The Second Mrs. Astor(88)

“I understand.” Madeleine made to rise.

“One more thing, please.”

She sat down again, stifling a groan. He stood with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him. Just over his shoulder, one of the gold-lacquered lion heads topping a pilaster winked at her in the dancing light.

“I would request that, at this time, you do not share any of the more—distressing details of your recent experience with Mr. Vincent Astor. Nothing beyond the most basic of facts, and even then only if he asks.”

Madeleine tore her gaze from the lion. The doctor was frowning again.

“His mind is in the throes of what I would call extreme nervous agitation. He has spent the last few days in a near manic state, ever since the news of the sinking reached us. He is, from what I understand, quite close to his father.”

“Yes,” she said. “Jack was his anchor.”

Just as he was mine.

*

Her private bath was of sculpted marble, much like the bathing pool back in Cairo had been, oval and deep and (as she knew well) large enough for two. The wall next to it was marble, as well, with a large seashell carved into it, a nude putto and two curved dolphins forming the faucet and handles. All but one of the walls in this room were paneled in marble, in fact: pearl-white, webbed through with silver and gold. They and the bath and the floor gleamed in the darkened chamber—she’d wanted only candlelight, not the electric—the metallic veins dimly sparkling as she moved, and everything was as serene and calm as the inner sanctum of a church.

But the water was tepid. The doctor must have had a word with Lillian, her second maid, and the girl had not dared to draw it any warmer.

Madeleine wanted her bath hot. She wanted it hot enough to sting her skin (her soul), to make her feel every inch of herself. She wanted the realness of that, the pleasure of the painful warmth soaking into her, wiping away the chill of every hour she had lived since Titanic had gone down.

She could have turned the tap herself, but instead she only sat there, floated there, and watched the play of light along the walls.

This water did not sting. It did not relax her. It only surrounded her, a cowardly temperature, a neutral solution that allowed her arms and legs to float.

The wall framing the door to the boudoir was papered in oyster damask. A large painting of Bacchus dangling a cluster of grapes over his mouth hung above the door, the exquisite labor of some Pre-Raphaelite master.

The god’s eyes met hers, sidelong. He wore a crown of leaves in his hair and had his head slanted back, laughing.

Madeleine slid down beneath the surface of the water.

She allowed her arms and legs to stay floating. She kept her eyes open and held her breath as long as she could, her hair drifting like seaweed all around.

She imagined it was the ocean rocking her. She imagined the water icy cold instead of temperate.

Only when her lungs were screaming for air did she come up again.





CHAPTER 30


I became, overnight, the sweetheart of the world.

From gold-digging social climber, I was transformed into the tragic “girl widow,” a fecund symbol of all that had gone wrong with society today. Man’s hubris and vice had left me—and other, less recognizable widows than me—stranded upon the shores of . . . I don’t know. Islands of hubris and vice, I expect.

I became the face of feminine heroism, doughty yet demure. The newspapers published story after story about me, usually quoting other survivors who claimed they saw me that night, or they saw Jack, or they saw us both, so terribly, romantically star-crossed. According to them, we were all over the ship in her final hours, even down in steerage, helping to comfort the distraught.

They said that we aided others into the lifeboats but jauntily refused to go ourselves, no matter how much they (our dearest, most bosom friends!) implored us to do so.

That Jack had jumped into my boat and then out again no less than four times to make room for more women.

That I had helped furiously row away from the sinking ship, only to collapse daintily afterward.

That, as I covered the men we’d saved from the ocean in woolen rugs, I’d howled out my husband’s name, she-wolf-like, into the unforgiving night.

People were inventing all manner of stories about the sinking—because some of the papers would pay for them, you see—and if they dribbled the name “Astor” into any of their accounts, it was like the publisher had been guaranteed a return in gold.

I became the dream of countless dreamers, women from all around who still—still—thought that my smashed life was perfect. That the marriage which had taken everyone so aback before had crystallized into the most wondrous, sorrowful fairy tale.

I was young, I was wealthy, and I was famous. That was all they really knew, and that was all they needed to know. It was enough to sustain their fantasies.

At long last, I had managed to gain the world’s admiration and respect, and all it took was the loss of my husband. The felling of my heart.

Jack was right when he’d told me that his people would eventually come around.

The taste of this success is like ashes on my tongue.

*

Those first few days, before they hooked his body from the sea . . . those were the worst, I think. Those were the days I surrendered to my heartache and hid away inside the mansion, mostly beneath my bedcovers. I would not answer anyone’s questions. I would not look anyone in the eyes. I lived in dread of the next time someone would walk into my bedchamber, because I was sure they’d lean down close and whisper some version of, Yes, he is really gone. Now you must tell us what actually happened.