She could see he mostly believed that was true, that her motives were pure as the frost that tipped the fields that morning. That even if he’d caught a glance exchanged between her and Sal, he would’ve already convinced himself he’d been only imagining things. Mostly.
“I am, yes. We are a loyal lot, from New Orleans.” With pressure from her left leg, she turned her mare so George could no longer see her face. She’d overstepped. Time now to change course. “I wonder which of these two hunters we’re riding is more fleet of foot.”
“Well . . . ,” he began.
“And I wonder how we might prove it.” Snapping back her head to smile at him, she shifted her weight forward in the sidesaddle and gripped the upper pommel with her right leg. She and the mare shot away from him.
Glancing back, she saw George posting in a half circle, unsure. Another glance, and he was urging his own horse to full speed in pursuit.
Lilli bent low over her horse and aimed the mare’s head toward a split rail fence she hoped—but was not entirely sure—they both could clear.
It was George Vanderbilt who was chasing her now. Quite literally.
Her pulse dropped as she neared the fence, its crisscrossed rails like big wooden stitches across the field. Lilli felt the mare gather her body, the power centralized in her back legs as she launched. Up. And up. That moment when they were no longer tethered to earth. No longer subject to its laws and constraints.
That moment when it remained to be seen how they would land.
Which, if John Cabot and his Kodak had been poised to photograph this moment, would be the perfect image for her life right now. Impeccably dressed and well strategized. Graceful and soaring.
And, depending on what secrets came to light, perhaps about to land in a shattered heap.
Absorbing the jolt of the mare’s front legs as they made contact again with the ground, Lilli glanced back only once more—and found George Vanderbilt close at her heels.
How odd, though, that it wasn’t George’s kind face she saw as she rode. Instead, it was the Italian’s. Her thoughts churned with each stride of her mare, a storm of self-interest and compassion. And, God help her, desire.
Keeping her skirts clear of the sizzling pots and mounded pastries in the kitchens, Lilli kept her strides light and carefree. But not without authority. “Hello, Mrs. Smythe.”
“Why, Miss Barthélemy!”
The housekeeper’s voice betrayed what Lilli knew full well: it wasn’t her place to be here downstairs. She was not mistress of Biltmore—not yet.
Still, a guest of George’s couldn’t be corrected by the housekeeper. Especially since the servants probably knew better than anyone else that their employer was quite possibly smitten with the heiress from New Orleans.
Heiress. That sounded a great deal better than what also might be whispered belowstairs. How, for instance, she’d been seen talking animatedly and at length on several occasions with the Italian inside the stables.
Or how, the servants might have caught wind, she came from some sort of bloody past in New Orleans.
Or how, the servants might whisper, she was connected somehow with the death at the station.
Lilli gave herself a hard shake. She was growing suspicious and fearful, neither of which was like her.
“I was just popping downstairs to see if I might find that maid . . . what was her name? Kerry, I believe.”
Mrs. Smythe cocked her head. “She’s only in the next room scouring pans, is our Kerry. But I do hate to see you have that lovely silk ruined down here.”
From the pastry area came the rumbles of a man’s voice with a heavy French accent and a woman’s with a thick mountain twang. “Zut! I tell you once, I tell you a thousand times, the meringue it must be whipped until it stands up stiff as the tower.”
“I hadn’t got issue with your meringue till I saw it slump down and roll to its back like a possum trying to hide hisself from the hunt.”
Mrs. Smythe cringed. “Beg forgiveness for our kitchen staff. There’ve been a few differences we’ve yet to smooth out.”
“Of course.” Lilli took this as her chance to sweep past the housekeeper. “I wouldn’t dream of mentioning the unrest belowstairs to Mr. Vanderbilt. Particularly as you have the rest of the house so beautifully in hand, Mrs. Smythe.”
The pacified Mrs. Smythe, Lilli was relieved to see, did not follow her into the next kitchen, but rather withdrew to the pastry area where the two battling voices grew hotter.
The maid, Kerry, straightened at the sink, her red hair corkscrewing at her temples. Lilli could see that, from the set of the maid’s jaw, she already guessed what had brought a houseguest down here—diamonds glinting incongruously, no doubt, in this fog of boiling water and steam.
“The Italian.” Lilli blurted it out before she had time to arrange her words like playing cards in a game of whist. She regretted her haste, but there it was. “Mr. Bergamini and his brother. I’m wondering if they are safe.”
The maid turned from the sink, wiping those chapped hands on her skirt. She appeared to be studying Lilli’s face. Waiting.
Lilli recoiled at the thought of what her face might be revealing. It could make her vulnerable to the maid. Even more than she already was, since this Kerry MacGregor had seen handwriting she recognized in the letter from Tate.
Despite the set of Lilli’s shoulders, always regal, and the arch of her eyebrow that gave warning, Lilli suspected the maid could see she was nervous.
The maid, Kerry, gave a slow blink that seemed to say she was choosing not to say what she was thinking.
Lilli met the maid’s eye. The knowing there. The things this maid might be suspecting.
Lilli’s trill of a laugh came an instant too late, and an octave too forced. “It’s ridiculous, of course, my even bothering. But I was concerned when they so suddenly disappeared.”
Silence. The maid taking her measure, Lilli thought with growing unease.
Then, finally: “They are, for the moment, safe. How long that will be true, I couldn’t say.”
Lilli had more she wanted to ask. Though it might show more of her hand.
A squawk came from the pastry area, where the two voices had battled over meringue.
“He ain’t never!” the mountain woman was shouting. “I won’t believe it was him gone and done it. I won’t. And that poor little brother of his. What’s become . . .”
Footsteps clattered across the tile floors.
Lilli and the maid both turned as the older redheaded woman, the cook with the face the color of escargot, burst over the threshold and, ignoring Lilli entirely, demanded of the maid, “Kerry, you got to find out if it’s true. That footman Moncrief just come from upstairs saying that awful man with the look of a bloodhound to him, all jowly . . .”
The maid’s eyes went round. “Leblanc?”
“He’s back again, Moncrief said. Not at the house. Somewheres on the estate.”
Chapter 45
Kerry moved through that evening in a haze, the dinner at Biltmore passing in what felt like time slowed to nearly a stop. Walking past the clock in the servants’ dining room, she was surprised to see its pendulum swinging—like some sort of prank someone was playing. Time was still moving on.