Chapter 1 #3
St. Didier descended and hung back when he might have smoothed the way. He’d been corresponding with someone near the head of the line, hadn’t he? Mrs. Shorer would be Cam’s guess. Consulting her on recipes for furniture polish and managing to do so with every appearance of earnest sincerity.
“Beaglemore, good day.” The butler, even in his sober black suit, wore a black armband, as did the rest of the male staff. The females wore black ribbons affixed to their lapels. The baron was dead, long live the baron. All very respectful.
And tedious as hell. Alexander, may he rest in peace, would have agreed.
“My lord, welcome to Lorne Hall.” Beaglemore creaked into a bow and remained in that posture long enough that Cam feared he might be stuck.
As a boy, Cam had thought Beaglemore ancient, but now the butler was truly venerable.
His face was a map of sagging-parchment wrinkles, his blue eyes had faded, and his white hair was thinning. He was shorter than Cam recalled too.
Mrs. Shorer was positively elfin. “My lord.” She curtseyed crisply. “Welcome home.”
My homes are in Mayfair and Surrey. “Mrs. Shorer, a pleasure to see you and Beaglemore again. If the outside is any indication, Lorne Hall has continued to thrive in the care of its senior retainers.”
Mrs. Shorer beamed, Beaglemore allowed one, “Very good, sir,” and Cam moved on.
He ran out of names once he got past the second under-parlormaid. From there on down, he resorted to, “And you’d be…?”
He stepped up the pace when a small boy shifting from foot to foot caught his eye. “And who are you, young man?”
“Parkin, milord. I’m the potboy, and I’m ever so good at my job. Cook says the best potboy in Yorkshire, though I talk too much.”
“You also forgot to heed nature’s call before you assembled for parade inspection, didn’t you?” Makes two of us.
“Forgot to pee, y’mean? Aye.”
Somebody snickered. Cam raised an eyebrow at the surrounding kitchen staff. The snickering stopped.
“Be patient another few minutes, young Parkin, and we’ll have you back at your post.”
Cam increased his pace, nodding cordially to each retainer, thanking them for greeting him, manufacturing pleasantries the same as he would have if passing among his clerks, who could also be prodigious snickerers.
Five minutes later, Beaglemore was escorting him into the house, while the rest of the line stood at attention like soldiers anticipating an advancing enemy.
“If I might speak just a bit out of turn, my lord, please do forgive the boy. He is new to his responsibilities and really ought to have remained in the kitchen.”
“He’s a pleasant little fellow and clearly proud of his post. Including him did no harm.”
Beaglemore blinked several times before the open front door. “Very good, my lord.”
If I hear one more ‘my lord…’
“Please excuse me, Beaglemore, I’ll have a look around the house on my own. Where will you put my trunks?”
More blinking. “In the baron’s suite, sir.”
Why would he…? Right. “Of course. One did not want to presume. I’m sure I’ll be quite comfortable.” Eventually, maybe. Alexander, strumming his harp on some celestial cloud, was doubtless laughing his halo off.
“You’d not like a tray in the library, sir?”
Cam would like to leap into the coach and depart immediately for London. The whole rigmarole on the drive had been pointless and tiresome. New faces or faces gone elderly on him, nothing in the way of a familiar visage or a genuinely warm welcome.
“Give me an hour to stretch my legs, and then a tray in the library would be most appreciated. If you can locate St. Didier, please invite him to join me.”
“Yes, my lord. Mr. St. Didier will be in the Rose Suite, and we will inform him of your plans.”
Another bow far too solemn for the occasion, and Beaglemore decamped, putting Cam in mind of the last coach in a funeral procession.
Cam ducked into the music room and risked a peek at the line on the drive, still seventy-one souls strong.
Beaglemore descended the front steps, resumed his place beside Mrs. Shorer, and nodded regally.
She stepped away from him, and the female staff fell in behind her, like a sloop coming about through the eye of the wind, in what was clearly a choreographed exit.
The male staff waited in turn, then collected themselves in rank order as Beaglemore led them back into the house.
The lot of them had doubtless rehearsed that maneuver, and thirty years on, Parkin would be teaching it to the junior footmen when the next baron had the great misfortune to inherit his title—if there was a next baron.
That thought topped the growing heap of Cam’s already towering pile of misgivings and sent him from the music room down the corridor, past the library, and headlong toward the conservatory, the one place in the entire Hall that always felt welcoming, informal, and safe.
Such was his desperation to reach the sanctuary of greenery and quiet that he did not check his speed as he flung open the door and strode into the shadowed, humid interior…
Only to collide with a substantial mass of curves, muslin, temper, and fragrance. The fragrance got through to Cam’s panicking mind first, and something about the nature of the temper closely followed.
Attar of roses and female asperity, sweetness and spice in equal measures that could only and always be Alice.