She must have looked like a crazy harridan to him. Red hair a mass of tangles from the wind through the train windows. Cheeks flushing—probably nearly matching her hair. She could be too impulsive, she knew, but she’d not allow him to scrutinize her and her people like dragonflies on a schoolboy’s pin.
“I say.” Madison Grant stepped forward. “Do let us assist you with your luggage, ladies.”
With a glance of what looked like utter contempt at Grant, Cabot turned back to Kerry. “We’d be happy to help.” He looked anything but.
And Kerry was in no mood to dispense mercy. “We are quite capable of taking care of ourselves, thank you.”
Rema hoisted her own bag to her shoulder. “Lordy, that is real kind. But Kerry’s trunk she borrowed hadn’t yet got dug out from under that pile belonging to the breathing-porch folks, and this here’s all I got. Kerry, she made it for me, but you can see for your ownselves you couldn’t never tell it wasn’t store-bought.”
Kerry felt herself sinking into the silence, humiliating and deep, that followed. Grant managed something about the bag’s loveliness.
But John Cabot kept his expression blank—except a flash of anger as it settled on Grant. Instead of praising the flour-sack bag, he merely turned away.
Giving a final bow, Grant followed. And perhaps he meant his voice to carry back to the women. “When Vanderbilt spoke of the beauty of these mountains, I see now he must also have meant its young ladies.”
Rema nudged Kerry, which Kerry ignored. Even so, she couldn’t miss Cabot’s response.
“Is this a habit of yours, Mr. Grant, vying for the attention of the village milkmaid?”
Whipping around, Kerry faced the backs of the gentlemen walking away. “Village milkmaid?”
“You know, sugar, you may be just a tiny little bit on edge.” Rema tapped on her arm to swing Kerry around. “Understandable, ’course, you having to face that daddy of you’rn. Wish I hadn’t had to take the new job in the kitchens over to Biltm—” She caught Kerry’s look. “Can’t hardly say it around you, can I?”
Crossing her arms, Kerry made herself focus. “I’m sorry, Rema. Your new job. That’s important. It’s steady pay. I’m glad you took it. It’s just not something I could ever do.”
“I learned early in life, child: don’t never say never.”
“With all respect, never’s exactly what I’m saying about Biltmore.”
Rema drew the knot of her lips to one side. Then, evidently, passed the argument by. “Me taking the job means I’ll be living there on the grounds.”
Kerry tried not to feel the full weight of that all at once, her aunt’s decision. A dying father. The growing twins. Saving the farm from being taken for unpaid taxes or gobbled up by George Vanderbilt. Now that they were here, the weight pressed heavier by the moment.
As more steamer trunks thudded to the top of hansom cabs and the inns’ carriages, Kerry and Rema wound through what was left, looking for Kerry’s luggage. At the office at the closer end of the station, the telegrapher, Farnsworth, glowered at the line that had formed at his window. “I don’t have but the one messenger boy, and not but one set of hands.”
Just behind him stood the person Kerry assumed to be that one “messenger boy.” A man, stoical and silent, that Kerry had seen only fleetingly around town two years ago. The only man from China here—the only man from anywhere in Asia at all—Ling Yong had not been hard to spot the rare times he stepped out of his dry goods shop on Haywood Street. Now it appeared he’d taken on a second job—or perhaps the shop had gone under. Staring directly ahead, he merely listened as the telegrapher ticked off delivery instructions, then dismissed him.
Farnsworth yanked a cigarette from his vest pocket. As he tapped in the next customer’s message, the cigarette dangled unlit from his mouth—like a promise to himself of a future smoke if he could keep his manners civil just a few moments more.
Ling Yong offered a piece of paper to Kerry. “A cable for you.”
Then, placing a hand on the satchel as if to say he had others to deliver, he mounted his bicycle and rode into the mist.
Two telegrams in three days, after none my entire life. Kerry steadied herself as she tore it open.
It had been received and then typed a few hours ago—Farnsworth’s initials, EDF, at the top—having come from a mill town at least a day’s ride away.
REMA SAID YOU WAS COMING BACK. SORRY CAN’T BE AT STATION.
STUCK IN WHITNEL. REAL GLAD YOU COME HOME. DEARG
For Dearg Tate, this was a torrent of words.
Real glad you come home. There was history behind that. And she would need to sort things out with him later. For now, her mind was already too full.
Several yards away, the two gentlemen in top hats were shaking hands with a man in a wool riding jacket and tall boots covered in leaves and muck.
“Gentlemen, I am Charles McNamee. Mr. Vanderbilt sends his welcome and hopes you will join him for a late dinner at the Battery Park Inn, where you’ll be staying, along with two other guests—though we’re delighted you can at least view Biltmore House in the final stages of construction. If you’ll forgive me a moment, I need to conclude a business conversation.” He gestured with his head toward Robert Bratchett.
John Cabot might have said something, but he was jostled from behind on the still-crowded platform. Aaron Berkowitz stood there, valise in one hand, his reporter’s pad in the other.
The two men stared at each other as Kerry watched, riveted. Though about the same age, the two were a good head apart in height, and from their expressions, they must have recognized each other. Neither apologized for the jostling; neither greeted the other like an old friend. Both looked rattled—horrified, even—at having to face each other.
The reporter turned away first, clutching his valise closer to his side and striding off to the right.
Cabot watched him go.
“Kerry!” Jursey was calling from behind her. “Where’s Tully gone to?”
Oddly, Tully had slipped out of sight. “She’s probably helping look for my trunk—I described it to her. Come on, Jurs, we’ll find her—and it—together.”
Grant squinted into the dusk. “By the time we settle into the hotel, it’ll be too dark to see George’s estate today. What the devil is keeping McNamee?”
Grant strode ahead, enveloped by the mist at the far end of the station. Watching him, Cabot slipped toward its opposite end and disappeared.
With another release of steam and a long blast of its whistle, the train chugged back into motion. Its locomotive headlamp sent a javelin of light ahead into the churning white.
At the whistle, the voices on the platform fell quiet. Even Jursey, at a trot in his search for his twin sister, slid across the moss-slick boards to a halt.
But then, just as the whistle was fading to an echo, came a shout of surprise from out of the darkness at the station’s far end.
Followed by a sharp cry of pain.
And then nothing at all.
Chapter 6
“Tully!” Kerry screamed, already running. “Tully!”
But only silence followed—too full of sounds cut short, and of the darkness that suddenly seemed to deepen around the tracks.