Despite the paper lanterns, the garden supplied plenty of shadows. Mother and Father stood sipping champagne with their hosts by a trellis frothing with honeysuckle, but Madeleine had lost sight of her sister not five minutes after their arrival. The last she had seen of her, Katherine had been headed toward the rose maze with an admirer on each arm.
Katherine, confident queen of both admirers and dinner parties, knew she’d have at least another twenty minutes of venial sin before they’d be seated for the meal.
Madeleine was hardly queen of anything. She stood alone in the sifting crowd and felt surprisingly unmoored, even though she had known this party and these people most of her life. She looked around, searching for (not him, certainly not him) anyone from the League—Carol or Nathalie or Leta—but either none of her friends were here yet, or else, like Katherine, they were taking quick advantage of the secret corners of the estate.
So she became one of the ghosts. She sipped from her own flute of champagne and rambled down a path of crushed oyster shells that gleamed before her like an ashen ribbon, unwinding into the dusk.
The air began to cool. It wasn’t long before she regretted her own silk sheath, floaty layers of coral edged with lace and very little else. She handed her glass to a passing footman and shivered, just for a moment, as the wind skimmed along the exposed skin of her chest and neck and upper arms. It ruffled through her hair, wayward strands already coming loose from her Psyche knot, and turned the pearls at her throat into stone.
The string trio began a new piece, the barcarolle from The Tales of Hoffmann. She paused beneath a gold bobbing lantern, closing her eyes to take in the notes, imagining how she would dance to it, the placement of her feet, the man who would hold her in his arms—
When she opened her eyes again, she saw, utterly without astonishment, a second shadow overlapping her own.
“Miss Force,” said the colonel, just behind her. “Pardon me. I hope I don’t startle you.”
Madeleine turned to face him. “Not at all.”
He was elegant and black-clad and taller than she, enough so that she had to tip back her head to meet his gaze. It was a strange sensation, and an unfamiliar one; Madeleine was tall for a girl, and most boys her age looked at her straight on.
She thought, This is what it’s like to feel dainty.
They studied each other, motionless in the hitch and trick of the swaying gold light. He seemed almost exactly as he had the night before, his hair precisely cut and combed; his ebony tailcoat immaculate; his expression a combination of gravity and absolute focus, as if nothing else existed in the world other than her.
She remembered that day on the beach in Newport; how she’d thought him comely. But comely wasn’t the right word for him, she thought now. It was too simple, too shallow to describe him. It was true that he had little of the muscular charisma of the young men she’d spy down at the docks, sunburnt and joking, sons of lobstermen grown to be lobstermen themselves, hauling in their daily catch. But neither was he one of the pale, paunchy gentlemen of her father’s circle, who golfed leisurely and dined voraciously, and spoke only of market fluctuations and real estate prices and the abundant promise of industrialization.
When she had been still in pinafores, Colonel Astor had outfitted an entire regiment in the Spanish-American War and then gone with them to do battle down in Cuba. He was a scion of the most blue-blooded family in America, head of a massive fortune, and distant cousin of President Roosevelt himself. He had traveled the globe purely because he’d wished to do so, visited lands her imagination could not stretch to encompass, and in the hush of the moment, Madeleine could very nearly catch the scent of those wild, exotic adventures still lingering upon him like a perfume—gunpowder and sharp spice and the dust of faraway trails.
Faint lines fanned outward from the corners of his eyes, crinkling his tan. Deeper lines bracketed his mouth, that long moustache, and she found herself looking at them and admiring them and thinking, How well his face suits him.
The diamond in his stickpin sparked a sepia rainbow.
The colonel cleared his throat. “I was just contemplating what a pleasant evening we’re having. How fine the night is, the gloaming, when I saw you here. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
She smiled. “You’re not intruding, Colonel Astor.”
“Ah,” he said. “Very good.”
A pair of crickets began to exchange songs, hesitant at first, gradually throbbing stronger. Madeleine clasped her hands over her elbows, then dropped them again when she realized she was wrinkling her dress. “I was listening to the music. I think I got a bit lost in it.”
He cleared his throat again. “Do you like opera?”
She thought, surprised, He is nervous.
She said, “We saw The Tales of Hoffmann last year, in Paris. Have you seen it?”
“Ages ago. I don’t remember most of it, I’m afraid.”
Her smile turned rueful. “I didn’t understand most of it,” she admitted. “But I enjoyed the production.”
He nodded, looked away. Behind him, the diaphanous ghosts lingered in the dark, drinking their sparkling wine, chortling. Above them both, the stars began to wake, a handful at a time, right above their heads.
The colonel seemed in no hurry to speak again, but neither did he leave; Madeleine cast about for something more to say. “This is the first time I’ve seen you in Bar Harbor, sir. I don’t believe you visit often?”
“No. I’ve been here before, naturally. Friends and extended family, all that. But Newport is . . .” He paused, frowning.
“Yes, it’s—”
“My customary summer home.” His gaze angled back to hers. “Yours is here, however?”
“Ever since I can remember.”
“And you . . . like summering here?”
“Well.” She lifted an open palm to the air. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”
“Of course.”
Silence again. She regretted now giving away her glass of champagne, because at least then she’d have something to hold in her hands, something to do besides stare up at him and feel gauche.
She said, “I’m sure it’s nothing so excellent as Newport, though. I’ve heard the cottages there are all fashioned of marble and gold, inside and out, like the temples of the gods crowning Mount Olympus.”
He ducked his head and smiled at last, rubbing a thumb along the line of his jaw. “Some of them are, perhaps. Certain families seem to take pleasure in that sort of thing. But I think most of the homes are more limestone than marble. Plaster and brick. And cuivre doré—only gold leaf, I’m afraid.”
“But even so—like heaven, all white and blue and gold.”
“I suppose that was the idea,” he said seriously.
“How resplendent it must be.”
“Yes,” he said, as if he’d never considered it before. “Yes, Miss Force, it is.”
Beyond the trees and shrubs and heavy-headed flowers, a dinner bell chimed. They both glanced toward the brighter heart of the garden, where all the tables were laid, then back at each other. Without a word, Colonel Astor offered her his arm.
Madeleine took it. Her gloved hand lay small and curved against the black of his sleeve. Her head reached just above his chin.