"A toast to the groom!" She says cheerily, but her throat burns, and she hopes no one can see the way she swallows thickly. The room clinks glasses together, laughter and smiles emitting from the crowd. When she sits back down the candlelight swims in her vision, making shadows flicker menacingly. She sips from her glass, eyes anywhere but on Alexander,.....alexander.
He grins, intelligent eyes burning in the slight darkness. She wishes she could meet those eyes, eyes that soak straight through her, but they are trained elsewhere. They are looking at the bride, who smiles brighter than the sun, hair shifting as she laughs. Eliza.
And then she really has to force back tears, as she curses her selfishness, a damper on her sisters joy. Joy that Alexander has put in the heart, joy that she will have him for the rest of her life, oblivious to the pain Angelica will suffer. The only thing that makes the hurt dull is the knowledge that Eliza will be happy, that she will grow old next to a brilliant man, a man that can bring her everything she has wanted in life.
Alexander's eyes lift from his new wife's face, and their amber glow meets Angelica for just a moment, before drifting across the room. A reminder that he will always be close, but never hers. Another wave of frustration hits Angelica. She will never be satisfied. But she narrows her eyes as Alexander looks anywhere but Eliza. He too will never be satisfied.
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Maria's eyes fill with tears as her hands tug at the roots of her hair. Alexander stands in front of her, and she can hear the voice that had only been gentle with her filled with anger, anger directed at her. All your fault, all your fault, his glare seems to say, amber eyes searching and cold.
"No, sir!" She exclaims and his voice is no longer Alexander's but James's, always hostile and burning with regret. Alexander's voice grows less strong, "I don't want you, I don't want you" and they both know that he lies.
"If you pay, you can stay" she says, but the words are just a reminder of all the promises she has to fulfil, a distant echo of things that once were true. And there's nothing more she wants than for him to leave, to leave her tear-soaked and drowning in guilt because she knows what she is doing not only hurts him, but another woman, who someday cry herself to sleep thinking, why was I not enough. She doesn't deserve his affection, but she accepts it anyway, because Alexander's warm hands feel so different than James's cold ones, and she knows that the money Alexander sheds for her will make her husband's words less sharp, that her skin will sting less, and for that she will give up making things right.
And when Alexander does leave, when everyone knows that he had visited her, when everyone knows her pride has been sold for her bed, when no one on the streets will not meet her gaze, she will try not to cry. When Alexander's pay no longer pleases James, when she has been branded as filth, she knows history will only see her as a villain. She would gladly go back and take back the night she asked him to stay.
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Eliza is rereading the letters that Alexander wrote her, searching in vain for the sentence that foreshadowed that he would rip her heart to pieces, that he would leave her alone and so cold.
And yet the letters are only warmth, warmth that she once found comforting but now burns at her skin, taunting her foolish girl, you couldn't see through his lies. She can almost hear his voice, a voice that spoke to her with what she thought was love. She is sad, she is angry but mostly she hurts.
She pushed all that's left of Alexander's love into the fireplace, watching the flames devour his letters. She wishes her hurt would burn away with the paper, she wishes it would burn away him.
The smallest comfort is that history will never know who he once was to her. History would never be able to dig into her and share the moments where Alexander made her smile. Hopefully history would never know that she was bound to him, that the same fire that his letters emitted had burned the edges of her wings. Eliza held onto the hope that the feathers would grow back, that she could fly away from this home and all the memories that cling to it.
Eliza's eyes meet the ashes of the words that had captivated her when she was young and there is only a pang of regret when she thinks I hope that you burn.
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YOU ARE READING
Me? I Loved Him
ספרות חובביםAngelica Schuyler Churh, Eliza Hamilton, and Maria Reynolds all placed footprints in Alexander Hamilton's life. Everyone gets to know the story from his perspective, but how deeply did Alexander alter the three woman's lives? Angelica will never be...
