“And just whose property might this be?” he inquired silkily, slapping his gloves in his left hand.
“This here’s the property of the Viscount St. Ryne,” came the shrill reply.
“Precisely, and I do not tolerate disrespect from any of my employees.” He smiled wolfishly as the man stumbled backward into the hall, and he followed.
“Beg pardon, your lordship!” the man gasped. “I meant no disrespect! We do at times get strangers coming by trying to make trouble, and we’ve had no word of your coming.” The man would have babbled on, but St. Ryne silenced him with an impatient wave of his hand as he surveyed the hall. Most of the furniture was draped with Holland covers, on which dust was thick. The walls showed scorch and soot marks from cheap candles, and the drapes looked as if a mere touch could shred them. On the whole, everything was drab and gray, and St. Ryne couldn’t have been more pleased. A boyish grin split his lips as he turned back to his employee.
“Your name, please,” he commanded.
“William Atheridge, if it please your lordship. My wife and I, we were butler and housekeeper to Sir Jeremy, milord.” He scurried to a doorway under the stairs. “Mae! Mae, come here!” he called, then scurried back to St. Ryne. He bobbed again. “She’ll be here presently, she will.”
“What are you fratch’n about now?” came a high, gravelly voice from the direction of the stairs.
Both men turned toward her voice, and St. Ryne found himself facing a dour-faced woman with deep lines bracketingher mouth, who was as stout as her husband was thin. Her eyes narrowed slightly when she saw an unknown gentleman in the hall, then her mouth stretched out into a travesty of a smile.
“Milord, this is my wife, Mae. My dear, this is the ViscountSt. Ryne,"he said, stressing the name.
Mae Atheridge approached them and bobbed a curtsy, her eyes sliding sideways to meet her husband’s.
“How do you do,” St. Ryne said absently, giving her only a cursory glance before dismissing her from his mind, his attention centering once again on the house. “So, Atheridge, as I’m here, what do you say to a tour of this holding of mine?”
Atheridge blinked rapidly. “Of course, your lordship. This way, please,” he said, gesturing his hand forward.
Atheridge, his pasty complexion as gray as the dust on all surfaces, quavered and shook like a leaf in the wind as he conducted St. Ryne around. Mae Atheridge followed behind, silently save for the swish of her long black skirts. Wringing his hands nervously, Atheridge begged pardon for the condition of the house, saying they received money only for their wages from Mr. Tunning, the estate manager. The lines around Mae’s mouth deepened, her brows sinking over deep-set eyes.
St. Ryne merely laughed. “This place is splendid! Better than I had hoped to find.”
Atheridge looked at him bemused. “B-beg pardon, your lordship?” he stammered.
“Do not change a thing. Do not clean anything. I dare swear the chimneys will smoke if lit. Best have the master bedroom chimney swept. The estate agent, what did you say his name was? Tonning?”
“Tunning, my lord.”
“Yes, tell this Tunning fellow I said to have it done and he’s to see it’s paid for. Oh, best have the library done, too. No other rooms mind you. I want it just as it is,” the Viscount said,grinning broadly as he looked about him. He began to laugh. “Yes, just as it is.”
The Viscount hurriedly declined their offer to ready a room for him, saying he would stay at the inn in the village, and took himself off almost immediately, still grinning as he wiped a trace of cobweb off his coat sleeve.
“Well, that’s done it for us,” Atheridge said heavily to his wife.
“Hush, Tom Tunning will cover for us or it’s his neck, too,” Mae said sternly, her mouth set in a straight line and her hands clasped primly before her ample form. Silently they stood together on the front steps and watched the Viscount bowl down the avenue, turn the corner, and disappear from sight behind wildly overgrown hedges at the front gate.
St.Ryne returned to London early the next day, and immediately began a round of meetings with his solicitors and bankers. These worthies had served the Earl of Seaverness’s family for many years, and had heard many an unusual request. Though they were delighted to receive news of St. Ryne’s planned nuptials, they were aghast at his settlement requests; yet they drew up the paperwork and opened the accounts as he requested, each silently bemoaning their tasks and wondering, as others had before them, if the tropical sun hadn’t indeed affected his lordship.
St. Ryne’s friends quizzed him unmercifully concerning his week-long absence, coming as it did hard on the heels of his encounter with Lady Elizabeth Monweithe. He only laughed but admitted the events were not unrelated; more they could not wrest from him.
“Pray, cease!” he implored when he was particularly besieged one afternoon at White’s.
“Well, old fellow,” Freddy said, laying a companionable hand on his shoulder, “what is the story?”
“Freddy, Freddy, not you too?” St. Ryne asked, looking over his shoulder. “All right, though I find this sudden interest amusing,” he said turning back to take in all those gathered around. “I tell you all, I merely went on a tour of my holdings. I have been away a year, and I need hardly tell you the necessity of looking after my own.”
“Particularly if one has specific goals they wish to achieve,” Sir James Branstoke drawled.
St. Ryne turned to look quizzically at him, but Branstoke only smiled as he bowed his way out of the group. Watching that enigmatic peer withdraw, St. Ryne’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Shrugging slightly, he turned back to the group before him and suggested a game of faro in order to bend their inquisitive minds elsewhere.
One crisp,bright morning shortly thereafter, Freddy Shiperton paid a morning call on his friend to request his company on an excursion to Tattersall’s. There was a good-looking gray there that he had his eye on and wanted St. Ryne’s opinion, for he was a known connoisseur of good horseflesh. He arrived at St. Ryne’s home, to learn from his butler that the Viscount was still dressing and had not yet descended. Freddy’s brows rose. It was not like St. Ryne to be so late about. Entrusting his hat and greatcoat to the footman, he informed Predmore he would announce himself.
He loped easily up the staircase, taking two steps at a time, before Predmore had an opportunity to object. He found St. Ryne in a distracted mood, yet dressed very elegantly in a jacket of blue Bath superfine, with fawn-colored breeches. He was snapping at his valet to remove a piece of fluff from his jacket sleeve. That little gentleman, who had been with his lordship since he’d come down from Oxford, and had even endured the hardships of a year away from civilization by attending his lordship in Jamaica, this particular morning looked extremely harassed and frazzled.
