Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Junior, had designed the whole of her home to ensure that everyone but herself was made small in its rooms. And right now, Madeleine definitely felt small.
She should turn around. She should mix with the other guests. She should confront their stares and tilt her head and smile, as grim and unapproachable as the famed woman in the painting.
“I only wish it was over already,” she said under her breath.
Katherine opened her fan, hiding the lower half of her face behind a spread of feathers as she drained the last of her champagne. “Who knows? Tonight may be the night he musters his nerve.”
“May,” Madeleine said.
“May,” her sister concurred, matter-of-fact. “But either way, you’d better buck up. Even in the midst of clouds and doom, we must remain sunny. Mother will wring our necks otherwise.” She snapped her fan closed. “Sunny,” she hissed. And then, much louder: “Excuse me. I see Mother conversing with the Pulitzers, signaling me with her eyebrows that I need to come over.”
And, fan and coupe and all, she was gone.
Jack came near. The volume of conversation in the room dipped considerably before picking back up again. Madeleine sent him a brief, welcoming glance, then returned her gaze to the portrait. She deliberately avoided looking at the ruby ring.
He said, “She would have been fond of you, I think.”
Madeleine couldn’t help it; she allowed herself a dubious pursing of her lips.
He noticed. “No, sincerely. She was formidable in her way, of course, but also fair. She valued virtue. Goodness.”
She thought of the stories she’d heard—of débutantes melting into tears at Lina’s smiling insults, of grown women fleeing town in shame over her snubs—and bit her tongue. From the corner of her eye, she could see Jack rotating the signet ring on his pinkie, almost fretful, and wondered that such a man could have been carved from the flesh of a woman like that.
His nails were short and glossy, evenly filed. She liked the shape of his hands, the blue tracing of veins just visible beneath his skin. She liked the experienced look of those hands. Here was someone, surely, who could teach her how to banish whatever specters haunted these halls.
Madeleine said, “Your mother was a remarkable woman. I’m sorry we never met.”
“Yes. Yes, so am I.”
But he sounded distracted. It gave her the nerve to face him, angling herself so that the light from the candelabra nearby fell full upon her features. With her face upturned and the diamond stars in her hair, the blue of the gown that matched her eyes and set off the cream of her cheeks, she knew how she looked. She should know; she’d planned it down to the last detail.
That was the sum and skill of her life now, it seemed. How to make herself alluring to this magnetic, just-out-of-reach man.
His brows drew downward, his lashes lowering. He seemed almost pained.
She remembered their kiss, their only one. His lips had been silky soft, his moustache scratchy. He’d tasted of mint and cigar and everything forbidden and unknown that she longed to explore, to sink her teeth and fingers and soul into. She’d felt herself expand with his kiss, her spirit swell and spill out of her like Katherine’s champagne overflowing from its shallow glass, and she couldn’t imagine that he looked at her without remembering it, too. Without craving more, as she did.
Without dreaming of more, as she did, waking up sweaty and breathless in the middle of the night.
Jack turned away from her, just enough to break their connection.
“Those ink-stained villains out there,” he said now, shaking his head. “I’m sorry about that. I can keep them off the property itself, but they’ve got free rein of the sidewalks and streets.”
“I know. It’s all right.”
“I despise how they harass you. I despise that it’s because of me.”
“Really. It’s all right.” She tried a smile. “I’m following the patented Astor method for dealing with them, you know. I won’t break.”
He exhaled, slow, quiet, beneath the ebb and swell of chatter filling the chamber.
Now, she thought. Ask me now.
Maybe he read her mind; maybe he only read her hope. When he spoke again, he sounded almost weary.
“You’re seventeen still, Madeleine. You’re so young.”
A surge of anger flooded through her, but she kept her tone carefully neutral. “So everyone keeps telling me. Young is not an unpardonable offense. Young does not mean I cannot make rational decisions, or abide by them.”