Read The Titans for Free Online

York harbor after the launching of Vanderbilt's opulent 270-foot steam yacht North Star. Julia had only been fourteen, but she vividly recalled the champagne and the lavish fireworks display. Sedgwick had gotten rich on the bases of this friendship. He'd been permitted to invest in the Commodore's immensely profitable Accessory Transit Company. At the height of the gold rush, the company had shortened the sea route to California by two days via a connection 44Prologue across Nicaragua rather than Panama. Next Sedgwick had pumped money into Vanderbilt's lucrative New York to Le Havre freight and passenger line. He was currently using his connection to share in the Commodore's new passion-railroads-and to help his son-in- law do the same if he wished. Sedgwick was by no means old New York society. But he was sufficiently wealthy and well placed so that Louis' successful courtship had been something of an accomplishment. Julia and Louis had married a year and a half after the conclusion of his last term at Harvard. He'd gone there at Michael's insistence but had dawdled through his classes. Louis had never received his degree. By the time he quit the university to devote himself to running the affairs of the family, he had only finished a year and a half of actual study. He'd developed a pattern of growing disinterested by the end of one term, at which time he would come back to New York and spend half a year with Michael learning the business. Twice Michael had been able to persuade him to return for a fall term-and twice, when winter arrived in the city, so did Louis, saying he was bored with Cambridge and eager to get on with his practical education. At the end of the third term, Michael abandoned any hope of Louis' graduating. Not that Louis wasn't bright. He'd quickly absorbed the training Michael had given him, as well as that from the Kents legal and banking advisers. Michael watched Louis grow into a shrewd and capable administrator who weighed every decision in terms of profit or loss. A year after the wedding, Louis succumbed to Julia's constant complaints about the smelly Italians, the quarrelsome Irish, and the stubborn Germans with whom the better classes were increasingly forced to contend in the crowded city. He presented his wife with a second The Titansblede home-a country retreat-even more lavish than the Madison Square mansion, which had become the family seat after Amanda Kent de la Gura had returned east from the gold fields. The new house, a great monster of a place near Tarrytown, had been designed in the popular Gothic Revival style. In Michael's opinion, the house well illustrated the paradox of Louis Kent. He was jealous of even a single penny lost from the profits of the diversified Kent enterprises-and none too scrupulous, sometimes, about how he increased those profits. Yet he liked personal ostentation. Contrary to all advice, he'd indulged his liking on an unprecedented scale by building the country place on wooded property overlooking the Hudson River. Louis was never at ease when imagination was required compyramiding wealth excepted-and so he'd been at a loss for a name for the house. It was Michael who'd proposed a name tracing back to the man who had sired Louis' great-grandfather Philip, the first of the Kents. Philip Kent's father, a British nobleman, had owned a country estate called Kentland. Although Louis acted put out because he hadn't thought of it-and because Michael seemed to know more of his family's history than he did-the name was finally adopted, and the American Kentland was surrendered to its new mistress. Louis and Julia divided their time between Madison Square, where Michael lived, and the country house, to which all of the family heirlooms had been removed. Louis' easy compliance about the house was just one reason Michael considered the alliance with Julia unfortunate. Another was the way her temperament reinforced her husband's. She approved of, and encouraged, patterns of