Under a Gilded Moon(32)
“The Winter Garden.” Vanderbilt pronounced it reverently.
He led them to a sunken circular room at the front of the house. Its glass ceiling arched overhead. Around the marble fountain at its center stood palms and orchids and rattan furniture splashed in light.
“As if one had stumbled into the tropics,” Lilli marveled.
“The crew will connect the fountain’s water soon. Meanwhile . . .” George Vanderbilt’s face suddenly grave, he tilted his head up toward the apex of glass. “Meanwhile, most people here in these mountains have no access to running water for their own cooking. Or hygiene.”
Cabot joined him. “Honestly, I was just thinking the very same thing. Which . . . forgive me . . . which I mean in no way as a criticism of your Biltmore.”
“My hope is to address just that sort of thing.” Vanderbilt’s gaze dropped from the domed ceiling to Cabot. “Remind me to tell you over dinner of a plan I’m hatching with All Souls, the new church we’re building in the village. The needs of the mountain people I hope it can address. The schools, too, I’d like to fund. I’d also value your input on the Young Men’s Institute for the black community here—you may have seen it in the village. The discrimination that community faces is substantial, so the shops and lecture hall and library . . .” He rattled on, eyes glowing.
Philanthropy. Lilli made a mental note. Mountains and art and philanthropy were all roads to their host’s heart. Part of the challenge of attracting George Vanderbilt’s attention: the forms of flirtation Lilli excelled at fell rather flat.
They swept next into a vast banquet hall. She gaped at the table that appeared capable of seating forty or so, the three-story ceiling, the organ whose pipes ran up one side of the hall, the tapestries that filled the entire facing wall and looked awfully old.
“Fourteenth century,” their host offered before she could ask.
Emily clapped her hands together. “Your people have lit all three fireplaces for our visit today. And there’s even a string quartet. George, how lovely.”
The four musicians near the bank of fireplaces picked up their bows now, “Sheep May Safely Graze” floating through the hall.
Behind them came a small grunt. Mrs. Smythe stood with her arms crossed over her chest. “Housemaids had to be instructed on the proper way to lay a fire indoors. Bless my soul, the staff here that’s not brought from England, they’ve grown up living outdoors as much as in. My job’s a bit of the training chipmunks about it.”
George Vanderbilt patted the housekeeper’s arm. “Carry on, Mrs. Smythe.”
Now he was gesturing for them to follow him past several other grand rooms and down a tapestry gallery.
Lilli nodded toward the tapestries. “They’re lovely,” she offered. Which sounded bland even to her.
John Cabot fell in beside her. “I understand you’re from New Orleans.”
“Yes.” She should manage something more friendly than that. He was better looking than Grant, after all. But she’d no wish to speak of New Orleans. Especially not now.
Cabot must not have caught the chilliness in her tone. “When I was a freshman at Harvard four years ago, several of us on the Crimson staff . . .” He faltered there, as if reminded of something quite awful. But then went on. “We followed a story in New Orleans. It involved the death of your police chief and the violent aftermath.”
Bristling, she drew a deep breath. And kept her tone airy. “My mother and I reside now in New York. We have little interest in being reminded of New Orleans.”
“As I recall, the murder of the police chief was never solved. Hennessy, I think, was his name.”
“It was most certainly solved.” She shot this back before she could think.
Startled, Cabot stopped walking. “The group of Italians who were arrested . . .”
“Were the perpetrators,” she said. “A mafia vendetta. The police chief named the Italians with his last breath.”
As he opened his mouth to speak again, Lilli held up her hand. “Mr. Cabot, you had your reasons a moment ago—mysterious as they might appear to onlookers—for not wishing to discuss a game of football in which you apparently were ejected for . . . what was it? Excessive brutality?”
She watched him flinch. “Perhaps, then, you can abide by my wish to avoid the subject of New Orleans entirely.”
Her voice had risen to a pitch she’d not intended, audible even over the strings. The others turned now and stared, as if they could see on her face the horror she’d so carefully tucked away out of sight when she’d dressed to come out this morning. The questions about her own father she carried inside her like internal wounds.
Cabot’s face had grown hard again. “Consider it done,” he said quietly. Then turned stiffly away.
In John Quincy Cabot, Lilli realized, she’d not made a friend.
Chapter 12
Lilli forced a smile—a charming nonchalance—in that center of stares.
Clasping his hands behind his back, Cabot was focusing on something else: the Sargent painting of Vanderbilt’s mother.
In the next room, two stories of bookshelves still under construction covered all four walls. A balcony ran the perimeter, interrupted only by the fireplace that commanded one side of the room.