as upset as she. I hated to think of how someone who’d observed the affection we shared among us had chosen to misinterpret our devotion so grossly, and twist it into something it wasn’t. “You will stay nowhere but here. These falsehoods have nothing to do with you. They’re only the inventions of evil men bent on spreading rumor and scandal to injure Alexander’s good name.”
“But surely Hamilton will see it,” she protested. “This is entirely mortifying.”
I sighed, dreading his reaction. “He is in court today, and may not see it,” I said. “I’ll speak to him when he arrives home. I’m sure he will agree that the last thing we should do is lend credence to these lies by having you move to other lodgings.”
He came home promptly that evening and in a cheerful mood because his case had been ruled in his plaintiff’s favor. After he’d greeted the children, I followed him into his library, and closed the door after me.
“We must talk,” I said softly, not wishing to be overheard. “There is a letter in today’s—”
“About the ‘harem of sisters’?” he asked, shrugging out of his coat. “I saw it. I’d hoped that you wouldn’t.”
He seemed surprisingly even-tempered, which made me wary. “Angelica saw it first.”
He winced. “I am doubly sorry for her sake as well as yours.”
“I told her that we must ignore it,” I said swiftly, praying that this time he’d listen. “I told her that to dignify such outrageous lies with a reply would only give them fresh life. You agree, don’t you, Alexander?”
He sighed, and dropped heavily into his armchair.
“You know I don’t like to let affronts like this go unnoticed,” he said. “To permit a liar go free only encourages him to lie again. But when I showed it to Troup—”
“You showed this to Mr. Troup?” I asked, aghast. Robert Troup was another attorney, but more importantly, he was Alexander’s oldest friend in New York. The two had shared rooms as students at King’s College and had fought in the New York militia together in the earliest days of the war.
“I did,” he said. “He pointed out several things that in the heat of the moment I had overlooked. The blaggard who wrote this stopped short of naming me, or even using a discernable cipher in his slander, so no offense was directly offered. Further, Troup said—and wisely, too—that since you and Angelica are included by innuendo, I would do better to take no notice, or risk having you made targets of future attacks. For the sake of you two ladies, I must agree.”
I sighed with relief so audible that he smiled. “Mr. Troup is a wise man.”
“Wiser than I?” He patted his knee, and I perched upon his thigh with his arm around my waist, as if we were again courting sweethearts.
“Not at all,” I said, circling my arms around his shoulders as I kissed him fondly. “But I agree that we will hold our heads high and ignore this. The next item I wish to read of you in the newspapers should be an announcement of your appointment to the cabinet.”
*
The summer passed swiftly. Angelica was still with us, and together we found much that was entertaining in the new capital. Lady Washington had arrived to take her place as the president’s wife, and Angelica and I became regular attendees of her weekly receptions at the presidential residence on Cherry Street. Although Lady Washington confided to me that she found the receptions tedious and tiring, no one who attended saw anything but the first lady of our land, as gracious as her husband was noble.
Visitors from every state crowded into these receptions, and the ladies vied with one another to be the richest in their dress. The fashion was for tall plumes worn in the hair—a fashion that Angelica whispered was required at Queen Charlotte’s receptions in the royal palace in London—but that unpatriotic fact did not deter the younger ladies from striving to outdo one another with the nodding height of their plumage, every bit as silly as the birds who’d worn the same feathers first. One of these vain young ladies had the misfortune to step too closely to the candles in the chandelier overhead, unwittingly setting her headdress aflame. Only the quick action of a young gentleman preserved the lady, if not her plumes, and his fire-fighting skills made him the toast of the evening.
There were also the usual plays, dinners, and entertainments, and because my father was one of the newly elected senators, he brought my mother down from Albany to New York, and we saw them often as well. The greatest single event of the summer, however, was a splendid and moving celebration of the Fourth of July that featured many of the officers who had once served in the army under President Washington, now united as members of the Society of the Cincinnati. My husband was one of the youngest of the company, but so many others of these brave men whom I’d recalled from the war were already becoming bowed and faded with age; the sight of them gathered together touched me deeply, and made me think melancholy thoughts of the too-swift passage of time.
In our house, Angelica made herself a favorite aunt with my children, and she was never too occupied, nor too well dressed, to take one into her lap. I suspect she lavished upon them the attention that would have gone to her own children, had they been with her; mother’s love is boundless that way. She and Philip, now eight, became especially close, and I only regretted that Angelica’s own son Philip could not have been here as well.
Alas, that first scandalous gossip which had arisen in the spring regarding Angelica and Alexander still simmered through the city, a whisper here, a snigger there, a snide remark from ladies in a shop that I was meant to overhear. The talk distressed me, for it not only belittled my husband and my sister, but also insulted our marriage, and my constant fear was that some malicious boy at school would repeat the tales to Philip. Through it I prayed for strength and held my head high, and tried to employ the genteel serenity of Lady Washington, who had endured her share of wicked gossip in her time, as my model.