All for One Page 18

  Robert Livingston was a fine fellow, but he was rather full of himself as the heir to Livingston Manor, which meant that as long as there were no Van Rensselaers in the room he could assume he was the wealthiest, most powerful person present. He was an intelligent man, and civic minded, yet like most scions of family dynasties, he assumed that everyone wanted to hear every thought that went through his head, and even in another couple’s house he had the unfortunate tendency to talk nonstop about whatever was on his mind, be it tariff laws or crop yields. On the night of the Rutherfords’ dinner, he went on and on about the house he was erecting for himself and Mary to replace the one he had built when they first married. He had originally named it New Clermont, after the family seat, but recently started calling it Arryl House, which, he must have told each and every guest individually, was a play on his initials, R. L. “‘R. L.’ Arryl. Do you see what how it works?” he must have said a dozen times. Eliza found the name just the teensiest bit self-involved, since it was not only home to him, after all, but also to his wife and their children.

  If he wasn’t talking about building the house, he was talking about furnishing it; if he wasn’t talking about furnishing it, he was talking about planting the gardens; if he wasn’t talking about planting the gardens, he was talking about tending to the crops; and if he wasn’t talking about tending to his crops, he was talking about tending to his father’s, which then led him off on an entirely new dissertation about Clermont, which, being twice as large as Arryl House, and sitting on roughly one thousand times more land, required even more time to describe. Despite the fact that the dinner went on for nearly four hours, no one managed to get in a word edgewise.

  No one, that is, except John and Betty, who were seated at the opposite end of the table from Chancellor Livingston and pointedly ignored him. The pair all but wrapped their arms around each other as they leaned close in conspiratorial whispers that often broke out into guffaws and gales of laughter that Robert either ignored because he had good breeding or didn’t hear because he was so full of himself.

  Alarmed by their camaraderie, Eliza tried to draw Alex’s attention to the chatty couple throughout the meal, but he only smiled at her eye twitches and head jerks and turned back to Robert, whose every word he seemed to find as fascinating as Robert did. He always was a little too respectful of aristocracy, Eliza thought. Either that or he’s the best actor in the world. They were still tentative with each other after their argument some weeks ago, and Eliza sometimes wished Maria Reynolds had never entered their lives.

  She tried to get Emma’s attention, but the poor girl was seated across from Robert and couldn’t have intervened in John and Betty’s confabulation if she wanted to. She sat in rapt silence, staring at Robert Livingston as though he were a preacher delivering the sermon that would guarantee her a spot in heaven.

  At the end of the evening, though, the men retreated for a cigar, leaving the women at the table. It was Betty who brought up the orphanage, saying that Eliza was “cooking up a scheme,” and they would all feel “left out” if their names weren’t on the top of the donor rolls every year. In short order, Elizabeth Bayard and Helena pledged fifty pounds each, and Mary, after apologizing profusely for Robert’s dominating the conversation, said that he would be mortified if they didn’t give at least twice as much as everyone else, and promised one hundred.

  “Oh!” Betty chimed in. She had been rather petulantly silent since the women and men had been quarantined from one another and she had no John Schuyler to tease. “In that case I shall have to get my brother Stephen to give two hundred. He couldn’t possibly allow himself to be shown up by a Livingston.”

  Betty was grinning as she said it, but Mary snapped her fan open and began waving it in front of her face, which had gone pink and shiny. “My dear! That is an astronomical amount of money!”

  Betty shrugged. “It’s not our money, after all. The men keep it all for themselves. The least we can do is make sure they spend it on a good cause.”

  Mary continued to fan herself. “Well, yes,” she said, nodding. “I suppose that’s true. I imagine that I can persuade Robert to donate two hundred pounds.”

  “I’ll get Stephen to give four hundred then,” Betty said immediately.

  “Betty!” Eliza exclaimed, feeling herself go as pink as Mary but resisting the urge to fan herself like an old woman suffering the change of life. “You will pauperize my sister and baby Cathy!”

  “Ha!” Betty exclaimed. “Four hundred pounds is less than Stephen spends on clothing a year. Indeed, I suspect it is less than he spends on lace for a year—his collars and cuffs would make Marie-Antoinette jealous. He has grown into such a fop since he came of age. He will not even notice the money is gone.” She peered slyly at Mary Livingston. “So what do you say, Mary? Think you can wheedle four hundred out of the chancellor?”

  Mary’s fan went back and forth so fast that Eliza thought her wig was going to be blown from her head.

  “Well, I . . . that is, the chancellor does so like to be thought of as a generous man.” She gulped audibly. “I think it can be done.”

  “That’s settled then,” Betty said. “I’ll get Stephen to give eight hundred pounds, and you’re set.” She stood up. “My work here is done,” she said, and waltzed out of the room.

  Eliza was about to rush after her, but it looked like Mary Livingston was about to faint. She rushed over to the chancellor’s wife and chafed her wrists.

  “There, there, Mary,” she said soothingly. “She was only joking. Your original contribution will be more than adequate. Stephen will never give that kind of money.”

  It took some minutes to calm Mary down, at which point Eliza rushed out into the hall. She was just in time to see Betty, with John rather cozily in tow, disappear out the front door. As she turned back to the dining room, she saw Emma staring after them, and she hurried back to her houseguest.

  “Do not be alarmed,” Eliza said quickly. “I’m sure Betty was just tired, and John is just seeing her home.”

  Emma blinked in confusion. “What? Oh, Mr. Schuyler told me earlier today that some of his schoolmates were having a party in their dormitory, and that Betty had asked him to sneak her in.”

  “Oh, that girl!” Eliza hissed.

  “She is quite daring, isn’t she?” Emma said, though Eliza wasn’t sure if she was agreeing or disagreeing. “I sometimes wish I had some of her pluck.”

  “Bite your tongue, Emma dear,” Eliza said (even though she had thought the same thing on more than one occasion).

  Emma shrugged. “I suppose I should be more upset about it, but the truth is, it is not my nature. I like being calm. I’m sure there is someone out there who will appreciate that.”

  Eliza wondered that Emma was not more jealous that John’s attentions were focused elsewhere, but she was still slightly woozy on her feet due to her condition and, for now, would have to just find a way to keep her brother away from Peggy’s sister-in-law.

  Plus, she had to leave Emma and return to the party, lest the evening’s true purpose be lost. After several hours of soothing—and more than a few glasses of sweet wine—Eliza had raised quite a large amount, as the other ladies reiterated their pledges of fifty pounds each. On the romantic front, the night was a total wash, but on the charitable front, at least, she was continuing to make headway.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE NEXT DINNER was at Elizabeth Bayard’s, who was so keen on the project that she threw together a soiree at which Eliza secured another two hundred pounds a year in funding. More events followed, at the Van Wycks’, the Larsens’, the Douglasses’, and the Schermerhorns’, each of which raked in more money. For the final push, however, Eliza decided to take an excursion up Manhattan Island, first to Inclenberg, the home of Robert and Mary Murray (the parents of Lindley, who had moved to England last year), then to the Beekmans’
Mount Pleasant, and then on to Van Cortlandt House at the northern reaches of the Bronx and Morrisania where Gouverneur had written that he was eager to host them. Alex wasn’t happy to be apart from his wife for a week or more, but she pointed out that he had left her alone a dozen times during their marriage when he traveled on business, and she was due at least one trip of her own.

  “Besides,” she said, patting her softening stomach, “I shall soon be showing, after which half of society won’t receive me, so it’s best to do this now while I am able.” She had to make Alex understand this fast approaching deadline certainly added urgency to her fund-raising work.

  Alex was not so easily convinced, but Eliza was implacable. And the truth was that between the Reynolds case, the Trinity project, and myriad minor lawsuits, he was busier than ever.

  “Without me around as a distraction,” she said, “you will have unfettered time to devote to your work.”

  “You are my favorite distraction, my dear,” Alex insisted, kissing her hands.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But I would rather be your focus than something you pay attention to between appointments. So, catch up with your work while I am gone, and when I return, prepare to lavish all your attention on me. I plan on being an exceptionally demanding expectant mother.”

  Alex grinned sheepishly. “Fair enough,” he said. “I only hope that I shall be able to work for missing you. I look forward to being your obedient servant.”

  “Lovely,” Eliza said. “You can start by getting me a slice of that pie Rowena made for dessert. Baby is hungry.” She smiled, patting her stomach.

  Eliza decided to bring Rowena with her and Emma, with the intention of leaving Rowena for the week at Mount Pleasant so she could spend some time with Simon, and she also brought Drayton to drive the carriage. Alex would be on his own for the week.

  “Consider it your last bachelor hurrah,” Eliza said as she kissed her husband good-bye. “Before you know it you’ll be up to your neck in diapers!”

  Part Three

  Vows and Vices

  16

  New World Flock

  Trinity Church

  New York, New York

  August 1785

  In his mind, Alex imagined watching the carriage with his wife, houseguest, cook, and footman rattling down Wall Street until it disappeared in the throng of traffic, then returning to his empty house to wander the empty rooms, wondering how he was going to make it through the next six days alone.

  In reality, he was already on his way to the office before the carriage had even turned north on Broadway. He didn’t even have time to miss his wife, although he did. Their recent argument was still on his mind, along with the thought that his firstborn was on the way—the beginning of the Hamilton dynasty! A child of his own, a future torchbearer to his legacy! The pressure it put upon him was tremendous. He had so much to do, so much to prove, to himself, to his wife, to his city, to his country.

  He had to get started. There was no time for sentiment.

  First, he had his weekly meeting with his partner in the firm, Richard Harrison, then spent the rest of the morning and much of the afternoon at Federal Hall filing a series of relatively trivial motions. Around three o’clock, he headed to Trinity Church for the day’s true work: a meeting with Reverend Provoost.

  It was a meeting he’d been putting off for some time. It was not in Alex’s nature to admit defeat, especially when it came to a matter of the law. In Alex’s mind, the law was designed to facilitate solutions, not impede them—make people more free, not hem them in with unnecessary restrictions. But if there was a loophole or exception to the church’s charter, he’d been unable to find it after months of scrutiny.

  Reverend Provoost kept him waiting nearly half an hour before seeing him. His waiting room turned out to be the chapel itself, which as an intimidation tactic Alex had to admit was pretty good. He sat in the straight-backed pew (not his, but one belonging to someone named David Sloane) and stared up at the sober wooden cross hanging at the front of the church. If he’d harbored any thoughts of trying to soft-sell the situation, let alone spin it, that cross banished all such ideas from his mind.

  At last, a deacon came out and brought him into the office. As Alex entered, Reverend Provoost came out from behind his desk with a warm if tentative smile. He shook Alex’s hand and directed him to a chair, while he sat on the room’s leather sofa. “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Hamilton. It’s been so long that I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about our little case.”

  Alex chuckled. “No such luck, Reverend. I think you know that my wife is expecting our first child. That has consumed much of our life these past months.”

  Alex groaned mentally as he heard these words leave his mouth. Blame the wife? What kind of second-rate attorney was he?

  “It is a wondrous blessing, and I hope that it is the first of many,” the reverend said with a serene, practiced face.

  “Nevertheless,” Alex continued, “I have had time to review your holdings as well as the pertinent statute law.”

  The reverend nodded eagerly. “And have you found us a way out of our predicament?”

  Alex hung fire a moment. He felt like a general about to surrender his sword in defeat.

  Finally, he decided that the easiest way to say it was just to say it.

  “There are some things you can do,” he began. “The easiest—and I use that term relatively—would be to transfer the bulk of the church’s holdings to a separate corporate entity. Its trustees would be drawn from the parish officers, so it would be wholly controlled by Trinity. Its income would be separate from the church’s, but could be funneled back to the church as needed.”

  Reverend Provoost frowned. “So we would simultaneously own the land and not own it at the same time? That seems . . . complicated.”

  “It is a common arrangement among more profit-driven business enterprises.”

  “So the church’s assets would be considered part of a—how did you put it?—‘profit-driven business enterprise’?” The reverend did not sound enthusiastic.

  “Unfortunately, yes. You wouldn’t be subject to any restrictions on your income, but you would have to give Caesar his due, I’m afraid.”

  The rector shifted uncomfortably. “You mean pay taxes.”

  Alex nodded. “Alas, there’s no way around it. You would lose a not inconsiderable portion of your income, but the loss would be made up tenfold by the increased revenue—in a few years.”

  The priest nodded, but his eyes had drifted away. His head bobbed back and forth like a cat’s grooming itself. At length he looked up. “You will forgive me, Mr. Hamilton, but your proposal has a whiff of Mammon about it.”

  Alex couldn’t disagree. “I admit that it is less than ideal.”

  “It makes the church look like a business,” the reverend continued in a firm, slightly scolding voice. “And a dodgy one at that.”

  Alex tried not to wince. “You must remember that the church wouldn’t be paying taxes; the external corporation would.”

  “An external corporation composed of the same people who run the church.” Reverend Provoost did everything but roll his eyes. “It is semantics. And if you will forgive my saying so, it sounds as if the church would be trying to pull a fast one. That is not exactly the message of probity we wish to send to our parishioners.”

  Ouch, Alex thought, but the truth was, he knew the rector was correct in his assessment. It’s why he had delayed so long in presenting the plan.

  “You said this was one option,” the reverend continued. “What are the others?”

  “Just one other option. I confess that I am loath to even suggest it.”

  “It sounds extreme. Though after your first plan, I’m not sure how much more extreme one can go.”

  “It is,” Alex said. He took a deep breath. “You could d
issolve the church.”

  Reverend Provoost stiffened. His smile widened, but it was a reflexive action, as if a muscle had contracted in a spasm. “Dissolve?” he repeated. “Like . . .” He shook his head as he tried to think of something one dissolved. “. . . tapioca?” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Alex nodded understandingly. “Trinity Church’s charter, and indeed the charter of every Episcopal church in the New World, is ironclad. The Anglican church is, after all, an extension of the monarchy, and thus participated in the crown’s attitude toward its colonies.”

  “I would like to disagree with you, but unfortunately I cannot. Many of us here at Trinity felt the Anglican church had lost a certain measure of ecclesiastical sovereignty over the years, which is why we supported the cause of independence.”

  “Your support lent incalculable credence to the soldiers’ efforts,” Alex echoed quickly, happy to find common cause with the reverend. “Nevertheless, Governor Clinton saw fit to carry over the church’s original provisions rather than try to find some more tenable arrangement. This may have been an oversight on his part, or it might be that he didn’t want any challenges to his power in his own region.”

  Reverend Provoost chuckled. “I will let that comment pass lest I incriminate myself.”

  “However,” Alex continued, “there are as yet no laws governing the formation of new churches in our country, and thus no reason that they should have to be established on the same draconian terms crafted by the Church of England. You would have to change the church’s name, of course, but that shouldn’t be an impediment. You did it when you went from Anglicanism to Episcopalianism, just as the Anglicans did when they left the Catholic Church behind.”