Rapped some more. “Potter?” he called, attempting to attract the attention of the faithful old retainer who had been running the manor house since Zachary’s youth. “Potter, it is Lord Anglesey. Please open the door.”
He raised his voice on the last, considering it had been years since he had seen Potter and the butler had been an august, hoary-haired gentleman even then. It was entirely possible he was hard of hearing these days, which would explain the lack of answer, if not the dearth of expected welcome. For he had been very precise with the messages he had sent to Barlowe Park in the days leading to this trip. He had even grudgingly enlisted Beatrice’s aid in plotting all the requirements for their guests, since she was accustomed to communication with the Barlowe Park steward as she had done when Horatio had been earl.
Provisions and additional servants would need to be brought up from the village, Beatrice had said coolly, her expression pinched as she reluctantly offered her counsel. Everything had been arranged. Or so it should have been.
He rapped some more, misgiving curdling his gut. Knocked with increasing insistence. And still, no one arrived. A steady drizzle began to fall.
Fuck.
He was just about to turn away from the door and find something with which he might break a damned window—a convenient stone from the drive, perhaps—when the door slowly, hesitantly creeped open.
A bespectacled man with a few remaining strands of hair the color of newly fallen snow, disheveled and sticking from the back of his head in every which way, blinked owlishly at him.
“Who goes there?” the fellow demanded.
He struggled to reconcile the hunched-over form with the elegant butler of his youth. The man before him, clutching a cane for purchase, his gnarled hands age-spotted, the skin paper-thin, was a far cry from the Potter he had once known.
“Potter?” he asked, the suspicion within him blooming like a cancer.
“And who wishes to know, sir?” the other man returned, his voice lined with distrust.
“Anglesey,” he said grimly.
Potter cupped his ear. “Arduously?”
“Anglesey,” Zachary repeated, louder this time.
Potter frowned. “Aimlessly?”
“Anglesey!” he roared, growing impatient. “The bloody earl.”
Not that he wished to be, but that was what he was now. No way around it. No sense denying it.
Potter blinked once again, then lowered his spectacles, withdrew a stained-looking handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, cleaned them, and settled them back on his nose. If anything, the action appeared to have left the lenses more smeared than before.
“Young Lord Zachary?”
He smiled, for at least the butler had finally recognized him. “The Earl of Anglesey now,” he reminded gently. “Unfortunately.”
“My lord.” Potter bowed, his spectacles sliding down his nose as he pitched forward and nearly fell. “This is an unexpected surprise.”
Zachary caught him, helping him to right himself. “Steady, Potter.” He paused, taking in the latter half of what his butler had said.Christ.“An unexpected surprise, you say? Did you not receive any of the missives I sent ahead, advising you about the guests and preparations which would be required?”
More suspicion unfurled.
“Gates and apparitions, my lord?” Potter’s look of befuddlement would have been comical if not for the sinking feeling within Zachary that no preparations had been made at all.
He glanced over his shoulder at the line of carriages arriving, then back to his butler. “Guests and preparations,” he said louder and as clearly as possible, indicating the carriages.
“Oh dear.” Still clutching the soiled handkerchief in his free hand, Potter used it to mop his brow before calling over his shoulder. “Mrs. Measly! Have you prepared for the guests?”
“What in heaven’s name is the commotion, Mr. Potter? I have told you not to call for me from another hall but to have one of the lads fetch me instead. It is ever so much more civilized…” A young brunette—far too young to be a housekeeper, although she was wearing the garb of one—rounded the corner in the great hall, her voice trailing off when she caught sight of Zachary standing beneath the immense Ionic portico. “Forgive me, sir. How may I be of service?”
“Mrs. Measly, I presume?” He was ashamed to admit how little he knew of the estate and the small number of servants who remained on here when his brother had not been in residence.
Christ, when his brothers had been buried here in the family plot, he had not attended the funeral. That was how low in regard he held the both of them. And it was also the same regard in which they had held him. But his absence, all these months later, proved just how unprepared he had been to inherit the earldom.
Wholly.
