Virtue and Vice

Chapter Two

At my request, Mrs. Simmons put me in one of the smaller guest bedrooms at the other side of the house, farthest from the master suite. 

Actually, I’d asked her to put me in the staff quarters where she herself stayed, explaining that I was to stay for the summer as help in whatever capacity I was needed. She wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that I was still a guest even if I wanted to lend a hand. 

I decided it was best not to argue. The fewer questions they asked me about my original reason for arriving in Cove Manor, the better. 

The staff was surprisingly small for a house this size—a housekeeper, a driver, a cook, a gardener, four maids and two security guards, not counting Jennison whom Mrs. Simmons explained was Sebastian’s personal bodyguard and right hand and stayed wherever his employer was. Cove Manor was apparently just one of Sebastian’s many homes and he usually only stayed here during the summer. 

A week had passed since my arrival and fortunately it had passed without incident. 

I haven’t seen Sebastian once since he hasn’t been home much and on the one night that he was, I took care to stay in my room. 

I busied myself with helping Mrs. Simmons with the chores. I liked everyone in the staff who had been friendly to me but the housekeeper reminded me very much of my aunt. She gave me very light tasks to start out with—like helping sort the laundry or loading the dishwasher or helping out at the kitchen or the garden.

After a week, she found that Bart, the portly, middle-aged cook with the apple-pink cheeks and hearty laugh, found me the most useful and assigned me to assist mostly in the kitchen. I had no complaints. 

I’d always helped my aunt around the kitchen but Bart took my culinary education to the next level, sharing with me tips and techniques to make excellent food. He didn’t stay in the manor along with the rest of the staff but lived fifteen minutes away with his family. He said he wanted me to be able to whip something up if he wasn’t around. 

During that week, I casually asked the staff about Sebastian and they didn’t tell me much except that he was a good employer even though he could be a tad bit difficult at times. Just the way he is, they said. Brilliant as a businessman and complicated as a person. I could tell they wanted to share a little more, especially Bart and Mrs. Simmons who seemed to have been in his employ much longer than the others but I could tell they were protective of his privacy, which made me oddly curious.

Despite participating in a lot of the housework, I still had a lot of free time in my hands. I spent it walking around the grounds, even once taking the long, narrow wooden stairs that led to the private beach below, or spending time reading from the vast collection of books in the library where Mrs. Simmons had allowed me to sneak into as long as Sebastian wasn’t around. The books were all serious stuff though. A lot of them were about business, history, sciences, philosophy and literary classics. I had little money and as much as I’d like to read my usual romance novels, I decided to make use of what was available. I rediscovered Jayne Eyre all over again.

I had brought my old, slightly banged up laptop with me and since I had internet access in my bedroom, I finally gave in to searching every information I could find about Sebastian Vice.

He was twenty-nine but at eighteen his father died and Sebastian became the CEO of The Vice Group, his family’s privately held corporation that did almost everything from oil to shipping to textile. His latest acquisition a mere three months ago was a technologies company that focused on corporate security. He was reputed to be cunning and ruthless in business but too powerful to be openly criticized. I wasn’t surprised. In a way, I understood his hardness—a person given that much responsibility at that young an age was bound to grow up fast. Just like I did.