Page 25 of A Duke Changes Everything
“So he can beat him bloody?”
Tobias grimaced, nudging his shoulders up in a shrug. “Some take a firm hand to break.”
“Just help him,” Mina said softly. “We’ll deal with Lord Lyle later. I’ll mix up one of those poultices we used on Mercury when he caught his ankle in the blackberry bramble.”
The young man nodded grimly. Tobias would do as she asked. He always had. They were nearly the same age and had always got on like siblings. Now her position as steward required him to do as she requested.
“Mina?” he called when she headed toward the kitchen door. “The duke say anything about us staff keeping our posts?”
“We can stay. He’s brought no staff with him, so he needs us for now.” She couldn’t bear to tell him the man planned to empty the house down to its bare walls. “I’ll find out more tomorrow and do what I can to secure employment for all of us.”
Whether it was at Enderley or elsewhere. She wouldn’t let any of them worry about where they’d find their next wages.
“Is he a good sort?” Tobias gestured with his elbow to the house. “Better than the other two?”
Mina stared up at the windows of the second floor windows where the guest bedrooms were located, then glanced at the smoldering burn pile. She thought of Nicholas Lyon’s mercurial eyes, the misery whenever he spoke of his father, the pain at mention of his mother, the loathing whenever he referred to Enderley.
“I’m not sure. What sort of duke he’ll be or how he’ll change Enderley remains to be seen.”
“Bit of a mystery, then, is he?”
He was indeed, but for all their sakes, he was a mystery Mina needed to solve.
Chapter Seven
“There’s no hope for the new master.” Hildy kneeled on a cracked kitchen tile while she blacked the grates. “He’s worse than the others.” The girl swiped a corn silk curl from her forehead with the back of her arm. “What shall we do about him, Miss Thorne?”
That was the trouble. There was nothing to be done about him. Enderley was his, and beyond the near impossibility of his solicitor finding a means to break the entail, he could do with the estate as he pleased. She couldn’t stop him if he wanted to pull it apart, as he claimed.
But she was going to try.
Late in the night, she’d formulated a plan. The wounded horse was a reminder that loathing Nicholas Lyon would get them nowhere. There was no use fighting his anger with more of the same. Some creatures required a bit of coaxing and kindness to make them trust. Perhaps the duke simply needed a dose of kindness too.
What if they could show him that Enderley could be a haven from all the muck and bustle of London life?
“He’s caused nothing but wreckage since he arrived,” Mrs. Scribb complained, all respect due their new master apparently forgotten. “Goodness, how he carries on. Such beastly manners for a gentleman. Climbing on furniture and removing paintings. If he goes on this way, he’ll have the house down around our ears before long.”
“A slight exaggeration,” Mina said, praying she sounded the least bit convincing.
“We could give him a bit o’ bad mutton,” Mrs. Darley suggested. “That’s what a cook friend of mine did until her master could bear it no more and took himself off to London.”
Mina narrowed her gaze on the cook. She’d never imagined such schemes might be running around the sweet old lady’s head.
“I fear he’ll return to London soon enough,” Mina told them, though she still hadn’t divulged his plan.
There was much to do before the house could be rented, and in that time she hoped to convince him of the estate’s value. She had to make him see it differently, not as a burden but as an opportunity.
Poisoning the man with mutton was not among the tactics she intended to employ.
“Good riddance to him if he only means to hate us and make our lives miserable.” Tobias popped a hunk of fresh bread in his mouth.
“Bad mutton could kill a man,” Emma said in a worried version of her usual soft tone. “Old Mr. McKintrick died of bad stew just last summer.”
“Word isMrs.McKintrick helped that along.” Tobias smirked around his next bite and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Ever wonder why she kept nightshade growing in her garden?”
Emma’s cornflower-blue eyes went round as saucers. “Cor, do you think it’s true?”
“We’re not poisoning him!” Mina’s shout startled her as much as everyone else, and she worked to calm the nervous energy born from too little sleep and too much fretting. “Not with food or anything else. We should be treating him better than he expects.”
