It was a short, brilliant ceremony held in the ballroom. Ivory and mirrors and gilt. Chilled, motionless air. The ocean crashing, a rainstorm rolling in. Red roses everywhere, everywhere.
My mother wept; my father, sister, and I did not; and for once, your brother kept his dark opinions to himself.
I had awoken that morning aboard the Noma in my little cabin as Miss Force.
I fell asleep that night aboard the Noma in a different cabin, with a different name.
And I was uncoiled.
And all the world was new.
September 1911
Manhattan; At Sea; Newport
Everything was kept as secret as possible. Which meant, naturally, that hardly any of it was secret.
It was predicted that the terms of the colonel’s divorce meant he could not be married again in a church, or that he could not marry again while Ava lived, or that he could not marry again in the great state of New York. Only that last guess was actually true, which left them with Beechwood or Bar Harbor if they wanted to keep the thing small and in the family, which they did, according to every single person except Jack himself. But he was willing to do whatever it took to hasten the ceremony. They hoped, all of them, that after it was done, the publicity, the notoriety, would begin to fade.
Madeleine had her doubts. But it seemed easier to go along with her mother and Mr. Dobbyn’s plans, to allow herself to be swept up and away by them rather than resist, flotsam atop a tidal wave of other people’s ideas about flowers and cakes and dresses and vows.
She didn’t care. She didn’t. She wasn’t one of those girls who lived for the explosion of excess lavished on one single day, Consuelo Vanderbilt, May Goelet. Even as a child, she’d never spent hours daydreaming about her wedding; it all seemed rather silly to her. Surely the most important part of it all wasn’t that day. It was every day after.
And now, on the brink of that ritual that would change her name, her family, her home, Madeleine knew in her heart that all she truly did care about was the end result. Becoming his wife. Heart to heart, flesh to flesh.
Jack’s attorney had managed at the last minute to wrangle a Congregationalist pastor for the ceremony, who was quietly shuttled in from Providence, and then just as quietly shuttled out afterwards, a thousand dollars richer. It seemed a strange miracle that none of the newsmen lurking in town had picked him out of the crowd, but then, there were so many frantic rumors regarding what was going on, who was where, when was what, that perhaps it was just the benefit of chaos.
Colonel Astor and Miss Force were to be married in Connecticut in a week. No, Boston in a month. No, Robins Island in the next few days. The Noma was being provisioned and coaled for a short voyage north, or a long one south, or maybe she was preparing to head all the way to the Bahamas. The crew wouldn’t say.
To throw the press off the scent, Madeleine and her family had spent the days leading up to the ceremony back in Manhattan, popping in and out of the brownstone on so many errands the reporters had to trot to keep up, and split into groups, and hurl their questions on the fly. Jack was still able to fend them off with a laugh and a quip, but Madeleine had given up attempting to be cordial. When a man demanding to know the details of the antenuptial agreement actually stepped in front of her to prevent her from entering a jewelry store uptown, his black eyes gleaming, his sour breath in her face, she found herself recoiling. She found herself clenching her fists.
A white-hot pressure spiked through her that felt very much like murderous rage. An animal rage, barbarous and untamed, and it felt feral and boiling and good.
Her fists had raised, all on their own. Who knew what she would have done next, in those flowing, perilous few seconds with that pressman blocking her way; Madeleine had never struck anyone in her life but was certain, certain, that she could, that she should, and that it would feel even better than good if she did.
The man’s eyes had widened.
And then, thank heavens, she found herself ushered inside by the store’s burly security guard, who gave the reporter a sharp elbow to the side in the process, one she sincerely hoped broke some ribs.
Don’t lose your temper, no matter how they goad you.
And how they did like to goad.
Father had had worse luck. On his morning walk （the opposite direction Madeleine and Katherine would take a quarter hour later; their lives had become maneuvers within maneuvers）， he’d been trapped by a photographer, who ended up getting away with a snapshot of an exasperated William Force shaking his cane at the lens.
Town Topics published the image with glee.
*
The Noma floated, lights dimmed, off the coast of Long Island amid gentle swells and a lavender-smudged dusk. Madeleine, her father, and Katherine had slipped aboard that afternoon as the ship remained moored off Eightieth Street; their luggage had been smuggled on first, and then them, and then Jack, and somehow, it had all worked out. By the time the reporters had gathered en masse at the water’s edge, the yacht was already beyond them, steaming rapidly out to sea.