Your Sterling Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  He had another mouthful of superb coffee. Do you think my reluctance to discuss my past makes me mysterious?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “No, but don’t most women like men of mystery?”

  “Men of mystery tend to be psychopaths.”

  “Yes, they do.” Mrs Valentine laughed and Kitt bit into a Chelsea bun. The flavours of orange peel, cinnamon, and a hint of what his brain identified as cardamom brought another instant of unexpected delight. He licked lovely, sticky sweetness from his top lip. “These are incredible. Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you like them. They’re all yours.”

  “Did you make them for Stephens when he moved in to the flat beneath your home?”

  She snorted. “No. You’re a special case.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “You think I’m special.”

  “Oh yes. You’re not mysterious, but you are special. Since you left the Army, you’ve worked for, if I remember your lease application correctly, Regent’s Park Consortium as a Special—there’s that word again—Risk Assessor? Is that something I can ask you?”

  “Yes, that’s fine, and it’s Risk Assessment Specialist. You have a very good memory.”

  “Risk Assessment Specialist, what does that mean?”

  “I assess risk.”

  “You mean like insurance?”

  “In a matter of speaking. The Consortium transacts in precious metals, chemicals, fuels, land. I deal with people, places, and situations that are of a sensitive nature and are, at times, inhospitable. It’s my job to ensure things are safe for business to proceed. Sometimes I do that before trade commences and sometimes I do that after trade has commenced. Not so different from the army when I think about it; it’s hazardous, I see lots of the world, and there’s a non-disclosure clause in my contract, but the pay is better.”

  “I see. You were in that part of the Army. Indeed, you are very mysterious.”

  “Are you calling me a psychopath? No, no. After these last few minutes, I think I know you well enough to say if you believed that you’d be very honest and come right out and tell me I’m a psychopath.”

  With a sly grin, she gave a nod and fell quiet.

  Kitt devoured another bun and found nothing awkward in their silence, which was easy, companionable even. The ease should have been something worrying, but it felt natural. Yes, she was irritating, frustrating, and he liked her nearly as much as he liked the flat’s location, second floor position and layout with its front and rear entrances—and wasn’t it an odd thing to compare an attractive woman to an attractively laid out flat? He laughed at himself, a tiny puff of air breezing from his lips.

  Mae looked at him over the rim of the metal cup as she finished her coffee. When she set the cup down she looked at her watch. “I ought to let you get back to working on that red crescent indentation in your forehead.”

  “I have a crescent in my forehead?”

  “Right here.” Mae drew an arching line below her own hairline. “It’s like a scar, like Dr Frankenstein went in a few years back, and you healed up quite nicely after he removed your brain.”

  He looked back at her wry smile. Attractively laid out flat? Had he really compared her to this flat? Had he actually thought that? Yes, he had. Maybe he’d had some of his brain removed when the vitreous gel had been drained from his eye. Kitt let out another little puffy laugh. “You’re very amusing.”

  “Thank you. And you have two minutes.”

  “I have three minutes,”

  “Your watch is slow,” she, said eyes on the Citizen strapped to his left wrist.

  “Have you grown tired of me already?”

  “You are exhausting. Not as exhausting as my husband was, but a good match to his dark soul. You’re both wearying company.”

  “Is Valentine your name or your husband’s?”

  This time, her smile was soft, wistful, reverent. She touched the wedding band on the chain around her neck. Her voice as soft wistful and reverent as her smile had been, she said, “Valentine is Caspar’s name, my father was Italian—Giuseppe Vincenzo—and you have two minutes.”

  “And your Irish mother?”

  She let go of the ring and slipped back into an Irish accent. “Margaret Mae Case, from Inchigeelagh, County Cork. What about your family?”

  Kitt shook his head. “No. Sorry.”

  “I see,” she said. “I’ll bear in mind a never to ask about your army career, your current career, or your family again.”

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  “No, but it’s personal to you. I understand. I suppose we’re all, in some way, haunted by something in the past.” She rose and screwed the lip back on the Thermos.

  “You don’t need to leave, Mae.”

  “But I do. Your mistress is calling.” She looked over to the damned massage chair and Kitt knew she was right.

  He swore and she laughed. “I think you are very cruel,” he said.

  “My hideous cruelty has left you enough coffee for another cup. It will stay hot in the flask for a few hours, and if you keep the buns covered and you can have them for lunch—unless you’re,” she touched the flat, square box, “set on finishing off this pizza.” Mae stared at the box for another moment, put her hands on her hips, and gazed around the sitting room. All at once, she huffed. No, this was not going to do.

  She opened the lid of the pizza box, lay the empty bottles inside, folded down the lid, grabbed the bags of rubbish, and set them on top of the box. Once everything was arranged, she lifted the stack and moved toward the door.

  “Whatever are you doing?” His look was quizzical.

  “I’m taking out your rubbish.”

  “Why?”

  At the door, she held the box against her hip, one hand on the doorknob. “Because I don’t want my flat to reek of old pizza, your time standing is up, and I feel sorry for you—well, sorry for your state. So, you sit for the next hour. I’ll get things in here a bit organised for you.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because you’re special, remember?”

  Mae watched his cool, blue-grey eyes narrow. His mouth took on a slightly unpleasant twist. “And here we are. What do you want in return,” he said, slipping a hand into a pocket of his jogging bottoms, “my help painting or moving something heavy downstairs, once my eye has healed?”

  “Why would I want anything in return?”

  His head cocked to one side. “It’s called reciprocity, something for something. It’s how the world operates.”

  “It’s not how I operate.”

  The coldness left his features and a frown that touched on embarrassment creased his brow. “I’ve insulted you. I’m very sorry.”

  Mae shook her head. “You don’t know me well enough to insult me.”

  “You’re very forgiving.”

  “I know you’re...a little out of sorts.” She shrugged. “Besides, life’s too precious and too short to waste time holding a grudge.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I didn’t turn heel when you opened your front door and glowered at me a little while ago, so you decide.” Mae opened the door and set the rubbish on the other side of the threshold.

  A minute later, her new tenant was in the blue-padded crescent-shaped temporary scar fabricator, and Mae began moving boxes. An hour later, in his next ten-minute ration of time on his feet, he’d showered and changed his clothes, she’d cleared three quarters of the boxes from the sitting room, arranged his collection of antique china, and organised his kitchen. The hour after that, he did ten minutes of gentle, standing stretches and read The Times and The Financial Times, the laptop on a side table propped under his nose, while she’d moved on to his arrange his bedroom. When noon rolled around, he’d dozed off, and she prepared lunch. Since the dining table near the bay window was stacked with framed, antique maps yet to be hung on the wall, she’d set a place for him eat at the kitchen worktop.


  She started for the sitting room, to rouse him. The soles of her shoes squeaked softly on polished wood and turned soundless on the Persian rug her new tenant had asked her to leave in the flat. Not quite hunched, the man was situated in an awkward, uncomfortable-looking position on his knees, bare feet poking out over where the blue padding ended. His forearms rested on left and right padded platforms, while his face lay not quite wedged in a padded oval covered with soft, cotton cloth. His chin and brow bore the weight of his head and took pressure off his bowed neck.

  Forty-five minutes to an hour in that chair, having massage, might be relaxing. Hour after hour, with only small breaks in between, would be unpleasant, while enduring an entire week would be akin to torture. Jaysus, no wonder the man had been irritable this morning. She felt sorry the poor sod and moved a little closer to the chair, ready to give him a little shake to wake him, but she hesitated.

  He’d sprayed on a pleasant cologne, or washed with a soap that smelled of orange, bergamot, and a whisper of spicy nutmeg. It was subtle, utterly the right choice for him. Mae liked it more than was appropriate. He was her tenant, not date material or casual lover material, but she took a moment to appreciate the scent and looked at him, really looked at him, at his hands dropping over the edge of the armrest, at the small grazes across his knuckles, at a scar that ran along the inside of his left arm, at the curved, pale line where his watch had been, at skin tanned and a little freckly, at the crown of his head, at his messy, shaggy, sun-bleached-at the-ends, dark, gingery blonde hair. This man, this new tenant had a natural magnetism and strong character.

  She liked to think she was, and had been, a good judge of character. He’d made that joke about being mysterious, and he was mysterious, but she was certain he wasn’t a psychopath; being in service for so many years, she’d dealt with a fair number of well-educated, manipulative men with charming façades and no remorse for their actions. This sleeping former army officer was ugly, handsome, and mysterious, but more than that, he was... fascinating. Mae hadn’t met a fascinating man, a truly fascinating man, who came close to being as intriguing as Caspar, in years. She must have made some small sound of surprise.

  The Major stirred, groaned and lifted his head.

  Another crescent bisected the other two on his face, the new one always deeper and redder than the last. Seeing it made her heart hurt in an extraordinarily wistful way that she wanted to chalked up to missing the way a man smelled, missing Caspar’s tousled bed-hair and sleep-rumpled face in the morning, missing the bright ginger cropping up in his beard the way bright ginger patches shone on her new tenant’s whiskery chin. Mae looked at bright gingery stubble on another man’s chin and laughed because bursting into tears over a dead man she still loved could be quite off putting to others.

  “What?” her new, ugly-handsome, nice-smelling, enigmatic tenant said.

  Mae swallowed her longing with another laugh. She made little arcing lines in the air above her forehead. “I’d tell you to go look in the mirror, but you only have ten minutes to eat your lunch.”

  Kitt untangled his limbs from the chair, stood, and stretched his arms out behind his back, clasping his hands until his shoulders popped. He looked at Mae. She’d tied a makeshift tea-towel apron around her waist. He found that amusing considering she wore a pair of paint-stained coveralls. He watched her smooth the towel over her hips. “You made lunch?”

  “I suspected you were tired of takeaway. So, I did what I could with what you had.”

  “And what did I have?”

  “Breakfast.”

  She turned about and he followed her into his newly-organised kitchen, the room filled by the aroma of melted butter and fresh coffee. A stool sat beside the end of the worktop peninsula where Minton china was laid out on a placemat.

  Mae gestured. “Sit or stand, it’s up to you. Everything is ready.” She took the plate, moved to the cooker, lifted the lid from a frying pan, and began scooping out a billow of scrambled eggs. She returned the china to the placemat. “You had just enough ground coffee in the ‘fridge,” she said and filled his cup with a brew from the glass Chemex carafe she’d also found sometime in the last hour. “I’ll leave you to it now.”

  “You’re not having any?”

  “It’s all yours, as is the coffee. I’ll finish off the things in the pantry back there.” She left him and went into the little room off the kitchen, the one that led to the back staircase.

  It dawned on Kitt that that little room was the butler’s pantry, and it amused him that the butler who was no longer a butler was organising his butler’s pantry for the next butler he’d employ. With a laugh, he pushed aside the stool, remained standing, and settled into having lunch, lifting the fork and knife, loading the pretty yellow staple of many a breakfast table onto his fork and into his mouth.

  The eggs were not what he expected. The eggs were a revelation. The eggs were simple, elegant, perfect, absolute bites of joy. The eggs were the most glorious, heavenly scrambled eggs he had ever tasted.

  Mae came out of the Butler’s pantry, a bottle of bourbon in hand. He looked at her, back at the eggs, and at her again.

  “Are you choking?”

  “No, I’m quite fine. It’s just these eggs...”

  “Are they off?” She set the bottle on the work top with a thump.

  “No. They’re not off. They’re exquisite.”

  “Exquisite. Right.” She scratched her cheek. “I think three-day old pizza and having your face stuck in that horrid chair must have killed your tastebuds.”

  “My tastebuds are fine and these eggs are extraordinary.”

  “They’re scrambled eggs.”

  They were scrambled eggs, simple scrambled eggs. Kitt had never realised he’d been looking for an anchor, but he’d knew he’d found one to hold him to a semblance of routine in his anything-but-routine life, and it all came down to scrambled eggs.

  What a thing to call attention to how he was getting older.

  Scrambled eggs. He glanced at them again and then back at Mrs Valentine. Scrambled eggs were a ridiculous thing to tell him to grow up and stop drifting. Bryce would laugh at him for that realisation. Reed would laugh at him for that realisation. Hell, he was laughing at himself for that realisation. Maybe it was a consequence of age, of growing older and possibly wiser. Those two men were older than he was and had discovered, years ago, what he’d just ascertained. For years, he’d ribbed them about it, now the proverbial shoe was one the other foot.

  But then again it wasn’t. This merely had the potential to be a shoe on the other foot. It all hinged upon freakishly delicious scrambled eggs and what his attractive, slightly older, obviously wiser landlady had to say to what he was about to suggest. “Would you like to work for me, Mrs Valentine?”

  She pulled off the tea-towel apron. “Did you just offer me employment?”

  “Yes,” Kitt said. “Temporarily.”

  “I am not a nurse.”

  “I don’t want a nurse. I want an excellently trained butler and household manager. After watching you this morning I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that you received excellent training as a butler. You appear to have a knack of knowing exactly where everything should go. I noticed that with the way you put things in the cabinet in my ensuite. Are you excellently trained, Mrs Valentine?”

  She folded up the tea-towel. “Would you care to see my references?”

  “Perhaps I should see your references.”

  She smiled, eyes crinkling. “Thank you, but as I said, I’m retired from service.”

  “And I’m asking you not to be. At least for the next eight to ten weeks while I’m home recovering and working from the office. You could help me with the rigmarole of searching for a permanent replacement for my surly Scot.”

  What an absurd idea. Mae looked at him, studied him, really, and mulled over the idea as much as she mulled over him. There was much about him to mull over. Chiefly, she liked him. Liking an employer was important
, however, she knew very little about him, save the information on his lease application. Then again, how much had she known about her other employers when she’d first begun work for them? This was work, a business arrangement, a service arrangement, a friendly relationship, but not a friendship. She inhaled to say yes, then thought the better of it. She inhaled again, opened her mouth to say no, reconsidered, and closed it, went through the process again, and concluded that his proposition was hare-brained. At last, she shook her head. “My days in service are over, well and truly.”

  “Might I point out that you live next door, above Stephens the busybody. Your commute would be brief. Also, I am hardly ever here.”

  Mae gave a sigh of amusement. “How desperate you are.”

  “Yes. Quite.”

  She laughed again. “Might I point out you’d pay me a substantial salary for my doing very little for you.”

  He frowned. “I’d pay you a substantial salary?”

  While her head tipped ever-so-slightly to the right, her eyes remained flat and unblinking beneath arched brows.

  “Yes. I’d pay you a substantial salary.”

  Mae set the tea-towel on the worktop, beside the glass coffee carafe, and an unexpected buzz gave her a nudge. She was certain she’d live to regret this, maybe even regret knowing this ugly-handsome enigmatic, moody man, but in the meantime, it was going to be interesting, challenging, refreshing. Of course, it would only be temporary, eight to ten weeks at most, and, if, at any time it didn’t suit her she could simply walk away. She said, “If we can agree on a sum, I’d be happy to accept your offer of temporary employment, sir.”

  Kitt wrinkled his nose. “Sir? I’d rather you call me by my first name.”

  “That would hardly be professional. There are distinct formalities best left in place. Our positions are clear. We may be friendly neighbours, but we are not friends. These are business transactions. I am your landlady, you pay me rent, and I provide you with a home. I am your employee, you pay me a salary, and I provide you a service.”

  Kitt leaned against the edge of the worktop and gazed out into the sitting room for a moment, to the moulding at the base of the window-seat, where Bryce had installed the hidden weapons safe and one or two ultra-compact 9mm semi-automatic pistols. He brought his eyes back to Mrs Valentine. “Yes, It’s a service arrangement. You are in service to me the way I am in service to my employer. That is very clear. I think I’d like your scrambled eggs every day for breakfast.”