The Second Mrs. Astor(4)
Madeleine accidentally bumped shoulders with Dorothy and smiled—part apology, part dare—but Dorothy ignored her and walked away.
By the velvet-swathed entrance to the house stood Mrs. Ogden Mills, a matron so prominent and formidable that Madeleine could not recall seeing her even once without at least four strands of pearls around her neck, no matter the time of day. Amid all the bustle and mayhem of the play’s aftermath, she remained as motionless as a graveyard statue; even caught up in the giddy we-did-it silliness bubbling around them, none of the Junior League débutantes dared to venture too close.
“Miss Force,” Mrs. Mills said, lifting her brows and tilting her head toward the man standing, also unmoving, slightly behind her. “Have you met the colonel?”
Of course Madeleine hadn’t; she wasn’t even officially out yet. There was no reason at all for someone like John Jacob Astor IV to have taken notice of her.
She was still in her mad weeds. She dripped with wilted petals and curling leaves. Her hair was fraying from its braids; candytuft dribbled down her shoulders, teeny white starbursts at a time. A stolen glance in a small rectangle of a mirror tacked to a flat revealed her eyes, pale blue smudged with kohl, her skin plastered white, cheeks and lips still painted red as blood.
The colonel glanced where she did, noticed the mirror. The skin along her cheekbones began to prickle with heat.
“Jack,” continued Mrs. Mills, oblivious, serene, “I would like to introduce you to Miss Madeleine Force, daughter of William and Katherine Force of Brooklyn and, of late, Manhattan. You saw her as our Ophelia tonight. Madeleine, Colonel John Jacob Astor.”
There was no choice but to extend her hand. He accepted it, his fingers folding firm and warm over hers.
“How do you do?” she asked faintly.
“How do you do,” he echoed, soft.
It was as though her vision failed and she could not see him, in spite of the fact that he was right there in front of her. She didn’t see him so much as feel his presence; the warm, tanned glow of his skin, the knowing curve of his mouth, the air of a man who knew what he wanted and was not bothered by the wanting, because everything he touched was already his.
Madeleine felt thirteen again, back on that rock-scrubbed beach—that moment when their eyes had met, and his smile seemed just for her.
From somewhere near her left shoulder, a pop of light flared, died, but she didn’t turn her head to see what it was.
“You were excellent tonight,” the colonel said, letting go of her hand.
She stopped herself from wiping her tingling palm down her dress. “I could have been better, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t see how,” he said, and with a nod to Mrs. Mills, angled away. A moment later, he was gone, devoured by the crush.
Mrs. Ogden Mills sent Madeleine a pointed look. Madeleine smiled tightly, murmured her thanks, and retreated slowly, gratefully, back into the Junior League crowd.
*
It was only much later—hours later, as she lay sleepless in her bed and stared out her window at the cascading, moon-silvered clouds—that Madeleine realized the pop of light backstage must have been a magnesium flash from a photographer, stealing for himself that moment when Colonel Astor had first taken her hand.
CHAPTER 2
Your father’s courtship of me began with a daily delivery of fresh hothouse flowers, starting the very morning after we were first introduced.
Someday I will teach you the language of flowers, my darling. Of how you, as a gentleman, will initiate your wooing with a floral message aimed only just slightly sideways, signifying nothing beyond the suggestion of yes, I have seen you. Yellow bud roses in fern, perhaps, or a spray of violets. A simple corsage, something modest and easily pinned to a bodice, should the young lady so desire. At this stage, always choose a bloom both sweet and candid, one to which no respectable mama could take offense.
Only after that (no fewer than four weeks of teas and picnics and cotillions, and before you groan, believe me, I know how tedious that becomes) may you move on to the flowers more opulent. Gardenias, pearled and intoxicating. Carnations, peach and lemon and cherry. Too many people (Europeans, really) consider carnations to be nothing but a vulgar American indulgence, but in my opinion, there is no blossom more intricate, more deliciously, thickly, fragrantly lavish, than a carnation.
So. After months of courting, you are at last allowed to consider sending red roses, but only if your intentions are sincere. Red roses have but one meaning. You will not be forgiven for mistaking it.
After the roses—after the conquest—what is left? Orchids.
In the fullness of time, I trust, the woman you love will tell you of those.
July 1910
Bar Harbor, Maine
The brick-and-cedar prison that was the Forces’ summer residence might easily have been a metaphor for Madeleine’s entire life: cramped, elegant, strictly contained. Although not one of the sprawling “cottages” famously dotting Millionaires’ Row, there was no aspect of the house that was not perfectly proper, and perfectly predictable: the handful of Old Masters paintings on the walls, the trompe l’oeil fresco in the dining room (Persephone accepting a pomegranate seed in her palm), the Aubusson rugs, the immaculate gleam of the teak handrail topping the banister that guarded the stairs. The windows were small but ocean-facing, never inviting much of the light or wind inside.