As they answered excitedly, talking over each other, she remembered her father telling her to have as many adventures as she could. Now she was. This year would be an adventure. A new school for the boys would be one too.
As the train pulled into the station, she smiled animatedly at her children. “Boys, you can’t even believe how marvelous this ship is going to be. I bet we could even eat dinner with the captain one night. Would you like that?”
William and George enthusiastically expressed their agreement, but Cornelia’s mind was already somewhere else. She had failed. Failed herself, failed her father.
No, Cornelia decided again as she took her boys’ hands and walked out into the day, her legs feeling stiff and tired but lightening with every step. A new world was out here waiting for her to turn into the woman she was meant to be, a woman her father would be proud of.
For days on the ship to England, Cornelia and her boys ate their meals together, played cards and squash on the deck, swam during the day and listened to the orchestra at night. And what would happen once they arrived at their destination finally sank in: there would be no more breakfasts together and silly jokes. Had she made the right choice? Only time would tell.
It seemed like only a moment later that a porter was unloading the boys’ trunks at the ancient, imposing school, the headmaster there to meet them.
“Are you ready for this?” Judge Adams asked Cornelia.
“I assure you, Mrs. Cecil,” the headmaster said, “your fine young gentlemen will receive the best schooling and the best care available.”
She smiled, looking braver than she felt. “Yes. That’s what my dear husband assures me. And we will be checking in often to be certain of it.” She liked the way it sounded, how she could put it off on Jack, like she was the doting mother who could scarcely bear to part with her children.
Cornelia held her boys close to her and then knelt down, kissing them. “This is going to be an adventure, my darlings,” she said. She was shocked at how stoic her children were as she kissed them again. “Goodbye, Mama,” they said.
She took a deep breath as she turned from them, tears filling her eyes.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Judge Adams confirmed as they got back in the car and pulled away down the school’s long driveway. Cornelia dared not look back lest she lose her nerve and call the whole thing off.
“I know,” she whispered, unable to keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks.
Jack and Judge Adams thought her children would have a better education here, but Cornelia wanted her children in London for a different reason. She never wanted her boys to feel the burden that she had, the glare of being in the public eye like she did. Here, she could keep them safe. Here, she could tuck them away and let them grow into the men they were already becoming.
The first step was always the hardest.
She and Judge Adams parted ways, her heart feeling heavy at the separation from her children, but lighter at the idea that she was protecting them. And, with the man she felt lukewarm about at best gone, she was free. Really, truly free, to soar higher and dream bigger, to uncover the path that the stars had been leading her toward since she was a child with her father in the observatory at Biltmore, when she contemplated how numbers governed the universe for the very first time.
She slipped into a table at the first café she saw, fully intent on ordering bread and cheese, wine and chocolate, until she soothed this very uneasy feeling inside her stomach. As she sat inside this old place that felt very new to her, she realized that Cornelia Vanderbilt—and all her disappointment—was gone.
She thought back to the letter she had left for Jack, her once love. Maybe her always love:
Dearest Jack,
I was thinking this evening about the first note you ever wrote me. It is the only personal paper I haven’t burned. I keep it close to my heart, folded in the tiniest parcel inside the locket I sometimes wear around my neck. I think you must feel what I feel—that we have somewhat grown apart. And I do hope that you can forgive me for having to leave you, for having to leave Biltmore, that we can be friendly in the sharing of our beloved sons.
I know that sometimes, in the deepest parts of your soul, you have wanted to return to England, and that it was for me you stayed. The irony that I am leaving to find a new life there can’t be overstated. But I feel as though abroad I will be less of a spectacle. I will be less of the disgraced heiress who couldn’t hold on to her father’s dearest possession and more of a new artist who happens to be philanthropic. Can you ever understand that?
Please do not feel like you need to stay at Biltmore. You have given it more time and attention than anyone could ever ask for, and I am most grateful to you. I know you must long to return home, and when you do, I hope that I will see you on the sidewalks, that we will smile at each other. Perhaps my book will be published in England. Maybe you could come celebrate?
You have been as kind and generous a man as I could have ever hoped to know, but the life we led wasn’t the life that was meant for me. I hope you can understand.
With deepest gratitude and affection,
Cornelia
If he had ever sent it, Cornelia would have read Jack’s reply:
My dearest Nell,
You are right. I have pined for my home country more times in more ways than I can ever say. But now, it is only for you I long in the very depths of my soul. That first night I laid eyes on you, something changed in me, something shifted. And you became the purpose in my life; you became the reason for living. I feel as though you are going through a stage, my darling, much as our boys do, and I have to think that you will snap out of it. When you do, I will be here waiting, at the place you love most, protecting your legacy and enacting your will. And if you do not return, it is still here that I will always be waiting, for it is here that I can be with you, even if you are gone. I meant what I wrote all those years ago. In my mind, in my memory, I am still Mark Antony. You are Cleopatra. And the two of us are, forever and always, Companions to the Death.
All my love, devotion, and fidelity forever,
Jack
Maybe that reply would have changed something. Maybe not. But, either way, now Nilcha ran her hand through her newly pink hair and took a deep breath, lilting her order in a southern accent that contrasted starkly from its British counterpart. Across the café, she met the eye of a man who smiled, one who didn’t know she was Cornelia Vanderbilt, one who had never seen her in the papers, had never heard of Tarheel Nell. Remembering, she got the slightest pang for her old life, could smell the magnolia tree that was hers, the one that was planted in her honor in earth that bore secrets and lies, truths and, for some, the freedom that Nilcha never seemed to find. She could always go back if she wanted, she told herself, even though she knew it was impossible.
As the moon started to rise in the still-blue sky, she, beginning to feel guilty about simply abandoning the place that had meant so much to her father, said, aloud, “We’re still under the same moon, Daddy. Always. But I need a fresh start.”
Here, now, in this café in London, she could be anyone she wanted to, someone of her own making, free of the pressures and confines of her previous life. What’s more, she had broken her children free, prevented them from feeling the suffocating weight of saving a home that was perhaps beyond saving. She pushed away the thought of all the pain she had caused her mother, her husband, her sons. She caught the eye of the man again. All she could think of now was a fresh start. Nilcha, in spite of herself, smiled.