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Levi stared at her, the bruises around his eye livid against his white face, his eyes blazing.

“You may well get your wish.” He turned to go, and then paused, the words torn out of him. “Will you watch when they hang me? Or will you be at meeting?”

“Go,” croaked Hope. “Go before I tell Elias thee had the gall to cross his threshold. He’s said he’ll shoot thee if he sees thee.”

“So he can avenge Elma’s honor?” Levi gave a strange laugh, that turned into something like a sob. “Oh, Hope. Hope.”

She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear the way he was looking at her.

“Go,” she said fiercely.

And he did.

Chapter Seven

Had it been true, that I had left every thing else to follow the Drum, my delinquency would not have been so great. But our military establishment offers too little inducement and is too precarious to have permitted a total dereliction of professional pursuits. The double occupation occasioned by these added to Military Duties, and the attentions which circumstances call me to pay to collateral objects, engage my time more than ever . . .

—Alexander Hamilton to Rufus King, January 5, 1800

New York City

January 18, 1800

“Forgive me for receiving you like this.” Elizabeth Weeks made an effort to push herself up against her pillows, wiggling into something closer to a sitting position.

Her husband dove forward to help her. “You know what the doctor said. You’re to stay lying down.”

“I can’t lie down all the time.” From the edge of annoyance in her voice, Alexander had the impression this wasn’t the first time they had had this conversation.

“We lost the last one,” said Weeks bluntly. “The doctor says we’ll lose this one too unless she rests.”

“We will impose upon you as little as possible,” Harison said soothingly. “General Hamilton and I both know what it is to be in a delicate condition.”

Elizabeth Weeks looked like she had thoughts about that, but she subsided against her pillows.

“Mr. Harison is here in his capacity of recorder of the city of New York to take your testimony in the event that you are unable to appear in court,” Alexander explained carefully.

They all knew that what he really meant was that they were there to record Elizabeth Weeks’s testimony in the event that she die in childbirth before Levi’s case came to trial.

“I am happy to do whatever is needed to free Levi from this terrible charge,” she murmured.

Alexander could hear the clock ticking, and not just the delicate porcelain clock on the mantel, decorated with gilt and cherubs.

It had been nearly two weeks since he had chosen to interest himself in Levi Weeks’s affairs, two weeks in which good intentions had bowed beneath the weight of obligation. What with planning a military academy, sorting out the shape of hats for his soldiers, berating James McHenry by letter, and plotting Burr’s political downfall, there had been very little time to hunt down witnesses to establish the innocence of Levi Weeks.

It was suicide, Livingston insisted, and Burr agreed.

But it wasn’t enough to assert that and leave it at that, even if Alexander agreed, which he didn’t. There were reports, more reports than could credibly be dismissed as imagination or scandalmongering, of cries of distress from the vicinity of the well at a little before or after nine o’clock on the twenty-second of December.

Levi’s time on that night needed to be accounted for, which was why Harison had accompanied Alexander here, to the Weeks house, on a Saturday, even though at the house on Broadway Alexander’s three middle boys and Eliza’s nephew were home from school in Staten Island for the day, bringing dirty linen and clumsy Latin translations and sending little William wild with the joy of having his older brothers at home.

It would, Eliza had made clear, be nice to have Alexander home while the boys were home, particularly since he meant to depart so soon for Albany and would be away for goodness only knew how long . . . but Elizabeth Weeks’s baby might arrive at any time, depriving them of a key witness, and Alexander keenly felt how little time he had devoted to Levi’s defense, how scattershot were his efforts, sandwiched between his other obligations, in the sleepless fog of the baby’s nightly howling.

Elizabeth Weeks’s testimony was crucial and her time limited.

Alexander pulled up a slipper chair by the bed. The upholstery was French silk, so rich that he could feel himself sliding off again. If the rest of the house was little more than an extension of the lumber yard, this room was an unexpected treasure hoard, in which Ezra Weeks had showered his bed-bound wife with all his growing prosperity could offer. Mahogany and fruitwood, gilt and silk; porcelain dishes holding candied sweetmeats and spiced nuts.

A one-legged wooden doll that lay forgotten on the brocade coverlet provided a homely touch amid the unexpected opulence.