“I was lucky this time,” Madeleine said, stepping back.
“Perhaps it was that your lucky charm lingered nearby,” Stella said, with a significant look past Madeleine’s shoulder.
Madeleine wiped her eyes again, hoping that her face didn’t look too red, that the pins in her hair had held and that her armpits weren’t showing their damp through her shirtwaist. Because, yes—there he was, standing at the end of the row of chairs, a walking stick slanted to the ground in one hand; in the other, the end of a leash connected to a large, tan dog.
Their eyes met. She nodded, and the colonel nodded, and the dog looked at her and furrowed its brow.
It had been over a week since she’d seen him last, and even then it had only been in passing, as they rode in opposite directions past the Mount Desert Reading Room. Yet the daily arrival of flowers had not ceased, each one accompanied by a card bearing simply his initials.
Even though he hadn’t come to call in person, every morning Mother practically hummed with anticipation.
“They’re just flowers,” Madeleine had said at breakfast three days ago.
“Colonel Astor is neither blind nor imbecilic,” Mother had responded, examining the fresh arrangement of mums he’d sent with something close to hunger. She kept each new delivery beside her plate—as though they were for her, instead of her daughter—and throughout the meal she would gaze at them as raptly as if they whispered the answer to a puzzle that had long perplexed her.
Madeleine said, “I just don’t think we should get our hopes up. That’s all.”
Mother looked up. “Maddy, my love. Do you mean your hopes, or mine?”
Madeleine shrugged, uncomfortable.
“Because in this instance,” Mother went on, “your hopes are the only ones that matter. I trust you know that.”
“I have an idea,” Katherine had said. “Why don’t we just go and call on him?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mother had sighed.
“Well, why not? It’s the twentieth century now, after all. I don’t see why we can’t at least drop by and leave our cards. Ask him what he means by sending all these silly flowers every single day. One would think he might have moved on to chocolates and jewelry by now.”
“Katherine . . .”
“My point is, we’re no longer bound by all those archaic rules hammered out by Mrs. Astor a generation ago. In fact,” Katherine finished, inspired, “there is no current Mrs. Astor. Not one who matters, anyway.”
And Mother had tilted her head to examine Madeleine, and Madeleine had examined her back and knew what exactly what she was thinking:
Yet.
“Miss Force,” the colonel greeted her now. He lifted the hand with the walking stick to tip his hat.
Madeleine strolled toward him sedately, casually, swinging her racquet by her hip in a slow, contained arc, the way she’d seen Stella sometimes do when talking to a beau. “Colonel Astor. I see you have a friend. Is it your dog?”
“She is. This is Kitty. Kitty, meet Miss Force.”
Madeleine had to laugh at the name. She came close and bent down, lifting her free hand. The dog leaned a little nearer and sniffed her fingers.
“Hello,” Madeleine murmured. “Hello, pup called Kitty.”
The dog—an Airedale, she thought—sat back on her haunches and gazed up at her with wary eyes.
“An outstanding game,” the colonel said. “There seems to be no end to your skills. Actress, athlete. What else do you have up your sleeve, I wonder?”
“Dog charmer, I hope,” she said, and smiled. “And you, sir?”
“Tennis dilettante.” He looked down and stroked Kitty’s head. The dog lifted her chin and began to pant. “Yachtsman. Adventurer, I’d like to think.”
“An interesting description. I’ve not met many adventurers before you, Colonel Astor.”
He arched an eyebrow. “But you have met others, Miss Force?”
“No,” she said, as placidly as she could manage with her corset pinching, her lungs burning, perspiration creeping down her back. “Actually, I have not.”
Another moment between them, stretching long and strange and lovely somehow, filling her with both elation and dread, because Madeleine understood then that, despite what she’d said to her mother, she knew she stood at the edge of a very steep cliff, and falling off of it would mean either flight or annihilation.
A lance of sunlight speared the clouds. From the corner of her eye, Madeleine saw a pair of figures approach. She turned to them in relief.