“You were excellent tonight,” the colonel said, letting go of her hand.
She stopped herself from wiping her tingling palm down her dress. “I could have been better, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t see how,” he said, and with a nod to Mrs. Mills, angled away. A moment later, he was gone, devoured by the crush.
Mrs. Ogden Mills sent Madeleine a pointed look. Madeleine smiled tightly, murmured her thanks, and retreated slowly, gratefully, back into the Junior League crowd.
*
It was only much later—hours later, as she lay sleepless in her bed and stared out her window at the cascading, moon-silvered clouds—that Madeleine realized the pop of light backstage must have been a magnesium flash from a photographer, stealing for himself that moment when Colonel Astor had first taken her hand.
CHAPTER 2
Your father’s courtship of me began with a daily delivery of fresh hothouse flowers, starting the very morning after we were first introduced.
Someday I will teach you the language of flowers, my darling. Of how you, as a gentleman, will initiate your wooing with a floral message aimed only just slightly sideways, signifying nothing beyond the suggestion of yes, I have seen you. Yellow bud roses in fern, perhaps, or a spray of violets. A simple corsage, something modest and easily pinned to a bodice, should the young lady so desire. At this stage, always choose a bloom both sweet and candid, one to which no respectable mama could take offense.
Only after that （no fewer than four weeks of teas and picnics and cotillions, and before you groan, believe me, I know how tedious that becomes） may you move on to the flowers more opulent. Gardenias, pearled and intoxicating. Carnations, peach and lemon and cherry. Too many people （Europeans, really） consider carnations to be nothing but a vulgar American indulgence, but in my opinion, there is no blossom more intricate, more deliciously, thickly, fragrantly lavish, than a carnation.
So. After months of courting, you are at last allowed to consider sending red roses, but only if your intentions are sincere. Red roses have but one meaning. You will not be forgiven for mistaking it.
After the roses—after the conquest—what is left? Orchids.
In the fullness of time, I trust, the woman you love will tell you of those.
July 1910
Bar Harbor, Maine
The brick-and-cedar prison that was the Forces’ summer residence might easily have been a metaphor for Madeleine’s entire life: cramped, elegant, strictly contained. Although not one of the sprawling “cottages” famously dotting Millionaires’ Row, there was no aspect of the house that was not perfectly proper, and perfectly predictable: the handful of Old Masters paintings on the walls, the trompe l’oeil fresco in the dining room （Persephone accepting a pomegranate seed in her palm）， the Aubusson rugs, the immaculate gleam of the teak handrail topping the banister that guarded the stairs. The windows were small but ocean-facing, never inviting much of the light or wind inside.
Everything in the Force household, and in Madeleine Force’s world, was exactly as it should be, and everything was exactly as it always would be. Not a single enhancement had been made in all of her memory, except for the Louis XVI ormolu chairs her mother had brought back from Paris three years ago because the cranberry satin cushions matched the runner in the foyer.
It was a wonder that Madeleine herself had managed to change, to expand from infant to child to young woman, within these walls. She thought she had grown; despite the evidence in her mirror, sometimes she wondered. The rooms and hallways did seem more claustrophobic than they had years ago, but otherwise her world seemed always, always the same.
Yet the globe did spin on its axis, and the seasons did flow from one to the next like water along the smooth, certain bed of a stream.
It was the height of summer, the weeks long and shimmering with heat, and the cottagers had descended upon Bar Harbor in a whirlwind of yachts and straw hats and billowing white linen. Drowsy shops, hungry for customers all winter, suddenly bustled with patrons; up and down Main Street, jolly banners snapped in the breeze, announcing fresh clams or imported cigars or exclusive Parisian tea-gowns. Newport, of course, had its matrons ossifying in their marble palaces—but Bar Harbor’s balmy months boasted a slightly franker, more daring crowd.
And, as had been true ever since Katherine’s debut, breakfast at the Force home （whether in Bar Harbor or New York） was punctuated by the arrival of flowers, which their butler placed strategically, jewellike, all around the dining room.
Pink sweet peas by the chafing dish of buttered eggs. Rubied dahlias at the other end of the credenza. Zinnias, marigolds, and hyacinths positioned between the pearlware figurines along the fireplace mantelshelf. Twin clusters of roses （one cream, one canary） in crystal bowls by the saltcellars.