The papers, even the scandal sheets, had been able to unearth only the barest-bone facts of the luscious Ava Lowle Willing Astor’s divorce from her lanky, obscenely rich husband. The details of the petition and decree remained sealed by the court, which meant there was nothing to rein in the breathless rumors: that he had been unfaithful, or she had. That they had fought incessantly; that they lived apart; that the only reason the divorce had not happened sooner was that they’d been forced to await the passing of the colonel’s puritanical mother. No doubt had the dissolution of their marriage happened in her lifetime, the disgrace of it would have stopped Lina’s heart.
A year ago, Madeleine had paid little attention to the talk regarding the Astors. Gossip was a ceaseless fact of society; there was no getting around it, she knew that firsthand. Tittle-tattle flitting through school would catch flame in the dormitories, in the hallways. Madeleine had seen perfectly pleasant girls ruined by slander, and perfectly horrible girls elevated by it. She’d managed her final few years of finishing school by keeping her head down, mostly, and her comments close.
Graduating from it all last June had been a relief. The ceremony itself had been conducted out-of-doors in an amphitheater dotted with flowery hats and lace parasols. The one-and-three-quarters hours of speeches had been tedious and wilting and crammed full of phrases like fair womanhood and gentle hearts and our future wives.
And here I am, anyway, Madeleine thought now, the ink-smudged sheets of the tabloid crushed in one hand. Being gossiped about, someone’s future wife—at least according to the papers. Maybe nothing ever really changes.
“You shouldn’t let it upset you,” Father said. It was twilight; they sat together on the swinging bench hung from the rafters of their back porch, watching the sky darken above the trees. There was a bite to the air tonight that hadn’t been there even this morning; the breeze from the bay nudged by with an undercurrent of woodsmoke, pungent and crisp. Soon birch leaves would litter the ground scarlet, and the grass would dry into straw, and the days would grow clipped, with violet shadows reaching longer and longer.
Soon they’d have to close up the house and leave, to head back to New York.
Where there were even more reporters.
“How is Mother handling it? The papers calling her—that?”
“Don’t tell her I said so, but I think she’s secretly flattered. La Force Majeure. It implies influence, doesn’t it.”
“It’s rude.”
“It is the nature of our lives, Madeleine. If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you. You can’t expect otherwise.”
The black iron candle-lanterns decorating the porch remained unlit, but a wan orangey glow from the lamps inside the house spilled over the windowsills, outlining Madeleine and her father both but only very softly, and only along their laps. She hoped that if she kept to the shadows enough, she’d remain a smudgy nothing to anyone observing from the darkness beyond. Of late, there were always strangers skulking nearby, walking slowly up and down the lane, watching the house, watching for her.
“Maddy,” said her father in a new voice, one she knew all too well; it was the graveled voice of lectures, of authority, of imposing family rules. Madeleine braced herself.
“Yes?”
“You are young yet, but God gave you intelligence—”
“Why, thank you,” she said, dry.
“—and a sensible head on your shoulders. I want you to think very carefully about the path you’re treading now. About where it’s going to lead you.”
She turned her face to his. In the deepening dusk, his silver hair became phantom gray, barely discernible. “I promise you, Dad, I think about it every day.”
“No doubt.” He lifted her hand, the one with the tabloid, taking the crumpled pages from her fingers, smoothing the paper flat again against his leg. “You understand, don’t you, that all I’ve ever wanted for you is your happiness?”
“Of course,” she said, surprised.
“But the quality of that happiness . . . I’ve devoted a great deal of thought to that subject lately, something I likely should have done years ago. The quality of happiness. The shape and texture of it. The endurance of it. Believe it or not, I remember what it’s like to fall in love for the first time. To be young and fearless, when the future is spread before you in every color of the rainbow, everything bright, everything impossible suddenly made possible. You’re invincible then.”