Under a Gilded Moon(10)
But she’d welcomed the chance to be with him, the elusive Napoleon of New Orleans whom she was like—and whom she barely knew. Lilli relished the four days she and her father and Emily had shared here. Until yesterday morning, when her father had been handed the telegram by the Battery Park Inn concierge.
His face had drained of all color. “Damn New York Times. Can’t let a story die after all these years. Bordel de merde. Thought they’d outsmart me and send someone here, did they?”
“The timing,” she said, as much to herself as to him, “couldn’t be worse. If word got out there was any question at all—”
“Precisely, ma chère. Ils sont cons, the idiots. Will no one stop them from dogging my life?”
He’d packed his bags and left—for where, he’d not even said—within the hour. And forgotten to tell her goodbye.
From behind now came hoofbeats: Emily approaching at a sedate trot.
“I can tell, Lils, by the way you’re sitting stock-still: you are amazed by the Approach Road. I’m so sorry your father couldn’t stay to see it.” She paused here, as if unsure whether to add how odd his sudden departure had been. But appearing to decide to steer clear of the subject, she only smiled. “George will be thrilled with your reaction.”
“I imagine your uncle has more pressing concerns than the opinions of a lady he’s never met.”
“But wait till he meets you. Then we shall see how much he cares what you think of his project.” Emily beamed at her friend. Which was her way: a childlike kind of warmth that, for all its naivete, was hard to dislike.
“Your uncle seems perfectly content as he is: traveling the world, collecting his art, reading his books, building this hidden estate . . .”
“He does, yes. But the right kind of woman can teach even a contented man just how miserable he really is.”
Lilli laughed.
“Without her, I mean,” Emily added.
“Let me make perfectly clear that I did not come south with you because I was desperately seeking a husband.”
“No one, dear Lilli, suspects you of desperately seeking anything. You secure whatever you want with hardly seeming to try. Which reminds me to ask about what it was you were saying to that man this afternoon. By the station.”
Lilli turned back to the Approach Road. “It’s hard to imagine a structure at the end that would live up to the suspense of all these twists and turns.”
Emily rearranged the drape of her riding skirt. “Change the subject if you like. I only hope that man from the station won’t make a nuisance of himself. He looked to me like he might be the kind to . . . become too familiar.”
Lilli felt her pulse drop again, and the words seemed to hang suspended there between them. No one was supposed to have seen her talking to the man at the train station. Lilli must have miscalculated how long it would take Emily to send her telegram. Perhaps Emily saw her approach the man. Who knew what she might have heard.
“He was only a local man. Asking for work. I sent him away, naturally.”
She wheeled her horse as if she were admiring the mountains.
Approaching them at a canter was a broad-chested bay. The horse was a Hanoverian warmblood, Lillian guessed, his movements as elegant as they were powerful.
The rider’s attire included high black boots that shone and a precisely tailored riding jacket with a stiffly starched winged collar and black cravat. Above that was skin as pale as she’d been expecting from a man known to be an inveterate bookworm. Still, his was a pleasant, intelligent face—a good deal better looking than the grainy pictures of him in the society pages.
His mouth, beneath a dark, neatly trimmed mustache, turned up only slightly. But his eyes, dark and soulful and creasing at the corners, were warm—even merry.
“Uncle George!” Emily flicked her crop to edge her horse close to his. “How wonderful to see you! And before you scold . . .” She held up her hand, palm flat. “I was just on the point of reminding Miss Barthélemy that I gave you my word we’d wait to see your new house together along with your other visitors tomorrow.”
George Vanderbilt seemed in no hurry to scold, but Emily plunged on, defending herself. “I know your other guests are arriving soon—and, in fact, we considered waiting at the train station. But the daylight was nearly gone and the rain was approaching, and we were wanting to extend our ride. And there was your lovely winding drive into the estate. So we’ve only come to this point, no farther.”
“We’ll not count a view of the spires as breaking the promise.” He gestured high to his left, where a break in the treetops showed a towering roof, two parallel spires catching the last of the waning light. And something—some creature—leered from one side farther down.
Lilli did not intend to gasp aloud. But a gargoyle dangling there in the distance, peeking through the forest of a Southern Appalachian valley, was not something she’d prepared for.
“Someday”—George Vanderbilt swiveled back in his saddle—“these trees will obscure all views of the house until the end of the third mile. But forgive me. I’ve not properly met our guest.”
His tone was surprisingly tentative for a man with the world at his feet.
Unassuming. Even shy.
He had a slim frame, which underscored what the society columns said: that he was the kind of man, odd in their circles, who’d rather read than eat. Rather discuss philosophy late into the night with a single close friend than dine with a host of steel barons’ daughters batting their eyelashes at him.