There were times during the six months that Joachim wasn’t sure he would last. Sometimes the whole curriculum seemed utterly absurd in the modern world. It felt like an anachronism. There were a few times when he was bored, but not many. For the most part, his classes were interesting and a challenge. He enjoyed learning about fine wines, the best cigars, and proper table service. Table settings he had to measure with a ruler were the hardest part. He always left out one thing, and absolute flawless perfection was vital. The hierarchy of guests was stressed and had to be learned, along with titles, as well as the hierarchy of the servants, who outranked whom and who had to be seated where, even in the servants’ dining hall. There were a million rules to learn and follow. There were no exceptions, and the attitude of the instructors was rigid and unforgiving, but Joachim was surprised that he genuinely enjoyed it, and when he did something right, it felt like a real accomplishment. At the end of the six months, he graduated with excellent recommendations from his teachers. There was satisfaction in it, because it hadn’t been easy. His mother was fascinated by everything he told her, and how much he was obviously happy there. She couldn’t understand why he would want to be a servant, but he had definitely been prepared for the very highest caliber of the job, and he took pride in what he’d learned.
The school placed him in his first job with an earl who had a house in London, an estate in Norfolk, and a castle in Scotland. He was hired as an under-butler, with a large, somewhat disorganized staff. But he found them fun to work with. The earl was massively in debt and put all three properties on the market within a year, and Joachim was out of a job. But he had excellent references from the head butler and his employer.
Joachim went to a high-end London domestic employment agency after that, and with his training at the school and a year’s experience working for the earl, he landed a job as under-butler in the London home of the Marquess of Cheshire. The family had an estate in Sussex as well, with a butler there too. Their homes were beautifully maintained. They were distant cousins of the queen and the most elite members of the aristocracy came to the parties they frequently gave. Joachim learned a great deal while he was there. He honed his skills, and when the head butler retired four years later, Joachim became the head butler in the London house at thirty-one. He ran the staff with an iron hand by then and could spot a flaw in the table settings from a mile away. His understanding of the social hierarchy and etiquette was flawless. He was a perfectionist, and took pride in how well he did his job. And his discretion was legendary as to whatever he saw at house parties, among family or guests.
Joachim was equally discreet about his own life. The family he worked for was always his priority and his job. His personal life came last. There were brief affairs, when he had time, with domestics in other homes. He never dallied with the staff that worked for him, told no secrets, and although he liked pretty young women, he never made long-term promises or became too deeply involved. He felt he needed to remain a bachelor to do justice to his job. And he had little time for friends. It was a solitary life, which he accepted as part of his chosen career.
The Cheshires were quite old by the time Joachim was in charge. And the marquess needed considerable care when he fell ill. Joachim had a deep affection for him and frequently assisted him himself, although there were nurses to do it. The marquess was particularly fond of Joachim and trusted him. Joachim had been in the job for seven years when the marquess died. His children asked Joachim to stay on, continue to run the London house, and oversee the care of their mother, who had dementia by then. Joachim felt great concern for her and stayed for nine more years. He had been with them for sixteen years in all. The marchioness had finally died three months before. The children decided to sell the London house and the Sussex estate. Neither home suited their lifestyles, and they didn’t want to employ the huge staff that houses of that size and age required to maintain them. Their parents’ lifestyle didn’t suit them, and they didn’t want the burden or expense of great houses. They preferred to live more simply, and the family fortune was getting thin by then.
Joachim had helped them close both houses, sent the pieces they wanted to their homes, and helped arrange a massive auction at Sotheby’s for the rest. He had just finished and left for Paris before his trip to Argentina. He was staying with his mother in Paris, for a breather before returning to London to look for a new job. After sixteen years with the Cheshires, he felt he had earned a break, and it seemed the perfect time to go to Buenos Aires, after having dreamed of it for years.
There had been no news of Javier for many, many years. Another foray with a detective had confirmed all their worst fears. There was no doubt now. Javier was deeply embedded with men who ran a drug cartel, had been in and out of jail a few times, and was beyond their reach. They had no access to him, but Joachim still wanted to go back, see his own friends if he could find them. If he learned anything more about his twin, he could at least tell his mother. Joachim had no hope of seeing Javier, but they were always hungry for news of him after nearly twenty-three years of silence, interrupted only by upsetting rumors from old friends every few years.
Quite remarkably, Liese was still working, still hunting down major works of art, and returning them to their original owners or their heirs whenever possible. She was eighty-one now. She was physically a little slower, and looked frail, but her mind was as sharp as ever. She had been a widow for seventeen years, as long as Joachim had been working in England.
She was surprised when he told her he was going to Argentina for a visit. He was forty-two now, and they had left when he was seventeen. She no longer wanted to go back herself. She was content to stay in France. Paris was her home now, not Buenos Aires.
“Who do you even know there by now?” she asked him.
“The boys I went to school with. I still get Christmas cards from some of them. It might be nice to see them, one more time.”
“Are you looking for Javier?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him, and he hesitated.
“Maybe. I always have fantasies that our paths will cross again one day. We were so close as boys. And even when he started to change as a teenager, he was still my brother. He still is.”
“I was always afraid he would take a bad turn and head in the wrong direction. I should have made him come to Paris with us,” she said sadly. It was one of her few regrets. She didn’t have many and had led a good life. She was proud of Joachim. He was a decent, upstanding man, hardworking and honorable, and a good son. She was sorry he hadn’t married and had children of his own, but he always said that marriage and a family were not compatible with a life of service, if you did it right and were truly dedicated to your employers. He had certainly put his heart and soul into his work for the past seventeen years. It had in fact turned into a satisfying career for him, and he was supremely capable. He didn’t seem to be unhappy about being single and without children. Liese worried sometimes that the trauma of losing his brother had made him unable to attach to anyone. He never discussed his personal life with his mother when he came to Paris to see her, which he did as often as he could, sometimes even if he could only come for a day. But with her work, she was busy too.
“Javier would never have come with us, even if you had tried to force him,” Joachim reminded her. “You forget how obstinate he was then. And I think he already had some bad plans by the time we left, which would have shocked us if we’d known about them. He started hanging around the wrong people as a teenager.” It was hard for either of them to imagine who he was now. He had strayed so far from anything familiar or acceptable to them that Joachim suspected they were better off not knowing. As sad as it was, especially for his mother, the silence was perhaps less upsetting than the truth. But he was hoping to hear some echoes about Javier anyway when he went to Buenos Aires. It was hard to let go of the fact that he had a twin brother somewhere in the world.