The Masterful Mr. Montague by Stephanie Laurens

requirements to a T.
    He walked into the sitting room, his footsteps faintly echoing.
    “Dinner’s ready and waiting, sir!” Mrs. Trewick sang from the kitchen. “Just take your seat at the table and Trewick will bring it out.”
    Montague smiled and did as he was bid. He exchanged the usual comments with Trewick as the man served the three courses of succulent and substantial fare; at the completion of the meal, as he usually did, Montague sent his compliments to Mrs. Trewick, which, as it always did, pleased Trewick no end.
    In pleasant accord, he and his staff parted for the night, the pair to retreat to their quarters while he ambled into the study, then, book in hand, wandered into the sitting room, where the fire Trewick had stoked blazed, eradicating the chill of the evening.
    Sinking into his favorite of the pair of armchairs angled before the fire, Montague reached for the small tantalus that sat on the side table. He poured himself a small glass of whisky, a drop he’d grown partial to since taking over the Earl of Glencrae’s accounts, then sat back and sipped.
    For several moments, he simply sat, book closed in his lap, glass poised in one hand, and stared into the flames.
    And heard again in his mind the contrast in sound between when his staff left the office for their homes, and when he did.
    When his staff left, their expectations of pleasure, of simple joy, and their confidence in finding those things when they returned to their hearths, homes, and loved ones rang in their voices. When he left, all was silent, even within him.
    Because he didn’t have anyone, no one dear to him, so he only had a house, not a home.
    That, he knew, was the critical difference, and while it hadn’t previously bothered him—not over the long years during which he had striven to build his firm to its present preeminence—the silence, the emptiness of his house, the loneliness, all reached him now.
    He’d achieved his goals, and more, but the triumph seemed hollow.
    After a moment, his gaze drifted, coming to rest on the empty armchair opposite. Unbidden, his mind supplied an image of Violet Matcham sitting there, the firelight glinting in her dark hair, her head tilted with that subtle grace that was peculiarly hers, a gentle smile curving her lips, lighting her blue eyes.
    Montague considered the image for several minutes, then shook his head, dismissed the dream, opened his book, and settled to read.
    A cross London, in Albemarle Street in Mayfair, Penelope Adair sat at the foot of her dinner table and exchanged a meaningful look with her friend, Griselda Stokes, then both ladies turned their eyes upon the two gentlemen sharing the table with them.
    “There must be some interesting case we can assist you with,” Penelope declared.
    Barnaby Adair, seated at the head of the table, glanced at Basil Stokes, friend and colleague, then Barnaby straightened, negligently waved, and nonchalantly said, “There really isn’t much by way of ‘crimes-to-investigate’ plaguing the ton and Scotland Yard at this particular time.”
    Aware of the oblique qualifications built into that statement, Penelope regarded her spouse through narrowing eyes. “It needn’t be anything expressly to do with the ton—you aren’t about to tell me that there aren’t any crimes to investigate in London at all, are you?”
    “Hardly!” The spontaneous reply came from Stokes, lounging in his chair. He immediately recovered and stated, “However, Barnaby’s correct in that there are no drawing room dramas, so to speak, presently unsolved.”
    “The Crimmins affair was the last,” Barnaby said. “But since then—over the summer and into the autumn—all has been quiet in Mayfair.”
    “I believe,” Griselda said, her soft voice a contrast to the bolder, more confident tones of the others; of the four of them, she spoke the least, but when she did, the others listened, as they did now, “that what Penelope meant to imply was that the