The Second Mrs. Astor(51)
Three sharp knocks rattled the door. The porter, ready for her trunks, Jack standing right behind him in the cramped hall.
“Shall we go? I’ve already sent Robins ahead with the rest of the luggage. It’s going to take some time to wend through customs, I’m afraid. These port towns at the edge of the world. It always does.”
“All right.”
Kitty, already leashed to keep her in check, pushed past both men, straining to reach Madeleine, her tail thumping against Jack’s leg. Her leather collar pulled tight against her neck, but she kept her focus on Madeleine, panting.
“Oh, hello, yes.” She cupped the dog’s face in her hands, smoothing the coarse brown fur. For some reason, Kitty had warmed up to her tremendously in the past few months, obeying some doggish logic Madeleine could not work out. Kitty followed her around now nearly as much as she did Jack, leaning against her heavily whenever she could. By the end of the day, all of Madeleine’s skirts would be coated with dog hair. (The impressive Rosalie would inevitably return the skirts to her closet two days later, pressed and spotless.) It would have been, as Jack pointed out, cruel to leave their dog behind for so long a period. Besides, he’d spent years taking her everywhere, and Kitty loved to travel.
Which was apparently true. At the very least, Kitty loved to be with her and Jack, so surely that was close enough.
“Hello, my good girl,” Madeleine whispered to her. “Are you ready for an adventure?”
“She always is.” Jack stole past the porter and the maid to buss her on the cheek, his free hand lightly and briefly gripping her elbow.
Ever since she’d told him her news, back in Paris, the worried cast to his eyes had vanished. He’d gathered her close to him, his lips against her temple. She’d breathed in that bergamot and amber scent of him, closing her eyes, wrapping her arms around his waist. Like the Airedale, like a child, she’d leaned heavily, letting him take her weight.
He’d wanted to know only was she certain, and when did she think . . . ?
Yes. And, August.
Whenever her husband gazed at her now, all Madeleine saw was a slow burning joy. It practically lit him from within.
She wished she felt the same. She wanted to feel the same. She wanted her heart to be as lifted as his, to keep them in harmony, because she adored their harmony and always had. But so far, all she could bring herself to feel about her pregnancy was a thin, distant amazement. Like all the tumbling, strange changes in her life now were happening to someone else, and she was only watching them from afar, observing all their fascinating little facets.
Look at that lucky girl, that newlywed in her coat and lace and jewels. Consider her fine life, her husband, her unborn child, and still all she does is complain about the weather.
She never said anything to Jack about this new, faraway side of her. She couldn’t lie to him, not about anything that really mattered, but that didn’t mean she had to tell him everything, either. It seemed kinder to let him believe her silence was tranquil contemplation; that her newfound gravity was Madonna-like, not simply detachment.
It occurred to her sometimes that she ought to feel guilty for her lack of feeling. She ought to feel shame, at least. But even those moments would slip away from her, fading off into insignificance.
Kitty licked her hand. Madeleine gave the dog’s head another rub, then put on her gloves.
“Let’s go find Egypt.”
*
The New Khedivial Hotel did not, as a policy, allow its guests to house their pets in its splendid apartments. Cats were considered bothersome and dogs dirty, but Jack was so accustomed to circumventing this particular rule that he merely smiled as he handed the wad of cash notes to the manager, who pocketed it without blinking and bowed deeply before conducting them all to their rooms.
They were only stopping for the night before heading to Cairo. She’d passed in a haze through the grand lobby, barely noticing the décor. But once ensconced in their suite, Madeleine had collapsed into a chair and leaned back her head, and all she saw was fussy gilt and silk wallpaper and shiny French brocatelle, and anonymous oil paintings of pastel sunsets blushing behind trees. A few Roman-looking busts gazed back at her, blank-eyed, from veined marble pedestals.
This room could have been anywhere. Any superior hotel room, anywhere in Europe or America, anywhere she’d ever been.
What an awful long way to have come for more gilt.
CHAPTER 18
It rained and gloomed until Cairo.
But I sleepwalked until then, letting your father’s meticulous plans buffet me this way and that. I had absolute trust in him to keep me safe, no matter how much I did not or could not see happening around me. I remember falling into my dreams that night in the hotel in Alexandria, relieved enough to be in a downy soft bed that did not rock, relieved even more to have my husband next to me.
(On the steamer from France to Egypt, there had been some mix-up with the ship, or the tides, or the captain or something—I still don’t quite know; it was explained in a rapid torrent of French—and in the end, all we could manage to procure in first class were single cabins with narrow bunks.) I hope it doesn’t shock you, me telling you these things. I hope that someday, when you are married, you will read these words and think, “Of course.”
I mean for you to know, in every motherly way that I can convey it, that your parents were in love. That we were twin spirits in love. And how special you were to us from the very beginning, the spark born from us both.