Lilli made herself nod. “I understand reporters sometimes push too far. The authorities probably know best.”
Emily laughed weakly. “Honestly, Lils, I can’t recall the last time you accepted any authority’s opinion, ever.”
Forcing her breathing to steady, Lilli tilted her hat more daringly to one side. What’s done was done, and however badly askew it had gone, she could not panic. She would distance herself from it entirely, of course. But she would not run away. “Let’s go see Biltmore, shall we?”
As they passed the clerk’s desk, a young woman in a blue serge skirt and white blouse—not bad fitting, though a couple of years out of fashion—was saying, “Yes, I understand. You’ve no work to offer.”
The creature marched away—head high. Lilli watched with approval. Being destitute couldn’t always be helped; looking the part was inexcusable.
The young woman’s hair had come loose from some sort of braid, and now it hung wild. She’d be pretty enough—with some smoothing and polish.
Madison Grant was also walking away from the clerk’s desk.
“And so good to have you back again this season, Mr. Grant!” the clerk called.
Grant pitched his voice louder than necessary, as if he wanted the entire lobby—including the young mountain woman—to hear and take note. “Sadly, I wasn’t able to persuade the manager to take on more staff.”
Beside him, John Cabot frowned. “Always working toward your own ends,” he murmured.
But if Grant heard—which he surely must have, standing so close—his smile did not fade.
“Mr. Grant,” Emily gushed, “how gallant of you to offer assistance to the poor mountain girl.”
Together, the four of them walked through the inn’s front doors to find their horses waiting.
Grant eased himself up onto a lanky chestnut that Lilli disliked for the same reason she’d refused at least one offer of marriage: various body parts out of proportion. She was not shallow. She did, however, expect a husband of not only considerable means but also reasonable looks. Hardly too much to ask.
“I,” Grant pronounced, “only did what any gentleman of breeding would have done.” That one emphasized word he seemed to toss John Cabot’s way like a challenge.
“We’re meeting George at the gatehouse” was Cabot’s only comment—his tone more terse, Lilli thought, by the moment.
She nodded to the groom approaching her with an animal far superior to Grant’s. That, at least, was a relief. Lilli could not abide mediocrity in horses—or men.
Placing her foot in the groom’s cupped hands and vaulting herself upward in one swift, graceful movement, she studied the two gentlemen from behind: Madison Grant with his breeding and perfect, cloying manners. He was beginning to get on her nerves. By contrast, there was John Quincy Cabot—she’d taken note of the pedigree right there in the name—with that unruly hair forever flopping into one eye and the newspaper always under one arm. Whenever the conversation lagged, he stole glances at it rather than engaging with others.
Apparently, he came from some blue-blooded Beacon Hill Bostonian stock—though he’d paled when she asked about his family. She’d thought him quite handsome at first. Until he seemed oddly indifferent to her. His looks had then dulled.
He glanced to the side of the road now as they passed the young woman in the blue skirt.
Lilli cocked her head. “Feeling pity for the damsel in distress, Mr. Cabot?”
Startled, he turned to her. “I . . . Pardon?”
“The young woman who was just turned away from employment. The interest, I believe Mr. Grant said you had, in the plight of the mountain people in their poverty, oui?”
Those hard, unreadable eyes met hers, and she saw anger there she’d not expected.
George Vanderbilt himself was just up ahead, arm raised in greeting.
Relieved, Lilli was just raising her own in return when a figure stepped from the shadows. Her horse spooked, wheeling.
“I got to speak with you,” came a low voice. “About the station.”
Lilli spun her horse back to face him—then quickly away. “Do not approach me in public again. Or ever. At all. Do not stop me again.”
She kicked the mare into springing ahead. One hand uncharacteristically shaking, she joined the others and did not look back.
Streams gurgled beside the road and beneath the stone bridges. Overhead, the gray skies of yesterday had subsided into a brilliant . . . sapphire was fair to say. Lilli was rarely histrionic. But she’d never seen sky quite that color.
At the gates just before what appeared to be a vast span of lawn ahead, George Vanderbilt reined in his horse. “Mr. Olmsted’s hope in designing so long and winding a drive was to produce a kind of mounting anticipation, leading to”—he motioned the group forward to where they could now see the full house—“this.”
Stunned silence.
Then: “Je ne peux pas y croire,” Lilli breathed. I can’t believe it.
Here in this flea-bitten backwater of the Appalachian Mountains . . . a palace.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen splendor before. She’d toured estates in France’s Rhône Valley and England’s Derbyshire back when money flowed boundless into their family coffers. Back when her short-statured, hardheaded father had ruled the wharf district with, some said, an iron fist: the Napoleon of New Orleans.
But this . . . this was something altogether different.
At the far end of a green expanse rose four stories of palace. Deep-blue mountains rose around it like so many hulking watchmen.
All four guests of George Vanderbilt sat their horses in a stunned silence.
“Mon Dieu,” Lilli murmured at last.
Emily nearly stood in her saddle. “It’s three times the size of the White House. George isn’t one to brag about it, but I feel perfectly free to do so as his niece. The estate has grown to more than a hundred thousand acres—is that right, George? Sixty-five fireplaces—”
“My architect,” Vanderbilt broke in gently, deflecting, “has done all I asked and far more.” He paused there, frowning. “Did. Did far more. It is the genius of our late Mr. Hunt, and the landscaping vision of Mr. Olmsted, that have made Biltmore.”
Lilli maneuvered her horse alongside his. “My condolences, Mr. Vanderbilt, on the passing this summer of your chief architect. I read about it in the papers.”
“Richard Hunt was like a father to me. And a mentor. No finer American architect ever lived. And this was his favorite of all his creations, I believe.”
Madison Grant trotted abreast of them. “Simply splendid. Another example of what Western civilization has achieved through centuries of refinement.”
John Cabot’s gaze shot toward Grant. Their eyes engaged for an instant.
A sort of cocking of pistols, Lilli thought. But over what, exactly?
Emily beamed. “George, it’s even more spectacular than when I last saw it.”
They rode forward slowly, the four guests awed into silence, and even their host looking newly startled by the sheer size of his home. Every few steps of her horse, Lilli tried to speak. But none of her usual flattering words seemed to fit.
Emily broke the silence as they reined in and began to dismount at the front entrance, a massive stone lion on either side of the steps. “Oh, George.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Your mother will love it.”