"We all have sinful thoughts," he says. "You did not act on any desire for me, and isn't that more important?"

He steps closer, projects calm in his body and his smell. "And you know as well as I do that if Alexander had any apprehension that you would leave your family for Jefferson, his rage would be towards you, and not towards his political enemy. Your betrayal would have been what mattered to him. Instead, he reacts as though you are one -- as though both of you have been wounded. So I can only think that there was a truth he glimpsed the moment you came home that shunted him into a frenzy, not towards you, but about you."