The Second Mrs. Astor(16)

Madeleine couldn’t help grinning up at him. Colonel Astor grinned back, and the room was crimson and gilt and teal plastered walls, and it was fine that they sailed practically alone across the elaborate parquet as everyone watched. It was fine, because they were touching, they were dancing, they were together.

*

He handed her a fresh glass of punch. It tasted more of champagne than of the fruit it had an hour before, and that, as it happened, was also fine with her. The music played on, and the people danced on, but Madeleine and the colonel had retreated past an open set of French doors to a balcony silvered in moonlight, where the breeze felt cooling now instead of chilly, and the soft, persistent scent of roses was washed away clean.

They weren’t really ever alone. There were people wandering in and out, spying the balcony, admiring the view, going back. There was a pair of servants, footmen in black jackets and crisp ties, who stood unobtrusively at either side of the doors, awaiting the colonel’s next instruction.

The balcony jutted out over a bluff. Thick cedar braces dug into the rock face beneath them, rugged pink granite that crumbled gently down into the woods. Looking out straight ahead showed her only more forest, mysterious and dense. Golden, flickering lights occasionally glinted past the trees—torchlights or cabins or lost spirits, Madeleine couldn’t say.

They stood in silence. She tried the punch again, savoring the bubbles popping along her tongue.

“Might I ask a favor of you, Miss Force? Would you call me Jack?”

“Yes,” she said, “if you will call me Madeleine.”

“Not Maddy? I’ve heard your mother and sister calling you that.”

She laughed, feeling warm and bold. “No, please. I’ve tried for years to get them to stop. It’s so undignified. Maddy. I’m not a child anymore.”

“It is a lovely name. Madeleine.” He said it again, under his breath. “Madeleine.”

“Thank you. At least I am grown to someone.”

He smiled at the trees, a wistful smile, one that tugged at her unexpectedly, that lodged itself in a tender place somewhere near her heart.

“It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we’re young, we’re taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that’s as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.”

“Is that how it was for you? You grew to be at odds with your parents?”

His jaw tightened; he took a longer breath. “Oh, for a while, yes. It was inevitable, I think. My father and I used to lock horns on so many things. Where I would attend school. What I would study. My companions, my ambitions . . . He was so determined that he knew the best path for me. And I, of course, was determined that he was wrong.” He shook his head. “All these years later, I see that we were both right, and both wrong. I wish I could tell him so now.”

An owl began to call from below them, earnest and deep. Another answered, closer to the sea. The golden lights in the woods winked and glowed.

“But your father must have been so proud of you,” she said. “No matter how you locked horns. Look at you. Look at all you’ve done.”

“What have I done, do you imagine?”

“Why,” she said, astonished, “you’re John Jacob Astor. You’re—you’re incomparable, really. Everyone in the world has heard of you. Every man and woman in the world admires you.”

“My money, do you mean?”

He said it mildly, and without looking at her, but she felt the nick of it anyway.

“Not just that. Certainly that, but not just. You’ve invented things, useful things. I’ve read about them, the road improver—the—that special brake, for stopping bicycles. You volunteered to go to war when you didn’t even have to. You’ve funded all sorts of charities, for people and places that need things so desperately—”

“Stop,” he said, now on a laugh. “I beg you. You’re making my head swell.”

“You’ve written a book,” she went on. “An entire book.”

“A passing fancy.”

“A book of fiction about exploring the solar system. Men in spaceships, landing on Saturn and Jupiter. Finding new life. Only someone tremendously clever would think of that.”

He leaned forward, braced both hands against the balcony railing as if to assess its strength, then shook his head. “It was a while ago. A lifetime ago, it seems.”

She tasted the punch again—it really was delicious!—then lowered the glass. “May I read it? Would you mind?”

“Oh, it’s not very good, I’m afraid. Just a clutter of ideas I had when I was younger.”

“But I want to know your ideas. I want to read your words, your book, because I might find a part of you inside those pages. A part I won’t have a chance to know any other way. And I would love to know every aspect of you, Jack Astor. Do they have it here at the library in town?”

“No,” he said, after a long, dumbfounded moment. And then, “Yes, I suppose they might. But I’ll give you a copy. You needn’t borrow it.”

“Thank you.”