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Hatred, was it? The man was as changeable as the weather, while thinking himself constant as the tides. He had been spending too much time in Hamilton’s company, thought Aaron grimly, if he was beginning to think in such labored metaphors. He would have to spend some time reading Voltaire to clear his mind, a literary purgative.

“I can offer you better than herbs if you wish,” said Aaron, knowing it was a safe offer. Hamilton always stayed with his wife’s parents when he came to Albany.

“Mrs. Schuyler is expecting me,” said Hamilton promptly.

He didn’t invite Aaron back to share the bounty of General Schuyler’s table. Aaron hadn’t expected he would. Schuyler had had little love for Aaron ever since Aaron had relieved General Schuyler of his senate seat nine years ago.

The Schuylers knew how to hold a grudge.

That didn’t matter. Against Hamilton’s Schuylers, Aaron had Brockholst’s Livingstons. Where once the Schuylers might have been royalty here in Albany, their power was waning, the old general consumed by gout, beggared by bad land deals, increasingly dependent on his brilliant but erratic son-in-law.

The Livingstons, on the contrary, had only continued to expand their influence. General Schuyler was of the old school, tied to the land, to a patroon system of feudal patronage that was fast evaporating. He was the past. It amused Aaron to see Schuyler cling to Hamilton as the rising star who would revive his fortunes, as Hamilton flung himself into the bosom of the Schuylers in a desperate attempt at legitimacy.

They would both lose.

But there was no reason Aaron couldn’t be generous in victory. Hamilton was useful—in his way. When he wasn’t carried away by the charms of his own voice.

If only one could stow him in a cupboard and take him out when needed. Aaron amused himself with the image: a pocket Hamilton, to be set to work as desired, drafting contracts and formulating bills, and then shut away again as his tiny voice grew too shrill, like the homunculus of the Renaissance alchemists.

“When do you return to New York?”

“As soon as our arguments are concluded. I told Eliza I plan to leave on Sunday and hope to be with her by early next week.” Hamilton’s ruddy face glowed as he spoke of his Eliza, like a boy in the first throes of calf-love.

How quickly the affair of Maria Reynolds was forgotten.

“Your military work calls you, I imagine,” said Aaron casually. He didn’t think it had occurred to Hamilton to arrange anything like the organization he had put in place preparatory to the election—but the thought of Hamilton bustling uncontested through the city while Aaron pursued allies elsewhere in the state gave him a bit of pause.

“Yes, and the Weeks matter.” It took Aaron a moment to recall what Hamilton was talking about; the case of Ezra Weeks’s amorous brother was not one of his priorities. “We’ve only a month until trial and still know little more than when Ezra Weeks first came to us!”

Us, was it? Aaron gave a delicate cough.

Hamilton was too busy speaking to notice. “I took Harison with me to speak to Elizabeth Weeks before I left for Albany—but there are still some points on which I wish to be satisfied. I hadn’t time before I left to get to the truth of the matter.”

It was just like Hamilton to set himself up as the arbiter of truth, a stone statue on a pedestal, undoubtedly holding gilded scales. And blind. Dangerously blind.

“Truth,” said Aaron delicately, “is the daughter of time, not the product of the courts. Our remit is to establish our client’s innocence, not the truth of the matter.”

“Aren’t those one and the same?” demanded Hamilton, as if it weren’t quite plain they weren’t the same thing at all. If he didn’t know that by now, Aaron wasn’t going to be the one to explain to him. But then, as Aaron had learned over the course of their very long acquaintance, Hamilton had a remarkable capacity for self-delusion.

“Ezra Weeks is the man who pays our fee.”

“We owe a greater debt to justice. Don’t you think the girl deserves as much? What if it were your own Theodosia?”

Privately, Aaron felt quite secure his Theodosia would never be in such a position. He had raised her to be superior to the rest of her sex in judgment and reason. Not to mention that she wasn’t a common girl of no breeding and less sense; she was mistress of Richmond Hill.

For so long as he managed to retain Richmond Hill.

No, even if he failed to recoup his debts, his Theodosia was not unprotected. She was hardly some little Quaker milliner to be used and cast aside.

Not that blood and position were always a protection. There had been that business of Nancy Randolph . . .

But his Theodosia would never be such a fool. It was absurd. Aaron blamed Hamilton for putting ridiculous thoughts in his head. Apparently, foolishness was catching, like the grippe.

If he could deliver New York into the hands of the Republicans, his influence would be assured; it would be a short step from there to the vice presidency. It was what he and Jefferson had agreed.

No one would dare presume to take advantage of the vice president’s daughter, no matter how fathoms deep in debt he might be.

“Do you see your Angelica in the role?” Aaron asked idly.