“I spend most of my time in the stables, with the horses,” the employer readily admitted. “The house would be your job, and making sure the tours go smoothly, that none of them wind up in my bedroom by mistake, and making sure that my current girlfriend, a very sweet Czech girl, doesn’t sell what’s left of the silver. Both of my parents are dead, thank God, so there’s none of that to worry about. And my sister hates the place. She lives in Italy, married to an Italian, and only shows up to make sure she gets her share of the money from the tours.” It sounded like chaos to Joachim, but a kind of chaos he understood, of British aristocrats who had run out of money, were trying to find resourceful ways to hang on to their estates and still run them, and keep the place looking decent. He knew of several homes that had turned into tourist attractions and managed to survive that way. He wasn’t opposed to it, and he thought it might be fun to be involved in it. And it was obvious that the only thing the owner cared about were his horses, and possibly his girlfriends. But Joachim thought that the many hats he was now able to wear, especially after working on the chateau, might be useful to this employer. It wasn’t a formal, elegant job like he’d had with the Cheshires, but more like working for one of their profligate sons, if they’d had one, which they didn’t. The Cheshire heirs were all quite nice and well behaved, even if they didn’t want to live as grandly as their parents. Joachim had the distinct impression that this man had run through whatever he’d inherited, or was working on it, and shoring up the estate wherever possible.
Of all the jobs he’d just interviewed for, the last one seemed the most interesting, and possibly even amusing. At least it would be different. The potential employer seemed like fun. And it was just different enough to be intriguing.
“I’d be happy to come to Sussex, sir, to have a look, if that would be all right with you.”
“Fine, whenever you like. Very decent butler’s quarters. My parents were always very good to the staff. You’d have your own cottage on the grounds.” He quoted a salary, which was less than the Cheshires had paid, but more than the Texans had offered, and the job seemed like it was worth a look. “I’m master of the local hunt, so we do hunt breakfasts in the season. Something for the tourists to look at. We serve them breakfast if they like too, at quite a jolly price.” He winked at Joachim, who laughed. They seemed to be commercializing everything they could, without embarrassment.
They agreed that Joachim would come for a visit before the end of the week and shook hands on it. Halsey Mount-Williams left, and Joachim told the agency he was interested in the position, but still willing to interview for others. He thought the job in Sussex would give him the most latitude to run things as he wanted, with a fairly relaxed employer, and it was also well enough out of sight not to draw attention from Javier’s cohorts, if any of them showed up in England.
Joachim told his mother about it that night, and she said it sounded like a bit of a mess to her, and very English.
“It probably is a mess. I think that’s what I like about it. It’ll give me something to do. I would have been bored with the others I saw, and the Texan child bride would probably have raped me, which might not have been an unpleasant experience, but then her husband would have killed me.”
His mother laughed. “Aren’t there any proper jobs left, with respectable employers in decent houses?”
“Apparently not. I suppose there are some, but no one ever leaves those jobs until their employers die or they do.”
“Well, go to see the one in Sussex. He sounds like a black sheep to me.”
“Probably. And he’s horse mad. He sounds like he spends all his money on his horses. But he doesn’t look like a bad guy.” She was happy that he had found something, but still sad that he had left Paris.
* * *
—
Joachim went to see about the job at Pembroke Manor in Sussex two days later, and it was even more disorganized than he had imagined. The front of the house was in relatively good order. Two very attractive young women were running the tours, and they had set up several bedrooms to look the way they must have originally, along with a drawing room, and a dining room with a formally set table, which was quite dusty. They had managed to keep an aura of grandeur and dignity at the front of the house, with some very handsome family paintings, and heirlooms. The back of the house where Mount-Williams lived was a mess and didn’t look as though it had been cleaned in a decade. The first order of business if Joachim took the job would be to clean it up. You could see that a bachelor lived there. The furniture was threadbare and the once-beautiful curtains in shreds from age and sunlight. The gardens were in total disarray. Even those the tourists saw needed attention. The entire aura of the place was of decaying aristocracy and the thin remains of days of grandeur. Everything around the place was in need of cleaning and repair, and in some cases replacement. It wasn’t impossible to do, if the owner was willing to spend the money. And Joachim was willing to put the time and energy into making it shine again.