The Second Mrs. Astor(28)

(She had gotten him a cigar cutter fob, gold to match his watch, with her initials engraved on the back. He’d worn it every day since.)

“Better than all right,” Katherine said. “You’re luminous. Utterly prepared to illume.”

The Astor chateau spread its massive shadow along the street; the automobile began to slow. A line of motorcars idled in front of the mansion, and a handful of pressmen huddled along the sidewalks, long-coated figures powdered with snow, hats and umbrellas turning white. The nearest one noticed the Forces and his camera jerked upward, and then they all did, one after another, as though linked by a puppeteer’s string.

Their limousine came to a stop, still seven cars away from the main doors.

“We’re sitting ducks out here,” said Katherine.

Mother leaned forward. “You’re right. Let’s get out now, before they surround us entirely.”

A pair of footmen had noticed them, as well, trotting up to the automobile’s doors.

“You are a queen,” Mother said to Madeleine quickly, in those last few moments. “Head high. Show them all you belong here.”

Swathed in ermine, Mrs. Force stepped out of the limousine.

Katherine gave Madeleine a wicked smile, then followed. There was a sporadic dazzle of lights, but most of the flashes, Madeleine knew by now, were going to be aimed at her.

She gathered her skirts. She slid across the squabs and raised her right hand to the footman awaiting her, exiting the auto in a slither of mink and ice-blue brocade, trying to show as little ankle as possible.

The flash-powder explosions began, hot lights surrounding her, men shouting her name.

“Miss Force! Look this way, please!”

“Miss Force! Over here!”

She kept her gaze cast down, focusing on her feet, the slippery folds of her gown. The wet gray slush of the pavement.

Think of Jack.

The footman released her hand, keeping an umbrella positioned above her head.

“Miss Force! Did you help plan the menu?”

“How many dances will you share with the colonel?”

“Any surprises in store for this evening?”

She had to look up to orient herself, to make certain she was heading for the porte cochère. It was a mistake. Within seconds, she was blinded, and the only thing to do then was to pause and wipe all expression from her face until her vision cleared.

“Miss?” It was the footman, paused with her but politely concerned, and Madeleine gave a nod and moved forward again, this time with a serene, slim smile, as if she’d meant all along to let them fix her there, frozen as a deer in the road.

“Miss Force! Miss Force!”

And then she was past the open doors, past the inner bronze entrance gates and into the glass-domed hall, her heels striking wood and stone instead of concrete. The air swept by her more temperate, and the snow disappeared, and she did not have to picture Jack any longer because he was there before her, smiling at her, taking up both of her hands in his own.

“Madeleine,” he greeted her, his tone low and intimate. He bent his head to place a kiss upon her knuckles. She felt the warmth of his breath through her gloves.

In that moment, it was all of it, every bit of it, worth it.

*

Did you help plan the menu?

No. Wives planned menus. Or, in this case, personal secretaries.

How many dances will you share with the colonel?

Any of them, all of them. As many as he wished.

Any surprises in store for this evening?

Only Jack himself knew the answer to that.

*

The portrait of Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Junior—Lina, the Mrs. Astor—hung with frigid magnificence upon a buff-plastered wall of the Fifth Avenue residence. It dominated the reception room, looming larger than any of the other masterpieces arranged nearby. It had been done by Carolus-Duran during the acme of Mrs. Astor’s tight-lipped beauty; her painted flesh gleamed like the pearls around her neck against the russet background and the black satin of her gown.

Beneath the portrait was a leopard-skin rug, one upon which the living Mrs. Astor used to stand to greet her guests, so that anyone fortunate enough to have gained entrance into these hallowed halls would be presented with the delight of double Mrs. Astors, both smiling grimly in welcome.

Madeleine took careful note of that painted smile, along with the pearls and the diamond-decorated fan and the impressive ruby so discreetly, yet openly, displayed upon the ring finger of Mrs. Astor’s bare left hand.

Behind her, the Knickerbocker guests of Lina’s Knickerbocker son drained cocktails and conversed as they waited for the dinner to begin. Bankers, Wall Street speculators, railroad barons, timber barons, plantation owners; potent, important men with interests in tobacco and politics and steel . . . and all their stiff-backed wives, all very much the age of her mother. The nape of Madeleine’s neck crawled with their attention.

They’d swiveled and smiled at her as she’d entered the chamber on Jack’s arm. Smiled with such pleasantly blank expressions, and took her hand and looked her not quite in the eyes, and the whole time Madeleine had marveled, I thought they’d be more terrifying.

But then Mrs. James Cardeza was in front of her, Charlotte Cardeza, that war dragon, who regarded first the colonel and then her with that same bland, genial air, and Madeleine came back to herself with a start.