The Second Mrs. Astor by Shana Abe

Author:Shana Abe [Abe, Shana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2021-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

January 1912

Paris, France

France was awash with rain. Not just any rain, but a miserable sleety slush that shifted back and forth from hard stinging drops to wet flaky splats, soaking through even the thickest of oilskins. From the moment they’d reached Cherbourg, it had begun, and had not relented for more than an hour or so a week later. Paris appeared to be weeping, all her famous façades stained with streaks of dirty gray ice. Medieval gargoyles retched watery sludge into leaky lead gutters; puddles and rivulets of melt mirrored the silver, sullen sky.

Whenever Madeleine went outside, her hair frizzed, and her breath frosted into clouds.

The air smelled of gasoline and horses and wet manure.

It was not warm.

There were, of course, history and art aplenty, but the stars remained hidden, and the sunsets descended uniformly gray. At least their suite of rooms at the Ritz-Carlton was well heated, as was the lobby and all the fine restaurants nearby to be found. But she still wore her furs wherever she went—she would wear them to bed if she could—and the tips of her fingers and toes nearly always felt numb. It was the strangest burden, this chill she carried with her. It felt like a fever wracking her, except she shivered instead of sweated.

She must have caught some manner of a flu-ish ague, which was horribly unfair, to be sick on her first trip abroad with her husband. But she was, and all she could do was hunker through it.

Her appetite waned. The sight of food, no matter how elegantly plated, left her queasy; the odors of sautéed meats and rich sauces were enough to make her leave the table. All she could bear to consume was freshly baked bread and softened cheese—which, happily, Paris had in abundance. She gorged on long crispy sleeves of baguettes, sometimes still warm from the oven, their crusts crackling at her touch, tender white insides ready to be devoured. She’d tear into them with her bare hands (if nobody watched), smear them with salted butter and goat cheese, a touch of jam, fig or pear or green tomato.

In all her life, she had never tasted bread so fine.

She drank tea by the gallons until she grew tired of it and switched to water and dry white wine . . . which France also offered in abundance.

“I wish you would try the turbot,” Jack said one night, their last night before they were to depart for the Riviera, and then North Africa. He gazed at her from across the restaurant table, ignoring the anxious waiter and the other patrons (ogling, because in a rising babble of languages, one after another they’d realized with whom they dined) and the constant churn of noise from outside, all the motorcars and coaches and people hurrying past the windows with their collars turned up.

The rain struck the panes in slender clear daggers, always falling.

“Just one bite,” he said, setting down his knife and fork, touching his napkin to his lips. Nestled in its little green glass bowl on the table, the flame of a candle bent and trembled.

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