Under a Gilded Moon(31)

At the entrance, a matron in a black dress with chains of silver keys at her belt stood with arms crossed. Her skin against the black of the dress was the color of clotted cream.

“It won’t do, I’m afraid,” she observed. “Being so short of proper staff that we’ve left the butlering and the keeping of the stables to them that can’t tie their own laces.”

Vanderbilt mounted the steps to greet her. “A challenge, I realize, as we finish construction. But I promise you a full staff by the time Biltmore House actually opens.” He turned to the others. “This is Mrs. Smythe, Biltmore’s interim housekeeper until the new housekeeper we’ve contracted, Mrs. Emily King, can arrange passage after settling some family obligations. Mrs. Smythe comes to us from Liverpool, England.”

“A scouser by birth,” she admitted, her speech slowing as if she were ironing out vestiges of the north of England from her accent, “but more recently of London.”

Vanderbilt shook her hand, pumping cheerfully with his whole arm.

“It won’t do, sir.” She glanced down at their employer-housekeeper handshake, then over at the footman—apparently including both in her critique. “He has more than a bit of the terrier pup about him, the lad does.”

Vanderbilt smiled. “Surely, though, Mrs. Smythe . . .” He waited until Moncrief had trotted out of earshot, holding two horses’ reins in each hand. Eight long legs jogged on either side of his own rather short ones. “Surely he can be taught by one as experienced with running a grand estate as yourself.”

“The average man could be taught, that he could. But a Scotsman . . .” She let this hang ominously in the air.

“Ah. That is your primary objection?”

“Primary. But the list, sir, is long.” Huffing, she shook her head at the far side of the esplanade, where Moncrief had been dragged off course by one of the horses, who’d spotted grass and taken the rest with him.

“Ah. I can see, Mrs. Smythe, this would not be the level of dignified comportment to which you’d be accustomed. The acting butler being led about by the equine.”

“Not to be geggin’ in, sir, but there’s not much of the butler about him.”

Moncrief was throwing his whole weight against the reins, finally persuading the horses to follow him through a porte cochere’s opening toward a vast courtyard.

Lilli gaped, and her host followed her gaze.

“The stable complex. Several thoroughbreds will be arriving soon from my residence up in Bar Harbor.” They watched Moncrief, jogging in jerky diagonals, disappear through the arched double doors that presumably led to the stalls. “Along with, I hope, more hands.”

Emily turned to her friend. “Twelve thousand square feet, Lil, in the stables alone. And twenty carriages George will house there.” She addressed her uncle again. “Lilli is quite the equestrian, you know, George. She will be fully swept away by the stables.”

Lilli let her smile drift across the stable complex and her friend Emily, then land on their host. “I could not be more swept away than I already am.”

It was, she could see, a direct hit. Cheeks flushing like a child, Vanderbilt gave an unsteady bow as he ushered his guests toward the front entrance.

Mrs. Smythe flung the double doors wide as the five of them passed through, four of them gasping and their host watching their faces.

Lilli rotated, gawking at the sweeping stone staircase seemingly unsupported as it rose inside a vast turret, the soaring ceilings—the sheer scale of it all.

In the main hall, four men jogged past, harried, each holding a hammer or screwdriver or saw.

“We’ll view the upper floors later—if the foreman gives leave. I’ve had to hire more crews to have the house finished by Christmas Eve when the family arrives.”

Emily squeezed her uncle’s arm. “How thrilled we’ll all be with it, George.”

Madison Grant sauntered ahead. “I daresay, Cabot, there’s room enough for you to play a full game indoors.”

Emily cocked her head. “A full game?”

Grant nodded toward Cabot. “Football, Miss Sloane. As a Yalie, I was there for last year’s Harvard-Yale matchup, later dubbed, I believe, ‘the bloodbath of Hampden Park.’ Mr. Cabot, as I recall, made quite a name for himself there.”

Cabot turned only halfway. “Actually, my . . . life circumstances had just taken a sudden turn that very week. I confess I recall very little of it. And have no wish to.”

Grant seemed not to hear this. “Cabot here knew how to obliterate a line. Quite the use of the lethal flying wedge.”

Cabot’s head jerked around at the word lethal, Lilli noted. A reaction that was hard to miss.

“Might I inquire,” Emily asked, “about the role of the flying wedge—without unleashing an explanation of the whole horrid game?”

“There’s nothing quite like it, is there, Cabot? Combatants meeting head-to-head. The occasional player ejected for excessive brutality.”

Cabot’s profile, rigid and dark, said he was thoroughly finished with the conversation.

Their host, meanwhile, appeared distracted, assessing the work yet to be completed. He clearly had no interest in this game football. Or in John Cabot’s apparently violent role in it.

“I, for one,” Lilli said, “would like to know what the room over there is—that wonder of sunlight and glass.”