Under a Gilded Moon(13)
John Cabot was scanning the village—what little of the farmhouses and privies and cabins could still be made out through the fog and the dim light. Now he was studying Rema, her back turned, and the twins—their old boots with broken squirrel-hide laces and holes at the toes—thudding over the station platform’s pine boards as they chased each other around towers of trunks.
“On the outside of the station,” Kerry offered pointedly, “you’ll also want to take note of the tools hanging there—the axes, the rail dog, timber wedges, and hammers. For the men here who repair the railroad, not just own it.”
His gaze swept to her. He must have heard the defiance in her tone. One of his eyebrows lifted. But still he said nothing.
Rema’s hand dropped to her arm. “Back in my day,” she murmured to her, “we gave the good looking-est of the roosters some smidginy benefit of the damn doubt.”
But Kerry’s hands had already gone to her hips. “We are not a National Geographic Society feature, you know.”
He stared back at her.
“I’ve seen the magazine.” She’d seen it a total of once was the truth, and that one was Miss Hopson’s. “The photos of poor villagers somewhere in the world. Their quaint, primitive ways. To be gawked at by arrogant outsiders.”
Ignoring her aunt’s pats on her arm, Kerry stood her ground.
Locking eyes with her, John Cabot touched the brim of his top hat.
She must have looked like a crazy harridan to him. Red hair a mass of tangles from the wind through the train windows. Cheeks flushing—probably nearly matching her hair. She could be too impulsive, she knew, but she’d not allow him to scrutinize her and her people like dragonflies on a schoolboy’s pin.
“I say.” Madison Grant stepped forward. “Do let us assist you with your luggage, ladies.”
With a glance of what looked like utter contempt at Grant, Cabot turned back to Kerry. “We’d be happy to help.” He looked anything but.
And Kerry was in no mood to dispense mercy. “We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves, thank you.”
Rema hoisted her own bag to her shoulder. “Lordy, that is real kind. But Kerry’s trunk she borrowed hadn’t yet got dug out from under that pile belonging to the breathing-porch folks, and this here’s all I got. Kerry, she made it for me, but you can see for your ownselves you couldn’t never tell it wasn’t store-bought.”
Kerry felt herself sinking into the silence, humiliating and deep, that followed. Grant managed something about the bag’s loveliness.
But John Cabot kept his expression blank—except a flash of anger as it settled on Grant. Instead of praising the flour-sack bag, he merely turned away.
Giving a final bow, Grant followed. And perhaps he meant his voice to carry back to the women. “When Vanderbilt spoke of the beauty of these mountains, I see now he must also have meant its young ladies.”
Rema nudged Kerry, which Kerry ignored. Even so, she couldn’t miss Cabot’s response.
“Is this a habit of yours, Mr. Grant, vying for the attention of the village milkmaid?”
Whipping around, Kerry faced the backs of the gentlemen walking away. “Village milkmaid?”
“You know, sugar, you may be just a tiny little bit on edge.” Rema tapped on her arm to swing Kerry around. “Understandable, ’course, you having to face that daddy of you’rn. Wish I hadn’t had to take the new job in the kitchens over to Biltm—” She caught Kerry’s look. “Can’t hardly say it around you, can I?”
Crossing her arms, Kerry made herself focus. “I’m sorry, Rema. Your new job. That’s important. It’s steady pay. I’m glad you took it. It’s just not something I could ever do.”
“I learned early in life, child: don’t never say never.”
“With all respect, never’s exactly what I’m saying about Biltmore.”
Rema drew the knot of her lips to one side. Then, evidently, passed the argument by. “Me taking the job means I’ll be living there on the grounds.”
Kerry tried not to feel the full weight of that all at once, her aunt’s decision. A dying father. The growing twins. Saving the farm from being taken for unpaid taxes or gobbled up by George Vanderbilt. Now that they were here, the weight pressed heavier by the moment.
As more steamer trunks thudded to the top of hansom cabs and the inns’ carriages, Kerry and Rema wound through what was left, looking for Kerry’s luggage. At the office at the closer end of the station, the telegrapher, Farnsworth, glowered at the line that had formed at his window. “I don’t have but the one messenger boy, and not but one set of hands.”
Just behind him stood the person Kerry assumed to be that one “messenger boy.” A man, stoical and silent, that Kerry had seen only fleetingly around town two years ago. The only man from China here—the only man from anywhere in Asia at all—Ling Yong had not been hard to spot the rare times he stepped out of his dry goods shop on Haywood Street. Now it appeared he’d taken on a second job—or perhaps the shop had gone under. Staring directly ahead, he merely listened as the telegrapher ticked off delivery instructions, then dismissed him.
Farnsworth yanked a cigarette from his vest pocket. As he tapped in the next customer’s message, the cigarette dangled unlit from his mouth—like a promise to himself of a future smoke if he could keep his manners civil just a few moments more.