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But it was too late. Elias was gone, slamming the door of their bedroom behind him so hard that her cloak fell from its peg in a sad heap on the ground.

“Mama?” Rachel stuck her head through the door. Her cheeks were pink from the kitchen hearth. Hope had fixed her hair that morning; her shining braids were slightly crooked. “I heard shouting.”

“It’s nothing, my lovely.” Caty gathered the first child of her marriage into her arms, resting her cheek against the top of her head. Her hair was no longer wispy fine like Eliza’s; she was nine already, Rachel, and growing so fast. Ever since Elma died, she’d looked so solemn all the time, as though she’d aged a decade in a month. “Nothing to concern thee.”

Caty would see that it wasn’t.

When it came to her children, she would do whatever was needed to protect them.

Chapter Ten

Attend the Court of Errors and hear the Arguments of the adversary—Hamilton is desirous of being witty but goes beyond the Bounds and is open to a severe dressing. . . . Col Burr is very able & has I see made considerable Impression.

—From the diary of Gouverneur Morris, February 11–12, 1800

Albany, New York

February 11, 1800

“You might wish to protect yourself,” murmured Aaron, as he walked with Hamilton down the crumbling steps of the Albany Stadt Huys into the February evening.

They’d spent the day in the room of the old state house that doubled as the sitting place of the Court of Errors, playing out the latest stage of the long-running—and highly lucrative—squabble between the merchants Le Guen, Gouverneur, and Kemble.

The commercial case, for which Aaron and Hamilton had first been retained in 1795, had burgeoned into no fewer than eight separate actions in multiple different courts, with suits and countersuits, and allegations of fraud.

Aaron found it a reliable source of fees; Hamilton, on the other hand, had taken the cause of Le Guen extravagantly to heart, laying about at the opposing counsel as if they were barbarians at the gates and not honorable colleagues. He’d all but accused them of arson and barratry and had probably refrained from that only for want of time.

So acrimonious had the case become that Isaac Gouverneur had brought in his honored kinsman Gouverneur Morris. The man hadn’t litigated for years, but his eloquence was legendary, his stature as a statesman undisputed, his alliance with Hamilton of long standing. Aaron could have told them that wouldn’t work; when Hamilton’s blood was up, friend became foe with the same ease with which a bit of judicious flattery could turn one from foe to friend again. Hamilton had savaged Morris without compunction but with a great many extraneous adverbs.

Even for Hamilton, his performance had been extreme; one might even say, intemperate.

The air here was crisper than in the city of New York, the color of the sky a deeper hue. Aaron breathed in appreciatively. “Gouverneur Morris has expressed his desire to give you a severe dressing.”

“He doesn’t mean it,” said Hamilton, with undue confidence. Aaron strongly suspected that if there had been a horsewhip to hand, Morris would have applied it with the outraged panache of a French nobleman lashing an impudent upstart.

Morris had so far lowered himself to demand of Aaron if Hamilton were in his cups.

No, Aaron had replied wryly. Merely drunk on his own oratory.

That had earned him the reluctant appreciation of Gouverneur Morris—an event to remember in itself—and the curt advice to rein in his co-counsel before someone gave in to the temptation to give him a damned good thrashing.

Aaron estimated that Hamilton’s oratory had kept him from his supper by an hour—but it had lost Hamilton at least one ally, so perhaps one might make allowances.

“Comparing Isaac Gouverneur to Shylock might have been a bit extreme.” Aaron couldn’t resist twisting the knife a bit. “You brought Robert Troup nearly to tears.”

“Robert Troup! A creature it is almost a vice to name.”

That was a fine way to dismiss one of one’s oldest friends. Troup had followed Hamilton about like a faithful puppy ever since their days rooming together as students at King’s College. Right now Troup was a whipped puppy.

A whipped puppy might bite his master.

It had been, Aaron thought, really quite a useful day’s work. Hamilton had eviscerated their opposition and, in the process, alienated two of his closest allies, allowing Aaron to position himself as the sensible voice of reason in contrast to Hamilton’s intemperate ravings.

Men remembered that sort of thing when it was time to go to the polls.

“If you continue upsetting your friends at such a rate,” said Aaron mildly, “you will have no one with whom to dine.”

“Better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox and hatred within,” said Hamilton stubbornly.