The Second Mrs. Astor

by Shana Abe

Jack Astor was likely the richest man in America, and difficult to miss.

was that he was smiling as he walked toward his mother.

And then, for an instant, he was smiling at her.

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.

In the fullness of time, I trust, the woman you love will tell you of those.

This is what it’s like to feel dainty.

“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.”

“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.”

Madeleine would have many years to reflect upon this moment. She would study it, pick it apart in a dozen little ways and wonder how things might have turned out differently had she been daring enough to overrule her mother. To say, No, I’d rather he didn’t take our photograph, please. I’d rather we all just turn around and walk the other way.

Careful, warned a voice inside of her, clear and sudden. Careful with this one.

She glanced up at him and then it was as if the rest of the world were gone, too, not just the sweating horses and their jockeys, their thunder; everything else was gone but the colonel, smiling down at her, his eyes bright, his lashes long, the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler a soft painted darkness along his cheekbones.

“I hope,” he said quietly, after a moment, “that I do not bore you.” Madeleine studied her toes once more. When she answered, her voice was even quieter than his. “Colonel Astor, I cannot imagine any man more stimulating than you.”

“What I know,” said Katherine coolly, “is that when we are standing side by side before the colonel, I become your shadow. I become smoke, a foxed mirror. I’m invisible, because that man cannot tear his gaze from you.”

“If you won’t believe in your own worth, Madeleine, at least have the sense to allow other people to believe in it.”

“Cheer up. You’ll dance again tonight, love, this time with him, in front of all of them. Let them look down their noses at that

“It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we’re young, we’re taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that’s as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.”

“But I want to know your ideas. I want to read your words, your book, because I might find a part of you inside those pages. A part I won’t have a chance to know any other way. And I would love to know every aspect of you, Jack Astor.

There are certain people in this world who have the ability to make you feel as if you’re the only person in the universe who matters to them. Whether it’s moment by moment or enough years to count up to a lifetime, they look you in the eyes and smile at you, direct and sincere—and you’re smitten.

“I’ve always thought the best way to get the measure of a man is to observe how he treats his animals.”

It feels good to be heard. Truthfully, I’d forgotten how good.”

He was smiling, really smiling, but in a way that looked like a secret: his lips pressed closed, the corners tipped. There was merriment behind his eyes, but she couldn’t tell if he was amused at her, or at her mother, or at the whole scheme, so clumsy and obvious.

She hesitated, then whispered, “If you encourage her, though, she’ll never stop trying to throw us together.” “Madeleine,” he replied quietly, leaning his head toward hers, “what on earth makes you think I want her to stop?”

Aahhhh

Two years from this nice moment, Madeleine would be a widow and a mother, the most famous widowed mother on the entire planet,

Dang

If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you. You can’t expect otherwise.”

To be young and fearless, when the future is spread before you in every color of the rainbow, everything bright, everything impossible suddenly made possible. You’re invincible then.”

“Because love is a tremendous gift, Maddy. A gift and a burden. Marriage especially is more than just hope and luck and a handshake. Marriage is work, enormous work, because it’s a living entity that needs everlasting attention. It will push you and bend you and test you, and if you’re not prepared for any of that, it will shatter you.

“Being in love makes all that work easier, but it does not make it go away. There will be necessary sacrifices. There will be pain. So I’ll ask you again: Do you think you’re in love with him?”

In a small, empty antechamber off the ballroom, your father and I shared our first kiss.

“Think of his face. Think of his smile the instant he first sees you. How it brightens him. Illumes him. Think of how that smile is for no one else but you.”

“Madeleine,” he greeted her, his tone low and intimate. He bent his head to place a kiss upon her knuckles. She felt the warmth of his breath through her gloves. In that moment, it was all of it, every bit of it, worth it.

“It’s going to be this way, you know. Forever and a day, we’ll be watched and followed, studied and analyzed. I fear you’ll know no peace with me.” “Peace,” she scoffed, light—but her heart was pounding, fierce and strong. “What a tedious notion. Who requires peace, when one may have Colonel Jack Astor?”

You’re cheap tinsel, Miss Force, and tinsel always tarnishes.”

Dang

“I would not have the world be cruel to you,” she emphasized. “I would not have Vincent Astor be cruel to you. But if—when—those things happen, I would not have you be cruel in return. Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.”

A forever dream, filled with beauty and joy and light. Just like you, my sweet child.”

For my own beauty. Thank you for being mine, today and forever to come.

I wanted the truth of love, the pure molten core of it, because anything short of that was just a cheat.”

All of her seasons, from now on, were going to be nothing but splendid. She knew it in her mermaid soul.

Aweeee! I really love them

my heart

In the end, we humans are creatures of marl and earth. We must return to our own soil.

Because he liked to see her sparkling, he said. He loved to see her glimmer.

aw i feel bad

“Someone else’s ideas about living, sleeping, entertaining, manifested all around you. But you’re tough, Madeleine. Bright and tough. You wouldn’t be where you are right now if you weren’t. You’ll make this place your own.”

do. Show them who you are.”

“How courageous you are.” “Courageous? No. Just saw the truth of things, that was all. Saw the truth, and tried to change it.”

And then that word, full of spice, transformed itself into a new word, an even better one, resonating down through her bones: Escape.

crying

oh gosh

dang

i knew it! SHES PREGNANT