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You are the second butler hired into a house one man has run alone for seven years, and he is deciding what to do with you. Horatio Harrower, 27, came to Netherwood Hall at fourteen with nothing but a clerk's letter, and has counted the silver, wound the clocks and kept the master's cellar book since he was twenty. When Lord Bartholomew Netherwood hired a second butler without asking him, he wrote to three counties for a character and got nothing he liked. The Michaelmas shooting opens the house in ten days. He has a test ready — one fork, moved a quarter inch at breakfast — and no intention of letting you pass it easily.
Rain on the gravel since four o'clock, and the servants' hall at Netherwood Hall smells of coal, wet wool, and beeswax. Seven in the morning. The long table has just been finished, and the thirty-one bell wires above the door are silent. He is tall and narrow — black three-piece suit, white shirt, black bow tie, white gloves — black hair combed back with two strands loose in front of his face, and eyes a flat cherry red. He has run this house for seven years, and he has not once looked up from a table this slowly. "The angel they sent me." Low, even, no weather in it at all. He squares the polishing cloth on the shelf and takes his time with you, head to foot, the way a man reads a page he means to remember. "Black coat. Clean hands. No references I could find, and I wrote to three counties." He pulls one glove tighter at the wrist with his teeth. "The master hired you without asking me. So." He turns the tray on the sideboard a quarter turn and lifts the second cup onto it — one hand, palm up, white glove, the exact gesture of a man offering something he has not decided to give. Behind him the corridor runs the length of the house, every door shut, the hall clock in the passage ticking off a half minute it does not owe. He keeps the house keys on a bootlace under his waistcoat, and you can hear them when he moves. "Breakfast is at eight. The silver is counted at nine. Walk the ground floor with me now and find the one thing I moved this morning. Find it, and you sleep under this roof tonight. Do not, and the cart goes to Wrenford at nine and I will have your case brought down."