The Second Mrs. Astor(22)
She made herself look up at him as he settled against the velveteen cushions. She’d abandoned the program as a fan but couldn’t stop herself from twisting the slim bangle on her left wrist around and around, a band of silver firm as a manacle against her glove and bones.
“I’m afraid she’s not very subtle,” she said.
Jack tugged his waistcoat straight. “I’m quite accustomed to ambitious mamas. Yours was obliging enough to read my mind, at least.”
“Did she?”
That secret smile returned; he gave her a sideward look. “She did. And I thanked her kindly for it, too.”
Madeleine sat back, relieved and yet still mortified. The burning bulbs in the chandeliers above them sank away into cherry, into cinders, into ash.
She hesitated, then whispered, “If you encourage her, though, she’ll never stop trying to throw us together.”
“Madeleine,” he replied quietly, leaning his head toward hers, “what on earth makes you think I want her to stop?”
*
This was why she would not remember the music played that night by the accomplished musicians of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, nothing beyond the first few dramatic notes of Bach’s Fantasia in G minor: because in the newly fallen darkness, Jack reached over and took her hand—deliberate this time, nothing absent-minded about it—and he held it the entire while, the entire performance, while Madeleine’s cheeks went warm again and her heart bloomed like a savage flower inside her chest.
*
It was the habit of the audience of the Building of Arts to wend slowly outside again once the affair was done, the play or music or lecture, where they would discover vendors in rolling wooden carts parked in the grass, selling sarsaparilla tonics or hot frankfurters or oysters or roasted corn by lanternlight. Any children in attendance would immediately begin tugging on their parents’ arms, pleading for pennies, only to run amok once they’d claimed their prize, darting from cart to cart to decide which treat looked best. And although most of the ladies, in their fine gowns and gemstones, declined to handle the mess of a shucked oyster or a buttery ear of dripping corn, a small slice of cake might be acceptable, as well as a glass of lemonade.
As a child, Madeleine would have been delighted with the corn, with the sweet tonic or a sharp mustardy frankfurter. But, as she’d said to Jack before, she wasn’t a child any longer; she was a young woman wearing white satin gloves and a dress of jade silk, and so when Jack Astor turned to her beneath the evening sky and asked if she would like anything, anything at all, she glanced around the carts until she found the one selling cider doughnuts, because they were easy to eat and always came with a thick paper napkin to hold the crumbs.
“Perfect,” he said. “My favorite.”
“Really?”
“Really. Mrs. Force, for you?”
Mother shook her head. She would not risk her new gown, not on its very first wearing.
The doughnuts had been fried during the day by the wife of a fisherman and were sold at night by her daughter, a freckled girl of about fifteen, and they were always moist and dense and tangy with apples. Madeleine took her first bite and closed her eyes in pleasure. She opened them again to find Jack watching her, his own doughnut untouched.
A pair of boys stampeded between them, clutching stick candies and yelling for a friend. A cool breeze followed on their heels, scented of sugar and the promise of rain.
“You . . .” Jack said, and paused. “You, ah, have a . . .”
He took a step closer, lifted a hand as if to touch her face. Before he could, Madeleine raised her own hand and brushed away the crumb from her lower lip and that was when the light exploded only feet away, startling her. She immediately turned her face aside as Jack did the opposite, pivoting toward that blinding burst.
“Sir,” he said, a word edged with exasperation. “Some warning, if you please.”
The smell of sugar and rain vanished, replaced with an acrid, chemical stink.
“Beg your pardon, colonel,” said the photographer, grinning. “It was a nice moment, though.”
Jack moved to stand between Madeleine and the photographer. There was now a giant pale spot in her vision that she couldn’t blink away.
“Very well, you’ve gotten your moment. My companions and I would like to get on with our evening, if you don’t mind.”
“One more of you and Miss Force, colonel? One more, with fair warning?”
Jack glanced back at her; she gave the slightest shake of her head, but perhaps he didn’t see. “One more, if you agree to leave us in peace afterwards.”
“Deal,” said the man, swiftly adding powder to his handheld trough, lifting his camera again. “Look this way, Miss Force. There you are, thanksverymuch. A wee smile, please, miss? I promise it don’t hurt a bit.”
Flash!
*
But it did hurt. A petty little wound, this photograph, that photograph, this mention in the papers, that one. Each one chipping away at any thought she might have had of privacy, of control of her own face or figure or destiny.
Two years from this nice moment, Madeleine would be a widow and a mother, the most famous widowed mother on the entire planet, and by then she would have developed her own flinty ways of dealing with the press.
But that was still two years away. For now, in the short months to come, Jack would teach her his rules on how to interact with them: