He gripped the knot at the back of his neck and tried again in a less demanding tone. “Where is Miss Thorne?”
“Couldn’t say, Your Grace.” The girl’s voice was so soft, Nick strained to hear her. “She departed early. Didn’t say when she’d return.”
She would come back to Enderley, of course, but would she come with him to London? He had a sickening sense that she wouldn’t.
“Will there be anything else, Your Grace?” The girl had backed herself against the door, holding the empty tray like a safeguard in front of her.
“Send a footman up. I want my clothing packed and a carriage prepared. I intend to depart for London today.”
The girl’s eyes ballooned. “Very good, Your Grace.”
Nick couldn’t tell whether she was shocked by the news or planned to head straight downstairs and begin a celebration with the other staff. At any rate, she scurried off, leaving him to dress quickly and in peace.
Downstairs, he headed for his father’s study. Mina’s closed office door felt as wrong as the quiet in the hallway the two rooms shared. She made little noises while she worked, hmm’s and aah’s and oh’s, and he’d learned them all by heart.
What the hell was he going to do when he was back at Lyon’s with only himself for company?
After collecting a few notes he’d made at his father’s desk, he found himself back at Mina’s office door. Standing outside the empty room like a fool, he wished for nothing so much as to twist the knob and find her inside.
But when he pushed the door open, he found nothing but her clean, floral scent to haunt him.
The notebook she often carried with her lay on the edge of the desk. Some of the notes pertained to the repairs he’d agreed to make to tenant houses, the estate, and structures in Barrowmere village. Nick hesitated a moment before lifting the small leather-bound journal, flipping it open to the spot where she’d placed a ribbon as marker.
He let out a sharp breath of disappointment. In front of him was a simple, practical list in a neat but utterly feminine hand. He flipped a page back and found notes from his visit with the villagers, all the promises he’d made in an effort to be benevolent. An effort to let Mina see that he could be better than he seemed.
Turning another page, he found calculations, hurriedly scratched. Numbers tumbling across the paper. Then one more flip and his breath snagged in his throat.
He emerged on the page in dashes of ink. Not the slash on his face or his strange eyes, but his mouth, generously shaped. His jaw, a sharp square below the curve of his chin. His brow, with a sinuous strand of black hair tumbling down.
She drew him in precisely the same way she looked at him. As none other ever had. Not with horror or even perverse curiosity. From the first moment their gazes clashed, Mina saw him and never looked away. As if she wasn’t put off by what she saw.
Strange woman.
“Pardon me, sir.” Wilder’s voice came from the threshold behind him. “I understand you intend to depart Enderley today.”
“It’s time, Wilder.” Nick turned to face the old man. “I’ve had as much of this place as I can stomach.”
“And Miss Thorne?” A mischievous glint came into the butler’s gaze. “What will she have to say of your absence?”
Nick laid her notebook aside reluctantly, pondered how much to tell the old man, and scrubbed a hand across the stubble he hadn’t bothered shaving from his chin. “I asked her to marry me, Wilder.”
“Did you?” The shock on the butler’s face was nearly as surprising as the high pitch of his usually deep voice.
Mina hadn’t told any of the other Enderley staff, apparently. Nick wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or disappointed.
“May I . . .” Wilder cleared his throat and looked at Nick pointedly. “May I be so impertinent as to ask what answer she gave?”
“None.” It seemed obvious to Nick. He wouldn’t be so damn eager to leave if he knew she would marry him. Or maybe he would. He far preferred the notion of having her all to himself in London. But if she was to be his, even Enderley would be sufferable in the interim until their vows could be made. Or even after, for visits now and then.
That thought hit him like a thunderbolt. Not the notion of returning to Enderley, but the fact that imagining such a thing didn’t cause dread to twist his insides.
“No answer at all, sir? Then I see why you wish to depart.” The disappointment in Wilder’s voice was somehow comforting, though a pale shadow to what Nick felt.
Nick slumped onto the front edge of her desk. “I wished to give her time to consider my offer. She is impulsive by nature.”
“Very.”
“Which is why three days with no answer from her seems like an answer in itself, does it not?” Nick wanted Wilder to tell him to wait a bit longer.
“An impatient man and an impulsive woman. A match made in heaven or a sure path to doom?” The old butler seemed to be musing to himself, almost mumbling.
“Please don’t pick this moment to humor me, Wilder. It’s time I stop fooling myself and go back to London. Don’t you agree?”
The butler assessed him and drew in a sharp breath. “I have never been a man to give up hope, sir.”
“That must be exhausting.” Nick quirked a brow, but Wilder seemed in earnest. He wore the stoic expression that Nick would always associate with the man. “Not even with my father?”
A slight shadow of a grin touched the old man’s mouth. “Not even with him. I hoped until Talbot Lyon drew his last breath.”
“It didn’t do you any good.”
“I beg to differ, sir. Your father did not bend from his hatred, but I do not regret the hope I held fast to. It anchored me. It always has. Hope does a soul good.”
Nick stood and glanced around Mina’s office one last time, trailed his finger along the edge of her notebook. “At least until you wake up to harsh reality and all hope is crushed.”
“You care for the young lady a great deal?”
“I do.”
“And you’ve told her as much?”
“I’ve offered her everything I have, Wilder. All that’s left is playing on her sympathies or manipulating her into wedlock. I’d prefer not to get a bride that way.” Hell, before he arrived at Enderley, he didn’t want a wife at all.
“Of course not, Your Grace.”
“I need some air.” Nick started out of the room. Mina’s scent was too tantalizing and her absence was unbearable.
“If I may, sir. The one truth I know about Miss Thorne is that she is forgiving, but her kind heart leads her to put others’ cares above her own. She is rather unerringly pointed toward what’s good for those around her, while often forgetting what’s best for herself.”
“Would I be good for her, Wilder?” Nick asked the question with a sarcastic bite, his mouth twisted in a smirk. But inside, he wanted Wilder to dispel his doubts.
“I believe you would care for her, sir. She’s never had that. Even with her father. He was a good man, but the estate always came first.”
The bloody estate.
Its walls seemed to be closing in on him. Nick patted Wilder on the shoulder and strode from the room. His stride lengthened the closer he got to the front door. He needed to breathe. Needed to be free of this damned castle where his father had nearly killed him. The place that might just come between him and the only woman he’d ever wanted as his bride.
He headed toward the rear of the house and found himself aiming for the stables.
Tobias lifted his head from his work when Nick approached.
“Is her horse still here? Hades.”
“She didn’t ride this morning, Your Grace.” Tobias pointed toward one of the stalls. “She took the pony cart when she left. The stallion is still inside.”
Nick’s hands were shaking, much like he was quaking inside. He stalked away from the stable master and approached the horse’s stable. The creature leaned his enormous head out and Nick patted his warm ebony s
nout.
“She’ll come back for you, and I suspect you’d follow her anywhere.” He glanced at the stallion’s haunch, where a faint line could still be detected on his coat. “Put you back together, did she? You and I have that in common.”
This place had brought them together, and now Nick sensed it tearing them apart.
He glanced over his shoulder, casting his gaze past the house to the outlines of that hideous jagged tower pointing into the sky.
That hellish pile of stones had nearly done him in. Now it felt like the black heart of all he stood to lose. If he was to consider residing at the estate, the tower had to go. Maybe then he could see Enderley differently. As Mina saw it.
Everything in him wanted to tear the tower down and never allow its outline to blight the estate again.
Scanning the stables, he searched for a maul or a pickax or anything that might help him chip away at its stones. He saw nothing but rakes and brooms. And high on a shelf, tucked safely out of the way, a tinderbox.
He snatched the box and marched toward the tower. The place pushed back at him, its evil repelling him the closer he got. Nausea clawed at his insides. A trickle of fear chased up his spine. But he was a grown man now. Not a fool child, too trusting to know that his father wished him dead.
He kept on until he reached the bottom step. The entire tower was naught but a shell, its interior structure built entirely of wood. A fitting metaphor for his father.
A shell with rotting, useless bits inside.
He started up the stairs, not caring that they groaned and threatened to give way. The smell gagged him. A familiar mustiness, mixed now with the scent of moss and rot.
He bit down hard when he reached his prison cell. Bent low to take a single step into the room.
It was too much. He couldn’t go any farther. He stepped back, retreating down the stairs. At the bottom, he braced a hand against the stones and fought the gorge rising in his throat. Fumbling with the tinderbox, he struck flint against steel, causing a flame to burst to life.
Nick threw the whole of the lit tinderbox into the tower.
Mina got down on her knees and leaned forward to brush dust and a few fallen leaves from her father’s headstone. She traced the letters of his name with her fingers.
Rotherhead, where her father’s people hailed from, wasn’t far from Barrowmere. It was farther south, closer to the sea. The air had a saltiness to it and a stiffer breeze. The church’s graveyard was quiet and peaceful, just the sort of place her father deserved to rest after years of hard work and devotion.
She was glad he was buried away from Enderley. The place had consumed him in life. He needed a bit of distance from its problems in death.
“I’m sorry I haven’t come more often in the last few weeks, Papa. There’s a new duke.” Her throat thickened and tears welled in her eyes. “I love him, and I believe he cares for me.”
Though she was alone in the graveyard, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s asked me to marry him.” Mina imagined her father before her, listening. What would he say when she confessed the rest? “If I say yes, that means I’m leaving Enderley behind.”
Did her father know what the old duke had done? She couldn’t bear to think he’d taken any part in such devilry, even if he only had an inkling of how the old duke had treated his son.
“You gave so many years to the estate. I tried to do as you would have wished, but I’m not sure I belong there anymore.” Mina gathered the little bundle of late autumn flowers and placed them atop her father’s grave. “I think I belong wherever Nick is.” The truth had been there, waiting for her to find it. The rightness of it made her giddy. “He’s more like me than you can imagine, Papa, but different too, in the best of ways. Not perfect. Neither of us are, but we suit each other.”
Mina stood and dusted off her trousers.
“I won’t return as often. We’ll live mostly in London, I think.” She felt compelled to add, “But we are repairing Enderley. Someone will live there and care for it, even if it’s not us.”
Leaning forward, she placed a hand on the cold stone slab etched with her father’s name and the words Loving father. Loyal servant. “Goodbye, Papa.”
Each step away from the church got a bit easier. She jumped up into the pony cart and let the horse take the trip back at a leisurely pace. Then anticipation got the best of her and she urged him into a canter. Within quarter of an hour, she spied Enderley’s parapet on the horizon.
She squinted when something else drew her gaze. Billowing gray. Not a cloud but puffs of smoke.
Tapping the whip against the side of the cart, she pushed the horse to go faster, until her bones rattled so hard her teeth clicked together. Moments later, she careened into Enderley’s stable yard and scrambled down from the cart.
“Tobias!”
The stable master strode out of the granary, a welcoming grin on his face. “There you are, Miss Thorne. The duke was looking for you.”
“Don’t you see the smoke?” She pointed toward the western edge of the estate as she rushed past the stable.
Tobias’s heavy footsteps followed in her wake.
Mina clutched at her chest when she rounded the stables. “It’s the tower. Not the house.” The structure was far enough away, it was no threat to the house or anyone inside.
“Get help, Miss Thorne. I’ll fetch some buckets of water.” Tobias started off, but Mina called him back.
“No, don’t bother.” She stared at the black smoke billowing from that vile structure and felt an odd sense of peace. “Let it burn.”
“But what about the cat?”
Mina frowned at him. “She’s in the stable. Emma said she brought Milly and the kittens into one of the stalls.”
He shrugged and his face crumpled into a panicked grimace. “I’ve seen her creeping around the tower. She goes back. Maybe she thinks she’s left a kitten behind.”
“Have you seen her this morning?” Mina sprinted past him toward the stable. “We have to find her, Tobias,” she shouted back at him.
Mina skidded down the line of stalls in the stable, peeking inside, trying to spot a clump of white-and-orange fur. She knelt near the straw-filled, blanket-padded box where the kittens were sleeping. Without their mother.
One of the stable boys called down from the loft. “No sign of her up here.”
Smoke wafted on the breeze, and Mina ran out of the stable. She passed Emma and Tobias in the yard. “Keep looking for her. I’m going to the tower.”
Emma wrapped a hand around her arm. “You can’t, Mina. It’s too dangerous.”
“Check the kitchen. Check anywhere she might hide.” Mina twisted out of the girl’s grip and dashed toward the tower.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nick stared up at the branch of the old oak and couldn’t quite comprehend it had been less than a month since he’d gazed up into Mina’s gold brown eyes and been completely lost. Or maybe he’d always been lost and that was the moment he’d been found.
Meeting her had changed everything.
He could take a knife and separate his life between the hours before that meeting and those after. Whether anyone could see it by looking at his mangled face or not, something in him had changed. A great deal, in fact.
For one thing, his feelings about Enderley had changed. The place would forever hold some of his worst memories, but now there were good ones too. Like every moment he’d spent inside its walls with Mina.
He saw now that he could do his duty and not allow the past to destroy any future good he might do for the estate and its people. Mina had done her best to show him why it mattered to do what was right, to be benevolent, and little by little he was beginning to understand.
Since meeting Mina, his heart troubled him every single day. Throbbing and aching and pounding like a gambler’s tell every time she was near. He’d deadened the organ so well over the years, he’d rarely noticed its working in over a decade. Now he sensed its pangs an
d yearnings constantly.
Ever since that damnable day under this tree, with Mina dangling from a branch above his head and her cat glaring down at him.
He turned back toward the estate, settled his arse on the cold ground, and watched as smoke billowed from the tower. Shoving his hands in his pockets for warmth, his fingers tangled with satin. He pulled out Mina’s ribbon and stroked his thumb up and down the pink strip of fabric.
Was this truly all he’d have of her when he went back to London? A strip of ribbon and memories that would haunt him the rest of his days?
Burning the tower didn’t bring the peace it should have. Oh, the smoke curling up into the sky gave him a measure of satisfaction, but nothing would ever feel right again without Mina.
He watched the burning tower until his eyesight blurred, then swept his gaze across Enderley’s rear facade. The window panes glittered in the sunlight, the stones gilded in the early morning glow.
Then he saw a figure rush past the ground-floor windows, slip in the grass, and continue on toward the burning tower.
He made out brown trousers, black boots, and long waves of chestnut hair.
Mina.
Nick scrambled to his feet and flew down the rise, breaking into a run when he hit flat ground. He shouted her name, but she didn’t seem to hear. She kept on toward the tower.
He stretched into a longer gait until he was so close he swiped for her arm. “Mina, stop.”
She slowed just enough for him to catch up. He stopped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her hands came up to dislodge him.
“Let me go.”
“Stubborn woman.” Nick came around to face her, planting himself between her and the tower. “Are you mad?”
“The cat might be in there.” She immediately tried to barrel past him, and he caught her again.
“What bloody cat?” But he knew as soon as he asked. The orange ball of fury. They’d come as a pair that first day. “Mina, I promise you she’s not in the tower. I went inside. There was nothing, just old rotting furniture.”
“But we can’t find her.” She kept pushing at him, attempting to twist out of his grasp. “Tobias says she goes in sometimes.”
A Duke Changes Everything Page 26