My Dear Hamilton

Prologue

Though the natural weakness of her body hinders her from doing what men can perform, she has a mind as valiant and as active for the good of her country as the best of us.
-Plutarch

Prologue
Spring 1825
The Grange
Harlem, New York

The promise of liberty is not written in blood or engraved in stone; it's embroidered into the fabric of out nation.

And so is Alexander Hamilton.

My husband. My hero. My betrayer.

Though Hamilton is more than twenty years dead now, his memory lingers where i stand in the garden of tulips, lilies, and hyacinths we once planted together. He is inescapable in even the smallest things. I cannot buy a pouch of seeds for this garden without money from the mint that he established. I cannot pass a newsboy on my walks through the city without seeing the paper he founded or without reflecting upon the freedoms for the press he helped guarantee. I cannot cast my gaze at the busy ships in Harbor without seeing the trade he assured, or the coast guard he founded, or the industry and opportunities he provided for the people who now flock to our shores in search of freedom and a better future.

In short, there is not a breath in any American's life that is not shaped in some way be Alexander Hamilton. Certainly not a breath in mine. His memory, which i must honor for the sake of our children if nothing else, is impossible for me to escape.

Though i confess i have tried.

In the secret seethings of my discontented heart, I've searched for a life that is my own. A life not consumed by the questions he left in his wake - riddles i will never solve about our marriage, our family, and the suffering to which he exposed us. I've searched for a meaning to my existence not swallowed up by Hamilton's shadow. By his genius. By his greatness. By his folly.

And by his enemies.

For in the battle for history - a war for truth, fought against time - i am a veteran. I've been fighting that battle for decades, and perhaps never more ferociously than now, within myself, as i stare at the paper in my hand.

Squinting beneath my bonnet against the sunlight, i see a calling card, unremarkable but for the single name etched in the center with bold ink.

James Monroe.

At the sight of it, an unexpected pain stabs beneath my ribs, where my heart picks up its pace. My basket of purple hyacinths lies forgotten at my feet as i stand up, a little breathless. For the only thing more astonishing than the name itself is that the card is folded at the corner, indicating the former president personally delivered it, rather than sending a servant.

I should feel honored.

Instead, I'm incensed that James Monroe has darkened my doorstep. And before i can stop myself, my voice drops low, as it always does when I'm angry. "what has that man come to see me for?"

"Couldn't say," my housekeeper murmurs, straightening her apron. "But he's waiting for you in the parlor"

It's not the protocol for a gentleman to present a card and wait, except when presuming upon familiar acquaintance. And though Monroe is a familiar acquaintance - and more than an acquaintance besides - he has no right to presume upon our old intimacy. No right at all. Not after everything that has passed between us. Especially not when he's caught me out in the yard, in my gardening gloves and black workaday bombazine frock.

He should not expect, even under the best of circumstances, that i would receive a man of his rank and stature on a moment's notice. But then James Monroe has always been wilier than anyone gives him credit for, and i imagine that he's counting on the element of surprise to work on his advantage.