Under a Gilded Moon(79)
Which was all they’d had time to exchange. But his eyes had gone tight and dark.
Kerry’s heartbeat throbbed in her throat. If it was a confession of the reporter’s murder, she’d rather roll buck naked in lye than hear it. For all that was murky about the two Italians and their past, she trusted them now and didn’t want to have that changed for her.
A few feet away, John Cabot helped greet the guests. “I’ll stay only to say hello,” he told Vanderbilt.
“You’re welcome as long as you’d like to stay. I won’t have you cooped up all alone on Christmas at Battery Park.”
“I’ll give my greetings to your mother and briefly to the others. But this is a family gathering.” He clapped Vanderbilt on the shoulder. “And I’ll have a stunning view of the mountains in snow from my window.”
“Come back, at least, then, in the afternoon tomorrow for the presentation of gifts to the children of the staff, won’t you?” The bashfulness was back in Vanderbilt’s eyes. “I expect it to be something you’d especially enjoy.”
“All right, then. And thank you.” Cabot’s gaze slid to Kerry. Then away.
Having returned her tray of empty tumblers to the electric dumbwaiter and sent it below to the kitchens, Kerry pulled a tray of steaming wassail in the V-monogrammed cups from the manual version along the opposite wall. Tully and Jursey were darting like minnows, Mrs. Smythe sending them up and down stairs between the kitchens and butler’s pantry like a third, far nosier food transport system.
“Did you see all them furs, Kerry, did you?” Tully demanded. “It’s a wonder there’s a fox left in the world.”
“I don’t think those were fox, Tuls.”
“All I could do not to run up and pet ’em.”
Kerry grimaced, laughing. “Let’s be real sure you don’t.”
Jursey dodged out of her way as she turned with the tray of wassail. “The man Cabot—the one with the sad he wears in the eyes—how come he’s still here when all the rest of the friends up and left a couple weeks back?”
“Not sure. Except that not everybody has family.”
As if imagining such a thing, Jursey’s eyes filled.
Maybe she’d done too good a job at stressing compassion to the twins: both their hearts were maybe more tender than was safe in this world.
As Kerry looked for a footman to take the tray from her, Mrs. Smythe swept by. “Mr. Vanderbilt assures me he cares not a whit if it’s a footman or a maid who serves, but I can hardly bear it myself.” She shook her head ruefully. “Still, we’re two footmen short, and that mud monster downstairs broke out of the basement. It’s back past the pantry we’ve got him caught, is our Cedric. Chaos, that’s what Americans thrive on.” She sighed. “I’ll be sending you out, Kerry, where, God help us, there ought not be a kitchen maid.”
Kerry stepped carefully down into the sunken level of the Winter Garden, its palms nodding in the currents created by milling guests. The air smelled of cloves and cinnamon and apples again—the wassail she carried—and also of the orchids that ringed the fountain.
The guests were gazing up and around, peppering Vanderbilt with questions.
Do show us where you chose to hang the John Singer Sargent of Mother.
A wonder, George, that you found skilled workers this far from civilization. You said not all were imported from England. So even to fill a competent staff . . .
The fact that all of them appear even to have recently bathed . . .
Kerry jolted to a halt there, the tray lurching sideways as she spun.
But a hand slipped under her tray. Caught it just in time.
John Cabot was looking at her. Holding her gaze. “Steady on,” he murmured.
Kerry pulled her spine straighter. “Thank you.”
She dipped to her left to offer the wassail to Vanderbilt’s eldest brother, whose face was upturned, assessing the glass dome overhead. “Hunt has outdone himself once again. I don’t want to know how much of your inheritance you’ve spent, George. I’m still astonished that you chose a spot so remote that you had to construct a spur of railroad to it. And so close to a local populace who, let us just say—”
“Actually, Frederick,” Vanderbilt interjected, “I’ve found the local populace refreshing. Their warmth and self-reliance. Their shape note singing in the chapels here. The banjos and fiddles they craft themselves. Their humor.”
Cabot raised his cup of wassail. “Their keen intelligence, too.”
All eyes turned to Cabot, and for a moment, he froze, hand in the air.
The right tip of Vanderbilt’s mustache quirked up in a half smile. “Cabot has been researching the Southern Appalachians. The manager of the Battery Park Inn tells me he’s pounded away at his Remington at such unseemly hours, the guests on either side and beneath his room have complained of the racket.”
“I’m no kind of pleasant hotel guest,” Cabot conceded. “Thank goodness Biltmore’s guest rooms have been finished before I’m tossed out in the snow.”
Emily Sloane, whose immediate family appeared to be flanking her now, spoke up. “Did George tell you about the murder we’ve had here? It’s been quite the game solving it.”
One of Vanderbilt’s sisters crinkled her nose. “Heavens, I’d completely forgotten. We read about it in the papers—covered because of George and Biltmore, of course. That poor Berkowitz fellow. Even if he was a Jew, I’m not convinced that’s a reason to be murdered.”