“Only at the absurdity of this situation.”
“You see? What can one do but laugh? Or drink! Or both! And you seem like the sort of person I can have a laugh with, and you fell into my life at precisely the right moment, so I’m calling it as meant to be.”
Amelia lightly chewed her bottom lip. She’d run away from her life to have an immersive experience, and what could be more immersive than hanging out in a stately home with hervery own Mr. Darcy? Just one drink. One little escape from reality. “Well, why the hell not?”
“Sterling. We’d better get started. We have a lot to get through.”
The light flickered and failed, and Tom grabbed her hand. She clutched it a little too fiercely as he pulled her along, grumbling about “the bloody cord.” From deep in the tunnel came a clunk. She shuddered, imagining the one-legged soldier emerging from the darkness.
“We need to get you someplace warm,” he said, misinterpreting her shiver. The light clicked on, and he dropped her hand. “So, which will it be?” He drew out two bottles and held each in a gloved hand like a waiter at a Michelin-starred restaurant.
“Nothing strong. I do need to drive, and that lane back to the village is not forgiving. Potholes to lose a chaise-and-four in.”
“No alcohol content on these labels. They weren’t so worried about DUIs in…” He dusted off the label of the wine in his right hand. “1945. Bugger it, let’s take both.”
“1945! You should know that I only buy grocery store wine. It’ll be wasted on me.”
“Wine is only wasted if it sits in dark cellars not being drunk. I should think it was conceived to bring people together. For conversation and merriment. What on earth is the point of owning a bottle of wine you’re not intending to drink?”
“You’ll be reassured that a bottle of wine never lasts long in our apartm—” She remembered she was no longer part of an “our” and no longer had an apartment. Hadn’t for a year, but even now, when she pictured “home,” the apartment was it, as if it were waiting for her, with all her things still in it. “When I’m around,” she finished.
“You see? Fate has brought us together. After you.”
He ushered her back the way they’d come. They passed the archway to the broken stairwell and came to a flight of stone steps. Each step sagged in the middle, worn down by centuries of foot traffic. As they climbed, the sound became less deadened and the air a little less cold. They emerged into a long passage with a flagstone floor. On one side were several arched doorways. Through one, she could see a large kitchen. On the other side, clusters of electrical cords were swagged along the top of a white-painted stone wall. Below them hung three rows of old-fashioned bells, with faded calligraphed labels: “small drawing room,” “night nursery,” “countess’s retreating room”… She located the “music room” bell she’d rung earlier.
At the end of the hallway, Tom shoved a thick wooden door and held it open for her. Inside was a cozy room with a desk, a couple of armchairs and a sofa. It was neatly painted in sage and white. Two huge sash windows looked out to the driveway, framed in faded linen curtains held back by a crimson braided-silk cord that must have been repurposed from a more opulent part of the house. But most notably, the room waswarm.
As Tom closed the door behind them, putting his shoulder into it, Amelia rubbed her hands. They were an unhealthy shade of purple—she’d left her gloves in the car. “I can feel my bones defrosting.”
“The butler’s room—the smallest room in the house with a functioning fireplace,” he said, removing his gloves and indicating a couple of enormous logs burning in an open stone fireplace. “This time of year, we only live—Ionly live—in the rooms we—I—can afford to heat, and even then, only with wood from trees I fell myself.”
She guessed the “we” he referred to was his absent family rather than a partner, but she could relate. It took time to adjust from being plural to singular. He opened a black lacquered Chinoiserie cabinet and grabbed two silver goblets.
“So you live here alone?”
“Yes, though I only occupy a few rooms, so it’s like living in a boarding house. An unpopular one.” He opened a desk drawer and rummaged around before pulling out a corkscrew. “Duncan, the groundskeeper, tends to avoid the house. And his son sometimes stays over—Connor, my lawyer. He was here overnight, actually, helping me chase down our last hopes for funding, unsuccessfully. Or trying to find thirty-one million pounds someone tossed into a bottom drawer and forgot.”
Amelia remembered the man in the study. “Oh yes, I think I saw him.” So the other voice she’d heard was Tom’s?
“I, meanwhile, am the butler, estate manager, clock winder, chicken keeper, fendersmith…”
“Fendersmith?”
“I keep the fires burning, not that many are still in operation,” he said, winding the corkscrew into the bottle. “Everything but the gardener and the mechanic—I’m hopeless with cars, and Duncan won’t let anyone touch his garden shears on pain of death. I’m also the chambermaid—chamberbloke—but I’m not very good at that.”
She noticed another robot vacuum charging in a corner. “You delegate?”
“‘If it can clean Pemberley, it can clean your stately home,’” he said, with a bow. At her puzzled expression, he added, “Oh, you wouldn’t know about my fifteen minutes of fame. Well, fifteen minutes of infamy, played at regular intervals day and night, ad nauseam.”
She shook her head.
He grimaced, easing the cork from the bottle. “I did an infomercial last year. I talked them into giving me an army of the things, on top of the fee. I have every floor covered.” He placed the bottle on the desk, picked up a cell phone, found a video on it and set it to play. In it, Tom was wearing a tuxedo andsitting in an armchair readingTatler. As a robot vacuum scooted past, he raised his polished black shoes to let it clean the carpet underneath.
“You can turn it off now—it only gets worse,” Tom said, pouring the wine into the first goblet. “I don’t have Darcy’s pride. Sorry to disappoint. Or his money.”
Amelia refrained from assuring him he had the looks. “You should have worn that costume!” She indicated his Regency ensemble. Not that he didn’t look like an altogether different fantasy in a tuxedo.
“Couldn’t,” he said, pouring the next goblet. It was etched with the same crest she’d seen on the collapsed stone outside. “I’d get Robert Pattinson in trouble.”
