She skulked up the steps and hid behind the Guardians, the marble lion statues that she had always imagined protected Biltmore from evil spirits. But tonight she was the spirit; she was the strange ghost of the night creeping into the house.
As each carriage pulled up to the house, the footman flipped down the carriage’s steps and opened the carriage door. The gentleman inside exited first, then offered his hand to help the lady as she alighted in her voluminous gown, carefully navigating the tiny carriage steps in her sparkling shoes. Once she was safely to the ground, she took the gentleman’s arm, and they walked through the grand arched doors together into the Vestibule and up the red-carpeted steps into the house.
The light and heat and sound of the ball, with hundreds of guests already inside, poured out of the mansion’s broad doorway, and hundreds more were still arriving. As Serafina slipped into the house, it felt as if she were being absorbed into a hot, glowing, gigantic organism.
The only thought on her mind was whether she could find the sorceress in time to stop her from hurting Braeden.
As Serafina entered Biltmore’s main hall, it was thick with the aroma of burning candles, fine clean wool, and women’s perfumes, all mixed together with the scent of the thousands of roses and lilies that had been strung along the archways and beams of the house. The genteel murmur of the guests’ voices mixed with the sounds of rustling satin, pouring wine, and tinkling glasses. There were so many people in the room from wall to wall that the arms of strangers touched each other where they stood, and friends leaned to one another to say a private word, but all the guests seemed happy and respectful, honored to be a part of the grand festivities. Serafina scanned the crowd but did not see Rowena or Braeden.
The gentlemen at the ball wore formal evening attire, dark tailcoats and trousers, neatly pressed white shirts with wing collars, dark waistcoats, and white bow ties or cravats. Some of the men were lean, others heavy, some with long handlebar mustachios or neatly trimmed beards, others clean-shaven. They all wore white gloves on their hands, and many had watches in their pockets, with long dangling gold or silver chains. A few even had silver-topped canes or formal walking staffs, but none were twisted.
What struck Serafina most was just how pleased the men were to see each other, to be talking and drinking, laughing and carrying on, like a great, gregarious flock of black-and-white jays cawing to each other, with no idea that a young boy of their ranks had buried a body nearby and that the fading, lost spirit of a dead girl walked among them.
The ladies wore long, full, shimmering dancing gowns made from satin, taffeta, and many other fine and luxurious materials, in dark purples, strawberry creams, peach chiffon, lilac, and blue—an endless variety of colors that reminded Serafina of the summer’s blooms.
She peered suspiciously at each of the women and girls in the crowd, searching for a girl that looked like her. She had a hunch that the sorceress would be hiding in there someplace among the others, for deceit was her specialty.
Serafina watched the sometimes slow, sometimes flighty interactions between the young ladies and the young gentlemen. Many of the ladies and older girls held embroidered fans, opening or fluttering them to signal interest to a possible suitor, closing or snapping them shut to signal disdain.
As she studied the young ladies and gentlemen maneuvering and interacting with one another, it reminded her of the sandhill cranes that sometimes stopped on their migration to practice their mating dance in the spring fields, hopping and raising their wings, dipping their heads and tossing sticks to one another, spinning and chortling with abandon.
She didn’t know exactly why the cranes and the young ladies went through all that or what it all meant, but she sensed that it was a hidden language all its own.
The younger children who weren’t yet cranes gathered in small groups together, whispering and watching all the various proceedings in the room. Gaggles of giggling girls pulled each other excitedly through the crowds toward unseen adventures. Clutches of young boys gathered near the food tables.
Among the adults, the room was full of society types and fashion plates, industrialists and politicians, authors and artists, ambassadors and dignitaries of a nature that Serafina did not understand. She missed her old friend, the smiling, storytelling Mr. Olmsted, who had returned to his home far away.
As Serafina made her way into the room, the soft, lovely sound of harps and violins began to fill the hall, and then the deep sound of cellos and other instruments joined in. Row upon row of musicians, each one in black coat and tie, were arranged in the center of the main hall playing the most beautiful, sweeping, romantic music she had ever heard. Mr. Vanderbilt hadn’t just arranged for a soloist or a string quartet. He had brought an entire orchestra into his home!
Serafina remembered years before when she was but a little child, sneaking around the house late at night. Mr. Vanderbilt’s friend, Thomas Edison, had given him a music-playing phonograph with a crank handle and a large brass horn. She had often watched the master of the house sitting alone in his library listening to his opera music. Mr. Vanderbilt loved Tannh?user so much that he commissioned the famous sculptor Mr. Karl Bitter to depict an epic scene from the opera in the frieze above the Banquet Hall’s gigantic triple fireplace.
She remembered that Edison’s music machine had produced a scratchy, tinny sound that she hadn’t liked, but this, this live orchestra, was something else entirely. Mr. Vanderbilt had traveled all over Europe collecting art and furniture for Biltmore, but also attending concerts and operas, and now she understood why. She could finally see and hear what he loved so much.
All the musicians were playing together in such perfect harmony, with all the violins and cellos and other instruments sweeping into gorgeous waves of sound, like nothing she had ever heard before. She overheard a gentleman say to one of the other guests that the music was from a new ballet called Swan Lake, which Mr. Vanderbilt had heard in Europe and fallen in love with, so he’d arranged for the orchestra to play it tonight.
The rising music carried through Biltmore’s soaring archways to all the grand rooms of the house, to all the elegant ladies in their glimmering dresses and the handsome gentlemen in their evening coats. There were flutes that made the sound of thrushes in the morning, and reedy oboes that sounded like the little grebes that landed in the lagoon in the fall, and majestic French horns like coming kings—instruments of so many kinds that she couldn’t name them all.
That was when she finally spotted Braeden. She felt a flush of happiness that her friend was all right. Rowena was nowhere to be seen, and Braeden was safe. Perhaps the night was going to turn out better than she’d feared.