The Second Mrs. Astor(53)

Jack handed her the egg. She took a bite, gazing out at the rippling sand.

“Still happy, Mrs. Astor?”

“Yes.” She looked at him sideways from beneath the brim of her Panama hat. “Are you, Colonel Astor?”

Like her, he faced the sands. Below them milled more tourists and guides, and camels adorned with bells and blankets, walking in trudging lines. Rosalie was down there somewhere, too, waiting for them, along with Robins, Jack’s valet, but Madeleine couldn’t pick them out. All the American and European women carried parasols; everyone, of both genders, was hatted. A line of native women in robes and veils sat at makeshift wooden stalls, selling everything from figs and oranges to crocodile teeth.

It wasn’t yet noon, and the sun felt fierce. In the early desert light, beneath his own Panama hat, Jack’s eyes paled to silver, and his skin warmed to honey.

“I am,” he said soberly, “without question, the happiest man in the world.”

*

At midday, they took a carriage back to the hotel, Madeleine sleepy enough to lean her head against his shoulder. She tried to keep her eyes open but couldn’t; it didn’t feel as if she slept, though. She still heard all the city around her, the clip-clopping hooves of the horses, the lilting calls of the street vendors, children constantly begging for baksheesh, horns bugling. The pace of the calèche along the crowded roads was erratic, surging and slowing, but even that didn’t rouse her.

When they reached the hotel, she drifted into their suite, kicked off her shoes, and aimed for the bed. Rosalie barely had time to unpin her hair before Madeleine embraced her pillow and sank into peace.

*

That night, that second night, long after dinner, they swam together in the huge marble swimming bath. Fires in iron braziers marked the edges of the pool, casting dramatic dark shadows along the stone and water. Jack told her that later on, after all the guests had retired, the bath would be drained and cleaned and refilled again for the next morning, so that each new day it shone clear and fresh, an aquamarine jewel gleaming at the edge of the desert’s dust and heat.

A pair of attendants waited silently in the dark by the cabanas, minding the towels and stars.

The water in the swimming bath felt like her skin, exactly the same temperature somehow. It was certainly warmer than the air, cooled to an arid crispness with the fallen sun, and best of all, they had it nearly to themselves. There was only an older German couple sharing the pool with them, who clung to the steps near the shallow end and had said nothing beyond guten Abend, occasionally chortling and splashing each other with the flats of their hands.

Madeleine was a strong enough swimmer not to mind the deep end of the bath. And Jack, of course . . . well, Jack could do anything. It didn’t surprise her at all to see him slicing through the water in his tunic and trunks in clean, hard strokes.

“You know,” she said, resting her crossed arms along the edge of the pool, kicking her feet behind her, “the first time I saw you, I looked a lot like this.”

“Like this?” He swam up beside her, picked up her soaked braid of hair, and wrapped it around his wrist. He drew his arm to his chest to pull her closer, to tilt her head and kiss her on the lips, ignoring the scandalized attention of the Germans.

“Yes. I’d just climbed out of the sea—”

“A mermaid.”

“Precisely. And I sat on the sand at Bailey’s Beach and saw you walking along. You were going to see your mother. She sat in a tent.”

He paused, then unwound her braid to join her with his arms propped atop the marble rim. “Really? When was that?”

“Long, long ago. When I was—oh, when I was a schoolgirl. But even then, I noticed you.”

He pushed a hand along his wet hair, slicking it from his forehead. “You never said.”

“I think I half-forgot. It was years ago. It’s like a dream memory to me now. Isn’t that funny? I forget the day, and why I was there. On holiday with my mother, I believe. But I remember you. I remember thinking that you were quite dashing.”

“Well.” He seemed amused.

“I think that was the moment I fell in love with you,” she said.

He sank away from the edge of the pool, treading water, studying her. The Germans were climbing out at the other end, searching for the attendants through the firelight.

“Yes,” she said, certain. “That was the moment. I looked at you, you looked at me—you won’t recall it, but you did, just for a second—and ta-dah. It was done. Love. Just like that.”

She dropped away from the marble rim as well, floating on her back with her arms out, gazing up at the night. A scattering of brighter stars shone through the smoke, sometimes there, sometimes not, forming new constellations, cryptic patterns of their own.

The water purled, shattered into ripples of fire as he came to float alongside her. Jack drew his palm along the lines of her—neck, chest, stomach—pausing at that modest roundness where their child grew, before pulling back.

“Do you know the moment I fell in love with you?”

She smiled drowsily up at the stars. “Tell me.”

“When you asked to read my book. Do you remember that? That night on the balcony, back in Bar Harbor?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. She turned her head to look at him, water caressing her cheek. “All the way back then?”