Serafina and the Black Cloak (12 page)

“We can ride the horses,” Braeden suggested. But the trees grew so closely together in this part of the forest that the horses couldn’t pass between them, which was almost a
relief to Serafina, because she couldn’t imagine clawing her way up onto the back of one of those stompers and expecting it not to kill her.

“We can walk,” she said.

“Eleven miles is a long way to walk in these woods,” he said. “Especially at night…”

He kept looking around, obviously frustrated, and she was, too; but there was something she liked about the fact that they were in this together. He was thinking of her as an ally. She’d
never spent much time with other people, but she was beginning to see why people liked it. Although she was pretty sure that not everyone was as clever and kind as Braeden Vanderbilt.

“If we stay here, we can use the carriage for shelter,” he said. “My uncle sent a rider ahead to tell the Vances that I was on my way. When I don’t arrive, they’ll
come looking for me. I’m sure of it. I think we should wait for help.”

She didn’t want to agree—she wanted to keep moving—but she knew he was probably right. She kept hearing the words he’d said to the horses:
We’re in this
together. We’re going to be all right.
The words felt strangely reassuring to her as well.

She watched as Braeden unharnessed the horses for the night. The horses couldn’t go far because of the fallen trees blocking the road, but at least they could move around. He gave them hay
and water from the supply that Nolan had stowed in the back of the carriage. Prior to this, she had only seen horses from a distance, and they had always seemed like terribly wild and unpredictable
beasts, but as she watched Braeden working with them, talking to them, and caring for them, they seemed to be such good-hearted creatures, far more intelligent than she realized.

“Horses usually sleep standing up,” Braeden said. “And they always take shifts so that at least one of them is awake and alert for danger. If they sense something,
they’ll raise the alarm. You just have to know the signals.”

“Excellent. We have watch-horses,” she said with a smile, trying to cheer him up.

Braeden smiled in return, but she could see he was still very frightened by what had happened, and she was, too. When a gust of wind passed through the trees, she reflexively spun around,
fearful that the flying specter had returned.

“What do you see?” Braeden asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just the wind.”

The night’s cold had settled onto the forest, and with the moonlight that filtered down through the trees, they could see their breath. When a screech owl gave an eerie trill in the
distance, it startled Braeden, but the sound of the bird calmed Serafina. She had lived all her life hearing those sorts of sounds on her nightly prowls of Biltmore’s grounds.

“Just an owl,” Braeden said as he exhaled.

“Just an owl,” she agreed.

As they climbed into the carriage, Braeden held the door open for her and helped her up the little steps, touching her back with his hand. It was as if they were entering the Grand Ballroom for
the holiday dance. As a young gentleman, it was a natural gesture for him, probably just a habit, but it was a sensation she had never felt before. For a moment, that gentle touch of
Braeden’s hand against her back was all she could feel or think about. It was the first time in her life that anyone other than her pa had touched her in a kind and gentle way. She tried hard
to tell herself that Braeden’s touch probably meant a lot more to her than it did to him. He probably wasn’t even aware that he’d touched her. She knew that he had danced and
dined with many fancy-dressed girls. It was probably silly for her to think that he wanted to be friends with a girl who wore a shirt for a dress and couldn’t ride a horse.

“Come on,” Braeden said quietly to Gidean, and the dog hopped up into the carriage with them. Braeden shut and locked the wooden door and shook it a few times to make sure that it
was secure. Gidean circled twice, then took his position on the floor guarding the door.

“I’m sorry there aren’t any blankets,” Braeden said, looking through the carriage’s storage cabinets and trying to figure out how they were going to stay warm.
“Not even a good cloak to sleep under.”

“I’ll pass on the cloak, thank you,” Serafina said with a smile, and Braeden laughed a little, but he seemed almost as nervous as she was to be crammed inside the carriage
together, with nothing to do but look at each other in the darkness.

Braeden sat down and patted the seat beside him. “Perhaps you should sit here, Serafina, on this side. We’ve got to stay warm somehow.”

Despite the uncomfortable tightness forming in her chest, she slowly moved toward him.

She hoped she didn’t smell like the basement. If he was accustomed to ladies like Anastasia Rostonova, with her lavish dresses, or even Miss Whitney, with her rose-scented perfume, she
couldn’t imagine that her own scent would be too pleasant for him.
Excuse me, Miss Serafina,
he would say, gagging and coughing,
on second thought, perhaps you should indeed sleep
on the floor with the dog
.…

But he didn’t say that. She sat beside him, and the world didn’t come to an end. As they snuggled together a little to stay warm, she fretted that he’d discover some bizarre
characteristic about her that she didn’t even realize was bizarre. She just hoped there wouldn’t be a reason for her to take off her shoes in Braeden’s presence and have him
notice her missing toes. She didn’t want him to get too close. Would he be able to feel her missing bones? She wasn’t even sure which ones they were. How many bones did a person usually
have, anyway?

She had always been content to snuggle into small places on her own, but she was surprised to find herself so comfortable cuddled up beside him. She was able to relax a little and breathe
again.

Earlier that morning, when she’d woken up wedged in a metal drying rack in Biltmore’s basement, the last place in the world she would have thought she’d spend her next evening
was nestled in the velvet warmth between the Vanderbilt boy and his valiant guard dog. Gidean, for his part, seemed to have gotten over his initial reaction to her. They’d fought together on
the same side, she and this dog, and maybe they were a little bit friends now, at least temporarily.

“Serafina, I need to ask you a question,” Braeden said in the darkness.

“All right,” she agreed, but she knew it wasn’t going to be good.

“Why do you live in the basement?”

She didn’t know if he considered her to be his friend or if they were just shoved together by happenstance and he was making the best out of a bad situation, but after all they’d
been through together, it didn’t seem right to lie to him. And she didn’t want to.

“I’m the machine mechanic’s daughter,” she said finally. She just said it. Just like that. Out loud. Even as she said the words, she felt both pride and a sickening
feeling of impending doom that she had betrayed her father.

“I’ve always liked him,” Braeden said casually. “He fixed the buckle on my saddle and made it much more comfortable for my horse.”

“He likes you, too,” she said, although she remembered that her pa had spoken more about the buckle than the boy that day.

“So, have you been down there in the basement all this time?” Braeden asked in amazement.

“I’m good at staying out of the way,” she said simply. She wanted to tell him that she was the Chief Rat Catcher, but she held her tongue, not sure how he would react to the
thought of her grabbing rats. He might want to know when she had last washed her hands. She suddenly doubted if he even cared what she did. All sorts of rich and famous people and their children
came to Biltmore, so why would Braeden care what she did all night?

“So you were down there in the basement when you saw the Man in the Black Cloak the first time…” he said. “Who do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t even know if he’s a human or a haint.”

“What’s a haint?” Braeden asked, his eyebrows raised.

“A shade, a haunt. You know, a ghost. The Man in the Black Cloak may be some sort of wraith that comes out of the woods at night. But I think he’s a mortal man. I think he’s
one of the gentlemen at Biltmore.”

“What makes you think that?” Braeden said in surprise.

“His satin cloak, his shoes, the way he walks, the way he talks. There’s something about him…like he thinks he’s better than everyone else…”

“Well, he’s certainly scarier than anyone I’ve met,” Braeden said, but then said no more.

She could tell that her theory that the Man in the Black Cloak was a gentleman at Biltmore had disturbed him.

They sat in silence for a long time. She could feel Braeden’s warmth beside her, his breathing, and the beating of his heart. She could smell the faint scent of wool, leather, and horses
on him. Regardless of what the two of them being in the carriage together might or might not really mean, for the moment, it brought her a wonderful sense of peace, a sense that she belonged, and
that, despite everything that was going on, she was exactly where she was meant to be. It didn’t make any sense to her, or even seem possible, but there was no denying that that was how she
felt.

“I need to ask you to do me a favor,” she said quietly.

“All right,” he said.

“Please don’t tell anyone about me and my father. He really needs his job. He loves Biltmore.”

Braeden nodded his head. “I understand. I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

“Thank you,” she said, relieved.

It felt like she could trust Braeden. And his reputation among the kitchen staff for being a loner who preferred to spend time with his animal friends rather than human beings seemed totally
unfair to her now.

As Braeden fell asleep, his breathing became slow and steady.

Remaining very still, Serafina turned to gaze upon him. She passed her eyes over his smooth, pale complexion. He was so clean. And his clothing fit so well. His woolen jacket must’ve been
made just for him. Even the buttons had been wrought with his very own initials,
BV
, etched upon every one. Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt must have commissioned those buttons, she thought. Did
that mean they loved and cherished Braeden? Or was it just so that he would fit into their elegant society?

Her pa had told her the story of Mr. Vanderbilt while they were washing up after supper one night in the workshop. Like many well-off gentlemen in society, George Vanderbilt used his inheritance
to build a home. But he didn’t build it in New York City like all the others. He built it in the remote wilds of western North Carolina, set deep in the densely forested mountains, miles and
miles from the nearest town. The ladies and gentlemen of elite New York society thought this was extremely eccentric behavior. Why would such a highly educated man born and raised in the civilized
luxury of New York City want to live in the wilderness of such a dark and forested place?

Biltmore Estate took years to build, but when it was finally finished and everyone saw what George Vanderbilt had done, they understood his dream. He had constructed the largest, most
magnificent home in America, surrounded by a working, self-sustaining estate and the gentle beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He married a few years later. And everyone who was fortunate enough
to earn an invitation came to the city of Asheville to visit George and Edith Vanderbilt. They were the rich, the famous, and the powerful: senators, governors, great industrialists, leaders of
foreign countries, favored musicians, talented writers, artists, and intellectuals of all kinds. And it was beneath this glittering world that her pa had raised her.

She looked at Braeden, and she remembered when he came to Biltmore two years before. The servants spoke of the tragedy in hushed tones. Mr. Vanderbilt’s ten-year-old nephew was coming to
live at Biltmore because his family had died in a house fire in New York. No one knew how it started, perhaps an oil lamp or a spark from the cook fire in the kitchen, but the house caught on fire
in the middle of the night. Gidean woke Braeden in a smoke-filled bedroom, pulled at his arm with his teeth, and dragged him from his bed. With the walls and ceiling ablaze around them, they
stumbled out of the burning house, choking and exhausted. They barely escaped with their lives. Gidean had saved him. It was only then that Braeden discovered that his mother, father, brothers, and
sisters were all dead. His entire family had been consumed by the fire. It made Serafina shudder to think about it. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing her pa. How sad and lost Braeden
must have felt to lose his whole family.

She had heard the servants talk about how hundreds of ladies and gentlemen, servants, and folk of every ilk came out for the funeral. Four black horses pulled the black carriage stacked with
eight coffins, as a little boy walked alongside, holding his uncle’s hand.

She remembered watching the boy the day he arrived at Biltmore and wondering about him. The servants said he came with no luggage, no belongings whatsoever other than the four black horses,
which his uncle agreed to ship by train from New York.

Moving closer to Braeden, she remembered what he’d said to her earlier that night:
These horses and I have been friends for a long time.

From that day forward, she had kept a lookout for the boy. She often saw him walking the grounds in the morning. He spent long periods of time watching birds in the trees. He fished for trout in
the streams, but much to the consternation of the cook, he always released whatever he caught. When she watched him in the house, he didn’t seem comfortable around boys and girls his own age,
or most of the adults, either. He loved his dog and his horses, but that was all. Those seemed to be his only friends.

She remembered overhearing his aunt speaking to a guest once. “He’s just going through a phase,” Mrs. Vanderbilt had said, trying to explain why he was so quiet at the dining
table and so shy at parties. “He’ll snap out of it.”

But Serafina had a feeling that he never did.