The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr Read online

  Books by Susan Holloway Scott

  I, Eliza Hamilton

  The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  THE SECRET WIFE OF AARON BURR

  SUSAN

  HOLLOWAY

  SCOTT

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  Veeya

  CHAPTER 1

  Eugénie

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  Mary

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  Mary Emmons

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  Mrs. Emmons

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  Mrs. Burr

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Susan Holloway Scott

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1918-8

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1919-0 (ebook)

  Kensington Electronic Edition: October 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1918-8

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1918-2

  First Kensington Trade Paperback Edition: October 2019

  For all the American women

  whose forgotten stories are waiting

  to be remembered and told

  PROLOGUE

  Philadelphia

  July 1829

  I sit toward the back of the church, on a bench to one side where no one will take notice of me. No one does, either. Few things in this fine world are more invisible than a small and wizened old woman with dark skin.

  Besides, today belongs to Jean-Pierre, not me. I watch him walk slowly to the pulpit, his shoulders squared and his steps measured. His forehead is broad and wise, his jaw firm with resolve, but it is his eyes that no one forgets, a gaze so filled with fire and courage that other men cease to speak in his presence, awed into silence before he says a word. He is my son, and so handsome that my heart aches with it.

  “How fine Jean-Pierre looks today, Louisa,” I whisper proudly to my daughter. “He’s the very image of your father.”

  Louisa’s brows are sharp and neat inside the curving brim of her bonnet. Despite my years, I am not sufficiently feeble that I require a keeper to guard me from mischief, but Louisa insists, and now sits so close beside me that her skirts spill over mine like a rustling wave of parrot-green cotton.

  “John is nothing like the Colonel, Mama,” she whispers back, using the English version of her brother’s name as well as their father’s rank. “Nothing.”

  I smile and nod, although I know better.

  “Then you forget,” I say. “I marvel that any father and son could be so much alike.”

  “Don’t say that before John, Mama,” Louisa warns. “You know his opinion of the Colonel.”

  Still I smile, though sorrow hides behind it. How did my little family come to this?

  “Your father loved you and your brother both, Louisa,” I say softly. “I expect he loves you still.”

  “But he doesn’t love you, Mama.” Even whispered, the words still wound, more than Louisa will ever understand. “Not as he should. Not as you deserve.”

  “He did when it mattered,” I say, as I always do. “Now hush, and heed your brother.”

  Jean-Pierre stands in the pulpit, his head bowed as he composes himself. Sunlight from the arched windows streams around him. The congregation is content to wait, expectant and eager. My son is here in St. Thomas’s by special invitation to discourse upon the subject of freedom. Jean-Pierre seldom speaks of anything else, so dear is freedom to him, and to all those who have come to hear him.

  Freedom: a powerful word, with more meanings than there are wildflowers in a summer field. If I were standing in my son’s place, I’d tell things differently. I’d speak of war and deceit and betrayals, of promises sworn yet broken and suffering that was nearly beyond bearing. But I’d also tell of trust and hope and love, a cautious finger on the balance against loss and sorrow. I’d tell of the girl that I was and the woman I became, both now so long ago. All of it would be the story—and the cost—of freedom. My freedom.

  But that can wait for another time. Today belongs to Jean-Pierre. He begins, and I smile proudly as a mother does. Yet his voice, rich and deep, so much echoes his father’s that the old memories begin to return again, and this time they refuse to fade away. I close my eyes, determined to listen more closely, but that only draws me deeper into the past, and away from the present.

  And here I am again.

  Here I am.

  Veeya

  CHAPTER 1

  Pondicherry, India

  August 1768

  It was in my eighth summer, when the monsoon rains drummed at their heaviest, that my uncle Rahul sold me to Madame Beauharnais for two rupees.

  How easily the thing was done! My uncle, a weaver of fine cotton muslin, had come to fetch my three cousins and me from the house where we were employed as thread spinners. The summer months were best for spinning, when the rains made the air wet and the thread swell, and we worked as long as the sunlight would permit. Each evening my back ached and the tips of my fingers burned from the hours spent with my spindle, twisting the thread as fine as a spider’s web.

  I didn’t dare complain. Since the British soldiers had left Pondicherry and the French again had power over us, work was scarce, especially for Tamils like us. I was neither the youngest nor the most nimble at spinning, and if I were to lose my place Uncle Rahul had vowed to cast me out from our family. As long as my grandmother, my ammatti, had still lived, I’d known my uncle’s threats were empty, but since she’d died of a winter fever last December, I’d lost the one person who had loved and protected me. Despite my every effort to please, my uncle’s dislike of me had only increased. Now he struck me whenever he wished, and I woke each day fearful of what he might do next.

  The spinning and weaving houses where my family worked and the warehouse nearby were all owned by Monsieur Beauharnais, a French gentleman who seldom troubled his workers with his presence. Yet on this evening, as my uncle and cousins hurried through the murky late-day rains, the Beauharnais carriage with its matche
d gray horses stood waiting by the front door of the warehouse. The carriage’s glass-paned lanterns shone bright through the rain, their dancing little flames reflected in the puddles around us.

  Snapping his fingers with impatience, Uncle Rahul motioned for us to keep by the wall in the narrow street and to walk with more haste, so as to cause no possible inconvenience to Monsieur by our presence. But as I quickened my steps to keep pace with the others and not be left behind, my bare feet slipped in the muddy street. I pitched forward onto my hands and knees, and slid into the glow of the carriage’s lanterns.

  “Veeya!” My uncle grabbed me by the back of my blouse and jerked me upright. “Why must you be so clumsy?”

  I scrambled to find my footing among the puddles, and from ill humor alone Uncle Rahul wrapped his hand around my long braid and snapped it hard, so hard that I cried out.

  With a scrape of glass and metal, one of the windows of the carriage slid open, and a woman’s face—ghostlike through the rain, pale and white-haired—appeared from the shadows within. She spoke in French, a language I did not then know, and at once one of the footmen hopped down from the back to stand beneath the carriage window.

  “Madame desires to know if this child is your daughter,” the footman said to my uncle, translating the lady’s words into Tamil. Despite the footman’s French livery, he was Indian, most likely a higher caste than we were. As the rain dripped from his laced cocked hat, he gazed down upon us as if we were the basest creatures imaginable.

  At once my uncle released my braid and bowed low from the waist toward the carriage window.

  “She is not mine, oh, most esteemed madame,” he said in the wheedling voice he used with foreigners. “She is the bastard of my dead sister. Yet I keep her with me from charity, in the holy name of Krishna.”

  I stared down at my mud-spattered clothing. My uncle might speak of charity, but from my birth he had treated me as an irredeemable stain upon our family. My poor mother had been no more than a girl when a party of British soldiers had fallen upon her one night as she’d walked home. With tears in her eyes, Ammatti had told me how these foreign men had used my mother like ravening wolves, and afterward discarded her broken and bloodied beside the road. She hadn’t died then, as she’d longed to do, but nine months later at my birth. I alone had lived on, unwanted and despised by my uncle for the sins of my unknown father.

  Madame Beauharnais spoke again, and the footman nodded.

  “Madame desires the girl to step forward,” he said, “so that Madame may see her face.”

  Uncertain, I hung back. I was the ugly one among my cousins and friends, the one who wasn’t pure Tamil, and I was always mocked for the light golden-brown color of my eyes and skin and for my ill-shaped nose, both marks of my tainted blood.

  “Do as he says, Veeya,” my uncle ordered.

  I’d little choice but to step forward into the light of the carriage’s lanterns and raise my face for the French lady’s scrutiny. Mud daubed my hands and clothes and the rain dripped from the dupatta that had slipped from my head to my shoulders.

  I didn’t flinch or look away, but met her gaze evenly, as if I’d every right to do so. At that time, I did. She stared down her long, quivering nose at me, considering, judging, like some terrifying deity. I had never before seen a Frenchwoman this close. I didn’t realize that her face was dusted white with powder, or that the glowing red circles on her cheeks were painted with carmine, or that there were tiny pillows stuffed into her hair to make it stand so high and straight from her brow. All I knew then was what I saw, and if smoke had next puffed from her nostrils I would have accepted that as well.

  Within a few moments, my courage began to slip away, and I scuttled back from the carriage and to my uncle’s side. The Frenchwoman scowled, and flicked her beringed hand upward like sparks as she spoke again.

  The footman nodded, though he did not hide his surprise or his disgust at the message he was to relay.

  “Madame fancies the girl,” he said. “Madame offers two rupees for her purchase.”

  I shook my head, not wanting any of this. Two rupees was more than my uncle could earn in a season of labor, more than I would earn in three years’ time. My uncle refused to look at me and I began to inch away.

  But my uncle was faster. He caught me by the wrist even as he thrust his other hand forward toward the carriage, his palm open and stained blue with indigo. The footman dropped the coins into it, and my uncle’s fingers closed tight over them. Without a word to me, my uncle then shoved me forward.

  This time it was the footman who caught me, and with his arm around my waist he lifted me high onto the box on the back of the carriage, at least six feet above the street, and sat me there as if I were a doll upon a shelf.

  “Stay,” he said sharply. “Madame orders it.”

  I twisted around to look to where I’d last stood with my uncle and cousins, hoping against reason that my uncle might change his mind. But already the four figures were hurrying away with their heads and shoulders bent against the rain.

  The carriage swayed beneath me, and I realized that Monsieur Beauharnais had climbed inside to join his wife. I heard the footman close and latch the door, and then he clambered onto a small ledge at the back of the carriage, standing so that his face was nearly level with mine. He’d a nose hooked like a parrot’s beak, curving over his upper lip, and he scared me, doubtless as he intended.

  “Hold on, bastard,” he warned, placing my hand on a leather strap designed for the purpose. “If you fall, you will be crushed by the carriage wheels, and the driver will not stop.”

  My perch was precarious on account of the box’s painted board being slick with rain, and as the carriage lurched forward I clung to the strap with all my strength to preserve myself. We traveled very fast through the now-dark and narrow streets, farther and farther from Black Town, the part of Pondicherry where I’d always lived, and into White Town, where I had never dared venture.

  When at last the carriage stopped, I still held fast to the strap, fearing what would happen if I didn’t. The house before me was enormous and grand, and in the dreary rain it seemed to glow like a giant paper lantern lit from within.

  The hook-nosed footman jumped down to open the carriage’s door, and I could hear Madame and Monsieur quarreling. Other servants hurried from inside the house with wide umbrellas to shelter Madame and Monsieur from the rain as they climbed from the carriage and entered the grand arched doorway to their house. I huddled on my high perch until at last the footman recalled my presence, and returned to lift me down. With his fingers gripping my shoulder, he led me through a gate and into a covered courtyard, where we were met by other servants who gathered about us. They spoke over me in jabbering French, and prodded at me with their fingers. One man came forward with a length of rope and, seizing my arm, began briskly to bind the rope around my wrist, as if I were no more than a little beast to be tethered into submission.

  But as soon as I felt the rope across my skin, I howled with panic and wrenched my arm free. Surprised at my boldness, the others stopped their talk to stare, and I took that opportunity to run away toward the gate.

  I did not go far.

  Instead, I was grabbed and pushed facedown against the puddled paving stones, with a knee pressed to my back to hold me there. Still I flailed and fought, sobbing as they jerked my wrists together behind my waist and bound them together. Then I was pulled to my feet to be led stumbling across the courtyard, and thrust into a small shed that was scarce more than a box. The door was slammed tight and bolted closed, and the footsteps and voices faded away.

  I curled on my side where I lay on the damp dirt, my eyes squeezed shut against the darkness. I’d cut my lip when I’d fallen, and over and over I licked at my own salty blood. I wanted to cry again, but now the tears wouldn’t come. Instead I lay there, listening to the racing of my heart and the beating of the rain overhead.

  And yet somehow I did sleep, only awakening when
the door to the shed opened and let in the pale light of morning.

  “Fah, look at you,” the woman said, addressing me in clipped Hindi. She was tall, with shoulders as broad as many men possessed, and wide enough to block the sun with her shadow. She was dressed in a patterned yellow cotton saree with brass bangles along her arms, strands of red beads around her throat and rings in her ears, a white French apron with red strings tied around her waist, and a ruffled white cap with a red bow on her head.

  “What a filthy little beast you are!” she said. “You must be made decent before you are presented to Madame.”

  Awkwardly I rose to my feet. “Forgive me if I am filthy, mistress,” I said as politely as I could. “It’s not my own doing, but because others have made me so.”

  “You’re a bold piece, to blame others for your disgusting dirt.” The woman frowned as she saw that my hands were still bound, and briskly untied the rope. I whimpered as I tried to flex the soreness from my wrists and arms, but she’d no patience for that, and instead led me across the yard and ordered me to sit on a small bench. There she handed me a dish of rice and lentils, which I devoured without shame, it being my first meal since yesterday morning.

  As soon as I was done, she took me to a large basin beneath a cistern that stood in one corner of the courtyard. She bid me strip away my clothing, and when my still-numb fingers did not move fast enough for her she ripped away the worn cotton of my blouse and pavada and tossed them aside. I began to protest, for I’d no other garments, but she cut my words short.