Where Lina had surely sat, and Ava after her.
She ate slowly, aware of the emptiness around her, the zest of evergreen in the air, the small noises coming from parts of the mansion she could not see, a servant’s corridor behind a wall, perhaps, or maids dusting in another room. As she finished the bacon, there came a clicking of toenails against stone just outside the doors; Kitty wandered into the chamber, walked over and lifted her nose inquisitively toward Madeleine’s plate, then （with no bacon forthcoming） wandered out again.
Madeleine had never been in this room alone before. Maybe that was why she’d never registered how vast it was unpopulated by Astors or guests, how the marble walls shone slick with light, how the Brussels tapestries told stories of men and gods in shifting tones of green, gray, blue. A clock was ticking somewhere, although she couldn’t see where. As she was craning her neck to search the corners, the ticking became a spill of chimes from clocks near and far, a count of eleven that trembled along the floor and walls and slowly smoothed to silence.
Her plate was empty. She stood, wondering if she should move it to the sideboard, if she should ring for someone （where was the bell?）， and finally just left it on the table. There would be someone nearby, no doubt, a footman or the butler, perhaps in the great hall. She could let them know she was finished.
As she passed a gilded console table by the fireplace, she noticed a stack of letters and cards on a salver and paused, spying her name （her new name! Mrs. John Jacob Astor!） on the envelope on top. This, it seemed, was where the household mail was placed. The letter was a congratulatory note from Leta, bubbly and short, hoping they could meet up soon. Madeleine smiled, flipping through the remaining stack, plucking out the correspondence addressed to her, or to her and Jack, until she reached the bottom of the pile, where a single sheet of paper had been already removed from its envelope. Dark, sloping handwriting covered the page.
My dearest boy, it began, and Madeleine put the sheet back on the salver. She squared the letters in her left hand and then, despite herself, found her eyes returning to the opened letter, the stock thick and creamy, the folds precise, that tilting script leaping out at her.
. . . not too much of a bother, ask him again if I might have the Waterhouse portrait of us. I cannot imagine he wishes to keep it, a reminder of the family he used to have, not when he has obviously decided to begin a new one without us. Whereas I, naturally, will treasure it . . .
“Do you want to see it?”
Madeleine started, the letters she held scattering to the floor. Vincent watched her with his hands in his pockets, unmoving, as she bent and gathered them up again.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, straightening. “See what?”
His mouth screwed into a smile, mirthless. “The painting, of course. The portrait my mother wants. She wasn’t granted it in the divorce, so she has to beg him for it.”
“Oh, I . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t know—I mean, I wasn’t—”
Vincent turned away. “It’s in my bedroom.” At the doorway, he paused, still not looking back at her. “Breakfast is always at seven sharp. You’ve thrown the staff off their schedule, Mrs. Astor.”
He left.
*
All the meals at the chateau followed a strict schedule, as it turned out: breakfast at seven, luncheon at noon, high tea at four （if anyone was home for it）， and supper at seven-thirty. The chef heading the kitchen here was from Orléans, Jack explained that night, and was far more thin-skinned than the New Englander on the yacht. Monsieur was prone to sulking if the soup got cold or the puddings soggy.
“We’re lucky to have him,” Jack said. “My sisters have been trying to poach him away for years.”
They sat in the music room before dinner, Mrs. Astor at the piano, Colonel Astor reading a newspaper by the fire, a whiskey sour sweating lightly on the end table nearby. She played carefully, a lullaby she remembered from her childhood, because she was out of practice, and she didn’t want to perform poorly in front of him, even this uncomplicated tune.
“I see,” she said.
He smiled at her from his place on a rose-pink davenport, the newspaper flat across his knees. “You’ll become used to it. Haven’t you ever been terrorized by a chef before?”
“No. The cook at our house is from Newark. I suppose she might terrorize the greengrocer some, but she was always nice enough to me.”
Against the wall behind the davenport was a bronze of Ariadne, nude and leaning against a rock, a hand covering her eyes. The metal curves of her captured the firelight, rounded hips and breasts and belly.