The Second Mrs. Astor(39)

“You’re far more beautiful than the papers give you credit for,” said the woman in a pleasant tone; her handshake was forceful and brief. “But then, I never give the papers much credit to begin with.”

“Madeleine,” said Jack, also smiling. “May I introduce Mrs. J. J. Brown, an old summer friend.”

“Margaret,” the woman corrected him. “Please. I hope you don’t mind if I call you Madeleine. I feel as though I know you already.”

“Not at all. Um, Margaret.”

“I read that you had quite an adventure the other night. A midnight rescue at sea! Is it true, Madeleine, that you helped lower the lifeboat yourself to help save those unfortunate sailors?”

“Oh,” said Madeleine again. After months of serenely murmured slights (the lifted, plucked brows; the faux looks of concern; my dear, are you really quite at ease here? Perhaps you’d feel better playing games with the children on the porch rather than trying to converse with us dreary old folks), Margaret’s open friendliness was rattling. “Hardly. I got them drinks, really. Some sandwiches.”

“More than that,” said Jack, covering her hand with his. “You were their beacon. They told me so themselves.”

Madeleine shook her head, embarrassed. She’d wondered at the time if she should have done more. Once aboard the Noma, the rescued men had essentially shrunk into sodden, vacant-eyed hulks, even wrapped in blankets and fortified with steaming mugs of coffee (laced with brandy; Jack had poured it himself), their fingers brushing dead cold against hers. After that, both Jack and her father had assured her there was nothing more to be done. Everyone was safe, and they’d be back to shore by morning. She’d returned to her bed and tumbled into a dark, dreamless sleep.

Across the street, a fleshy man in a battered jacket had stopped to observe them, pulling a pad of paper from his breast pocket and a pencil from behind his ear.

“We’re on our way to luncheon,” Jack said now, nodding toward the hotel ahead, glass windows glinting, men and women ambling in and out of the main doors in crisp linen and gauze and more silk. “Might I tempt you into joining us?”

“Why,” said Margaret Brown, “there is nothing I would enjoy more.”

She sent Madeleine another smile—if there was any animosity behind it, Madeleine truly couldn’t tell—and fell into step beside them. None of them looked at the man across the street.

As they approached the entrance, Margaret asked, “What were those fools doing out on a sloop in the middle of a gale, anyway?”

“Bankers,” answered Jack, succinct, and Margaret laughed again as they walked inside.





CHAPTER 13


Your father wanted me to like Newport. Oh, he wanted me to love it as he did, and I swear to you, I did try. But it’s difficult to love that which not only does not love you in return, but regards you with little more than thinly veiled contempt. For all of his efforts, for all of Jack’s dinners and dances, the tennis games at various clubs, the Astor Cup, the polo matches—Newport remained stiff and hoary toward me. We were invited places; after all, no one directly insults an Astor, not without risking certain consequences. But besides Margaret Brown, I found no genuine friends.

The warm and sunny days of my girlhood were back in Bar Harbor. I suppose they always will be.

The only thing I miss about Newport is Beechwood itself. The cottage belongs to Vincent now, and that’s fine, too. I had my days there. I had that one special, magical day there, and no one could ever ask for more than what I was given then.

It was a short, brilliant ceremony held in the ballroom. Ivory and mirrors and gilt. Chilled, motionless air. The ocean crashing, a rainstorm rolling in. Red roses everywhere, everywhere.

My mother wept; my father, sister, and I did not; and for once, your brother kept his dark opinions to himself.

I had awoken that morning aboard the Noma in my little cabin as Miss Force.

I fell asleep that night aboard the Noma in a different cabin, with a different name.

And I was uncoiled.

And all the world was new.




September 1911

Manhattan; At Sea; Newport



Everything was kept as secret as possible. Which meant, naturally, that hardly any of it was secret.

It was predicted that the terms of the colonel’s divorce meant he could not be married again in a church, or that he could not marry again while Ava lived, or that he could not marry again in the great state of New York. Only that last guess was actually true, which left them with Beechwood or Bar Harbor if they wanted to keep the thing small and in the family, which they did, according to every single person except Jack himself. But he was willing to do whatever it took to hasten the ceremony. They hoped, all of them, that after it was done, the publicity, the notoriety, would begin to fade.

Madeleine had her doubts. But it seemed easier to go along with her mother and Mr. Dobbyn’s plans, to allow herself to be swept up and away by them rather than resist, flotsam atop a tidal wave of other people’s ideas about flowers and cakes and dresses and vows.

She didn’t care. She didn’t. She wasn’t one of those girls who lived for the explosion of excess lavished on one single day, Consuelo Vanderbilt, May Goelet. Even as a child, she’d never spent hours daydreaming about her wedding; it all seemed rather silly to her. Surely the most important part of it all wasn’t that day. It was every day after.