Under a Gilded Moon(29)

“I can’t, Dearg. I can’t give you an answer right now. I’m sorry.”

“If you’re waiting for Vanderbilt to gallop off into the sunset with you . . .”

“Don’t be stupid, Dearg.”

“So that’s it. I’m too damn stupid.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I meant. Right now, all I can let myself think about is how to survive—how to take care of a man I learned to hate as a kid. How to keep food on the table. The roof from crashing down on our heads. I’m sorry, Dearg. It’s all I can focus on now.”

Dropping her hand from his arm, she walked away. With dark falling fast now that the sun had slipped behind the mountains, she broke into a run, the pounding of her steps muffled by pine needles and the damp of bright leaves.

Hemlocks feathered past. Beside her, a stream wound through mountain laurel.

The train whistle sounded again. Its call hung over the hemlocks for several moments, drifted on through the valley. Still heard by the old-timers here as new and foreign and sad, it used to strike her as mournful, too.

But today it was like an announcement. Something coming. Something fearsome, perhaps. Something that rattled and roared, shook the earth like the train.

But change. A change she had to be ready for.

The train whistled again. She thought she could hear, too, as she ran, its churning axles and pistons and wheels: Something coming, coming, coming. Something . . .





Chapter 11

“So today,” Lilli mused, “we finally see.” Morning sun blazed through a Battery Park Inn window, white petals of light scattering on the marble floor.

Emily shuddered. “I’m thrilled for George to show us Biltmore, but I have to say, I’m still shaken by the thought of what happened at the train station. That poor reporter’s . . .”

Death went unsaid.

Lilli wished she could shudder like Emily. Or weep—also as Emily had done—for poor Aaron Berkowitz. Instead, she felt paralyzed. Numb.

And rather frightened, which wasn’t an emotion she often allowed.

She’d made arrangements, certainly. She’d taken a tremendous risk in trying to save the family name. She’d specified just how the thing should be approached. But this . . .

Emily straightened after hooking up the longer left side of her riding habit’s skirt to allow for walking. “I assume you caught what Mr. Grant said last evening, that there are reasons to suspect several men—and even to investigate what Mr. Berkowitz might have been involved in that could have brought this on himself.”

Lilli made herself nod. “I understand reporters sometimes push too far. The authorities probably know best.”

Emily laughed weakly. “Honestly, Lils, I can’t recall the last time you accepted any authority’s opinion, ever.”

Forcing her breathing to steady, Lilli tilted her hat more daringly to one side. What’s done was done, and however badly askew it had gone, she could not panic. She would distance herself from it entirely, of course. But she would not run away. “Let’s go see Biltmore, shall we?”



As they passed the clerk’s desk, a young woman in a blue serge skirt and white blouse—not bad fitting, though a couple of years out of fashion—was saying, “Yes, I understand. You’ve no work to offer.”

The creature marched away—head high. Lilli watched with approval. Being destitute couldn’t always be helped; looking the part was inexcusable.

The young woman’s hair had come loose from some sort of braid, and now it hung wild. She’d be pretty enough—with some smoothing and polish.

Madison Grant was also walking away from the clerk’s desk.

“And so good to have you back again this season, Mr. Grant!” the clerk called.

Grant pitched his voice louder than necessary, as if he wanted the entire lobby—including the young mountain woman—to hear and take note. “Sadly, I wasn’t able to persuade the manager to take on more staff.”

Beside him, John Cabot frowned. “Always working toward your own ends,” he murmured.

But if Grant heard—which he surely must have, standing so close—his smile did not fade.

“Mr. Grant,” Emily gushed, “how gallant of you to offer assistance to the poor mountain girl.”

Together, the four of them walked through the inn’s front doors to find their horses waiting.

Grant eased himself up onto a lanky chestnut that Lilli disliked for the same reason she’d refused at least one offer of marriage: various body parts out of proportion. She was not shallow. She did, however, expect a husband of not only considerable means but also reasonable looks. Hardly too much to ask.

“I,” Grant pronounced, “only did what any gentleman of breeding would have done.” That one emphasized word he seemed to toss John Cabot’s way like a challenge.

“We’re meeting George at the gatehouse” was Cabot’s only comment—his tone more terse, Lilli thought, by the moment.

She nodded to the groom approaching her with an animal far superior to Grant’s. That, at least, was a relief. Lilli could not abide mediocrity in horses—or men.

Placing her foot in the groom’s cupped hands and vaulting herself upward in one swift, graceful movement, she studied the two gentlemen from behind: Madison Grant with his breeding and perfect, cloying manners. He was beginning to get on her nerves. By contrast, there was John Quincy Cabot—she’d taken note of the pedigree right there in the name—with that unruly hair forever flopping into one eye and the newspaper always under one arm. Whenever the conversation lagged, he stole glances at it rather than engaging with others.