Page 9 of The Heir’s Return

Mina had closed her eyes and sighed. Her father and the butler of Ravenshire Manor had engaged in a relationship of cool dislike and underhanded bickering, each one believing he was more integral to the running of the home than the other. She should have known mentioning Sanderson’s name would evoke such a reaction.

She tried again, saying, “Nothing at all. I was merely asking if you’ve seen him recently.”

“No.” He gave a rapid shake of his head. “No, I don’t think I have.”

Mina’s heart sank. The lack of staff at Ravenshire Manor would explain the silence and the general state of disrepair, but what would explain their absence? What could have happened that so many staff were missing? Of course, Mina knew large country estates were typically only lightly staffed when the lord was not in residence, but to be without a butler and the head maids?

“Have new staff been hired?” Mina had asked, gently squeezing her father’s forearm when it seemed he had not heard her. He merely blinked at her, still not seeming to understand precisely who she was and why she was interrogating him.

“Why hire new staff when matters are in hand?” her father had fired back with a harrumph.

It was all Mina could do to not throw her arms wide and demand her father really look at his surroundings. Nothing was “in hand” about his living conditions or the grounds of Ravenshire Manor. Even the bloody road leading to the manor house was in shambles! This was not a problem that had taken place overnight; this had taken years to accomplish.

Years.

“You do not believe me!” Her father’s temperament had shifted from mild annoyance to violent agitation. Between one heartbeat and the next, he’d thrown off her hand and stormed across the room, his bare feet making muffled slaps across the grimy floor. Standing before the desk, he’d gestured broadly and declared, “It is all here! All of it! If you will not take my word for it, then see it in irrefutable figures. The Earl of Ravenshire has entrusted me with the care of this estate for decades, and it will take a hell of a lot more than the rude, impertinent inquiries of a girl to make him think otherwise.”

It was difficult for Mina not to wince when faced with her father’s harsh tone and his dismissal of her as naught more than a strange woman questioning his caretaking abilities, but she managed. Just.

It was rapidly becoming apparent that she needed to review the ledgers her father stood over if she was going to form a better picture of the current state of things at Ravenshire Manor, but she doubted she’d be able to do it beneath her father’s confused gaze. She’d upset him with minor inquiries; what would he do if he saw her rifling through his work and questioning it? Regardless of whether or not he’d just invited her to do so, Mina sensed the tension in his frail frame and knew that to do so might invite a crisis.

“I believe you,” she’d replied soothingly. “My apologies for any insinuation that you were less than the most capable of stewards.”

His expression had stuttered at her unexpected words, but he’d recovered quickly and replied with a curt nod and crossed his arms over his thin chest.

“In all my haste to travel today, I seem to have forgotten to eat my midday meal. Would you like to join me? I can prepare us both a little something to eat.”

His eyes had shifted, seeming unsure how to answer. She spoke again before he had the opportunity to decline. “Please accept it as an apology for insulting your expertise.”

“Very well.” He tilted his chin up with all the regality of a lord and swept from the room with a gesture for her to follow…as if she hadn’t spent much of her life within these very walls.

After scrounging up only some stale bread and a few small apples that remained from the winter store, Mina set her meager offering between them on the table in the kitchen. Rather than turn his nose up at it, her father made a show of rubbing his hands together in delight before selecting a thick slice of an apple’s white flesh. Watching him do so caused a fresh wound upon her heart as she recalled that had been his precise behavior when she’d been small and placed a tin plate of imaginary food before him. He’d always made a show of savoring every bite, praising each morsel for its flavor and tenderness. Now, as Mina watched him eat, she wondered if a part of his mind did recognize her, and this was its way of sending her a signal. Her Papa was there; he was simply very lost, buried deeply within the jagged walls of a fracturing consciousness.

She’d witnessed something similar happen to Robert’s grandmother, but she’d been bedbound and several decades older than Papa. She often did not recognize the faces of those who cared for her each day, and she often called out for her mother and husband, both of whom had been deceased for many decades at that point. It had broken Mina’s heart, but she now saw that her experience there brought her a sense of patience and understanding with her own father. He was not nearly as poorly as Robert’s grandmother had been, but the signs were there. His once sharp mind was slipping away, fraying, with no reason as to which bonds snapped and which remained. It concerned her greatly that the condition of the estate seemed to mirror her father’s own decline, but there was nothing she could do about it in those first few hours of her arrival.

She did not leave her father except to dash back around to the front of the house when she realized in all her confusion that she’d forgotten about the carriage and her belongings. Luckily, the road had been in such disrepair that its progress had been so delayed that it only arrived in the front drive just as she did. Disconcertingly, Mina was also the only one to notice its appearance. There was no butler, housekeeper, maid, or footman to greet it; no one to see who had arrived or unload the small amount of luggage.

Only Mina.

“Thank you for struggling through what must have been the most taxing portion of the journey,” Mina said to the driver, not a hint of condescension or censure in her tone. She did not doubt that the last mile to the house had been more than a little troublesome—not if what she’d experienced and what she’d seen had been any indication.

Despite looking a little worse for wear, the driver greeted her with a pleasant enough smile and leapt down from his perch to begin unstrapping her trunks. Mina busied herself by fishing some coins from the hidden pocket sewn into the waist of her black-dyed gown, then plucking two more when she realized there really would be no one exiting the house to offer their assistance.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, but would you mind helping me carry my things ‘round the back to the steward’s cottage? I can offer a few more coins for your time.”

The driver’s brows twitched downward. “No one at all in this grand house to help you?”

Mina’s cheeks heated. “The staff is otherwise indisposed, and I do not believe I can accomplish this task on my own. My father is ill, you see…” Her voice trailed off.

Seeming to take pity on her, the driver nodded in agreement and hauled one of her trunks onto his shoulder. “Which way?”

Mina snatched up two hatboxes filled with anything but and proceeded to show him around the side of Ravenshire Manor.

Three hours later, after she’d changed into an old gown, done her best to scrub and scour the kitchen table clean of crumbs and dried spills, boiled and hauled a sufficient amount of hot water for a hip bath, finally coaxed her father to utilize said bath, and located a fresh set of linens stored in the wardrobe of her childhood bedchamber, Mina was exhausted in mind, heart, and body. A normal day of travel was taxing, but to lose her husband and then return to find her father in such a state, to then discover the concerning condition of his mental capacity…that nearly crippled her with helplessness. But Mina had never been an idle chit.

She’d straightened her spine, ignored the smudges of dust and sweat on her arms and her cheeks, disregarded the burn in her muscles, and finally dropped down into the chair at her father’s desk. She’d cleaned and lit the hearth, and it was finally beginning to chase away some of the evening chill that had settled into the very bones of the building. It was by this light that Mina worked.

One by one, she sorted through the haphazard collection of documents. The repetitive act of sifting, skimming, categorizing, and tidying allowed her mind to rest into a familiar rhythm. For those few hours it took her to make decent progress, she only concerned herself with the task at hand. Her father wasn’t sleeping in the bedchamber above her head, finally giving in to his exhaustion. Mina wasn’t standing on the precipice of something more ominous than she’d ever faced; foreboding did not loom wide before her, prepared to swallow her whole. She was merely performing a task to the best of her abilities, treating each document with the care and consideration her father had instilled in her from the time she could read and perform simple sums.