4.2This officer: 0600–0645 hrs (breakfast preparation); 1230–1300 hrs (lunch preparation, if taken at the residence); 1830–1915 hrs (dinner preparation).
4.3Outside the windows at 4.2, the kitchen shall be considered available for the Principal’s use without restriction. This officer shall endeavour, during the Principal’s use of the kitchen, to remain either in his bedroom, the study, or theadjacent corridor, and shall not loiter within the kitchen itself unless specifically invited by the Principal to do so.
4.4Either party may, by mutual agreement, vary the windows above on any given day, provided that notice of the variation is given not less than thirty minutes in advance.
4.5Shared provisions (milk, coffee, bread, olive oil) shall be replenished by whichever party first notes their depletion. A list shall be maintained on the refrigerator door for this purpose.
5. DRAWING ROOM AND COMMON SPACES
5.1The drawing room is the principal shared space of the residence. Both parties are entitled to use it at any time without prior notice or permission.
5.2Notwithstanding 5.1, this officer shall endeavour to remain out of the drawing room during periods when the Principal is occupying it for purposes of rest, reading, correspondence, telephone calls, or entertainment, save where a specific operational or security concern requires his presence.
5.3Where this officer is required to pass through the drawing room in order to access another part of the residence, he shall do so at an unhurried but purposeful pace, and shall not engage the Principal in conversation unless the Principal addresses him first.
6. NOISE
6.1Both parties shall endeavour to minimise noise during the hours of 2300–0600.
6.2The playing of music in common spaces during the hours specified at 6.1 shall be avoided.
6.3Telephone calls taken within the residence during the hours specified at 6.1 shall, where possible, be taken from the caller’s bedroom with the door closed.
7. GUESTS
7.1The Principal is entitled to receive guests at the residence. This officer shall be informed of the expected arrivalof any guest not less than one hour in advance, for the purpose of security clearance.
7.2During the visit of a guest, this officer shall remain within the residence but shall absent himself from the drawing room and such other spaces as the Principal and his guest may occupy, save in the event of a security concern.
7.3This officer shall not receive personal guests at the residence during the term of this arrangement.
Vidal stopped laughing.
He read 7.3 a second time, slowly, and then a third.This officer shall not receive personal guests at the residence during the term of this arrangement.The Major had written himself out of the possibility of a visitor entirely for the next five months. He’d not drafted an exception for a sister, or an old Sandhurst friend, or a woman he might one day wish to bring home for a glass of wine. He had simply closed the door on all of it, because he had decided that this was what the job required of him. That was Beauchamp through and through.
8. REVIEW
8.1These protocols shall be reviewed weekly by both parties. Amendments may be proposed by either party at any time and shall come into effect upon the written agreement of both.
8.2In the event that either party considers the arrangement to have become untenable, that party shall raise the matter at the earliest opportunity with the appropriate authority (in this officer’s case, his commanding officer; in the Principal’s case, Her Serene Highness Princess Anne of Cardona).
Signed:H. R. Beauchamp, Maj., Household Division
Countersignature required:
The final page had a single line ruled across the bottom for his signature.
Vidal laid the stack of papers down on the duvet beside Mercè. Beauchamp had stayed up to write this, and it made his chest do a delighted flip.
Vidal had been raised on theatre and spectacle, on aunts who threw wine glasses at husbands they adored, and uncles who ended arguments over correct barbecuing technique with fisticuffs. The entire Cardonan sensibility held that if a thing mattered, you shouted about it. Beauchamp had taken a thing that mattered, typed it out, and he hadput a clause number on each carefully framed point.
It was, Vidal decided, the sweetest gesture of caretaking he had ever encountered in his life.
He slid out of bed and didn’t bother with slippers as he eased the door open, and stepped out into the corridor. Vidal walked the length of the corridor in complete silence, stopped in front of the second bedroom’s door, and raised his knuckles. Then he paused, glanced down at the document in his other hand, and allowed himself a private smile at what he was about to do.
As a little act of rebellion, he didn’t knock. The door swung inwards on hinges that didn’t squeak. The curtains had been drawn, but not fully, so that a pale wedge of morning light had found its way through the gap and laid itself across the bed, catching the far corner of the pillow and the dark head resting against it. Beauchamp was asleep on his side, one arm folded beneath his cheek, the other thrown loosely across the duvet, which had slid down as far as his waist.
Vidal stopped inside the threshold of Beauchamp’s bedroom and let the door come to rest against his bare heel.
