Mina stared back at him. “My bags are practically packed,” she admitted. “I was hoping to hear word of some position—”
He cut her off peremptorily. “Good. I believe I have sampled all the delights Bath has to offer and am now ready to wend my weary footsteps homeward.”
“But how long would it take to travel to your home?”
“A week,” he answered with a shrug. “Depending on weather and travelling conditions.”
A week? “Are we to take the stagecoach?”
“I have my own conveyance,” he answered with a yawn. “And we will change horses at Exeter.”
The next hour was a blur. Hannah, very excited, helped to round up the last of Mina’s meagre possessions into a battered trunk and a large, rather ugly carpetbag. Methodically, Mina walked through every single room in the small school and ensured she had not overlooked any treasured possession including the matching Staffordshire china dogs or her mother’s engraved silver teapot. As a last act, she slipped into her father’s empty room and taking up his watch and chain, she secured it in the hidden pocket at her waist and pinned the chain to her bodice. Then she and Hannah threw dust sheets over the piano, the tables, the mirrors, and the desks.
Lord Faris came looking for her long before they had finished, and Hannah assured her she was more than capable of completing the task before she secured the property and returned the key. Mina embraced Hannah, and the servant slipped a weighted piece of paper into her palm as they drew apart. She shot a warning look at Mina as she bobbed a curtsey to Lord Faris.
“Thank you for everything, Hannah. I have left your references on the desk. I do hope you will be happy with Mrs. Fortescue.”
“Yes miss, I’m sure. And you take care of yourself.”
Touching a hand to the locket at her throat, Mina turned and followed her half-brother out of the door and out of Hill School for Young Ladies, forever.
2
One week later
The carriage lurched again, and Mina’s hand shot out to brace herself against the padded sides. Lord Faris’s coach was luxurious and flaunted his crest on every available surface, yet even wealth it seemed could not shield you from all discomfort on the open road.
A succession of inns and the merest glimpse of bustling Exeter had been all Mina had experienced en route, for Lord Faris had not wanted to tarry and had pressed his coachman hard. The four white horses had been exchanged at Exeter for four gray horses and they had pressed on. Now, on the seventh day, they had set out bright and early for the final leg of the journey.
She wished she could take the opportunity to enjoy the Cornish scenery, for what she could see from the window was astonishingly varied. Rocky outcrops one minute and lush green barley fields the next. As for the glimpses she caught of the coastline, they were tantalizingly lovely even when the sea mist obscured the detail.
Mina had now spent six and a half days in the company of her half-brother and was no longer surprised by his mercurial changes in mood. Her heart sank when she saw his silver hip flask appear mid-morning and at every inn they passed, he demanded it refilled. Usually, he waited until their evening meal before he began imbibing and it seemed an ill-omen for his homecoming that he would make it blind drunk.
As the day wore on, he became steadily more wild-eyed and disheveled in appearance, his necktie hanging untied, his collar open. Mina watched him with pursed lips. Now she could recognize the signs, she thought he must have been drinking heavily on the first occasion she had met him.
“You look nothing like her,” he said, suddenly rousing her from her ruminations. “You must take after the school-master. A great pity.”
“Apparently, my lord,” she corrected him in a low but firm voice. “I take after my paternal grandmother who was a woman of great resolve.”
He gave a soft laugh at that. “I just bet you do.”
“How do you know I look nothing like her?” she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Do you tell me you remember her? Despite the fact she left when you were so young?”
His eyebrows rose. “There is a full-size portrait of my—our—dearly departed mother hanging in the gold sitting room at Vance Park.”
A portrait? “I have her miniature,” she admitted. “My father commissioned a matching pair for their first wedding anniversary.”
“Indeed?” His eyes flew to her locket. “May I see it?”
She had half a mind to refuse him, but her mother’s memory forestalled her. Instead she reached wordlessly for the clasp on her bronze locket and unfastened it. The catch was stiff and fiddly, she opened the oval locket before passing it to him.
He took it from her and sat studying it a moment. “Undoubtedly the same sitter though my father’s artist was infinitely more skilled.”
“Doubtlessly infinitely more expensive also,” she replied dryly.
The smile on his lips grew. “You get your coloring from your father, I suppose,” he said, transferring his gaze to the opposite side of the locket. “That middling brown shade of your hair. I had hoped you would resemble her more.”
Jeremy Vance, Viscount Faris was starting to grate on her nerves. “She was also a very sweet-tempered person with excellent manners. It seems we neither of us resemble her in temperament, brother.” It was the first time she had addressed him as such, and certainly the first time she had shown him outright the sharpness of her tongue. To his credit, he threw back his head and laughed. She had a suspicion he was more than half-cut at this
