The Second Mrs. Astor(42)

Her sister hugged her arms over her chest. “Yes, well . . . but there has to be some sort of a bridal time limit. No seeing her after coffee and dessert, I’d say.”

“After our goodnights,” he countered.

“Yes,” agreed Madeleine. “Not till then, at least.”

Katherine paused to take them both in, wise once more. “Hmm. I find I suddenly miss my coat. But I will return soon.”

Her footsteps faded off.

Madeleine lifted a hand to the lapel of Jack’s jacket, running her fingers down the sharp woolen crease. He brought up his to capture her palm against his chest and they stood there like that, connected, gazing into each other’s eyes. His were pale as the moon now, just the same soft silver. His heart beat so strong against her.

“How happy you make me,” he said, unexpected.

She curled her fingers tighter around his. “Good. Because I’ve decided that mermaids definitely have husbands. At least, this one will. So become accustomed to happiness, Colonel Astor.”

“I will,” he said, sounding almost bemused. “I plan to. I will.”

*

They held hands during the ceremony.

She wore a suit of kingfisher blue with a pencil skirt and a cream hat. Her bouquet was a sweet-smelling mass of deeply scarlet roses.

Katherine stood to her left as maid of honor; Vincent served as best man. Her father had walked her down their makeshift aisle, a long, snowy runner laid across the shining floor, vases and vases of American Beauties stationed between the poles lining either side.

A part of her knew that it was cold in the ballroom. That her nose was cold, her cheeks were cold. That the storm brewing beyond the windows, gray and thick and spliced with lightning, might prove to be more than just a little rain. That outside of this chamber, outside of this mansion, waited a phalanx of reporters and photographers, eager for their scraps of fresh news.

But that was all fine. She let the tranquil tones of the pastor wash over her and barely heard what he was saying, and it was all fine.

“Colonel and Mrs. Astor,” the pastor said, and Mother and Father and everyone else broke into applause, muffled because they all wore gloves.

Jack turned her to him and bent his head and kissed her, his hands light against her upper arms. Their third kiss.

A change of seasons, indeed.

All of her seasons, from now on, were going to be nothing but splendid.

She knew it in her mermaid soul.





CHAPTER 14


Off we sailed.

For months we sailed, up and down the coast, the Noma our own sweet personal paradise.

But every time we went ashore—and we did need to go ashore at times; the yacht ran on coal, not dreams, and frankly, sometimes my joints longed for dry land—they were waiting for us. The journalists. The tourists. The gawkers.

The Four Hundred, those avid and disgruntled beings.

Our marriage had not sated them, not a one. The press wanted more and more of us because the public did, and at least that was something I understood. Our names and faces sold their papers; our names and faces paid their salaries; and by devouring even the most mundane details about us, people around the country could imagine themselves, if only for a few moments, living our lives instead of their own.

But the fashionables! The Newport cottagers, the old Rhinebeck families, with their gnarled ancestral roots sunk deep into a fading Dutch–American history . . . they simultaneously craved us and despised us.

I suppose that, to them, Jack and I represented the elimination of that last crumbling battlement shielding the Old Guard from the New. The thought of our unholy union must have been both fascinating and horrifying.

Oh, my Jakey. My poor, beloved boy, who will have to navigate both of these worlds without your father’s guidance.

How I fear for you.

In the end, we humans are creatures of marl and earth. We must return to our own soil.




December 1911

Manhattan



Colonel and the second Mrs. Astor spent their days aboard the Noma lazing in the sun or beneath the skating clouds, dazed and suspended between the heavens and the vast heaving ocean. They spent their nights entangled, alone together, learning new ways to dance. Learning the language of each other, rhythm and flesh and scents and kisses, and Madeleine was intoxicated.

They never said the words to each other. They never said I love you, because everything was still so wild and tender and new, and their souls were still understanding how to fit together. Or perhaps they never said it because they never had to. It was a silence understood by both of them, dark and secret and precious. Their connection, their union, was nothing ordinary, configured from the ordinary world.

But Madeleine was a bride; she knew what love was. She knew as sure as she knew her own body, her own mind, its measureless, electric thrill. In their sleep, they still touched, her hand on his arm, his arm around her waist.

He draped her in jewels, even as they basked in their splendid, salty isolation. More ropes of pearls, emerald chains for her hair and neck, sapphire drops for her ears. Belts of hammered silver studded with turquoise or malachite. Gold bangles chased with dragons, with flowers, or shaped as buckles or ruby-eyed snakes. At night, sometimes she dined with a ring on every finger, so that when she sipped her soup or sliced her fish, sparks would scatter in every direction, and in the softly lit saloon of the Noma, she became a minor star.