Old houses never fail to deliver on their reputation of being cold and drafty. Castle Beadale proved to be no exception when the alarm woke me at 6 a.m. the following morning. I writhed and stretched under the thick mound of blankets for at least twenty minutes, attempting to delay the moment when I would have to face the freezing walk to the bathroom. When I sighed at the thought of it, an icy cloud of my own breath hung in the air above my head as if to prove the point. Counting to three I jumped out of bed and slipped quickly into a thick toweling robe stolen from the hotel. Dancing from foot to foot I pulled on a pair of gym shoes and made a mad dash down the hall. I filled the tub, and it wasn’t long before huge clouds of steam had taken the chill off the room. Not having a shower was going to take some getting used to, but in the mean time I was rather enjoying the old-fashioned luxury of a pre-breakfast soak.
By the time I had bathed, shaved, and dressed I’d either warmed up or simply become accustomed to the cold. I wasn’t sure which, but either way, feeling wide-awake, I bounded down the back stairs two at a time toward the kitchen. I could smell the aroma of cooking bacon all the way from the first floor landing, and my mouth was watering uncontrollably by the time I pushed open the kitchen door.
Inside, the room was buzzing with activity. Wendy was at the Aga frying bacon as fast as Vera could pile it into a waiting silver dish. Alongside the bacon on the warming plate were dishes of deviled kidneys, mushrooms, scrambled eggs, fried bread, and grilled tomatoes. There looked to be enough food for at least a dozen people.
“Do we have guests?” I asked.
“Not as far as I know,” replied Vera, placing the lid on a silver chafing dish and passing it to me. “Gloria, is that toast ready?” she barked. “And whatever you do, don’t burn that black pudding. Kylie, be a love and give the porridge a good stir, would you?”
“This can’t all be for His Lordship,” I said, looking at the vast array of dishes spread out in front of me.
“Oh, can’t it now?” Vera laughed. “Trust me, my boy, this is normal. But don’t worry; you’ll get used to Lord Shanderson’s excesses soon enough.”
Vera picked up two of the dishes and motioned for me to follow her through to the dining room. She placed the dishes in perfect alignment on an electric hot plate on the sideboard, and when I put a dish down she rolled her eyes before making a minor adjustment to its position.
“Right, be a love and run an iron over this before you go and wake him up, would you?” She handed me a copy of the Telegraph from under her arm. “There’s an iron in the butler’s pantry just for the job.”
I hadn’t heard of anyone’s ironing the newspaper for years. One of the old boys at the Palace had told me they used to do it to set the ink so that the royals didn’t end up with dirty fingers. Even though I was pretty sure things had moved on in the world of printing since then, it seemed old habits die hard at Castle Beadale.
After a quick once-over with a hot iron I returned the newspaper to the dining room, where I placed it neatly alongside the single table setting before sprinting up the back stairs to wake Lord Shanderson.
I paused outside his room when it occurred that nobody had briefed me on the correct protocol for waking His Lordship. Should I just knock on the door and wait for a response, or should I knock and enter? I mulled it over for a few seconds before rapping sharply and entering as authoritatively as I could.
The room was pitch-black; I fumbled around the furniture toward the heavily draped windows and pulled back the curtains. The bright morning light flooded the room, revealing a sleeping Lord Shanderson only partially covered by a swathe of white linen sheets.
He stirred, but remained sound asleep whilst I took the opportunity to have a sneaky look at His Lordship. It appeared that, beneath the formality of his Harris Tweeds, Lord Shanderson had been concealing a surprisingly fit and toned body. His chest was broad with a light covering of hair that tapered down to a narrow treasure trail before disappearing beneath the sheet. His arms too were broad and generously muscled but not, I guessed, from endless workouts in the gym, but rather from a life lived in the country where looking after his horses was his daily exercise. After all, had I not seen him energetically mucking out the stables himself the day I arrived? Whatever it was that kept him looking so buff for a man of his age, it was working. As he slept I studied his face carefully and began to wonder exactly how old he was. His skin was smooth with only a few wrinkles around the eyes, and his hair was thick and wavy with only a smattering of gray at the temples. His beard, on the other hand, whilst carefully trimmed, was heavily flecked with gray, and it was probably this alone that had made me mistake him for someone older. If I had to hazard a guess, I would put Lord Shanderson at no older than mid fifties, but however old he was, one thing I knew for sure was that he was a damn sight sexier right now than when I had first seen him in the stable yard.
I gasped nervously when he rolled over, fearing he might open his eyes at any moment only to catch me staring, but to my relief his eyes remained tightly closed. I forced out a cough, feeling sure it would wake him, but instead he simply shifted his position. I returned to the window and began to wrestle with the enormous swathes of fabric that made up the elaborate curtains. Eventually I managed to secure them in place by using the heavy, gold-tasseled tiebacks. After I fully raised the blinds, even more light flooded into the room.
“Good morning, Gowers,” said a voice from behind me. I breathed deeply and pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to erase all the mental pictures of my near-naked boss before turning to greet him.
“Good morning, Your Lordship,” I said with a smile. He was now sitting up in bed and had pulled the sheets back over himself. “Breakfast is ready when you are, sir,” I said, trying my best to keep eye contact.
“Jolly good, Gowers. I’m starving,” he replied, before throwing off the sheet and springing out of bed. I tried to keep my cool as he stood completely naked in front of me. He remained motionless for what seemed like an age before speaking.
“Would you have me eat my breakfast in the nude, Gowers ?” he asked.
“Sir?”
“It wouldn’t be a problem for me, but I’m not sure if Vera’s nerves could take it, so perhaps you would be so kind as to pass me the dressing gown hanging on the door right behind you.”
I turned and hastily grabbed the silk robe from its hanger, holding it out at arm’s length for him to slip into. But as he turned his back to me my eyes couldn’t help but wander from the nape of his neck down the length of his spine to his backside. The fact that he had an extremely pleasing arse was not what caught my attention though. What did take me by surprise was that on one cheek there was a tattoo. I saw it only for a fleeting moment before it disappeared beneath the folds of his silk dressing gown, but it looked like some kind of Latin inscription.
“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” he said, turning to face me.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Honi soit qui mal y pense—evil be to him who evil thinks. It’s the motto of the Household Cavalry.”
“I’m sorry, sir; I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“My tattoo, I know you just saw it. All the chaps in my regiment had them done.”
“Oh! I see, sir. I’m afraid my Latin is rather rusty,” I said, stumped for anything else to say on the matter.
“It’s French,” he replied, smiling and looking rather pleased with himself. He breezed past me and bounded down the main staircase toward the dining room, leaving me just a little bit stunned.
Despite the huge spread laid out for breakfast, His Lordship ate only a couple of slices of toast before disappearing back upstairs to dress. As soon as he was out of the dining room Vera appeared to help me clear away the dishes.
“Such a shame all this food is going to go to waste,” I said.
“Don’t you worry about that, my dear; nothing edible goes to waste in this house. If the staff don’t demolish it, the dogs will.”
; I followed Vera back to the kitchen where quite a crowd had gathered. I scanned the room and saw Tom, Kylie, Gloria, and Wendy, and on the far side of the room by the back door, struggling to remove his riding boots, was George.
“Right, you lot—help yourselves, but be quick. I want to get these things washed and put away,” Vera said, placing all of the silver dishes in the middle of the kitchen table.
Tom was the first to spring into action, but as he lunged at a dish of deviled kidneys his mother rapped the back of his hand with the wooden spoon she was holding.
“F.H.B!” she barked at him. “What does that stand for, Tom?”
“Family hold back,” he said sheepishly before moving aside.
I stifled a laugh and glanced over at George, who was now hovering over a plate of sausages. We exchanged glances before he spoke.
“Morning, Anthony,” he said coolly.
“Hi, George, lovely day,” I said, but it looked like he was done talking as he just tucked into his breakfast without another word.
I hastily assembled a bacon sandwich for myself and stood leaning on the workbench whilst I devoured it. George began chatting to Kylie and Tom about something work-related that I couldn’t quite hear, but every few seconds he glanced over in my direction before quickly looking away again. I found his behavior most confusing. One minute it felt like he was flirting with me, and the next it felt like he couldn’t stand the sight of me. This guy seemed not to know what he wanted.
Maybe, I thought to myself, I could help him find out.
All of a sudden, the chatter in the room was replaced by the scraping of chair legs on flagstones as everyone seated stood up. I turned to see Lord Shanderson standing in the doorway.
“Please, don’t get up, I just came to say that I will be out most of the day. I’m shooting over at Glebe Farm. I’m going to have lunch there. I’ll be back for tea.”
“Very good, Your Lordship,” said Vera.
“And Tom, I’m going to drive myself,” he added, before doffing his tweed cap to the room.
As His Lordship closed the kitchen door behind him, a very faint waft of his cologne floated past my nose. A bracing mix of citrus and spice, it wasn’t a scent I had ever smelt before, so I made a note to check his bathroom to see what it was.
“Right, you lot, let’s not waste the day now His Lordship is out of the house. There’s plenty for everyone to do.” Vera clapped her hands, which seemed to be universally understood to mean that breakfast was over. If Tom harbored any doubt of her precise meaning, she promptly removed it by taking away his half-eaten breakfast and scraping it into the bin.
“Got any plans for the day?” I asked George as he wrestled with his boots by the back door. He looked up, but yet again he chose to ignore me, leaving without another word.
I knew that my first job of the day was to make His Lordship’s bed and tidy his bathroom, so I got right to it, hoping that if I got a move on I might get a few hours to myself before teatime. I planned to take a walk through the estate and get a feel for the place. I thought I might even go for a run if I could summon the energy.
The bed was as he had left it, with the linen sheets practically tied up in knots. I grasped a handful of the top sheet, meaning to simply smooth it into place, but before I knew it I had my entire face buried within its folds, breathing deeply. Pure linen is permanently cool to the touch, so any secret hopes I might have harbored about the sheets still being warm left me disappointed. However, there was a lingering human scent, which instantly sent a jolt of electricity to my groin.
For God’s sake, Anthony, pull yourself together, I thought as I began to work on making the bed in earnest. Once I had placed the top cover on and plumped up the pillows, I quickly ran an iron over it the way Vera had shown me and got down on my hands and knees, checking that everything was just so. Eventually, when satisfying perfection had been achieved, I began to move around the room picking up various items of discarded clothing. I picked up a pair of crisp white cotton boxer shorts and noticed that they were handmade and had the initials DS embroidered in red silk on the inside of the waistband. It’s hard to imagine anyone having bespoke underwear these days, but I guess Drummond Shanderson isn’t just anyone. Finally I placed his dressing gown back on its hanger and started on the bathroom.
There were towels strewn everywhere, and he hadn’t even bothered to let the water out of the bath.
Jesus! I thought. This guy doesn’t do anything for himself—and I thought he was supposed to be low maintenance.
As I began to tidy all his toiletries on the washstand, I came across a small glass bottle. It was in the shape of an old-fashioned apothecary bottle with a gray ribbon tied around the neck and a tiny crystal stopper. The label on it read:
BLENHEIM BOUQUET
One sniff of the bottle told me it was the cologne I had smelled earlier. I stood for a moment with my eyes closed, thinking about Lord Shanderson, but quickly pulled myself together and put the bottle back on the shelf where I had found it.
With Lord Shanderson out of the picture for most of the day, I opted for a run to try to shift the bacon sandwich that I could feel weighing down on my conscience as well as my stomach.
The weather outside was damp and cold, but all I had with me was the gym kit I was used to wearing in the comfort of the hotel health club. The skimpy nylon shorts and flimsy tracksuit top weren’t really suitable for cross-country running, but would just have to do, and I figured that if I ran fast enough I could generate my own heat. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I was determined not to let my change in career lead to a change in my waist size.
I managed to avoid bumping into anyone on my way out of the castle, and in a matter of minutes I was beating a path across the fields and building up quite a head of steam. It was ages since I’d been for a proper run, and at first I felt ungainly and a bit out of kilter. I stumbled and tripped a couple of times, reminding me how very different an activity running on a treadmill is, not to mention how much easier it is. I was used to running for forty-five minutes or more, but today I’d been at it for a third of that time, and I was really feeling the strain. Even though the muscles in my calves and thighs were screaming for mercy as I splashed through muddy puddles and vaulted over rickety wooded stiles, I had to admit I was really rather enjoying myself. After stopping for a moment to catch my breath, I laughed out loud when I saw the state I was in. Splattered from head to toe in mud and with shorts that were wet and clinging obscenely to the contours of my thighs, I hoped to God that I wouldn’t bump into anyone whilst I looked such a mess.
I decided to run to the farthest edge of the estate, which looked to be about half a mile away and was marked by the high stone wall. After that I would head back to the castle for a good long soak in a hot bath, and be ready to start work again by the time Lord Shanderson returned.
After reaching the wall I leaned on an old tree stump, stretched out my calves, and tried to figure out which would be the best path to take back to the castle. The direct route I had just come on was one option, but I didn’t think my legs would cope with the return journey over the rough, uneven ground. But there was also a narrow track running off to the left that disappeared into the woods. I knew that on the far side of the woods was the lake, so by my rough calculation the path could only lead back to the castle. Apart from anything else, even if it were a slightly longer route, it looked as if it would be a bit more forgiving, so I set off with renewed vigor.
Sure enough after ten minutes of running through the woods I arrived at the lake. The path had dwindled to not much more than an animal track, but I followed it along the water’s edge until it trailed off altogether, leaving me no choice but to head back the way I had just come. But before I turned around I noticed, through a line of dense trees, the back of an old stone cottage set on slightly higher ground. I scrambled up the steep, muddy bank, which sloped down from an overgrown and neglected rear garden. There was a light on inside the cottage an
d sweet-smelling wood smoke pouring from the chimney, but when I peered through the window there was no sign of life. I fought my way through a thick tangle of brambles to get to the front of the cottage, and there, coming toward me with arms full of logs, was George.
“Where did you just pop up from?” he asked, looking genuinely surprised to see me.
“I went for a run, and I was trying to get back to the castle when the path I was on just sort of ran out,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.
“You look like you’ve been for a swim not a run,” he said, looking down at my soaked kit. “You must be frozen.”
“Not quite, but I suppose I’m not really dressed for this weather.” I laughed through chattering teeth.
“Why don’t you come and dry off,” he said, pushing past me and holding open the front door. “It’s lovely and warm inside.”
By now I was shivering uncontrollably, so the warmth that emanated from the cottage’s interior drew me in like a moth to a flame. As I passed inside I noticed a small wooden plaque attached to the front door. Although it was faded and some of the painted letters had peeled away, there was no mistaking what it said:
ROSE VIEW COTTAGE
So, I thought as I entered the darkness of the cottage’s interior, George is living in “my” cottage, is he?
George kicked off his riding boots and threw a couple of logs into the wood burner before tossing the rest into a waiting basket. He then sank back onto an old battered Chesterfield before speaking. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, bending down to pick up an empty beer can. “I wasn’t expecting guests.”
“That’s quite all right,” I replied. “I wasn’t planning a visit.”
The room smelled strongly of leather and saddle soap; bits of broken saddles, riding crops, and other horsey paraphernalia covered every surface, and magazines and books littered the floor. The room had the vague air of student digs, but I felt a twinge of jealousy when I realized it had the one thing I would never have over at the castle: privacy.
Manservant Page 9