“Do you think Granville’s come to say your brother is after money again?” Iverson asked quietly.
“He won’t find any here.” Nick swigged down another glass of bubbly wine to clear the bitter taste in his throat. “Knowing Eustace, he could spend more in one evening than most of the men downstairs wager in a week.”
In the three years since his older brother had inherited the dukedom, he’d spent enough to nearly empty the ducal coffers. Nick wanted nothing to do his wastrel brother or the bloody estate that was the Tremayne legacy.
A few minutes later, Huntley returned and approached the cart of drinks, just as he had when he’d first arrived. His expression was the same mask of jovial nonchalance he always wore, but for the telltale tightness in his jaw.
“What did he say, Huntley?” Nick dreaded the answer. Any news of his brother wouldn’t be good.
“He said two letters were sent from your brother’s solicitor with no response from you.”
Nick drew in a sharp breath and let it out slowly, trying to temper his agitation. “I no longer bother with opening any correspondence from him. Is that all he wanted? To complain on Eustace’s behalf that I haven’t opened my post?”
Huntley shoved a shaky hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, Nick. Recall that I’m only the messenger, will you?”
Every muscle in Nick’s body tensed. “Go on.”
When Huntley merely swallowed hard and stood gaping at them, Iverson stepped forward.
“What is it, man? Just tell us.”
Nick saw Huntley’s shoulders sag and his lips begin to move. Far off, he could hear the man’s voice, but it took long minutes for the words to register. For the horror of it to sink in—the past he loathed had come back with a vengeance.
“Your brother, Eustace, is dead. As of a week ago, you’re the Duke of Tremayne.”
Chapter Two
Mina Thorne held the letter in her hand so tightly, the foolscap began to crumple. She’d been gripping the envelope for half an hour, unable to let it go, because everything else she cared about seemed to be slipping away.
In three days’ time, she might lose her position. Her home. Friends at Enderley Castle who’d become as dear as family.
Concealing the letter and her trembling hands below the level of her desk was easy enough. Willing away the flutter in her stomach was proving harder, but Mina had become rather good at pretending.
Over the years she’d mastered half smiles, grown proficient at blank expressions, and she would’ve earned high marks in tongue biting if anyone was offering a grade.
Her father taught her that others’ opinions mattered. Along with mathematics and estate management, lessons in good manners were the ones he repeated most.
She’d striven for propriety, always eager to please him.
But inside, in a secret place, rooted so deep as to never be wholly weeded out, she hid a terrible truth. Every single day she yearned to buck the ladylike nature to which she’d been taught to aspire.
Impulsive, Papa had called her, and that was true. She had a tendency to throw herself headlong—into work, problems, and emotions she had no business feeling.
For five and twenty years she’d done her best to act as if wearing a corset and skirt pleased her as much as a practical shirt and comfortable trousers. Even as a child, what her father expected of her never quite fit who she truly was inside. There wasn’t a day she wouldn’t have thrown over her flawless porcelain-faced doll for a gallop across the Sussex downs on one of the ponies in Enderley’s stable.
When her father died two years past, she’d acted as if picking up his duties wasn’t terrifying and overwhelming and not at all the path she’d imagined her life would take.
But doing what one must, getting on with one’s duties, was what he taught her. Never let your struggles be known , he’d often say.
As a child, Mina had endlessly failed to live up to his expectations. Whether her cheeks flamed, or her voice wobbled, or her tongue tripped over words, hiding her feelings had been a constant struggle.
But she kept on trying to be ladylike. To speak gently. To mask her feelings.
This morning those skills were being put to the test. She needed to convince her uninvited visitors that nothing was amiss. Though, truth was, she dreaded the pending arrival of the new Duke of Tremayne.
As soon as Mina spotted the letter from Nicholas Lyon’s solicitor, she couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding that nothing would ever be solid or steady again. She hoped he’d be different than his father and brother. The list of what required repair and refurbishing at the estate grew each year, and Mina longed to see the estate improved. But it was a goal the previous duke had not shared. His preference had been to spend as little time as possible at Enderley.
Pressing a palm to her middle, she willed her stomach to settle.
“What a drastic change the new duke’s arrival will bring for your circumstances, Miss Thorne. We sympathize, of course.” Vicar Pribble led the trio who’d come to call shortly after sunrise, hoping to discover all they could about the new duke and demanding to know when he’d finally deign to show his face at Enderley.
They were the unofficial leaders of Barrowmere village—the eldest farmer, the magistrate, and the resident man of God.
“How could we not pity you?” the vicar went on. “A motherless, fatherless girl, without a single prospect ahead of her?”
Good grief. Mina would be sure to never seek out the vicar for encouragement when she was feeling downtrodden.
“We wish to see you living your life as a young woman should,” Magistrate Hardbrook barked in his usual gruff manner.
“And how should I live, gentlemen?” She almost managed to keep any trace of irritation from her tone.
“As a wife. A mother.” Farmer Thurston drew the words out slowly, as if she must be addlepated to even ask such a question.
“I’m afraid that will not be my fate.” She drew in a sharp breath, filling her lungs to say more. Retorts surged up and died. She could tie a bow with the knot of yearnings she’d pushed aside.
Of course she wanted to be a wife and mother, to share her life with someone who’d give her loyalty and love. A man to whom she could entrust her heart. But she’d tripped down that road before and ended facedown in a puddle, figuratively speaking. She was done chasing a fairy-tale ending that would never come.
“My father prepared me for this work, and I shall do my duties as long as I’m able.”
“Or until the new master dismisses you.” The vicar spoke bluntly, but he tempered his words with a furrowed brow and sad gaze. “You must anticipate that he will wish to choose his own steward. One who’s—”
“Not a woman?”
“It is unusual, Miss Thorne. That you must allow.”
“I woke up on the morning of Father’s passing”—her throat ached at mention of that hideous day—“and did what needed to be done.” Everyone at Enderley had looked to him for guidance, and when he’d gone, they’d looked to her. “I couldn’t leave his role empty. The work needed doing, so I did it.”
“Still isn’t right or proper,” Hardbrook grumbled.
Mina stood and stepped out from behind her desk. Between the three seated men and stacks of account ledgers and estate documents, there wasn’t much room. But squeezing close to a bookcase was preferable to enduring the scrutiny of her visitor’s disapproving gazes. She ran a finger along the shelf where she maintained a collection of items she’d gathered from around Enderley—a shard of colored glass from the original castle’s windows, a bit of polished flint, a Tudor coin dug up near the estate’s old tower.
Staring at the items eased her nerves. Nicholas Lyon might be inheriting every inch of the place, but he hadn’t visited in years. She could help him understand Enderley, if he let her.
After drawing in a deep breath, she turned to face her visitors once more.
“Gentleman, this isn’t a matter of propriety but of necess
ity. The previous duke did not concern himself with Enderley, and the estate required management while the ‘absent duke’ chose to ignore it.”
“You did your duty well, Miss Thorne. I’m sure your father would be proud. But it’s been two years,” Robert Thurston spoke. “Couldn’t you have found a new steward in all that time?”
“Not a suitable one.”
There’d been a young solicitor who recited the law as if it had been tattooed on his eyelids, but he’d known nothing of animals and jumped in fright when she’d taken him on a tour of the stables. Another young buck had gone cross-eyed when she showed him the pile of estate ledger books. A third had stared so intently at her bosom, she’d cut off the interview before asking the ogler a single question.
Beyond their individual faults, no applicant had possessed one essential qualification. They didn’t know Enderley and Barrowmere village. They didn’t care for the inhabitants. Mina had lived in this quiet corner of England her whole life and been raised on the estate. Her cousin, Colin, lived nearby, and he was her only family now.
The villagers and staff were all she had left. They needed her, and she couldn’t imagine any other steward appreciating Enderley Castle and its needs as her father had. As she’d been taught to do.
Mina fixed her gaze on two paintings on the wall of his office. One was of her mother, a woman of gossamer delicacy with pale blue eyes, dewy skin, and hair like rays of sunlight. The other was of a stag. A work by Landseer, her father once told her. A print of a famous painting by one of Queen Victoria’s favorite artists.
The stag wasn’t particularly pretty, but he had a fierceness in his eye, determination in his stance. He knew where he belonged. He knew his purpose in the world.
Mina yearned to possess fairy-tale beauty like the mother she’d never known instead of her father’s dark hair and muddy-brown eyes. But, little by little, she’d begun to accept that she was more like the stag. A creature of the land she’d been born to, ready to fight, if necessary, to protect every acre.
“Gentlemen, shall we return to the reason for your call this morning?”
The three men glanced at each other as if trying to remind themselves of just what their purpose had been.
“The new Duke of Tremayne,” she said, ignoring how her stomach dived at mention of the man. Before she could explain that his arrival was imminent, Pribble cut her off.
“Indeed.” Vicar Pribble leaned forward, his voice pitching higher. “Why hasn’t he come to Enderley yet?”
It was a question oft repeated by the house’s staff and every villager Mina encountered. Where’s the duke?
“The old duke died months ago. The new duke didn’t even see fit to attend his brother’s funeral.” Hardbrook shook his balding head in disgust. “This cannot stand.”
Mina clenched her teeth and did her best to quell the glare she wanted to shoot in Hardbrook’s direction. He was a perennial troublemaker. A first-class grumbler. She had no idea how her father had borne his complaints with such long-suffering patience.
Mina hadn’t inherited that virtue.
“We must get the remainder of the harvesting completed and there’s not the men to do it.” Farmer Thurston always spoke of practical matters, keeping his eye on the estate’s bottom line. Her father had appreciated that about the old man.
“I expect the new duke to take matters in hand.” Hardbrook nodded, heartily offering support for his own pronouncement.
Mina wasn’t so certain.
The previous duke had been dead for three months, and the only contact she’d had with the new one was through his solicitor. The man seemed as disinterested in the duties and dilemmas of the estate as his brother had.
Until this morning.
A letter had awaited her in the center of her desk blotter. Not another demand like the others that had come from his solicitor, asking that she produce inventories of the silver, antiquities, and art at Enderley. This morning’s letter contained a pronouncement. Seven simple words that nearly made her toss her breakfast.
The Duke of Tremayne arrives on Friday.
“What we need is a bit of the firm hand of the father,” Hardbrook insisted. “The old duke was a strong man.”
“He was cruel.” Mina failed to stifle the comment before it slipped out.
Hardbrook sniffed and shifted his gaze, no longer able to stare at her with his usual boldness. “Daresay he wouldn’t stand for a lady steward.”
And there it was again. On Friday, all she’d worked for would be lost.
Hardbrook was right. The new duke would probably dismiss her, not simply because she was a woman, but because in all her interactions with the man’s solicitor, she’d failed to mention the fact.
She’d not planned some master deception. But when the time had come to tell the truth, she’d kept mum.
“You wish to know when the duke will come, gentlemen? He arrives in three days.” The words escaped. She’d been holding them in all morning. The plan had been to tell the household staff first. But the village leadership trio had arrived too early.
“Well, that’s excellent news!” Vicar Pribble found a reason to smile.
Mina’s stomach lurched.
What would Nicholas Lyon do at Enderley? A man who had a life and a business to attend to in London? Eustace, the previous duke, had preferred London too. But he’d spent his days there in drunken revelry while his brother built his own wealth.
Hardbrook leaned forward, planting a fist on Mina’s desktop. “I have a bone or twenty to pick with the next Tremayne.”
“The queue is a long one.” He’d need to get in line behind tenants, creditors, and villagers who’d waited years for a reasonable man to take the helm of the dukedom. Mina had patched and problem-solved where she could, but nothing compared to a competent lord and master to do his duty by his tenants.
“What will you do, Miss Thorne?” Pribble’s voice softened.
“I will assist the new duke.”
“And if he sacks you?” Hardbrook’s forehead buckled, as if he might actually care about her fate, despite his gruff demeanor.
“There are other posts.” Not that she could truly imagine herself anywhere else, doing anything else. But she’d tried. Her gaze lit on a square of newsprint at the corner of her desk.
“A position as governess?” Pribble tipped his head to examine the advert she’d cut from a newspaper.
The doubt written in a dozen creased lines across his face matched Mina’s own. She’d never had lessons in decorum or music or painting pretty watercolors. Her only hope was to find a family who wished for their offspring to learn household management, animal husbandry, and how to balance sums.
“What about marriage?” Hardbrook asked, latching his beefy hands around the lapels of his frock coat.
Mina tried to conceal a shiver. Young women married old men all the time, but she couldn’t fathom such a fate.
A low rumble, like approaching thunder, echoed in the room as Hardbrook shook with the power of his own guffaw. “Have no fear, girl. I did not mean for you to wed me. I’m offering you my son. He’s a good lad. Not too daft. Not too daring. He’ll be a steady sort you can rely on.”
“Your boy is sixteen, Mr. Hardbrook. Friendly, to be sure, but not a marital prospect, even if I were seeking one.”
“Give him a few years, and he’ll be a fine young man.”
“In a few years, I’ll be older too, Mr. Hardbrook, and even more of a spinster.”
The three men shifted in their chairs, as if the old worn cushions were as uncomfortable as their attempts to talk sense into an unnatural woman.
When Emma rushed into the room, she saved them all from further misery.
The young maid bobbed a curtsy before turning her panicked gaze on Mina. “You’re needed, miss. Tobias says you’re to come to the stable as soon as you’re able.”
Mina stood and instantly breathed easier. Work. Problems. That was what she knew. Much simpler than ju
ggling the expectations of grumpy old men.
“Gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me.”
Hardbrook, Thurston, and Vicar Pribble stood too.
“When the duke arrives, I’ll inform him of your visit.” Hardbrook opened his mouth as if he’d add another grumble, so Mina added, “And let him know you wish to speak to him.”
Mina understood the villagers’ concerns all too well. In her desk, she kept a running list of what needed to be done and for whom, and all of it required funds that the estate had long stopped producing.
“Thank you, Em,” Mina told the maid after the men had gone. “I thought they’d never leave.”
The girl grinned. “If I’d known I would have come in sooner. But I meant what I said. You must come quick. Tobias needs you.”
Fear chased goose pebbles across Mina’s skin. “What is it? Is someone injured?”
“Not unless you count a few scratches.” Emma smiled again. “It’s Lady Millicent. She’s up a tree and clawed Tobias when he tried to get her down.”
The barn cat. Fat and furry and feisty as a mongoose. Especially now that she was in a delicate way.
“Where is she?”
“Up the tall oak at the edge of the copse. He’s gone out twice and she’s put him off. The poor thing can’t jump down in the state she’s in.” Emma wore a fretful frown. “How will you get her, miss? Tobias is bleeding something fierce.”
“She just needs a bit of patience.” The stable master was an enormous man of good humor, but his brusque style didn’t help when a bit of delicacy was needed.
Mina glanced toward the doorway to make sure none of the other servants were in view, quickly unfastened her belt and skirt, and slipped the fabric down her trouser-clad legs.
Emma, who was used to Mina’s preferred fashion, didn’t blink an eye. In fact, she lifted her arms to take the skirt. “I’ll put it away for you.”
“Thanks, Em.” Mina squared her shoulders and started toward the stable yard. She thought of Milly and of retrieving the ladder they kept in the kitchen. The awkward meeting with the village elders began to fade from her mind.
A Duke Changes Everything (The Duke's Den #1) Page 2
