Under a Gilded Moon(85)
“For inflammation,” Kerry told the twins. “And he needs more liquid.”
Because the fiddle on the wall looked as if it ought to be picked up on Christmas, she’d leaned in to every haunting verse of “Greensleeves,” with Jursey on one of the squirrel-skin-and-gourd banjos and Tully on the singing bow. Jursey kept his head down so no one could see a young mountain man’s tears. Tully knew the words of the carol that had been set to the old English folk tune, and the notes of her soft soprano floated in the silence of the barn.
What child is this who lays to rest . . .
Their father’s eyelids fluttered at the words, but he had not otherwise stirred.
Now Tully and Jursey sat among the other children of estate workers, each opening a hand-selected gift. But it was the owner of the estate, eyes shining as he distributed packages, that Kerry watched most closely.
“I don’t think,” said a man’s voice behind her, “I’ve seen George even remotely this happy before.” John Cabot stood there against the doorframe.
Kerry watched the owner of Biltmore presenting the next child with her gift, a doll in green velvet with a green velvet parasol. The child blinked, speechless, in wonder at the porcelain face, then up at the owner of Biltmore, whose eyes glowed.
“Even more,” Kerry agreed, “than he is with his books and his art. And equally as much as he is with his mountains.”
She exchanged a smile with Cabot. And was grateful there was sorrow in his face along with the smile, just as she knew there was in hers.
She’d admired framed Currier & Ives prints at a Barnard friend’s home. Part of her, though, had suspected the people in those lithographed sleighs and those glowing homes were also weighed down with secrets and worry and illness.
Which, perhaps, made the insistently giddy jingle of those sleigh bells hard to bear some days. Other days, maybe, the sleigh bells got to drown everything out.
From the refrigeration rooms where Kerry had just finished her work, she padded up the back stairs. As the string quartet migrated from the banquet hall to the Winter Garden, she could slip through shadows at the back of the house undetected.
Surely no one else would think to come to the library tonight. The last hint of smoke tendrilled from the maple logs in the fireplace.
Pulling Nicholas Nickleby and Middlemarch from one of the unpacked boxes, Kerry dragged an armchair close to the embers. Not even opening the books, she held them close to her nose. Smelled their leather, felt the supple spines. She’d read both during her time in New York, and now it felt like she was gathering their characters around her like friends.
Feet aching, she closed her eyes. From the Winter Garden, the string quartet’s performance of a Handel composition drifted through the house, amplified by limestone walls and marble floors.
A single footstep a few yards away.
Kerry bolted upright in the armchair.
John Cabot stood in the shadows to the right of the fireplace. Might have been there all along, in fact, and her too exhausted to notice.
“Forgive me. I’ve startled you.”
She stood. “I can go.”
“No. That is, please don’t.” He stood at an angle to the fire, his profile toward her. “George mentioned he’d given you full access to his library. For what little spare time you might have.”
“Still, I should go.” She was turning when she realized what he was holding: a volume of the American Architect. With a maroon bookmark.
“Someone left this sitting out.” As if he were suddenly not conscious of her being there, he laid two fingers of his right hand on his left lapel. The same sign she’d seen him make at the depot in New York.
“The article about your family’s home on Beacon Hill.”
“Former home.”
She waited for him to go on.
John Cabot put the book down and thrust his hands into his pockets as he stared into the fire. “I wonder if you’d allow me to tell you the story behind that article—that is, the story that came after it.”
“Of course.” Kerry could see the pain that tightened the corners of his eyes.
“I don’t speak easily of my life to those I don’t know well—those I don’t have ample reason to trust. I hope it’s not too presumptuous if . . . forgive me if I say that you strike me as utterly trustworthy.”
“I think,” she said softly, “I can forgive you for that.”
“It seems somehow deceitful not to tell you.” He paused. Then nodded to the issue of American Architect. “It happened shortly after that article came out. Both my parents and my sister, Adelaide, drowned late that summer in a sailing accident off Nantucket. I’d just gone back to Harvard for my final year.”
“That . . .” She struggled for words, her throat tight. “That must have been horrific.”
His eyes drifted to the fire. “I went on in a bit of a daze, I think, as if I were handling it well. I was not, I’m sorry to say. When the lawyers settled the estate, it also became clear my father had been in debt. For years. I became the sole heir overnight—and the sole debtor. The house was actually sold just a few months”—he nodded toward the volume Kerry held open—“after the article’s publication.”
Kerry’s own gaze dropped to the fire. Suddenly cold, even there near the hearth, she shuddered. “I’m so very sorry.”