Pause.
We are agreed. I will inform Madeleine. Goodbye, Colonel Astor. I trust I will see you soon.
Pause.
If you insist. Jack. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye.
*
It seemed the gates of hell had swung open and disgorged a mass of tweed-jacketed men at their front steps. Madeleine stopped counting at thirty—thirty! in just the two hours since the announcement!—and stood on the other side of the door, caught between amazement and dismay. The incessant knocking had at least died down, as Matthews had sternly instructed the crowd that Miss Force was not at home at the moment, nor was she likely to be any time soon.
She felt flushed and hot and disconcerted. She looked at her mother, who looked back with an iron face and ordered the hall boy to stand guard at the top of the steps, a gangly child of no more than fourteen, perspiring and jittery and full of awe at his abruptly elevated position, instructing the rabble that they must respect the house; they must stay back.
It didn’t deter them, though, those grown men out to hook this shiny fish of a story caught in their net. Neither did the sun, the lack of shade, the airless waves of heat shimmering off the pavements and buildings. August had arrived, gummy and funky with the rot of wilting garbage. It had been so long since Madeleine had spent a summer season anywhere but by the ocean. She’d forgotten how stifling the city could be.
Mother, attempting to take command of the situation at her door, had already sent the hall boy a glass of iced tea and issued a brief statement from the safety of the entranceway: Yes, her youngest was engaged to Colonel Astor as of a few days past. Yes, the two of them had first met in Bar Harbor a year ago. And yes, the wedding was likely to be small, quiet, and for close family only.
It wasn’t enough. A couple of the journalists peeled away to file their reports, but a great mass of them remained, sweltering and determined to speak to Madeleine herself.
“I won’t,” she said now. “I don’t want to. I don’t know what more to say to them that you and Father haven’t already said.”
Mother settled into the appliqué chair by the telephone, cooling herself with a Chinese fan. Matthews approached with more iced tea. She accepted it with an eloquent, languid hand. “Just let them see you. Give them a smile. Tell them how happy you are.”
“No. My happiness is none of their business. I have nothing to say to them.”
“Madeleine—”
“They pick apart every little thing I do! If I smile at them, they call me insipid. If I don’t smile, they call me aloof. Remember that article in the Caller last month? They said I was brazen just for waltzing with Jack twice at the Olyphant ball.”
“Twice in a row,” Katherine pointed out. “You harlot.”
“Kat!” snapped Mother, then closed her eyes, holding the glass to her forehead. She sighed. “Dearest, try to remember what the colonel said. It’s a stratagem of give and take with the press, so you must be prepared to give them something. Anything. They’ll never decamp otherwise.”
“I’ll wait for Jack. He’s coming by tonight, after all, and he can deal with them then. If I try to talk to them now, they’ll just muddle me, and for what? All they do is print lies about me, anyway.”
She heard how churlish she sounded even as she said it but she didn’t care, because it was too hot, and everything smelled, and she was right. Her happiness belonged to her, to her and Jack, a sweet and fragile thing she wanted to nurture, to hold close, not turn into some cheap public display. Most frustrating of all, she didn’t have better words than the ugly ones she’d already said; she had nothing more sensible or mature or articulate to offer beyond, No, I won’t, I won’t, this fresh joy is all mine, and I won’t let them take it from me.
Mother lowered her glass of tea, shifting to sit upright. “Madeleine Talmage Force, this is your job now. It is a job for a woman, not a petulant child, and I trust you will remember that. I thought you understood these terms. I thought the colonel himself had made them clear. No doubt he’d say the same to you were he standing here right now, and may I say I am very glad that he isn’t.”
Madeleine dropped her eyes, shamed and angry, and angry about being ashamed. Her mother rose from the chair, lifted her daughter’s chin with the tip of the fan. She held her gaze a moment, searching, then gave a ghost of a smile.
“You can do this,” she said, a gentle, forgiving tone: the tone of Madeleine’s youth, of her many mistakes, of her mother’s unshakable faith in her and the universe at large. “You know it, I know it, and certainly Colonel Astor knows it. Show those men out there that you are the lady of grace and poise they hope you will not prove to be.”