“To relatives?” Mr. Roberts pressed. Mina stared at the broken blood-vessels on his bulbous nose and wondered if he was a secret drinker.
“I am hoping to secure a position as a governess,” Mina corrected him.
“Now, if you gentlemen would excuse us,” Hannah said loudly, pursing her lips. “My young lady has several matters she needs to wind up before she can pack her bags.”
This was another lie, Mina thought but was grateful for Hannah’s intercession. She had neatly packed up her things the day before. All packed up and nowhere to go. Nosy Mr. Roberts and sour Mr. Simpkin were ushered out of the front door and Mina sat at her father’s walnut writing desk and laboriously wrote out a set of glowing references for Hannah.
As she laid down her pen, she felt the beginnings of a dizzy terror at what was to become of her. Her future yawned before her like a frightening chasm which would swallow her up into nothingness. She had no-one. Even Hannah had prospective employment lined up with a young widow in town, though she professed herself quite willing to stay on until Mina was ready to leave.
To leave for where though? She had given up hoping for employment from the several schools in the area. She had applied to them for any teaching positions when their own pupils had trickled away, before Father had even grown sick. Since Father’s illness, she had sent dozens of letters asking after private governess posts but had yet to receive a single reply. The trouble was, she was still relatively inexperienced at four-and-twenty and the only school she had ever worked in was her own father’s.
Governess positions usually took a while to secure and realistically you needed a sponsor to work on your behalf who had the necessary connections. She had hoped that Lady Ralph who had been a sponsor of the school might help her, but that lady had been sadly uncommunicative of late. Mina’s family had kept very much to themselves. Although regular attendees at church, they had not mixed much with the congregation, for her parents had really only cared for one another’s company. They neither moved in society nor kept up any acquaintance in Bath. They also lacked family connection for, as Mina understood it, both her parents had been orphaned at a young age.
A rap at the front door startled her out of her bleak reverie. She hoped goodness it was no tradesman expecting payment for the coffers were now well and truly empty. She craned her ears and to her surprise heard a tread on the stair. Surely Hannah was not bringing any caller upstairs to her? She half-turned in her seat and widened her eyes when she heard a short knock on the door. Quickly touching hands to her head, she felt her nut-brown hair was still smooth and glossy in its arrangement of side-braids which looped below her ears and then swept up into a neat bun at the back.
“Presenting Lord Faris, miss,” Hannah said, bobbing a curtsey and withdrawing promptly.
Mina stared at the beautiful young man who sauntered into the room. He wore a most elegant outfit of evening wear complete with black opera cape, top hat, and a walking cane topped with a silver pommel. His hair was a bright, burnished gold and stood around his face like a halo and it was only after staring at him a moment, that Mina realized he had a rather cynical mouth and his eyes looked slightly glazed.
“Good evening, Lord Faris,” she said, rising from her chair and giving a graceful curtsey. It was easy to fall back on deeply ingrained manners when all else failed.
He was looking at her rather hard. “Dear me, you are not at all what I expected,” he drawled. “Are you indeed, she?” He extracted a letter from his pocket. “Miss Mina Walters?” He read the words as though they were slightly distasteful to him and Mina felt herself bristling. “You do not look,” he added thoughtfully. “Like I imagine a Mina.” He twirled a hand about indicating her appearance. “You look more like…” He pouted a moment in thought. “A Prudence.” He pronounced with displeasure.
“My parents always called me Mina,” she answered repressively. “Though my true name is Minerva, after the goddess of wisdom and strategy.”
“Minerva?” he repeated with a faint wince. “Ah yes.”
At that moment, Mina caught sight of the handwriting on the page he held between his elegant fingers. Surely that was her father’s writing? She felt her heart leap. It must be the infamous letter Hannah had posted. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me. Are we acquainted?” she asked with a calm she did not feel.
He threw himself down onto a chair and then winced. “This chair,” he pronounced carefully. “Is damnably uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps you ought not to have hurled yourself down into it, in such a fashion,” Mina could not help suggesting. “It is hardly designed for such ill-treatment.”
He ignored her, his eye roaming over the room with a fascinated and leisurely sort of contempt. “Dear me, so this is what a young ladies boarding school looks like. How very disagreeable. I can scarcely credit she would have left my father for this.”
Mina looked back at him steadily. “I’m afraid you will have to be a good deal less cryptic,” she said frankly. “If you expect me to respond at all meaningfully.”
He frowned. “Do sit down. I can’t concentrate when you’re hovering above me like some kind of carrion.” He eyed her full mourning with disfavor. “That gown makes you look like a crow.”
“Yes, so I gather. A crow called Prudence,” she agreed tartly. “I am in mourning,” she said, taking a seat opposite him and drawing her black fringed shawl tighter about her.
“Oh? Did he actually die then?” His gaze flickered back to the letter. “He said he was dying, but I did not know if that was merely artistic license.”
“My father died three days ago,” she corrected him quietly.
“A man of his word,” he replied with a humorous quirk of his lips.
“Always,” Mina agreed and saw by his quick frown that he would like to always have the last word. Immediately, she determined she would never let him have it. She folded her hands in her lap and waited as he crossed his legs encased in cream silk breeches and stared at her in moody abstraction.
“Shall I go and order tea?” she asked when the silence started to stretch.
“Filthy stuff,” he answered swiftly. “I never touch it. I will take a glass of brandy.”
“I’m afraid my father kept no liquor in the house.”
“Good God. Was he some kind of puritan?”
Mina did not trouble to answer this for she saw he was not really interested in her father at all. “Am I to take it there is some kind of familial connection between us, my lord?” she asked coolly, though she still could not credit what her father had told her in his last few moments.
“Oh yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “We are brother and sister, my dear, though only half-blood. Through our sainted mother.” Mina felt her color rise and seeing her expression, he laughed softly. “She divorced my father and married yours,” he said. “Did she never speak of it even once?”
Mina clutched the arms of her chair. “Not of divorce, no.”
“Of me?” he asked, looking intrigued. “She spoke of her own darling boy?” His lips twisted.
“Of you, yes,” she admitted, feeling as though the words were dragged out of her. “She spoke of her first-born child, but I never dreamed…” She had never said he was by a different father. Mina took a deep breath. “It was her expressed wish that she was buried with your baby bonnet.”