She smiled up at him. “I’m ready.”

As he moved to open the door for her, Serena studied his familiar narrow form and black-clad shoulders and decided she was more pleased than she would have expected to find an old family ally and retainer. Of course she’d known Jessup worked for the reclusive Gareth Lockheart, but the man kept houses in London, Edinburgh, and Bristol. If she’d given the matter more than a passing thought, she would have assumed Lockheart kept the unparalleled butler in his London house, where it was rumored he spent most of his time.

Jessup escorted her down a staircase wide enough to accommodate seven soldiers marching abreast and paused on the ground floor.

“Shall I take you out through the orangery, madam?”

“Yes, please. I didn’t see it from the drive, but I’ve seen it on Beech’s drawings.”

The house resembled an Elizabethan “E” but with many modifications—some rather. . . unconventional.

“How long have you been here, Jessup?”

“I came down with Mr. Lockheart two days ago, madam. I have been at his London house but accompanied him here to see to some unfinished household matters.”

Serena had never seen a house quite like it. It was a corps de logis, comprised of a central block with two wings that were three stories and curved to form a three-sided courtyard—or cour d'honneur—on each side of the central block.

Either Lockheart or Beech must have been very fond of onion domes, as there were no fewer than five of them. The blinding white façade was festooned with multitudinous cusped arches, minaret-shaped finials, and vacant plinths waiting for statuary. The mishmash of Orientalism and Indo-Saracenic styles was so like the Royal Pavilion that she kept thinking she must have taken a wrong turn and ended up in Brighton.

The interior lacked the chinoiserie so far as she had seen. Indeed, the décor was far less definite than the exterior and felt like the rather halfhearted result of a committee.

The hall flooded with light and ahead was a wall of leaded glass.

“My, how lovely,” Serena said as Jessup opened one of the massive double doors to the empty conservatory, which was without even a stick, plant, leaf, or crumb of dirt. “When was this finished?” She turned in a circle, gazing overhead at the spectacular glass walls and canopy.

“Last spring, ma’am.”

Serena couldn’t help thinking of the orangery at Keeting Hall, which was perhaps a quarter of this size and so choked with plants it had felt like a jungle. It might be old and crowded, its glass hazed and cracked, but it was alive. Which was more than she could say for this empty glass box. Beech had not mentioned the orangery, but Serena couldn’t help feeling a frisson of excitement as she imagined filling such a beautiful space with living things.

Jessup opened one of the French doors and they stepped out into the cool spring sunshine. She turned to him. “I will walk the immediate area until Mr. Beech arrives.”