“Perfect,” he said. “My favorite.”
“Really?”
“Really. Mrs. Force, for you?”
Mother shook her head. She would not risk her new gown, not on its very first wearing.
The doughnuts had been fried during the day by the wife of a fisherman and were sold at night by her daughter, a freckled girl of about fifteen, and they were always moist and dense and tangy with apples. Madeleine took her first bite and closed her eyes in pleasure. She opened them again to find Jack watching her, his own doughnut untouched.
A pair of boys stampeded between them, clutching stick candies and yelling for a friend. A cool breeze followed on their heels, scented of sugar and the promise of rain.
“You . . .” Jack said, and paused. “You, ah, have a . . .”
He took a step closer, lifted a hand as if to touch her face. Before he could, Madeleine raised her own hand and brushed away the crumb from her lower lip and that was when the light exploded only feet away, startling her. She immediately turned her face aside as Jack did the opposite, pivoting toward that blinding burst.
“Sir,” he said, a word edged with exasperation. “Some warning, if you please.”
The smell of sugar and rain vanished, replaced with an acrid, chemical stink.
“Beg your pardon, colonel,” said the photographer, grinning. “It was a nice moment, though.”
Jack moved to stand between Madeleine and the photographer. There was now a giant pale spot in her vision that she couldn’t blink away.
“Very well, you’ve gotten your moment. My companions and I would like to get on with our evening, if you don’t mind.”
“One more of you and Miss Force, colonel? One more, with fair warning?”
Jack glanced back at her; she gave the slightest shake of her head, but perhaps he didn’t see. “One more, if you agree to leave us in peace afterwards.”
“Deal,” said the man, swiftly adding powder to his handheld trough, lifting his camera again. “Look this way, Miss Force. There you are, thanksverymuch. A wee smile, please, miss? I promise it don’t hurt a bit.”
Flash!
*
But it did hurt. A petty little wound, this photograph, that photograph, this mention in the papers, that one. Each one chipping away at any thought she might have had of privacy, of control of her own face or figure or destiny.
Two years from this nice moment, Madeleine would be a widow and a mother, the most famous widowed mother on the entire planet, and by then she would have developed her own flinty ways of dealing with the press.
But that was still two years away. For now, in the short months to come, Jack would teach her his rules on how to interact with them:
Learn their names, so you can get an idea of how they write about you.
Learn where they work, because some papers are more discreet than others.
Never say more to them than absolutely necessary; words are easily misquoted.
Don’t get caught in a lie; a good newspaperman will always sniff it out.
Don’t lose your temper, no matter how they goad you. Spectacles always sell sheets.
And finally, if truly pinned, negotiate. Offer them something they want, a very limited something, so that you can have something you want. If it helped, he would tell her, kissing her hand, she could think of it as a tiny sacrifice for the greater good.
*
That sultry August evening after the concert, Jack’s idea of the greater good was simply the freedom to walk with her, to enjoy apple-flavored doughnuts with her, to speak of flimsy nothings while quietly learning the unspoken things about each other: how they harmonized, how they linked, how even the silences between them were light and lovely.
And it worked, more or less. After the photographer had gotten his shot （Madeleine pasty and smiling nervously; Jack at ease; Mother cropped out entirely）， the man had tugged at his cap and let them alone. But the next morning, there were two more of them camped out across the street from Madeleine’s house, underneath that sturdy red oak.
They were only the beginning.
CHAPTER 7
BEWARE LA FORCE MAJEURE!
—Special to Town Topics
September 1, 1910
Bar Harbor, Me.
Mother Force has her heart set upon adding a certain army officer to her list of kith and kin, and nothing will stand in her way. Mr. and Mrs. William H. Force, favored with two stunning jewels in their family crown, would happily bestow either upon this newly eligible suitor, no matter his recent marital woes.
Sources have caught sight of both of these freshly polished gems being squired about this Mount Desert town by the fickle man himself. The question becomes, what will this fortunate fellow choose to do with such generous offerings?