The Second Mrs. Astor(5)
Everything in the Force household, and in Madeleine Force’s world, was exactly as it should be, and everything was exactly as it always would be. Not a single enhancement had been made in all of her memory, except for the Louis XVI ormolu chairs her mother had brought back from Paris three years ago because the cranberry satin cushions matched the runner in the foyer.
It was a wonder that Madeleine herself had managed to change, to expand from infant to child to young woman, within these walls. She thought she had grown; despite the evidence in her mirror, sometimes she wondered. The rooms and hallways did seem more claustrophobic than they had years ago, but otherwise her world seemed always, always the same.
Yet the globe did spin on its axis, and the seasons did flow from one to the next like water along the smooth, certain bed of a stream.
It was the height of summer, the weeks long and shimmering with heat, and the cottagers had descended upon Bar Harbor in a whirlwind of yachts and straw hats and billowing white linen. Drowsy shops, hungry for customers all winter, suddenly bustled with patrons; up and down Main Street, jolly banners snapped in the breeze, announcing fresh clams or imported cigars or exclusive Parisian tea-gowns. Newport, of course, had its matrons ossifying in their marble palaces—but Bar Harbor’s balmy months boasted a slightly franker, more daring crowd.
And, as had been true ever since Katherine’s debut, breakfast at the Force home (whether in Bar Harbor or New York) was punctuated by the arrival of flowers, which their butler placed strategically, jewellike, all around the dining room.
Pink sweet peas by the chafing dish of buttered eggs. Rubied dahlias at the other end of the credenza. Zinnias, marigolds, and hyacinths positioned between the pearlware figurines along the fireplace mantelshelf. Twin clusters of roses (one cream, one canary) in crystal bowls by the saltcellars.
Each delivery was accompanied by a small pasteboard card, which would be carefully collected and handed to Madeleine’s sister, who kept them in a stack by her water goblet for the duration of the meal. And even though not a single one of her beaux ever called before noon—Madeleine imagined they weren’t awake before then, anyway—Katherine dressed as if one might emerge unexpectedly from the side hall or the drawing room at any moment, ardently demanding the next dance.
Katherine at breakfast was a vision in lace and chiffon, powdered and perfect. Katherine at lunch was a vision, and Katherine at dinner was fairly staggering. Katherine, in short, was always a vision, and it was no surprise to Madeleine that the florists in town were kept so busy on her behalf.
So although she was glad of the scattering of fresh flowers that brightened the lead-shadowed room, Madeleine was used to them. She barely looked up any longer whenever some clever new arrangement appeared nearby.
A single, ivory-colored card was placed by her plate. Her plate.
She looked at it aslant, her cup of café au lait paused halfway to her lips.
“Miss,” murmured the butler, and stepped back into the gloom.
Madeleine set her cup upon its saucer.
“Who’s it from?” Katherine inquired, taking a sip of her own coffee.
In deep indigo script, the card read:
Pansies, for thoughts.
—JJA
For a heartbeat, she could not move. For a heartbeat, she only swooped inside, the heady and helpless feeling of falling from a very steep height. Then she blinked and looked around until she found it: a small nosegay on the sideboard, captured in one of the few rays of sun to pierce the chamber. The mauve edges of the petals glistened so sheer and crisp they looked dipped in sugar.
“Maddy, who is it from?” Katherine asked again, focusing on her eggs.
“Colonel Astor,” Madeleine said.
Katherine’s eyebrows climbed; Father lowered his newspaper; Mother inhaled sharply. Wordless, she held out her hand for the card. With a sense of breaking free from invisible chains, from gravity itself, Madeleine rose, walked around the table, and gave it to her.
“My heavens,” her mother said, turning the card around and around, as if there might be a hidden message somewhere in the margins. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s from Hamlet. It’s a reference to something Ophelia says.” She took a breath; did the air taste of sugar, too, or was it only her sudden and unbounded imagination? “I told you we met last night, remember?”
“You told me you were simply introduced to him in the crowd backstage. I assumed he was there to congratulate everyone on the performance.”
Madeleine shook her head. “We hardly spoke. We shook hands. That was all.”
“Hardly all,” Katherine said, leaning far across the table to steal the card from their mother. The chiffon folds of her morning dress drooped dangerously close to her eggs. “That must have been quite a handshake.”
“I suppose he’s sending flowers to all the girls in the cast,” Madeleine said. Her own dress was ecru muslin—thin, fetching, everyday. She rubbed a pleat between two fingers. “Perhaps he’s only being kind.”
Katherine tapped the edge of the colonel’s card against the gloss of the tabletop, then slid it back toward Madeleine. “Little sister. Even you are not that na?ve, surely.”
No. She was not.
*
The art of stillness—that classic and stultifying hallmark of a true lady, at least according to Mother—had never been one of Madeleine’s best skills. It seemed to her that remaining frozen in time and place really only suited hunted creatures. When she’d said so aloud one day during deportment lessons at Miss Ely’s School, her teacher had retorted that there was surely no creature more hunted than a young, pretty heiress.