He managed to stop himself making a witty remark about closets. Mainly because he didn’t think she’d find it funny. Victoria Hamilton was the most serious and earnest woman he’d ever met. ‘Surely the more important your guest, the posher the room you’d use?’
‘No. The public rooms meant everyone could hear what you were talking about. Nowadays it’d be the equivalent of, say, video-calling your bank manager about your overdraft on speakerphone in the middle of a crowded coffee shop. The more privacy you wanted, the smaller the room and the smaller the number of people who could overhear you and gossip. Even the servants couldn’t overhear things in the closet.’
‘Got you. So that’s where you’d plot your business deals?’
‘Or revolutions, or marriage-brokering.’
He followed her back to the salon.
‘Then we have the Long Gallery—it runs the whole length of the house. When it was too cold and wet to walk in the gardens, they’d walk here. Mainly just promenading up and down, looking at the pictures or through the windows at the garden. It’s a good place to think.’
She flushed slightly then, and Sam realised she’d accidentally told him something personal. When Victoria Hamilton needed to think, she paced. Here.
‘Next door, in the ballroom, they’d hold musical soirées. Sometimes it was a piano recital, sometimes there would be singing, and sometimes they’d have a string quartet for a ball.’
‘The room where you have the mould problem,’ he remembered. Was she blinking away tears? Crying over a room?
‘We’ve tested the air and it’s safe for visitors—you don’t need a mask or anything,’ she said.
He wasn’t going to pretend he knew much about mould, other than the black stuff that had crept across the ceiling of his friends’ houses during his student days. So he simply followed her through.
‘Oh.’ It wasn’t quite what he’d expected. The walls, curtains and upholstery were all cream and duck-egg-blue; there was a thick rug in the centre of the room, a grand piano, and chairs and chaises-longue laid out along the walls. There were mirrors on all the walls, reflecting the light from the windows and the chandelier.
‘It’s not a huge ballroom,’ she said. ‘Big enough for about fifty, and they’d have supper downstairs in the dining room or they’d lay out a standing supper in the Long Gallery.’
‘Is it ever used as a ballroom now?’ he asked, intrigued.
‘Not for years, but I’m planning to use it as part of the fundraising. It’ll be a Christmas ball, with everyone wearing Regency dress, and dinner will be a proper Regency ball supper.’
Her dark eyes were bright, and it was the first time Sam had seen her really animated. It shocked him to realise how gorgeous she was, when she wasn’t being earnest. When she was talking about something she really loved, she glowed.
‘That all sounds fun.’
‘We’ll attract fans of Austen and the Regency,’ she said. ‘And that’ll be the theme for the week. Craft workshops and decking the house out for Christmas, so visitors can feel part of the past.’
Feel part of the past. Now Sam understood her. This was clearly her favourite room in the house, and she must be devastated by the fact that this was the room with the problem. Now he could see why she’d blinked away tears.
‘Forgive me for being dense, but I can’t see any signs of mould,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it usually black and on the ceiling?’
‘This is white and it’s behind the mirror that usually goes over the mantelpiece, but it’s just come to the edge. You can see it under ultraviolet light.’ She sighed. ‘We’ll have to take the hangings down to dry them out and then make sure we get all the spores.’
He walked over to the mantelpiece and put his fingers to the wall, and she winced visibly.
‘Don’t touch because of the mould?’ he asked.
‘Don’t touch because of the oils on your fingertips, which will damage the silk,’ she corrected.
‘So this isn’t wallpaper?’
‘It’s silk,’ she said, ‘though it’s hung as wallpaper.’
‘Pasted to the wall?’
‘Hung on wooden battens,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing you haven’t covered the care of textiles or paper on your course, then.’
He was going to have to come clean about this—at least partially. ‘Now you’ve shown me round, why don’t we talk about the job?’ he asked.
‘OK.’ She led him through the house without commenting, but he could tell that she didn’t take her surroundings for granted, she loved the place. It was her passion—just as he’d thought that fund management was his, but meeting Victoria had shown him that his feelings didn’t even come close. Otherwise why would he feel perfectly fine about dropping everything to take over from his father?
Stockbroking wasn’t his passion, either. He was doing this to make sure his father had a lot less stress in his life.
Did he even have a passion? he wondered. His best friend, Jude, lit up whenever Shakespeare was mentioned. Whereas Sam... He enjoyed the fast pace of his life, but there wasn’t anything that really moved him or drove him. Since Olivia, he’d shut off from everything, lived just for the moment. He’d thought he was happy. But now he was starting to wonder. Was his father right and he was living in a useless bubble?
He shook himself and followed Victoria through a door in the panelling, and then down a narrow staircase.
‘Shortcut—the former servants’ corridors,’ she said, and ushered him into a room that was clearly her office.
Everything was neat and tidy. Obviously she had a clear desk policy, because the only things on the gleaming wood were a laptop computer, a photograph, and a pot of pens. The walls were lined with shelves, and the box files on them were all neatly labelled.
‘May I offer you some coffee?’ she asked.
Right now he could kill for coffee. It might help him get his brain back into some semblance of order. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Are you a dog person or a cat person?’ she asked.
That was a bit out of left field. Would it affect a potential job offer? ‘I didn’t grow up with either,’ he said carefully, ‘so I’d say I’m neutral. Though I’d certainly never hurt an animal.’
‘OK. Wait here and I’ll bring the coffee back. My dog’s a bit over-friendly and he’s wet—which is why he’s in the kitchen,’ she explained. ‘How do you take your coffee?’
‘Black, no sugar, thanks.’
‘Two minutes,’ she said. ‘And perhaps you can email me your CV while I’m sorting coffee.’ She took a business card from the top drawer of her desk and handed it to him. ‘My email address is here.’
‘Sure,’ he said.
Samuel Weatherby was nothing like Victoria had been expecting. He was older, for a start—about her own age, rather than being an undergraduate or just applying for his second degree—and much more polished. Urbane. Although she wasn’t one for fashion, she could tell that his suit and shoes were both expensively cut. Way outside the budget of the nerdy young student she’d thought he’d be.
So who exactly was Samuel Weatherby, and why had he come for this job?
She put the kettle on, shook grounds into the cafetière and made a fuss over Humphrey, who was still wet and muddy from the lake. While the coffee was brewing, she slipped her phone from the pocket of her jacket and checked her email. Samuel had sent over his