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Pickeridge batted his hand through the air. “That can wait. I want to hear all about it from your own lips, but for now, it can wait. You’ve been summoned to Harcourt Alabaster Manor.”
It was a pompous as shit name, but when Ethan looked it up on the Internet after he was glued together at the hospital and got back home, it seemed to be a family-run business that had been going since the late eight hundreds. The manor had been won in a bet over a cockfight and turned into a cottage business, if you could get over the absurdity of calling anything about that place a cottage.
After a generation, the Harcourts built a family home in an influential neighborhood closer to the city, transportation being what it was, and the family wanted to enjoy “polite society.”
That’s not what it said on the official website; the information Ethan was reading was posted on another site that looked like it was run as a hobby—someone interested in local history with all the receipts—pictures, architectural drawings, and the article about Mr. Edward Binglington losing his family home in a cockfight and how, after Edward’s untimely death, his wife ended up in the poor house.
That was quite a way to fall.
Harcourt Alabaster Toilette Company became a popular brand.
The family became generationally wealthy.
And now, Harcourt Alabaster (the modern, shortened name) housed its paper pushers and executive suite in the mansion and used the ballroom for their parties.
Mr. Pickeridge clapped Ethan on the back, right over the spot where his worst glass cut throbbed. “Remember the golden rule?”
“Treat others the way you wish to be treated?” Ethan had asked.
“No, man, the golden rule is to weigh every damned word out of your mouth. If you aren’t talking about the weather, you need your lawyer present. I’ve been in this business long enough to know that these people play by a different set of rules. They know every lawyer and judge in the area. They go to each other’s weddings and pass information on the golf links. Anything you say will be twisted into a knot that will form your noose.”
Ethan quirked a single brow. What the hell? He’d saved the woman.
“There were no arrests,” Pickeridge said, “they may want someone to be responsible.”
“So this isn’t a handshake and a bonus check?” Ethan asked.
“There’s a solid policy against rewards and bonus checks. You know that.”
“Yes, sir, I was just trying to lighten things up.”
“My man,” Pickeridge put his arm around Ethan’s shoulder, “you never know what it is that they’ve got in mind. Now, if they ask you about yourself, you can lean full tilt into your hero schtick.”
“I haven’t got one of those, sir.”
“You can talk about your advanced training and Tango’s training. But you can’t say a word about the rescue.”
“I was hoping to find out how Mrs. Harcourt was doing.”
Pickeridge scowled. “My understanding was that she wasn’t injured.”
“Maybe some bruising from the accident. No obvious signs that she’d been beaten or anything.”
“Still. Mouth shut. That’s an order.”
He’d keep his mouth shut.
Summoned.
As Ethan drove past the wrought-iron gate into the parking lot, he could imagine the heavy clop of horse hooves on the cobblestones as they approached the front entrance, with its massive canopy that would let carriages pull up, and ladies in their gowns dismount without getting muddy or wet.
This place was monstrous.
And it looked oddly out of place, stuck in a jungle of modern glass-and-metal structures. It was like going out dancing, and someone’s grandmother was in the middle of the room, getting down. Grandma was more than welcome, but it was still odd to find her there.
He drove into the parking area.
The vehicles here were the ones he'd read about, but they weren’t the everyday cars he’d see on the street. They were the kind that made the covers of glossy magazines.
