The Butler(63)

    Of all the jobs he’d just interviewed for, the last one seemed the most interesting, and possibly even amusing. At least it would be different. The potential employer seemed like fun. And it was just different enough to be intriguing.

“I’d be happy to come to Sussex, sir, to have a look, if that would be all right with you.”

“Fine, whenever you like. Very decent butler’s quarters. My parents were always very good to the staff. You’d have your own cottage on the grounds.” He quoted a salary, which was less than the Cheshires had paid, but more than the Texans had offered, and the job seemed like it was worth a look. “I’m master of the local hunt, so we do hunt breakfasts in the season. Something for the tourists to look at. We serve them breakfast if they like too, at quite a jolly price.” He winked at Joachim, who laughed. They seemed to be commercializing everything they could, without embarrassment.

They agreed that Joachim would come for a visit before the end of the week and shook hands on it. Halsey Mount-Williams left, and Joachim told the agency he was interested in the position, but still willing to interview for others. He thought the job in Sussex would give him the most latitude to run things as he wanted, with a fairly relaxed employer, and it was also well enough out of sight not to draw attention from Javier’s cohorts, if any of them showed up in England.

    Joachim told his mother about it that night, and she said it sounded like a bit of a mess to her, and very English.

“It probably is a mess. I think that’s what I like about it. It’ll give me something to do. I would have been bored with the others I saw, and the Texan child bride would probably have raped me, which might not have been an unpleasant experience, but then her husband would have killed me.”

His mother laughed. “Aren’t there any proper jobs left, with respectable employers in decent houses?”

“Apparently not. I suppose there are some, but no one ever leaves those jobs until their employers die or they do.”

“Well, go to see the one in Sussex. He sounds like a black sheep to me.”

“Probably. And he’s horse mad. He sounds like he spends all his money on his horses. But he doesn’t look like a bad guy.” She was happy that he had found something, but still sad that he had left Paris.



* * *



—

Joachim went to see about the job at Pembroke Manor in Sussex two days later, and it was even more disorganized than he had imagined. The front of the house was in relatively good order. Two very attractive young women were running the tours, and they had set up several bedrooms to look the way they must have originally, along with a drawing room, and a dining room with a formally set table, which was quite dusty. They had managed to keep an aura of grandeur and dignity at the front of the house, with some very handsome family paintings, and heirlooms. The back of the house where Mount-Williams lived was a mess and didn’t look as though it had been cleaned in a decade. The first order of business if Joachim took the job would be to clean it up. You could see that a bachelor lived there. The furniture was threadbare and the once-beautiful curtains in shreds from age and sunlight. The gardens were in total disarray. Even those the tourists saw needed attention. The entire aura of the place was of decaying aristocracy and the thin remains of days of grandeur. Everything around the place was in need of cleaning and repair, and in some cases replacement. It wasn’t impossible to do, if the owner was willing to spend the money. And Joachim was willing to put the time and energy into making it shine again.

    The stables were far better tended and in better shape, and the horses were magnificent. The park was almost completely overgrown. The butler’s cottage was very comfortable, under an inch of dust that made Joachim cough when he visited it.

The main house was quite large, though not enormous. There was a very old maid and her granddaughter from the village. Two very lazy gardeners, who were lounging about doing nothing, and that would have to change. And the cook was a jolly heavyset woman who said she had been there for thirty years, and Joachim could smell alcohol on her breath when he approached her. The three women’s uniforms were frayed and dirty, and they needed a good polishing too. The challenge appealed to him, after the work he had done on the chateau with Olivia. This was a much smaller scale venture, with potentially good results, but the chateau had prepared him for it. He wished he could talk to Olivia about it, but they hadn’t parted well, and he didn’t feel comfortable calling or writing to her. He realized now that his mother was right, and it was a mistake to leave people badly. As far as he knew, he had burned his bridges with her, and he wondered how she was doing with the chateau. He hoped things were going as smoothly as possible and she had found someone to help her.

    He liked being back in the English countryside, though. It was familiar to him after all his years in England. The estate in Sussex had never been as beautiful and dignified as the Cheshire homes, nor as well kept, but he thought he could make something of it and restore some of its original dignity.

“What do you think?” Halsey Mount-Williams asked him after Joachim had walked around the houses and property for two hours. He had left him alone until then, and he had been impressed by Joachim’s credentials. They were flawless, unlike his own.

“I think there’s great potential here, sir,” Joachim said cheerfully.