“Thank you, Rob. I trust my daughter hasn’t been driving you too crazy?” Neil asked him.
“Not at all, sir. She’s very efficient. Helps to shake the staff up a bit.” Rob the butler motioned to the young man who’d followed him out. He went to the trunk and retrieved two of our bags. A twinge of guilt niggled me at the thought that I was letting a real servant carry something for me. If my family ever found out, I would never live it down.
“This is Ms. Scaife, she’ll be staying with me over the holiday,” Neil introduced me to Rob, and I reached out to shake his hand.
“Madam.”
“Oh, um.” I shrugged. “You don’t have to call me madam. Sophie is fine.”
Neil steered me through the door, onto the checked marble floor of the entrance hall. Tall stone arches rose over our head. They reminded me of the vestibule at St. Patrick’s cathedral back in New York. Rob took our coats, and Neil led me the rest of the way into the house. The hall widened, stretching into an impressive dark wood foyer. Winter flowers— pale pink Christmas Roses and white Poinsettias— were gathered in enormous arrangements in tall urns on either side of a massive staircase. The ceiling was open to the second story, where toga-draped cherubs pointed down at us from an intricate mural. The tall, leaded glass windows on the landing lit the otherwise dark foyer, though I was certain the fuck-off huge chandelier hanging overhead would provide plenty of illumination.
Neil’s footsteps echoed off the marble. “Sophie? Are you coming?”
I snapped my head down so fast I almost got whiplash. Neil was standing at the wide doorway to the left of the staircase, his hands in his pockets, super relaxed and slightly perplexed at my gaping mouth and wide eyes.
“Yeah,” I said quickly, taking hurried steps across the huge space to catch up with him. “This is... well, I mean, it’s no Chinatown walk up, but it’s okay.”
“You haven’t seen the rest of it,” he said, walking slowly to meet me. “There are forty-five bedrooms. I think we should make a checklist, so the next time we’re here, we can begin marking each one off.”
I stepped into his arms and stood on my tiptoes for a quick peck. “Do you anticipate spending a lot of time here?”
“I anticipate retiring here— if I ever do.” My sudden stomach plummet must have been visible on my face, because he quickly added, “Because I like working. That’s all I meant by it.”
I couldn’t think of a good response that wouldn’t just invoke more death thoughts, so I said, “Well, show me more of this place. Do we take a shuttle, or...”
He swatted my behind playfully. “Come on. I want to find Emma.”
Beyond the doorway was a long room done up with butter yellow brocade on the walls, more tall leaded glass windows surrounded by heavy drapes, two huge oil portraits of folks that were probably long dead, and a fancy marble fireplace that seemed to have been placed there as an afterthought.
“This is the east gallery,” Neil told me as we walked. “If you ever get lost, the house is oriented facing south.”
“I forgot to bring my compass.” I snapped my fingers with an “aw shucks” arm motion.
“That smart mouth is going to earn you a spanking.” He looped his arm around my waist as we walked. “Through there is a staircase, and at the end is the drawing room.”
“What are these doors in between?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“I don’t know, actually. The servants come and go through them all the time, I assume they know where they lead.”
There were places in his own house that he hadn’t seen. Oh, I didn’t have the strength to deal with that one right now.
At the end of the gallery, another wide doorway stood open, and I spotted movement inside.
“Ah, they must be putting up the tree,” Neil said, clapping his hands together and speeding us along.
When we stepped through the door, a dozen people in snappy black uniforms stopped what they were doing and looked at us with wide eyes. A slender middle-aged woman with graying brown hair in a pixie cut emerged from behind one massive evergreen bough. The tree was so big, it almost distracted me from the grandness and vastness of the room itself. The high ceiling was worked with dark wood beams. The walls were the same dark wood, the floor covered in a plush red carpet. A seating area in the center boasted furnishings that probably belonged in a museum of Victorian style, and I noted that despite the number of people in the room, no one was sitting on any of it.
“Mr. Elwood,” the woman said with a pleasant smile that contradicted the mildly panicked looks on the faces of everyone else. “We didn’t realize you’d be arriving so soon. Shall we clear this room?”