“Good heavens,” he said.
She was getting a neckache looking up at him. Madeleine propped her elbow on the arm of the causeuse and rested her chin upon her hand. This salon was one of the rooms Lina had shrouded in tapestries, towering and priceless, and she let her focus gravitate to the closest one. Cyrus and Croesus, surrounded by grapes and peacocks and courtiers. The cloth lifted and fell in its slow mockery of breath.
The doctor was saying, “Please understand that your health is delicate, no matter how resilient you may feel at the moment. It is not uncommon for women in your condition to experience delayed symptoms of one kind or another after a trauma.”
Might I board the boat in order to protect my wife? She is in a delicate condition . . .
Exhaustion began to creep through her, a leaden weight in her bones.
The doctor tugged at his beard. “Forgive my bluntness, but I must inquire about the child. Have you suffered any cramping?”
“No.”
“Any pain or bleeding?”
“No.”
He regarded her with a considering gaze, as if he didn’t quite believe her, but only said, “I’m gladdened to hear it,” when it became clear that she would not add anything else. “I will leave you to the comforts of your family and call again tomorrow, if that is agreeable. Do not run the water too hot for your bath.”
“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.