Under a Gilded Moon(78)
Leblanc couldn’t make out what Vanderbilt murmured to the woman—something boringly bland and polite from the tone.
“Still, it’s a relief to be out of New York,” the woman said. “Really, George, three-fourths of the city now are foreigners. Good God, their goulashes and garlics, their pigs and chickens and hordes of children, half of them reeking of disease. And the smells. A complete dearth of simple hygiene.”
Letting the servant in the ridiculous livery hand her up into the sleigh, she paused at its running board to address the others. “This mystery home of George’s will be a lovely respite, I’m sure—if only for the pure, unpolluted air.”
The servant’s arm must have slipped then, nearly dropping the woman flat into the snow. But he recovered in time to catch her fall.
The sleighs loaded, the Vanderbilts and their furs and trunks went jingling off toward a break in the trees and a big, hulking arch of an entrance of some sort.
“Waste of my damn time watching all that,” Leblanc muttered. He kicked his horse into a trot, snow winging out from each step, heading in the direction the idiot telegrapher had pointed.
Chapter 32
It took only the one sentence whispered to her from the doorway, and Kerry’s hands went unsteady, which she realized not by a look down at them but by the sterling flashing in the firelight. Gold and red and green sparked from the edges of the platter that her hands gripped, wobbling.
Tully and Jursey had been invited to spend the night at Biltmore tonight in an empty servant’s room with Kerry since she would be working late. Ella Bratchett had offered again to care for Johnny Mac in Kerry’s absence.
Kerry had held her arm. “Please let me pay you for your time.”
“If mountain folk can’t take care of each other—especially with us about the only two farms in these parts not already bought up—and you all living here in this barn, then the world’s gone clear to hell and took us with it.”
“Please. It’s the only way I’ll feel comfortable staying over at Biltmore.”
“We’ll talk about it later. I’m just glad Rema finally let on to me about the roof collapsing so we’d know you could use some help. Y’all go on now.”
Ignoring the issue of money, Robert Bratchett had shaken his head. “Johnny Mac and me, we got some things we need to get straight with each other. I’ll stay with Ella, and we’ll have us that talk.”
Kerry had swallowed hard. Then lifted the photo of her father and Bratchett in their Union army uniforms from where it lay on their one table. “This was inside his fiddle.”
Bratchett raised an eyebrow. “Was it, now?” He made no move to see it closer, as if the image were thoroughly preserved in his memory already. Ella stiffened her shoulders, like she was bracing against some strong emotion.
Silence followed, swollen and throbbing with things unsaid.
“Is there nothing either of you can tell me about this picture? Or why it stirs him up?” She studied her father, who’d not been conscious all day. “I mean, besides memories of the war.”
Robert Bratchett’s eyes were on her father’s unmoving form. “Not everyone here in the mountains fought for that side, you know.”
“We knew he’d been with the Union. But he’s never talked much about it ever.”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
“Is there anything about the photo that my father would associate with the attack at the station? The odd thing is he—”
She’d hit some sort of chord here, the visitors’ eyes finding each other.
Ella Bratchett spoke at last. “Best let Robert talk with your daddy first if there’s a chance in the coming days. See can they clear up some things. Then, later, you can ask all the questions you like.”
Now the twins, their faces scrubbed and gleaming, stood peering out of the hall leading to the billiard room. Mrs. Smythe had commanded them to stay well out of the way as the flood of guests arrived.
This made Kerry jumpy enough, wondering what the twins might do or say. But it was Marco Bergamini’s words to her a moment ago that had given her hands their shake, the tumblers of hot cocoa rattling on the silver.
The Clydesdales had been harnessed again tonight to the sleighs, their silver bells jangling through the falling snow as they returned, mounded with brown fur and top hats, blanketed passengers and luggage.
The footmen and grooms all occupied with the unloading of people and their towers of possessions, Kerry stood to the side with a platter of hot cocoa in one hand, Pierre’s steaming croissants in the other. Rema had insisted on adding more cream to the hot cocoa at the last minute, igniting a battle downstairs.
“Because,” Rema had triumphed in a final shot, “with all the jawing over Mr. Vanderbilt’s prize dairy Jersey cows, the cream ought to get its own say.”
Chuckling to herself, Kerry held out the platter to guests.
“There is trouble,” Marco whispered as he’d staggered by with a trunk toward the freight elevator.
“Oh?” She’d turned, nearly sloshing hot cocoa onto George Vanderbilt, who’d leaped from the first sleigh as it jingled and shushed to a standstill.
On the next pass with a trunk, Marco added, “I have the confession to make.”