The Second Mrs. Astor(70)
Jack sat down across from them, began to tick off his fingers. “Margaret says she hopes you are feeling better. Mary Fortune says the same. A woman named Mrs. Bishop—your new friend, I presume?—sends her very best regards.” He mimicked Helen’s inflection exactly and then paused; they exchanged smiles across the table. “Eleanor Widener has invited us to join her table tonight at the Ritz restaurant—the à la carte restaurant, everyone’s just calling it the Ritz now—for the dinner she’s hosting for Captain Smith. Seven-thirty.”
“Oh,” Madeleine said, lowering her scone. “Must we? I thought we’d maybe huddle together tonight, rather than wade through a crowd.”
“Never fear. I regretfully declined, telling her I had already booked my own table at the Ritz and that I was looking forward to enjoying dinner alone with my beautiful bride too much to cancel it.”
She sat back, impressed. “How artful you are, Colonel Astor.”
“It was only the truth, Mrs. Astor. We dine at eight.”
*
The sunset that evening was the most lovely of the voyage so far, but the temperature outside had plummeted so severely that Madeleine didn’t try to venture abovedeck to admire it. She watched it from the sitting room window instead, already dressed for dinner in a gown of iridescent opal satin and net, rows of silver glass beads flashing and dancing against her ankles along the hem.
It was a Poiret, one of her best; for the rest of her life, she would associate the finest fashion house in Paris with ice and cold and death.
The sky beyond the window burned fuchsia and scarlet, orange and pink, tinting the ship and Madeleine and the suite around her all the same colors. She stood there looking at the world as though through a magical lens of stained glass, all the true hues around her washed away, drowned in the dying light of the sun atop the flat sea.
*
It was the first time she’d dined in the à la carte restaurant, perhaps because she’d been vaguely put off by all the gilt visible from inside it whenever she’d passed by. But the Louis XVI décor wasn’t as overbearing as she’d been afraid it would be. The fluted walnut columns and gold-trimmed boiseries seemed quite tasteful in the half-light, and the table centerpieces of milk-white daisies mixed with pink roses added a simple, delicate touch.
They were seated near one of the alcoves, far enough from the entrance to feel no draft, yet close enough to still hear the strains of Puccini from the string trio in the reception room beyond.
On their way in, they had greeted Eleanor and her group, and that was Madeleine’s first glimpse of their ship’s captain, as well. He had stood as they were introduced, a silver-bearded, older gentleman with a firm handshake and a kindly smile. Society’s captain, she had heard him called, as if it were a mark against him. But there was a reason why so many of society’s most prominent members preferred to sail with Edward Smith, Jack told her.
Experience, he’d said, dabbing caviar on a narrow point of toast, setting aside the bone spoon. Experience and comfort. Comfort in his experience.
The mood inside the restaurant was one of rising gaiety. Wine was poured around the room, the stewards rushing from table to table with fresh bottles. A steady stream of people Madeleine hardly knew stopped by to greet them both; at one point, the ship’s surgeon and his assistant pulled up chairs at Jack’s insistence—he had made certain to meet them the first day aboard, just in case—and they all toasted the ship.
They dined on grapes and smoked quail from Egypt, on plover’s eggs and oysters so fresh they slid along her tongue tasting of nothing but the ocean, of brine and tides.
Without meaning to, she’d kept one hand flattened over her middle for the entirety of the meal, testing that new life that pushed against her gown, protecting it. Jack had watched her throughout with his slight, knowing smile.
Halfway through dessert, he’d put down his sherry, reached for her hand.
Their fingers met, skin to skin, all her rings and bracelets afire like the sunset in the low, flattering light.
CHAPTER 24
I didn’t know it would be our last kiss, the last time we ever spoke.
I didn’t know it would be the last time we ever touched.
Sunday, April 14th, 11:40 p.m.
Aboard Titanic
She awoke briefly from a dream about standing at the edge of a green copper roof—one of Jack’s hotels, perhaps—looking down at a busy street far below. In the dream, there came an earthquake, the mildest thing, but it alarmed her to be so close to the edge, and so Madeleine took a step back and opened her eyes. The last faint tremor of the earthquake still rattled her bed, but then it was gone, and she was able to fall back asleep.
*
“Madeleine. Wake up.”
“Father?”
The mattress shifted, dipped. “No, it’s me.”
She rolled over toward his voice, pushing her hair from her eyes. “Jack? What’s wrong?”
He was perched beside her on the bed just as he had been that morning, only now he was silhouetted with light instead of captured in shadow, and his clothing was different, and he smelled of brandy and cigars, and he wasn’t smiling.
He ran a hand up and down her arm, his palm bunching the silk of her gown.
“The ship has struck an iceberg.”