Under a Gilded Moon(51)
Several days into the visit now, this was their first hunting excursion. Grant and Cabot stood some respectful steps behind the pair with their own weapons over their arms as her lesson commenced. Emily, wearing a cunning little woolen jacket and a smirk, watched the scene from a few steps behind the armed members of the party.
Lilli made sure she reached for the shotgun tentatively. Like a woman who was frightened of firearms. Fumbling it a bit, she lifted the gun’s stock to her cheek. Ran a gloved hand over the barrel.
“So well polished.” An inane comment. But better one that made her look feather-headed than one showing what she felt: suffocated by a corset, the drag of her skirt through the clearing’s tall grass, and this role she had to play.
This was the price of survival: feigning big-eyed incompetence when she was all but quivering with impatience like the panting spaniel holding his position at their feet. She ached to set the dog loose and follow him into the brush, to raise the double-barrel amid the sudden, desperate cacophony of birds driven to the wing and squeeze off two blazing rounds in such quick succession that the birds struck the earth as one.
Control yourself, Lilli.
“So shiny,” she added. And cringed at her own voice.
“Regardless of the abundance or the paucity of a man’s possessions, he should take painstaking care of all that he calls his.”
Lilli turned to meet George’s eye. Had he meant more by this than the proper maintenance of firearms?
“If you’d like me to demonstrate some tips about leading your target, Miss Barthélemy . . .”
She smiled up at him. “I’d be so very grateful.”
Wrapping one arm around her shoulders, George repositioned her weapon. “When the quail are flushed, you’ll want to take an instant to plant your feet, feel the wood of the stock against your cheek, and focus on a single bird, not the flock.”
His breath near her ear, his cheek brushing hers, he nudged the gun down to the right. “You’ll be swinging your firearm up and through from behind the bird, sweeping from tail feathers to body to beak and then, bang—pulling the trigger as the muzzle passes the beak. The key is to breathe deeply. To remain calm.”
Yet she could hear his breath coming faster. His gloved hand covered hers on the trigger. “I’ll be right here behind you.” Did he really imagine she felt nervous about pulling a trigger?
Her own heart rate at a preternaturally slow thud, Lilli was scarcely aware of the others in their group standing in a clutch behind them. When at last the dog was released—“Hunt, Gurth,” Vanderbilt all but whispered—and shot into the brush, she followed without hesitation, leaving all of them quickly behind. Her mistake, perhaps—the initiative that said she wasn’t a novice at all. But hang it, there were birds to be shot.
Nose to the ground, the dog was visible only in flashes as he crashed through the brambles, quartering relentlessly toward the next open space. Seeing where Gurth must be headed, Lilli hurried to that clearing’s edge and took her position. As the dog thrashed through the last of the brush—and the three men, huffing, caught up with her—a covey of bobwhite exploded into the air.
In a triumph of restraint, Lilli emptied only one barrel. The quail tumbled to the earth. Grant and Cabot shot, too, one of them missing, one of them dropping a quail. Gurth went happily about his business, collecting the birds.
George beamed. “Well done, Miss Barthélemy!”
“Merci beaucoup.” She cocked her head at George. “Beginner’s luck.”
Emily had by now joined them. Her tone was telling, a drawl that mimicked Lilli’s own remnants of a New Orleans accent. “Why, however did you learn to shoot like that in only one lesson?”
Lilli shot her friend a look. Women never betrayed each other on these little deceits. Not women who wished to remain friends.
George’s enthusiasm bounded over her silence. “Beginner’s luck indeed! Marvelously done.”
Leaning into him ever so slightly, she handed the gun back to him. “The credit is entirely due to my teacher.”
He took this in. Blinked. And then smiled.
After lunch, the group went for a ride, then after a time dismounted and, leading their horses, strolled over the fields, golden brown, and beside the French Broad River that wound through the estate. Above were the mansion and the blue mountains beyond.
George stopped, his hand scratching under his horse’s mane but his eyes on the bottomland that rolled out on either side. “I hope, you know, for the estate to be entirely self-sustaining. The forest, the crops, the dairy, the nursery—all of it.”
John Cabot drew up beside him. “I can see why anyone would feel so powerfully drawn here.”
“Despite the destitution of the natives,” Grant added, “and the harrowing depths of their ignorance.”
Cabot’s retort came with a vehemence that made everyone turn. “Poverty, I’ll grant you. Grinding poverty, even. But we’ve witnessed examples of keen intelligence. Less access to formal education, of course. But a striking intelligence, nevertheless.”
For a moment, no one spoke, the only sound the crunch of their footsteps and the horses’ across the dried grass.
Emily splashed into the quiet. “Why do I think that Mr. Cabot is thinking of one intellect in particular, rather than the whole of the Appalachian populace?”