Chapter Text
He’s different in the daytime than in the night. At night, he’s a warm heart beating against hers; he’s teacher and student, a blazing hearth. In the day he’s…
He’s pacing again.
Eliza sets another stitch in the elaborate “H” on the handkerchief she’s embroidering, watching as her husband, elegant in a bottle green coat that's a little too formal for the afternoon, walks back and forth in front of the big picture window in their sitting room. His lips move silently, and agitated fingers tapping out the rhythm of whatever speech he’s running through his head on his breeches.
Tap. Tap tap. Taptaptap.
A hopeful, uptilting rhythm. A speech of welcome, maybe.
He takes the turn at the far end of the window in front of her and she looks up, trying to meet his eye, judge his train of thought. The weak afternoon sun through the wavy glass highlights him in a back glow of bronze, like one of the figures in the stained glass at Trinity Church. But he's not frozen. It's been months since she's seen him in the middle of the day like this; long hours at the law practice, the state congress in Albany, his upstairs office, they all beckon more compellingly than her cozy front sitting room. This afternoon should feel like a rare treat, but instead his presence has her slightly off balance. She'd feel better if she could get a read on him. Understand whatever it is he's scripting out. Understand what is about to happen. But he’s lost and far away.
In the early days of their marriage she’d interrupt him when he got buried in his own head, “What are you thinking about? What are you writing?”
Alex would stop and explain, words tumbling out of him, stacking up on each other, like the notes of the new Haydn sonata she’s been struggling to master; discordant chaos until the center—the heart of it all—becomes clear, then pure as truth. She would chase his ideas as they sped past her, and he’d explain, and explain, and explain, half in his mind, half with her, and then stay up long into the night, scribbling furiously.
Better to let him be there, in his head, composing, and then get the best of him--his full focus--when he’s done. Alexander’s full focus is more intense than anything else she’s ever experienced in her life and she craves it. Gets it, too.
Just not in the middle of the day.
So Eliza returns her attention to the embroidery, watching out of the corner of her eye, his fingers drumming, his lips moving, a comforting cadence. The rhythm of her life.
Taptap. Tap.
“He’s here.”
Startled, Eliza looks out at the front walkway of the house, visible through the sitting room window. A lean figure in gray clumps toward their door. She’d been listening for the sound of coach wheels, but he must have walked.
Alexander takes three long strides to the door, flinging it open.
“James.” There is a world of emotion in his greeting: memory and trepidation and anxiety.
Eliza sets her embroidery aside and stands, brushing her skirts off, suddenly nervous at this meeting of her unknown brother-in-law. James Hamilton, carpenter, of St. Croix.
Late last night, exhausted in the private world of their bed, Alexander had spilled out his fears to her--what if he didn’t recognize him, this older brother he hadn’t seen in twenty years? What would he say? What did James want? What if he’s in trouble—will he accept help?
James bows, “Sir.”
“James,” Alexander says, his voice chiding. He seizes his brother by the shoulders and pulls him in for a hug. “Good to see you, man.”
The introductions are awkward. Eliza starts forward to embrace this new-found family member, but James is caught in a stiff half-bow. The head bob of a servant, rather than the courtly sweep of a gentleman.
He titters—an unexpected sound—and holds out a tremulous hand instead, which she shakes firmly, feeling the minute snag as the edges of his callouses catch on her gloves.
Alex sweeps an arm around his brother’s shoulders and leads him to one of the wing chairs by the fire. Rather than sit, himself, he hovers over James, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”
“I got lost coming from the docks. New York is so…big. You wrote about it, but I never pictured…”
Alex laughs, slapping his brother’s back and eliciting a wince. “Man, when I first got here I got lost six times just trying to find the boarding house. People everywhere, fast paced. You’re going to love it.”
James looks blank.
Eliza leans forward, eager to draw him in. “New York is the greatest city in the world.”
Alex’s hands wave expressively as he picks up the thread. “It’s the harbor—everything flows through us; and if we’re smart, we’ll keep it that way. You remember what I wrote you about our commerce clause?" He doesn't pause for an answer. "Listen, I was at Albany last week, the state assembly, and they tried to vote it down. Jamie, you won’t believe how trifling some of these so-called ‘revolutionaries’ are. Why shouldn’t we open ourselves up to wider trade, strengthen our position in the world?" He pushes his face forward, right into his brother's, looming over the seated man. "You know St. Croix—small, backwards, isolated—well this city ain't that, even if some of those 'visionaries' want it to be. We will not be just another stop off port for France or England, under the thumb of a crown.”
He takes a deep breath in and Eliza recognizes it as preparation for the second verse. He's in full flow now, flush warming his cheeks, eyes sparkling and alive. Eliza feels the familiar thrill as his passion catches her up and bears her along. James, on the other hand, is hunched back in his seat; Alex is overwhelming his brother. Surely he understands how special Alex is? Eliza’s looks down to find her hand curled absently around her stomach.
Alex smacks his hand on the back of James's wing-back chair with a dull thump. “Lord knows, if we don’t take action it will all come undone. But the assemblymen—Morris, Yates, Lancaster—they’re indecisive and scared. Taxes are an anathema to them, a bad word. Morris actually suggested that, as a Republic, we do away with taxes. Fucking delusional! Pandering to the idol of popularity. We need more financial stability, not less, and—Oh!” Alex grips James’ shoulder. “You haven’t seen my bank yet! The Bank of New York. Just opened two years and already issuing more stable money than the continental congress. I have a board meeting tomorrow, you can come with.”
“That sounds…” James clears his throat. “Um, you wrote that you had children?”
Alexander grins, so brilliant its seductive, and, for the first time, James leans in toward his brother, finally drawn in by Alex’s enthusiasm in that way she’s so used to seeing. And Alex is off again, doing the quick rundown summary of the family. The latest exploits of little Phillip—over visiting his Church cousins—and baby Angelica—upstairs, asleep in the nursery. Of their new secret, the fluttering heartbeat that is currently thickening her waistline, he says nothing.
Eliza studies her heretofore mysterious brother-in-law. Unbidden, Angelica’s description of a mutual acquaintance springs to mind. A cautionary tale: why we don’t stuff scarecrows with potatoes. Tall and gangling, but oddly lumpy, dressed in plain broadcloth. James Hamilton is only two years older than Alexander, but he looks...grey. Worn. It must be a hard life. A carpenter. She’s never really encountered one before. Well, talked to one. Been related to one.
She shifts in her chair, attention drawn to a small rent in the seam of James’ coat, just under the elbow. Phillip’s coats strain there too. She could fix that, if he’d let her.
Across the room, the conversation has loosened a bit, shaking off the rust of decades of next-to-no contact. James laughs at a sally of Alexander’s and asks about his law practice. Alex still has a hand resting affectionately on his brother’s shoulder, but it seems more welcome. Less of an intrusion. While talking with James, his voice has somehow both broadened and raised slightly, taking on the tiniest tip-tilted hint of what Eliza realizes with wonder must have been his boyhood accent.
“Practice the law, bro? I practically perfected it. I’ve got two, three, young clerks studying under me now.”
Eliza sticks her oar into the conversation again. “Increasing the rat population of New York to abominable bounds.”
The two men turn to her and smile. James has a slightly crooked face, one eyebrow resting a little higher than the other over his deep-set eyes, It gives his every expression the look of a baby being introduced to solid food for the first time: perpetual amazement at the complexity of the world.
Alexander finally leaves his position hovering over his brother to come sit next to her on the chaise. As he lowers himself, he registers the hand on her stomach and flashes her an intimate smirk.
“Alexander has been catching you up on himself.” From the way her husband ducks his chin briefly Eliza knows he hears the monopolizing the conversation she was carefully trying not to say. “I want to hear about you. Are you married, sir? Do I have a sister-in-law?”
“Ah, no, Mrs. Hamilton…” James pauses, a strange expression on his strange face. She can feel her heart contract in sympathy—how long it must have been since he’s said that name. “I’m not married. I thought, once, but...no.”
Alex leans forward in his seat, his own coat straining across his shoulders, “You should stay in the area. Let me hook you up with a few ladies. Eliza’s sister throws the best parties, I’m sure we could have you…”
Eliza tunes out part four of the monologue. She has always wondered, desperately, about Alex’s early life. The family he talks about so little. So much of his world is closed to her—things she can’t be a part of—that she delights over the memories he has dropped, hoards them over and counts them like jewels on a string.
Sucking sugar raw from the cane, mouth-puckeringly sweet.
The waltz his father hummed when he hitched up the horses.
And, quietly, in the depths of a dark night after they’d both been terrorized by Phillip’s first bout with the croup, polished amber memories of his mother, frozen in time. First, brilliantly alive, but lined with years of bitterness. Then, dying, choking on her own vomit, inches from him. Finally, still and white and grimly beautiful, but not at peace, never at peace.
All confidences in the confessional of their bedroom, never repeated or alluded to in the light of day. Evidence of the thing she’s most valued from their first meeting: his heart. So big and overflowing and generous, although it is sometimes—
She checks back in on the conversation; Alex is still talking.
—often overshadowed by the near-equal generosity of his mouth.
Eliza brushes a hand down her husband's forearm, a light reminder, and he winds his thoughts up with a plea to James. “You’ll stay, right? In the city, I mean.”
It hurts, almost, to see him this pathetically eager. He looks like Phillip begging for a bedtime story. Tell me more. Tell it all. Stay with me just a little longer.
“I...yeah. I would like to, yes.” James leans forward in a posture that nearly mirrors his brother’s, but with his elbows resting on his knees instead of on the arms of his chair. “You’ve come a long way, Alexander.” He looks around the small but comfortable sitting room, eyes lingering on the ornately framed miniatures of herself and the children that sit on the side table.
“And so’ve you, James.” Alex says lightly. “It’s a long way from the islands.” He tilts his head. “What brings you here anyway? I’ve been asking you for years…”
In the ensuing pause, a chunk of the log blazing away in the fireplace cascades to its doom in a shower of sparks.
James straightens up and the tenor of his voice changes, becomes almost business-like. Rehearsed. “I understand you received a bequest from Pop’s will.”
Suddenly, Eliza’s heart sinks, leaden, and lodges somewhere behind her breastbone.
Oh no. No no no.
“Yes, of course I did.” Alex’s gaze sharpens on his brother, and this doesn’t seem to be quite as much a surprise to him as it is to her. “You did too, according to the letter the solicitor wrote me.”
“I did.” James’s reddens as he works through words, halting, stumbling. “I would...I think...I feel that I am—”
“James.” The warning plea in Alex’s voice is heartbreaking.
James stands, turns and faces the fireplace, speaking his pronouncement to their andirons. “I feel that I am owed that whole bequest.”
Beside her, Alex stiffens and then stands. She makes to follow him up, but he puts a staying hand on her shoulder, then moves toward his brother.
“Why?” He tosses the challenge down like a glove.
“You know why.”
“Why?” At this second, more slow and deliberate, enunciation, James turns around. His crooked baby-face is mottled an odd puce color.
“Because he—you weren’t. Because Ma—”
“Don’t, James. Don’t say it." She's never heard him sound quite this dangerous. "Keep her name outta your mouth right now.”
“But everyone—”
“Don’t!” It comes out as a roar. Alex’s face goes stark white and then flushes an ugly crimson. He moves forward, long strides that eat the room, until he is pressed right up against his much taller brother, chest to chest. James, alarmed, backs up a few steps, but Alex follows, backing his cringing brother into the literal corner.
His words are bitten off, forceful. “Don’t you ever talk about that again. Here, in my home, in front of my WIFE!”
James sends an angry, panicked look over Alexander’s shoulder at her. Eliza can see that he’d forgotten she was even in the room.
As their eyes connect, she finally sees it—the similarity between the two men she’d been unconsciously searching for: their eyes light the same color in anger. Her heart is pounding, slow and thick in her breast and she stands in a rustle of skirts. “Mr. Hamilton, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave now. We have other engagements this afternoon.”
Alex backs up, clearing her line of sight to James, who takes a deep gulping breath in, as though he’d been choked. He looks in confusion from her to Alexander, thwarted, as men so frequently are, by the niceties of social convention. Eliza stands firm, secure on her ground as hostess. Get out get out get out of my house. I can’t fix this until you get out. He needs to leave soon, or the tell-tale heavy breathing Alex is doing through his nose will erupt again and god knows what un-fixable damage will be done.
He bows, the awkward half bob again. “Your obedient servant, madam. Sir.” And makes for the door.
Eliza heads straight for her husband as the door closes. He leans into her seeking arms for the barest instant before he shrugs her away.
“Alex.”
“Bet, I can’t. I…”
Her stomach is a hollow pit and her hands feel empty and purposeless. Eliza closes her eyes then opens them with the solution.
“Phillip is at Angelica’s. I need to go pick him up. You’ll come with me.”
It’s not a question, because she knows the answer.
XXXXX
Angelica and her husband, John Church, have taken a house on Broadway a few blocks away; a lease, in preparation for their imminent move to London. Phillip, six years old, considers the Church house and his two slightly younger Church cousins the be-all end-all of entertainment, and frequently begs to go over there. Today, with the prospect of James’ visit looming, it had seemed like a smart idea not to have him underfoot.
When they arrive at Angelica’s to pick their son up, the sounds of boys hollering are audible before the front door even opens.
“Daddddyyy!” Phillip comes flying into Angelica’s front parlor, clutching a long stick in one hand, and trailed closely by his similarly armed cousins. He throws himself at his father’s legs, then ducks behind them, using Alexander as a bulwark from behind which he wields his ‘sword’ at the other boys.
“We playin’ lawyers,” he insists, breathlessly, “like YOU!”
Alex had barely held it together in the carriage—maybe the only time in their marriage she’s seen him turn inward rather than out with anger. She’d been expecting a furious diatribe but all she got was fulminating silence. His heart and mind closed to her. Now he’s got Phillip’s solid weight leaning on him, fingers clinging to his breeches.
“Lawyers, huh?” Alexander says, his voice a little hoarse, as he looks down at his son, then across at his tiny co-combatants. All three boys and sticks are smeared with mud. “Seems about right.”
Phillip detaches himself from his father. “Le’s go,” stick thrust, “The def’dant needs me!” With a whoop, Angelica’s oldest leads the pack out of the room at a dead run.
“Walk!” Angelica hollers, with no noticeable effect. As the noise dies away into the distance, she turns to Eliza and Alex and says, dryly, “I’m thinking of getting them all Blackstone’s Commentaries for Christmas.”
“Sorry, Jel.”
“Eh,” She shrugs broadly. “So...how was—” at the last minute, she catches Eliza’s head shake behind Alex’s back and shifts tacks skillfully mid-sentence. “—the last assembly meeting in Albany? I haven’t had a chance to hear about it.”
Eliza watches her sister scan her husband, understanding lighting her eyes. Angelica reaches out and Alex extends his hand; palm to palm they touch, briefly. Then Angelica sets a light hand on the his waist and he allows her to steer him toward the couch.
“Tell me,” she insists, the demand open enough that he can take it in any direction he chooses. Alexander settles next to her, their heads tilt together and, no surprise, he chooses politics.
“It’s such weak shit, Ang. They’re just a bunch of corrupt war mongers, ‘bout to go to war with New Jersey and Massachusetts rather than sign on to my tax plan.”
The conversation takes on the familiar rhythm of their customary political fencing as he outlines his import tax proposal for Angelica’s knowledgeable audience. Eliza can feel the pit in her stomach settling a bit. She wanders over to a small settee by the fire. In a work basket by her feet is an embroidery project, clearly abandoned for some time, if the dust settled on it is any indication, but bearing Angelica’s trademark precision stitching and eclectic color choices. Smiling, she unwinds a skein of thread and sets about carefully working in the purple stem of a daisy, while, across the room, the volume grows.
“They voted you down? Who was it this time?” Angelica demands.
He rolls his eyes. “Lansing and Yates, stingy assholes. On again about states’ rights and preserving the liberty of New York. They’ll preserve us right into the grave. We must support a federal Congress, or else what was it all for?” Eliza mouths the next words along with him. “You’d think they never fought in the war.”
Angelica throws her head back in exasperation and Alex reaches up to tweak back a soft coil of her hair.
“Alex, they’re in Governor Clinton’s pocket.”
“So? Fat old goat. He’s no better.” He adopts a fatuous “Clinton” tone and quotes from memory. “I have confidence that the harmony and friendship of our sister states does not rely on our slavish obedience to the so-called federal Congress.”
Angelica shakes her head. “Clinton may be an old goat, but he knows his stuff. He’s been at the top of New York politics for over a decade. He pushed Father out and he’ll force you out too, if you can’t be smarter than you’re being right now. Do you, or do you not want to go to the convention?”
“I do.”
“Then suck it up, buttercup. Clinton is the horse you’ve got to ride.”
“It’s so clear, though,” he frets. “Why can’t they see that what we need—
“What we need,” interpolates Eliza, finishing a Prussian blue and orange bumblebee with a flourish and setting the embroidery aside. “Is to go home before Cook has to hold dinner back anymore. Where is Phillip?”
“Oh.” Angelica waves a hand, casts a meaningful glance at Eliza, sisterly communication in full force. “I actually told the boys, earlier, that Phillip could stay the night, if that’s okay with you guys. I meant to ask you when you got here but…”
“You were overwhelmed by the sheer strength of my animal magnetism?” Alexander smiles flirtatiously at Angelica and Eliza’s heart lightens. He’s back; Angelica always fixes things. She and Alex are so in synch, it’d be easy to be jealous, but instead it just feels right. My family. Coming here was a good decision.
“You know it, pookie,” Angelica purses her lips and blows him an exaggerated kiss while Eliza laughs.
Coming to Angelica is always a good decision. And Alex always comes home with me.
Eliza heads to the back of the house to say goodbye to Phillip—although the lure of cousins is strong he’ll likely never notice she’s gone. As she leaves the parlor she can hear Angelica talking to Alex, sharp and matter of fact.
“It was bad. With James.”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to your wife, Alexander”
XXXXX
The carriage ride back without Phillip is quiet; Angelica’s gift. Alex was never one to stand for quiet. Sooner or later, he’ll talk, just to fill it up.
It only takes a block.
“She never said, you know. My mother. People talked, but she never said.”
Eliza keeps silent, tilting her head to rest against the plush velvet of the arm of his coat, letting him work it out.
“I don’t look like my father, except maybe the nose, I think. I don’t really remember. But I do look like…Fuck damnit.”
She laces their hands together, runs her thumb up and down the firm length of his. He squeezes back, bare hand warming hers.
Eliza turns her face a little, letting her lips brush against the soft nap of his coat sleeve. “Phillip needs to be measured for new coats.”
He snorts an exhale. “Didn’t we just—?”
“Yes. Not two months ago, but he’s shot up again—eats like his father—and I don’t want him going to school looking shabby.” She says it teasingly, but his response is serious. Thoughtful.
“No, I don’t want that.”
“He’s excited. About school.”
Alexander smiles, leans his head wearily back against the cushions of the carriage. “Of course he is. More chances for mayhem. More ears to talk off.”
“Like his father.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s got a big heart like his father, too.”
He turns his head a little so that their foreheads rest together, his silky hair falling loose around their faces. “I think he gets that from his mother.”
Eliza encircles his wrist with her free hand, making a loose shackle and pressing his arm down into the seat, pinning him and holding him there.
He leans into the pressure and sighs, shoulders loosening; she keeps her hold on him as they fall into a comfortable silence. Alexander’s eyes drift shut. Eventually the carriage pulls to a stop in front of their house with a jar. He opens his eyes and she releases his wrist, untangling them.
Alex hops down from the carriage with his usual athletic grace, holds his hand out to help her down. As she steps to the sidewalk, he runs a thumb along the soft skin on the inside of her elbow and she thrills at the private signal, prickles of memory running down her nerve endings.
Eliza looks up at him. Eyes. He’s all eyes right now, soulful and deep.
She precedes him into the house, tugging at his hand, and they head unerringly upstairs. Just beyond the first landing, Eliza stops at the door to the nursery, eases it open and inhales the familiar powder-sour-sweet scent of baby. Alex’s arms slide around her as they gaze at their daughter, asleep under the watchful eye of her nursemaid.
Alex slides into the room past her, spares a smile for the maid, and gently curves a hand over baby Angelica’s skull, a bare caress of the small shell of her ear. After a pulsing moment, he retreats back to Eliza’s side and they quietly close the door behind them.
“I’ll write him a letter.” Alex says as they reach their bedroom. “James, I mean.”
She turns her back to him and he unhooks her bodice, then starts on her laces, each inch a careful tug and release. Goosebumps chase across her skin and he blows a hot stream of air on her nape. Her voice is husky when she responds. “That sounds like a good idea.”
She turns to face him, unbound and free, and brings her hands up to his face, tracing his cheekbones, his eyebrows, his lashes, his lips. He opens his mouth and sucks two of her wandering fingers in, deep, wet, inside of him. She closes her eyes at the decadent pull of the suction.
He pulls the pins out of her hair and it tumbles in free fall.
“It’ll be better if I write it out.”