The Second Mrs. Astor(23)

Learn their names, so you can get an idea of how they write about you.

Learn where they work, because some papers are more discreet than others.

Never say more to them than absolutely necessary; words are easily misquoted.

Don’t get caught in a lie; a good newspaperman will always sniff it out.

Don’t lose your temper, no matter how they goad you. Spectacles always sell sheets.

And finally, if truly pinned, negotiate. Offer them something they want, a very limited something, so that you can have something you want. If it helped, he would tell her, kissing her hand, she could think of it as a tiny sacrifice for the greater good.

*

That sultry August evening after the concert, Jack’s idea of the greater good was simply the freedom to walk with her, to enjoy apple-flavored doughnuts with her, to speak of flimsy nothings while quietly learning the unspoken things about each other: how they harmonized, how they linked, how even the silences between them were light and lovely.

And it worked, more or less. After the photographer had gotten his shot (Madeleine pasty and smiling nervously; Jack at ease; Mother cropped out entirely), the man had tugged at his cap and let them alone. But the next morning, there were two more of them camped out across the street from Madeleine’s house, underneath that sturdy red oak.

They were only the beginning.





CHAPTER 7


BEWARE LA FORCE MAJEURE!

—Special to Town Topics

September 1, 1910

Bar Harbor, Me.



Mother Force has her heart set upon adding a certain army officer to her list of kith and kin, and nothing will stand in her way. Mr. and Mrs. William H. Force, favored with two stunning jewels in their family crown, would happily bestow either upon this newly eligible suitor, no matter his recent marital woes.

Sources have caught sight of both of these freshly polished gems being squired about this Mount Desert town by the fickle man himself. The question becomes, what will this fortunate fellow choose to do with such generous offerings?





The papers, even the scandal sheets, had been able to unearth only the barest-bone facts of the luscious Ava Lowle Willing Astor’s divorce from her lanky, obscenely rich husband. The details of the petition and decree remained sealed by the court, which meant there was nothing to rein in the breathless rumors: that he had been unfaithful, or she had. That they had fought incessantly; that they lived apart; that the only reason the divorce had not happened sooner was that they’d been forced to await the passing of the colonel’s puritanical mother. No doubt had the dissolution of their marriage happened in her lifetime, the disgrace of it would have stopped Lina’s heart.

A year ago, Madeleine had paid little attention to the talk regarding the Astors. Gossip was a ceaseless fact of society; there was no getting around it, she knew that firsthand. Tittle-tattle flitting through school would catch flame in the dormitories, in the hallways. Madeleine had seen perfectly pleasant girls ruined by slander, and perfectly horrible girls elevated by it. She’d managed her final few years of finishing school by keeping her head down, mostly, and her comments close.

Graduating from it all last June had been a relief. The ceremony itself had been conducted out-of-doors in an amphitheater dotted with flowery hats and lace parasols. The one-and-three-quarters hours of speeches had been tedious and wilting and crammed full of phrases like fair womanhood and gentle hearts and our future wives.

And here I am, anyway, Madeleine thought now, the ink-smudged sheets of the tabloid crushed in one hand. Being gossiped about, someone’s future wife—at least according to the papers. Maybe nothing ever really changes.

“You shouldn’t let it upset you,” Father said. It was twilight; they sat together on the swinging bench hung from the rafters of their back porch, watching the sky darken above the trees. There was a bite to the air tonight that hadn’t been there even this morning; the breeze from the bay nudged by with an undercurrent of woodsmoke, pungent and crisp. Soon birch leaves would litter the ground scarlet, and the grass would dry into straw, and the days would grow clipped, with violet shadows reaching longer and longer.

Soon they’d have to close up the house and leave, to head back to New York.

Where there were even more reporters.

“How is Mother handling it? The papers calling her—that?”

“Don’t tell her I said so, but I think she’s secretly flattered. La Force Majeure. It implies influence, doesn’t it.”

“It’s rude.”

“It is the nature of our lives, Madeleine. If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you. You can’t expect otherwise.”

The black iron candle-lanterns decorating the porch remained unlit, but a wan orangey glow from the lamps inside the house spilled over the windowsills, outlining Madeleine and her father both but only very softly, and only along their laps. She hoped that if she kept to the shadows enough, she’d remain a smudgy nothing to anyone observing from the darkness beyond. Of late, there were always strangers skulking nearby, walking slowly up and down the lane, watching the house, watching for her.

“Maddy,” said her father in a new voice, one she knew all too well; it was the graveled voice of lectures, of authority, of imposing family rules. Madeleine braced herself.

“Yes?”