Harry Paterson is an agent with MI6.
We should refer to him as Lord Paterson, since when we meet him he is just learning of the recent murder of his father, the previous Earl of Harrogate and Sheriff of the County of Yorkshire. When the younger Paterson heads to London to handle legal and financial matters as a result of the killing, he will get his first experience with the shadowy world of international espionage.
The Paterson family, we will discover, has a long history of being deeply involved in one way or another with spy business, going at least as far back as Harry's great-grandfather, Maudlin Paterson, and the rewards and other repercussions of those activities will come back to confront Harry Patterson throughout the events we are allowed to follow, sometimes for the good and other times not so much.
In the case of our Paterson, while he does not seem particularly thrilled with having to deal with these new situations, he also does not come across as especially upset by then either. Perhaps it is in his blood or perhaps he is just finding out he enjoys it as much as his predecessors did.
Paterson is a man very much used to the finer things in life but he is also a fellow who takes his responsibilities, especially as a landowner, quite seriously. He might be wealthy, and apparently he very much is, but he is not one to just 'hire-it-done'. When he is told of his father's death, he has just come in from helping his farm tenants kill crows out to prey on newborn lambs. When the predators on two legs start to circle and threaten him personally, he is just as ready to respond to them as he was to the crows.
Regarding his family's position in the nobility hierarchy, he tells us, "The Patersons are directly related to royalty, albeit from the wrong side of the blanket, but that deviance from a purity of lineage has not stopped our progress through the upper levels of this sceptred isle, in fact, the opposite is true."
Paterson is single with no long-term relationship going but he has an eye for the lovely ladies and they reciprocate, though he is always aware it might be for his charm or for his money and title. He is not jaded, just wary.
One interesting aspect about Paterson's foray into the cloak-and-dagger world is that he will become more appreciated by the CIA than his own MI6. "My own personal star is in the ascendency, particularly within the secret intelligence community of America, however, it must be said that our own secret services are not thought highly of at all over there, or here." Paterson has an enjoyable albeit interesting attitude towards such things.