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Diana Rubino
Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: Creativia
Type: Fiction
Pages: 299
Copyright: October 30, 2017
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
The nation’s first Treasury Secretary is embroiled in a humiliating public sex scandal as his wife struggles to save their marriage and restore a stable home to their six children.
Philadelphia, 1791. James and Maria Reynolds are flat broke. James, well aware of the strong attraction between his wife and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, hatches a plan to blackmail Alexander and get rich. James sends Maria to seduce Alexander and extort hush money from him. Alexander, married with five children, soon begins an affair with the beautiful 23-year-old Maria. They indulge their passion either in Maria’s boarding house or in Alexander’s home when his family is away. Not only do the forbidden trysts titillate the tabloid readers of the time, but news soon breaks that Alexander is paying Maria’s husband James hush money. James, a con artist, lives by his wits and scams. When he begins extorting hundreds of dollars from Alexander under threat of ruining his reputation as Treasury Secretary, Alexander has no choice but to continue paying James while carrying on with Maria. Their relationship grows in its passion and intensity as it spirals towards potential political disaster for Alexander.
“The Reynolds Affair,” the country’s first sex scandal, would last for two years.
Meanwhile, behind the romantic and political machinations, a vicious serial killer is stalking the city by night. Having arrived in the New World from London via Paris, Dr. Severus Black, specialist in ‘women’s medicine’, soon befriends the Hamiltons and becomes a close confidant of Alexander’s wife, Eliza. Mrs. Hamilton grows very fond of the handsome, debonair young doctor, who in turn develops a growing affinity for his patient. Yet she senses something ‘different’ about the English doctor.
As Hamilton’s affair with Maria runs headlong towards personal and professional catastrophe, and Mrs. Hamilton grows closer to her ‘doctor of women’s medicine’ the constables of Philadelphia begin to draw a net around the killer of young serving girls to the rich and famous. What connection, if any, could Dr. Black have with these murders which a hundred years later would be mirrored in his own country in a series of murders attributed to Jack the Ripper?
Excerpt
“You love me, Alex? You truly love me? Are you sure?” My breath caught in my throat. My heart danced. His admission rendered me breathless. I melted into a puddle in his lap.
“Maria, I’ve been awaiting you all my life.” He stroked my cheek. “You’re everything I’ve wanted in a woman—allure, intelligence, talent, fun—I’ve never met a woman who was all those things wrapped in one beautiful package.”
I gazed into his eyes, knowing our souls had entwined before this, ages before.
“I wanted you so badly from the moment we first met, at Aaron’s soirée,” I divulged the risky admission. “Though I knew you were already taken, and your course already laid out for you, I craved your attention, not to simply revere you from afar. I wanted to know you personally, even if only to spend one visit together. Just to be close to you. But I knew it was a fantasy. I was distraught when you left New York to live here. Then, when James made us move here, I knew our paths were destined to meet. It could not have happened any other way.”
“Then your initial letter to me had subtext I missed?” His lips curved with mirth.
“Oh, no, not at all,” I murmured between kisses on his face, his ears, his lips. “We—I was destitute. James had—” About to blurt it out, I stopped myself. I couldn’t bring myself to admit I’d lied to him; I’d been a pawn in James’s plot. “All I wanted was to meet you, to be alone with you, for a few stolen moments. That was all I deserved. After all, you are—who you are! I’m—no one.”
“Ah, you’re far from no one. A pity James doesn’t realize that. But I do. I will come clean with you, Maria. I love my wife, but I am not in love with her. As I am with you.”
He ran a fingertip over my lips and I tingled all over. I wanted to climb to the roof and sing to the entire world, “The great Alexander Hamilton, my new love, is in love with me!” How could I ever keep this a secret? The best part of being in love was sharing it with others. Oh, how I wanted to tell someone! But who could I trust?
“I am all talked out. Come upstairs.” His voice caressed my ears. “Take this candle, for my hands will be busy.”
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