Page 6 of A Duke Changes Everything
After drawing in a deep breath, she turned to face her visitors once more.
“Gentlemen, this isn’t a matter of propriety but of necessity. 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. “Daresayhewouldn’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.
