"Monty didn't know about the child, Alexander. It was only the next day, after we'd mated that he--" He stops, swallows. A surge of emotion, that he had thought he conquered. Less now, with the lessening hormones, yet somehow more acute and painful for it.
"He always said he intended to marry me," Burr whispers. "That once we returned from the campaign, if we both lived, he would have a ring made, and we would break ground on the house together. But then, he went through the walls, and I was caught up in the rubble--small legs, and awful boots, and he rounded that corner and the grapeshot killed him instantly, and we tried to drag his body back but it was heavy, and there was musket shot and cannon fire everywhere, until it was just me and him, half sunk in the snow, and I couldn't get him back through the wall, and I knew it was only me, and I thought then, I was sure, though there was no logic behind it but a kind of desperate hope and despair, that he had gotten me with child, that he could have, and that here he was dead and no one would believe me if I said he intended to marry me, that a promise was no better than a lie, and I saw the ring on his hand and I thought--I took it and I ran. I left him there and I ran, blind into the snow, half-out of my mind and deaf until Benedict Arnold found me."
"I laid in bed so many nights just holding that ring in my hand. I had to wash his blood off of it. And I thought perhaps he had never really intended to marry me, that they were all false promises, as real as they seemed at the time. But then the letter came from his cousin, the talk of the letter he sent. You can find it there in my bag, near the bottom--" and Burr would get it for him if he could rise, but Hamilton is amenable always to these small favors.
"The letter, he says, was witnessed by a Colonel who was killed in the action, and sent to New York the night before we invaded, which he believes to be suspicious circumstances but cannot be readily proved. Moreover, he contends I could have written the letter myself after everyone was killed, which is ridiculous given the speed at which it reached New York, at a time when I was in Arnold's company, trying desperately to escape the massacre."
no subject
"He always said he intended to marry me," Burr whispers. "That once we returned from the campaign, if we both lived, he would have a ring made, and we would break ground on the house together. But then, he went through the walls, and I was caught up in the rubble--small legs, and awful boots, and he rounded that corner and the grapeshot killed him instantly, and we tried to drag his body back but it was heavy, and there was musket shot and cannon fire everywhere, until it was just me and him, half sunk in the snow, and I couldn't get him back through the wall, and I knew it was only me, and I thought then, I was sure, though there was no logic behind it but a kind of desperate hope and despair, that he had gotten me with child, that he could have, and that here he was dead and no one would believe me if I said he intended to marry me, that a promise was no better than a lie, and I saw the ring on his hand and I thought--I took it and I ran. I left him there and I ran, blind into the snow, half-out of my mind and deaf until Benedict Arnold found me."
"I laid in bed so many nights just holding that ring in my hand. I had to wash his blood off of it. And I thought perhaps he had never really intended to marry me, that they were all false promises, as real as they seemed at the time. But then the letter came from his cousin, the talk of the letter he sent. You can find it there in my bag, near the bottom--" and Burr would get it for him if he could rise, but Hamilton is amenable always to these small favors.
"The letter, he says, was witnessed by a Colonel who was killed in the action, and sent to New York the night before we invaded, which he believes to be suspicious circumstances but cannot be readily proved. Moreover, he contends I could have written the letter myself after everyone was killed, which is ridiculous given the speed at which it reached New York, at a time when I was in Arnold's company, trying desperately to escape the massacre."