“Speaking of the theater,” he said, walking slowly beside her, “I appreciated your performance last night.”
“Oh?”
“You were . . . enthusiastic.”
“Oh.” She laughed, mortified. “I know I’m not terribly skilled, but I don’t seem to ever lack enthusiasm. Things were going all right, I think, until I forgot my line.”
“Did you? Forget a line?”
“You must have noticed. Everyone noticed.”
They stopped. He turned to her without releasing her arm.
“What I noticed was how committed you were to your role. How you made me believe in her tragedy. Her great loss. It seems to me that’s the most valuable skill one might have on the stage, the ability to convince the audience that you inhabit the truth.”
She searched his face for any sign of teasing, but he only looked back at her with that unwavering focus, in shadow now, the gloaming he had admired before fading into a darker, deeper night.
The wind pushed again and her skin tightened and Madeleine wished very much for a shawl, or a witty thing to say, or for her sister’s infinite poise.
“Forgive me.” The colonel shook his head, scowled down at the path. “I, ah—I’m not expressing myself well.”
“No, you are. I’m glad for your honest opinion, thank you. And for the pansies,” she remembered to add. “They were lovely.”
“Miss Force,” he said, his lashes lifting, and through the dusk she could see only that his eyes were darkened too, fixed on hers. “Please never doubt I’ll give you my honest opinion.”
“Colonel Astor,” she replied, “please believe that I shall never doubt you.”
It seemed, astonishingly, that she had found the right thing to say after all, because his smile returned, now easy and slight, filling her with a warm buzzing wonderment.
The dinner bell chimed again, three melodious peals. Neither of them moved.
She thought, This is what it’s like to feel understood.
They strolled on, and every glittering soul they passed stopped talking, and stopped drinking, and eyed them askance as they went by.
* * *
They were not seated at the same table. They were not seated, in fact, anywhere near each other, but on separate islands of grass, in separate sections of the garden, with beds of larkspur and poppies between them, and a solitary weeping birch that draped its long branches like a curtain off to the side.
She could still see him, though. Past the birch, past the other guests, through the shadows. Sometimes she thought she heard him, too.
She had been placed between the ginger-haired son of a nouveau riche shipping and forwarding importer—not coincidentally, the same profession as her father’s—and a giraffe-necked boy from an old and affluent Philadelphia family. On the other side of the ginger-haired boy sat Leta Wright, one of Madeleine’s better friends, who was brash and spirited and not in the least afraid to speak her mind.
“Harold,” she was saying to the ginger-haired boy. “Did you forget to do something this morning?”
The ginger boy sat up taller in his chair, looking nervous. “Um . . . did I?”
Leta smiled at the air straight ahead of her, a sweet and dangerous smile, as she picked up her claret. “You attended the play last night, did you not? You saw me as Queen Gertrude?”
“You know I did, Lettie! You know I’d never miss seeing you onstage!”
“And did you admire my performance?”
“Of course I did. Naturally!”
“That’s what I thought.” She took a sip, aimed the smile at him. “So imagine my surprise this morning as I was receiving posy after posy from all sorts of lovely boys to congratulate me and I realized, Harold, dear, that none of them were from you. Not a single sorry petal.”
“Um . . .” said Harold again.
“Ollie sent flowers. Morris sent flowers. Ernest and Walter Owens sent flowers, and you know they hardly even like me! Valentino Louis sent daisies, my favorite.” She faced him directly. “But nothing, nothing, from you.”
“Lettie, good God, I’m so sorry, I just—”
“Maddy,” she said, leaning around him, “don’t you agree it’s nice to get flowers from boys who say they admire you? Don’t you rather expect it?”
“Well—”
“I’m sure you got flowers this morning from admirers of your Ophelia, didn’t you?”
Madeleine pressed her lips together, embarrassed, then admitted, “Yes.”
“You see, Harold? It’s not such a terribly onerous task. Who sent yours, Maddy? Please do not tell me it was our boy Harold here.”
Madeleine looked down, tapped her fish fork against her plate. She’d hardly sampled the bouillon, or now the salmon tartare; she felt simultaneously out of breath and out of room inside, as if her corset was too tight. “No. It was Colonel Astor.”
Leta paused. “It was who?”
“John Jacob Astor.”
“Gosh,” said Harold after a moment, sounding impressed.
Leta clapped her hands together in delight. “How exciting! What sort of flowers were they?”
“Pansies.”
Her friend made the connection instantly; her brown eyes widened. “Wonderfully perfect! Were you thrilled?”
“I was . . . surprised.”
“Well, then, was your mother thrilled, at least? What did she say?”
Madeleine poked her fork at the tartare. “Not very much. But I suspect she’s already grappling with the agony of who will design my wedding gown.”
At this, the Philadelphia boy stirred at last, turning to stare at her with hooded eyes. “What’s that? You and Colonel Astor? You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” Leta challenged. “Maddy’s good enough for a king, much less a colonel.”
“But not a Knickerbocker,” he said. “Trust me. Anyway, he’s too old for her, and he’s divorced.”
“He’s not so terribly old,” Leta said.
“And lots of people get divorces,” added Harold. “My uncle and aunt did, and it was fine.”
“Because they are not Knickerbockers,” said the other boy, patient. He swallowed a bite of the vinegary salmon. “I don’t expect you to understand, I suppose.”
“I think I understand snobbery quite well,” Leta retorted. “There’s nothing wrong with Colonel Astor sending Maddy flowers. I think it’s romantic.”
“I think it’s onion-headed,” the boy said.
Leta gave an incredulous laugh. “So that’s it for you, then? You’ll never fall in love with someone unexpected? You’ll never marry anyone outside of your own little world, never ever?”
The boy shrugged, returning to his fish. “It’s simply not done.”
Madeleine sat back in her chair, hands on her lap, and secretly wished for the Philadelphia boy to choke.
All around her conversations bloomed, swelling and falling like the constant waves that scored the harbor. Beyond them rose the murmur of the breeze through pine needles and leaves, and the canticles of the crickets tucked beneath shrubs, and the dulcet notes of the string trio floating beneath the arc of the luminous blue night.