While We Were Watching Downton Abbey Read Online Free PDF Page A

humidity, and manners.
    The Hungry Fox would go to his older brother, Bertie, much as the title and country estates his forebears had served in had gone to oldest sons. But that was all right with Edward, who had pulled plenty of pints behind the Fox’s scarred wood bar but could never imagine staying there; not even to keep the woman he’d loved.
    Bertie continued the tradition of mounting Edward’s postcards, which now papered an entire wall of the bar.
    The last seven years’ worth had been sent from Atlanta, making the Fox’s patrons among the lucky few in England to know exactly what the Fox Theatre, a restored Egyptian-themed 1920s movie house, looked like. He’d sent postcards of other Atlanta landmarks—like what was left of the apartment Miss Mitchell had written
Gone with the Wind
in; Stone Mountain, Atlanta’s answer to Mount Rushmore with its three-acre mountaintop carving of three Confederate heroes of the Civil War; CNN Center; Turner Field; the World of Coca Cola.
    Six months ago he’d sent not a postcard but a sales piece he’d had printed after his newly formed personal concierge company, Private Butler, had been selected by the Alexander’s condo board. It was a wide shot of the Alexander’s Beaux Arts façade, shot from across Peachtree. In one corner of the brochure was the Private Butler logo—the company name wrapped around a photo of Edward’s grandfather, William Parker, in the Montclaire livery he and his twin brother had worn so proudly.
    Edward took a final sip of his tea, checked the time, and removed his jacket from its hook. He wanted to do a tour of the fitness room and clubroom/theater. Then he’d take another look at the adjacent pool deck to see what it would need in the way of winterizing.
    He smoothed his collar, slipped his silenced cell phone into his jacket pocket, and added a stop at the security desk and an assessment of the valet’s uniform to his mental to-do list. He had always taken pride in a job well done, but it had taken the heavy-footed approach of his fiftieth birthday to make him look at building something for himself. Private Butler was a company that he could shape and build; one whose seeds had been sown in his forebears’ years “in service.”
    Edward had every intention of making them proud.
    * * *
    IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON AND SAMANTHA STOOD IN her gourmet kitchen staring into the pan of what was meant to be saltimbocca alla Romana, but which looked like a rolled-up lump of shoe leather—and not the expensive Manolo Blahnik kind.
    Damn.
    For a few moments she debated whether the veal could be saved. Doctored. Buried in some kind of sauce, preferably bottled, that would disguise its leathery qualities. She went to the pantry and walked inside to peruse the shelves, but unsurprisingly, nothing called out to her.
    Her attempts at family dinners had been more laughable than edible when she and Jonathan had first gotten married, but she had kept at it, ignoring the fact that he’d taken Meredith and Hunter out on “errands” after many of those meals and returned smelling like McDonald’s fries or Burger King onion rings.
    Then he’d started bringing home takeout a couple of nights a week. But Samantha remained determined to feed her cobbled-together family and she took the series of cooking lessons Jonathan gave her as a joke on their first anniversary very seriously. Just as she did the cooking schools in Tuscany, Provence, and the South Carolina Lowcountry, where she’d failed to master everything from deveining shrimp to whipping egg whites.
    With a sigh, Samantha stepped out of the pantry and closed the door behind her. It would take more than a can or jar to save the shriveled, congealing lump now burnt to the roasting pan. Conceding defeat she pulled her cell phone out of her purse and speed dialed the chef at one of Jonathan’s favorite Italian restaurants.
    “Giancarlo?” she asked when she heard his voice. “This is an SOS call.