Under a Gilded Moon(30)

Apparently, he came from some blue-blooded Beacon Hill Bostonian stock—though he’d paled when she asked about his family. She’d thought him quite handsome at first. Until he seemed oddly indifferent to her. His looks had then dulled.

He glanced to the side of the road now as they passed the young woman in the blue skirt.

Lilli cocked her head. “Feeling pity for the damsel in distress, Mr. Cabot?”

Startled, he turned to her. “I . . . Pardon?”

“The young woman who was just turned away from employment. The interest, I believe Mr. Grant said you had, in the plight of the mountain people in their poverty, oui?”

Those hard, unreadable eyes met hers, and she saw anger there she’d not expected.

George Vanderbilt himself was just up ahead, arm raised in greeting.

Relieved, Lilli was just raising her own in return when a figure stepped from the shadows. Her horse spooked, wheeling.

“I got to speak with you,” came a low voice. “About the station.”

Lilli spun her horse back to face him—then quickly away. “Do not approach me in public again. Or ever. At all. Do not stop me again.”

She kicked the mare into springing ahead. One hand uncharacteristically shaking, she joined the others and did not look back.



Streams gurgled beside the road and beneath the stone bridges. Overhead, the gray skies of yesterday had subsided into a brilliant . . . sapphire was fair to say. Lilli was rarely histrionic. But she’d never seen sky quite that color.

At the gates just before what appeared to be a vast span of lawn ahead, George Vanderbilt reined in his horse. “Mr. Olmsted’s hope in designing so long and winding a drive was to produce a kind of mounting anticipation, leading to”—he motioned the group forward to where they could now see the full house—“this.”

Stunned silence.

Then: “Je ne peux pas y croire,” Lilli breathed. I can’t believe it.

Here in this flea-bitten backwater of the Appalachian Mountains . . . a palace.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen splendor before. She’d toured estates in France’s Rh?ne Valley and England’s Derbyshire back when money flowed boundless into their family coffers. Back when her short-statured, hardheaded father had ruled the wharf district with, some said, an iron fist: the Napoleon of New Orleans.

But this . . . this was something altogether different.

At the far end of a green expanse rose four stories of palace. Deep-blue mountains rose around it like so many hulking watchmen.

All four guests of George Vanderbilt sat their horses in a stunned silence.

“Mon Dieu,” Lilli murmured at last.

Emily nearly stood in her saddle. “It’s three times the size of the White House. George isn’t one to brag about it, but I feel perfectly free to do so as his niece. The estate has grown to more than a hundred thousand acres—is that right, George? Sixty-five fireplaces—”

“My architect,” Vanderbilt broke in gently, deflecting, “has done all I asked and far more.” He paused there, frowning. “Did. Did far more. It is the genius of our late Mr. Hunt, and the landscaping vision of Mr. Olmsted, that have made Biltmore.”

Lilli maneuvered her horse alongside his. “My condolences, Mr. Vanderbilt, on the passing this summer of your chief architect. I read about it in the papers.”

“Richard Hunt was like a father to me. And a mentor. No finer American architect ever lived. And this was his favorite of all his creations, I believe.”

Madison Grant trotted abreast of them. “Simply splendid. Another example of what Western civilization has achieved through centuries of refinement.”

John Cabot’s gaze shot toward Grant. Their eyes engaged for an instant.

A sort of cocking of pistols, Lilli thought. But over what, exactly?

Emily beamed. “George, it’s even more spectacular than when I last saw it.”

They rode forward slowly, the four guests awed into silence, and even their host looking newly startled by the sheer size of his home. Every few steps of her horse, Lilli tried to speak. But none of her usual flattering words seemed to fit.

Emily broke the silence as they reined in and began to dismount at the front entrance, a massive stone lion on either side of the steps. “Oh, George.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Your mother will love it.”

“Two hundred and fifty rooms, I read in the New York papers,” Grant marveled, easing down from his horse. “Forty-three bathrooms. And what a display of innate talent and taste.”

“I do apologize that I can’t invite you to stay here at the house for your visit this time. The interior of the house, as you’ll see, is far from finished, with carpentry crews everywhere. I only hope Battery Park is sufficient.”

A man in full livery suddenly bolted from the house. “Right, and I’ll be taking your horses back to the stables today, Mr. Vanderbilt, sir.”

“Moncrief.” Vanderbilt turned to the others. “This is one of Biltmore’s fearless footmen, recently of Glasgow. Moncrief is temporarily filling the place of the butler I’ve engaged, Mr. Walter Harvey, until he arrives from London.”

“It’s in the bloody meantime, sir, that we’ve a problem. The stable’s short on the hands, that it is.” Darting forward so fast he spooked the horses, Moncrief lurched for the reins.