Marcus walked over to the house with Aria, and he saw the decorator was there with her crew, and they were somewhere inside. He sort of liked the kitchen with its clean country lines, whitewashed walls, reclaimed cabinetry from another country house somewhere, and the key pieces, a huge hutch that had been placed in an archway to give it a built in look, and an old heavy wooden Victorian kitchen worktable. An old rustic table with some charmingly mismatched chairs was the dining space. French copper pots hung, along with cast iron ones, on the wall and above the worktable. Plants galore were in the windows.
Marcus had ordered a huge set of Kate's bright colored dishware, and it was sitting near the enormous hutch to be displayed there and put at the ready for use. There was a full set, including teacups and saucers, big chunky mugs, and all sorts of accessory pieces. Marcus had ordered pewter flataware to use with the pottery.
He walked through to the next room, to the butler's pantry. He had specifically wanted the cabinets he'd seen at an estate auction, and he'd wanted them in the butler's pantry. Now, installed and oiled and waxed to a high shine, their warm, old patina made them almost glow in the sunlight that was streaming in the windows. For a pantry, this was a particularly warm space. A door here led to a stairway that went down to the cellar to the wine cellar that would store wine, firewhiskey, beer, and other liquors. He had taken Angus's advice and had put in a walk in fridge and freezer. Angus's reasoning had been that with five kids, there would surely be, in the future, big happy Christmases here, and, if his kids had 2.5 children, that would work out, mathematically, to a total of thirteen grandchildren. With Marcus's parents, his kids, their spouses, and the grandkids, that would be a minimum of twenty seven people for every family holiday. They would need a walk in fridge and freezer. They were both in here. In the kitchen itself, there was a standard size fridge and freezer, and a commercial sized stove with a double oven. Marcus had seen how essential that was to Angus, and he hadn't considered otherwise. Marcus knew he couldn't cook, but he knew Aria could, and his parents both could cook. Marcus? He could save lives, and that counted for something.
The country house's scullery had been pressed into service now as a modern laundry room and a fully functional and well-organized and expertly appointed sewing room for whatever sewing thing Aria wanted to do. A large center island would serve perfectly as an enormous cutting table for laying out patterns and cutting fabric without bending over a low table. The decorator' suggestion that, often, repairs to a garment came up with a garment either was going into or coming out of the laundry. So it made sense that the sewing room might be a perfect companion in the laundry room.
The kitchen led into a bright and cheerful morning room, painted a buttery yellow. It wasnt a harsh yellow. It was creamy and calming and yet, in the morning light this morning, Marcus could see that it would indeed be a great place for a cup of coffee and a scone and a morning paper to start the day without a lot of fuss and formality. The creamy yellow was a great choice, he thought. A short hallway separated the butlers pantry and the dining room. There were some french doors in the morning room that opened up to a terrace that had a comfortable table and chairs for breakfast outside.
Marcus rather liked the dining room color choice. It was painted a chestnut color--the same sort of color that Marcus expected to see on a cherry bay horse. The trim was white. The fireplace was white with a handpainted tile surround. An antique liquor cabinet was pressed into place again as a bar, this time in the dining room. It had waterford crystal glassware and was equipped for a casual drink or a dinner party. The dining room, like the morning room, opened up to a terrace. This one was set up a bit like Edward's outdoor living space and could be used for a larger outdoor dining event.
The dining room led to the library. The shelves were still largely empty here, but they wouldn't be. Deep, comfortable furniture framed the fireplace. This room was designed for long hours of reading by the fire in the deep, dark days of winter. It made Marcus silently wonder if men like him, who were hired to take the bullets for their clients, ever lived long enough to retire to ever read books by the fire. Still, it was a nice thing to be prepared for.
The library led to the drawing room, or as Marcus really wanted it to be used as, the living room. This was the room that he had wanted to plaid furniture, the chunky tables. He wanted this to be the room that the family felt like they could come into, kick their shoes off, curl up on the furniture and watch forbidden muggle movies and eat popcorn. Or play board games. Or open Christmas presents. He liked this room a lot. This was a happy room, he thought.
And off the drawing room was the foyer and the stairs going upstairs. There was the master bedroom with a full bath, and four guest bedrooms upstairs and each bedroom had an ensuite bath. That was the main house. A breezeway from the kitchen led to what had been a carriage house. When it had been moved, it had been attached to the other end of the breezeway, and it now had a recreation room on the ground floor that had a billiards table, a wet bar, some tables to play board games or cards, and a little kitchenette to turn out some snacks. An old muggle jukebox refitted to run on magic and a little speck of a dance floor, and a few other games to make it a great place for some fun and some laughs. Upstairs, there were six more guest rooms and six full baths That gave them a master bedroom and ten total guest rooms.
The house had originally not been designed to be nearly that large, but they had worked with the decorator to make much better use of the space. The rooms themselves were not that large. Larger cavernous spaces had been whittled down for more efficient use by a large family, but they were efficiently organized and very comfortably decorated to be family friendly. And then they had attached the carriage house, so that had given them a much bigger house on the inside than they had started with. Marcus hoped that he would have the time now and the peace to have his children and his parents to be a part of his life. As an espionage agent, there had never been a hope of that. And Evelyn had given him even less hope of it. Now, though, his life had dramatically changed for the better. And he could start to have what he really, deeply wanted. His family. His own family and a sense of a home. He wasn't really doing this for himself. He was doing this for them. He had seen that Angus had placed a strong priority on making sure his kids had good strong roots. a sense of connection, and an iron, unbreakable sense that they were loved and protected no matter what. That had been something that Angus had wanted from his parents, but he had gotten it, not from Reginald, but rather in overflowing abundance from Edward and was passing it on to his kids. It was a legacy worth passing on. Marcus admired Angus and Ruby for that, and he hoped he still had time to connect that way to his kids before they got too grown up to want to pay any bloody attention to him. He didn't want to wake up in some fleabag hotel some morning in Bangladesh and find he was old and alone and his kids wanted nothing to do with him.
"What do you think?" he asked Aria. "It's pretty different from all sterile white and chrome contemporary safe houses we've seen in our work, isn't it?"
Last edited by Khaat Lupin on Fri May 31, 2024 1:32 pm; edited 2 times in total (Reason for editing : ")
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