night in the field to face his sire had ever been a party. But familiarity didn’t just breed contempt. Sometimes it formed the bookends of your life, buttressing your novels and nonfictions alike so that they stood up straight and didn’t fall off the shelves.
When those confines were suddenly and unexpectedly removed, even if they had been unpleasant, you ended up with a case of out-oforder that made you rattled.
On that note, he braced himself and looked across the foyer. The doors to his father’s study were open, and the walnut walls glowed in the buttery light of the fire that glowed in the marble hearth. Heading over, he leaned against the entrance’s doorjamb, his eyes traveling across the leather books that filled shelves. And the oil paintings of horses that Altamere had owned in the Old Country. And the brass sconces and the two brass chandeliers that threw illumination in a complementary fashion to that which emanated from the fireplace.
“Did you require something.”
The words were technically a question. The tone was a suspicious demand.
Boone looked over his shoulder. Marquist had materialized from out of nowhere, although given the fact that there were security cameras throughout the house, his perfectly rotten timing was not a surprise. The male was also back to SOP. In contrast to the night before, when he had been clearly shocked by the news, the butler was in proper form, his pressed suit buttoned up, his starched shirt white as fresh snow, his tie knotted so tightly at his throat, it was a wonder he could breathe.
No more shaking hands. This time, the perennial polishing cloth was as steady as ever.
“No,” Boone said. “I do not require anything.”
Entering his father’s study, he pulled the doors shut on the other male, very aware that it was tantamount to a declaration of war. But like the pair of them hadn’t always locked horns? Some things, death did not change.
Some things, death made worse.
Crossing the Persian rug, Boone placed the urn on the corner of the Jacobean desk, right beside a Tiffany dragonfly lamp and a rock crystal sculpture of a rearing stallion. Maybe the ashes could just sit here for a while, like any other vase-ish thing in the room. It wasn’t like there was anything to rot inside the container.
Unlike the refrigerated corpse of that female.
With a heavy feeling in his bones, Boone went around behind the desk and sat in his father’s leather chair. Placing his hands palm down on the blotter, he stared out into space.
Where was the will?
The question had been brewing in his mind for the last twenty-four hours—no, wait. Longer than that. He had been wondering, for at least the last decade, but especially the previous twelve months since he’d made that paternity threat, whether his father was going to cut him out of things. Leave the money and the house and the personal effects to someone else.
Or a cat. Not that they had any pets.
But Altamere always had been a huge Karl Lagerfeld fan.
Tilting to the side, Boone tried to pull out the top drawer on the left. Locked. Same with the rest of them. As he straightened, he wondered what was more important to his sire, his supposed posthumous propriety or revenge for his first shellan’s possible mistake with another male—
The knock on the door was sharp.
Speak of the devil.
And Boone debated not answering it just to see how far Marquist would push things. But goddamn, he was tired. “Come in.”
The butler yanked the doors apart, and as the male saw Boone sitting at his sire’s desk, the anger that flared in that face could not be hidden.
“Tell me something,” Boone said as he took care to settle back into his father’s chair and cross his legs comfortably at the knee. “Where are the keys to this desk?”
A mask of professionalism slammed down on the butler’s hostility, closing off the emotion. “I do not know.”
“You’ve been in charge of this entire house for how long? You were my father’s right-hand male—and you don’t know where the keys are?” Boone indicated over his shoulder, to a painting entitled Grand Champion Altamere’s Bespoke Beauty. “How about the safe that’s behind here.”
As the butler registered surprise, Boone smiled coldly. “Yes, I know it’s there. Are you going to tell me you don’t know the combination?”
“These are private areas of your father’s—”
“My father is dead. They are mine now. Everything under this roof is mine.”