King's Man: Outlawed 1 by Sally Malcolm

Author:Sally Malcolm [Malcolm, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

“Wait here please, sir.”

The footman disappeared down a long corridor, his shoes clacking on the white marble floor, leaving Sam in a vast mausoleum of an entrance hall. Stone pillars edged the space, between which the dead-eyed gaze of austere marble busts regarded him with suspicion. MacLeod’s esteemed ancestors, no doubt.

Pirates, according to Nate, ruthless young buccaneers who’d settled in the West Indies, discovered sugar cane, and amassed vast fortunes off the backs of enslaved laborers. Now their descendants masqueraded as aristocrats. But perhaps all aristocrats were descended from brigands if you looked back far enough.

Opposite the entrance, a beautiful grandfather clock stood against the far wall, measuring out time with a patient tick-tock. A slow heartbeat in this dead space. A pair of matching footmen, no more than half an inch between them in height, stood sentinel either side of it, dressed in knee breeches, braided coats, and powdered wigs. Handsome, Sam noticed, if your taste ran to tall, athletic, and fair. A pair of human ornaments. He wondered whether it was Lord or Lady Marlborough who relished the sight of their well-shaped calves.

At the back of the hall rose an enormous staircase, sweeping up and around to an entresol overlooking the doorway. The lord of the manor could stand there and look down on his subjects like a king surveying his domain. As with everything about Marlborough Castle, it appeared designed to intimidate. And it told Sam everything he needed to know about its master.

Under the guise of gaping in awe, he attempted to create a mental map of what he could see. Double doors stood open to his left and right, through which he could glimpse more marble and opulence. An explosion of male laughter drifted through the doors on his left, from a more distant part of the house. This would be where MacLeod entertained, but his study would be part of the suite of rooms in which he conducted private business. Upstairs, more than likely. Sam eyed the sweeping staircase with distaste. It would be much too exposed to use when he came back tonight, but as he carefully scanned the hallway, he saw an inconspicuous door virtually hidden amid the walls’ wooden paneling: the servants’ stairs. These great houses all had them — passages and staircases that allowed the servants to move about the house like rats behind the wainscoting, hiding their honest work from aristocratic eyes. God forbid Lady Marlborough encounter a maid carrying her husband’s night water downstairs.

But servants’ stairs or not, Sam would need to see more than this damned entrance hall if he were to find MacLeod’s study, and that would depend on whether he was permitted inside. Nate had assured him that Lord Marlborough was not so aristocratic that he left his business in the hands of an agent, but Sam was more skeptical. In his experience, men of MacLeod’s position liked to pretend their fortunes were God-given, preferring to leave the unseemly matter of running their affairs to others. In

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