Where McNamee was pointing now, though, was under the flowing script. Where five crudely formed words had been scrawled in what appeared to be charcoal.
Kerry knew before she deciphered the blurred lines what the message would amount to. The twins watching her face, her stomach churned as she read aloud: “Ready to talk selling farm.”
Chapter 41
Late winter 1896
In a daze since leaving New York in a late-winter freezing rain, Lilli did not know the names of the hamlets they passed as the train climbed into the mountains, nor did she care—not with all she had on her mind. She smoothed the brown satin of her traveling dress, tight over the waist and flaring like a bronze bell just past the hips. But how well she looked in the dress wasn’t first on her mind, either.
The only part of this trip she’d dreaded was arriving at Biltmore Junction’s station, where the reporter had died.
She refused to think the word killed. And, certainement, not murder.
“You know,” said a man’s voice from behind her, “you’ve seemed distracted and quiet this entire trip. Not much like you, Miss Barthélemy, if I may say so.”
Madison Grant. How she loathed the man. That was the one other thing she’d dreaded about coming: having to share the travel with him.
She smiled at him wanly and wondered if he could see contempt on her face. “Indeed, Mr. Grant? No doubt a few weeks at Biltmore will cure that. This landscape. How lovely.” She could feel Grant watching her from his upholstered chair as she gazed out the window. The crystal chandelier at the car’s center swayed as they rounded the next curve.
The wheels beneath them clacked out the time—all these minutes wasted with Grant staring at her. Because what she wanted to do was open the letter.
And the truth was, the landscape was only lovely this time of year if you liked bare, silver limbs and pines that grew straight out of cliffs. Lillian Barthélemy had been born and bred in New Orleans, and she thought none of these things were lovely.
Although she ought to try harder to see the beauty in them. Her being invited back to Biltmore meant George wanted her here. For all his interest in art and farming and philanthropy, he must have felt enough attraction for her that he’d renewed his invitation just after New Year’s to join a small party of friends back in the Blue Ridge.
Madison Grant, she’d heard through society grapevines, had not been invited back explicitly. Rather, he’d made it clear he wanted to learn more of Biltmore’s strides in forestry, and had essentially invited himself as a leader in American land preservation. Grant was well enough connected in the same social and intellectual circles as George that bluntly banning the man from Biltmore would have been a central topic of society gossip—which, as Lilli knew well, George avoided at all costs. Look how far from New York he’d come to build his home.
“I say.”
Grant sounded like every American who wished he were English: pretentious. She cut him off with a quick lean toward the window. “Perfectly lovely.” She said it loudly, trying for George’s sake to mean it this time.
“Indeed. Although given my own work, I should point out the ravaging of the natural resources. These people chose to desecrate their land.”
Lilli was no social reformer, but it did strike her that they might have had less choice in the matter than a man like Madison Grant, who’d never once in his life needed to cut down a tree or plant a crop for his next meal. Keeping her face to the window, she began easing open the envelope with her finger.
Grant was droning on. “George’s purchase of the land will rectify this depletion with intentional, sustainable forestry, and furthermore . . .”
She’d plucked the letter from its sleeve now. Her fingers ran over the page as if they could read its message for her.
Grant seemed to have switched topics from his precious conifers to a costume ball at Mrs. Astor’s. Would he never hush? It was one thing to tolerate the posturing of men who might benefit her in some way. But a man who could do her no personal good . . .
“A Yale man like you, Mr. Grant, with a multitude of connections—not to mention your work saving the American bison and the noble pronghorn—must stay terribly busy.” Like a bone tossed to a yapping dog, the flattery was meant to pacify him into silence a while.
“I believe, Miss Barthélemy, that I saw you at the Met a number of times over the winter. Though never, to my surprise, with our friend Vanderbilt.”
Lilli leveled a gaze at him. And did not answer the question implied.
“Although,” he went on, “he’s done us both the honor of having us back to Biltmore.”
She refused to betray to Madison Grant her own disappointment that George, known to attend the opera sometimes four times in a week, had not asked to escort her there a single time during the season. Still, she was on his private train car, his niece Emily asleep in an armchair in the far corner, and they would be staying at the house itself this time, now that Biltmore had officially opened.
“Which,” Emily had commented just this morning at the station, “is far more than any other young woman of our set has achieved so far.” She’d squeezed Lilli’s arm.
Grant lifted a magazine from the mahogany table to his left. “I do so like the opera.”
“Yes,” she agreed so she could ignore him.
She despised opera. It was indoors, for one thing. It attracted the types who cared about social rules, for another. The only risks she faced there were leaning too far out over a box seat or having her name not listed in the “Some Happenings in Good Society” feature of the New York Times as one of the glittering people present.
Also, on the high notes, Lilli always wanted to scream.
Madison Grant flipped open the Harper’s magazine. Facing the train window, Lilli glanced down. But she got no further than recognizing the same, nearly indecipherable hand as the letters before. Grant—impossible man—popped from his armchair to walk toward her, the open Harper’s held out.
“You might well be intrigued by this article on the cotton mills of the Appalachian Piedmont.”
She gave him the most wan of smiles, the more polished version of her standing at the back of his chair and shrieking into his ear, Why the hell would I be interested in that? He appeared to be one of those men who could not read smiles.
He held the magazine so close to her face she had to push it away a few inches to focus. Pictures of little children in front of giant spools appeared. Rather than skim the article itself, Lilli scanned the captions—even as she flipped her letter facedown.
“How striking.” The pictures piqued her interest in spite of herself. “How young these workers are. Just little children.”
“Although one wonders if they derive from genetic stock that could perform at higher levels. Probably not. The mills may actually be a beneficent alternative to slums.”
Lilli intended to push the vile thing away. But more of its rather distressing pictures—little girls in pigtails clambering up on machines that dwarfed them—drew her in. And then the byline.
“By John Cabot!”
“An early peek, one would assume, into the book he’s been researching.”
“I’d be delighted to borrow the Harper’s from you, Mr. Grant. Just as soon as I’ve had the opportunity to catch up on my correspondence.”