Chapter Six

The doctor gave Mira some time to eat, drink, and use the water closet. Mira was very grateful to see indoor plumbing. The game had no scenes that took place in the bathroom, so she’d feared the worst. No chamber pots for her in this life!

Doctor Desmona didn’t exaggerate the effect of the healing spell either, Mira was aware for about a minute or so of the strange cool sensation of the doctor’s hand cupping the back of her head before she woke up alone, facedown in bed, with midmorning light and pigeon noises streaming in through the open window.

It took a moment for her to remember she wasn’t supposed to move around too much, so Mira groped on the nightstand until she found a bell and rang it.

Anna popped in almost immediately. “Good morning, miss!” she chirped and came over. “How are you feeling?”

“Very groggy,” Mira replied, rubbing her good eye. “What time is it?”

“It’s eleven forty-five,” Anna replied with sympathy. “Do you need the water closet? The doctor said you could move around that much, but you have to stay on your tummy otherwise for another hour.”

“Yes, water closet,” Mira replied and watched Anna bustle about. She did like having servants when she was vulnerable like this—when they were trustworthy, at least. That hadn’t been the case in all her lives, although Mira had (by necessity) gotten good at bringing unruly staff members to heel over the course of all her lives. “Thank you.”

Anna was an excellent assistant, though, as she helped put Mira back into order and set her up on a rounded chaise lounge in a housedress with the back left open to not interfere with the paint, which had dried down to a tacky glaze that was prone to smearing or coming off against anything that brushed it. Presumably, this so that the lines wouldn’t crack.

Given Nanny’s reassurances to her about their financial situation, Mira didn’t plan on trying to go anywhere nor do much of anything until she had her full inscription. There wasn’t a pressing need to and she wasn’t in a hurry to encounter the rest of the cast.

000

As her first task, Mira sent Nanny Byrde out to go look at the townhouse. They couldn’t stay in the hotel forever, no matter what her finances would allow, especially not when she had property already in hand. The fact that Mira woke up in a hotel suggested that the house wasn’t ready for occupancy, so Mira’s first order of business was to find out just how much attention the townhouse would need.

It couldn’t be in very bad shape. Violet’s father used to stay there every so often when she was little, before his third marriage, for those times when he had business in the Capitol. Still, that was eighteen years ago and a lot could happen in that time. Lord Coventry’s third wife, the stepmother, had family members who lived in the Capitol and they kept permanent guest quarters set aside for their son-in-law, which was more convenient than keeping an entire house at the ready so he hardly used the townhouse anymore. Now it belonged to Mira.

The Coventry family’s territorial seat was about twenty hours away by carriage. The crystal communications network in the game only operated within the Capitol’s city limits and it was the same in reality. Any message headed outside of or into the city had to rely on the postal service or a special courier, therefore it wouldn’t have been easy or convenient for Violet’s father to keep a personal eye on his dead wife’s property and Mira didn’t remember enough about him to guess about how much effort he was likely to put into it after he remarried.

Speaking of, Nanny had sent a letter to Violet’s father as soon as she could following the broken engagement and Violet’s seizure, but he would likely only receive it this afternoon at the earliest. Mira had directed her housekeeper to send an update and, unless she was mistaken, the letter would probably arrive long before anyone could leave, if they even planned to. The Lord Warden traveled with a full guard and so he didn’t go anywhere in a hurry. It was just as well. She didn’t want to see anyone from Violet’s family before she had to, but there was always a chance that Violet’s father might find the situation dire enough to command use of a managate.

The managates were a network of teleportation gates in ‘Lost Daughter 2.’ Access to them was heavily restricted, though. Cecily would get a pass, but only because the Prince Regent gave it to her as a favor to his son around mid-game. Violet’s father probably already had a pass, due to his status, but Mira wasn’t sure how any of that worked when you weren’t a sweet-faced teenage girl who didn’t travel with family or an entourage.

It would be interesting to find out if Violet’s family made any attempt to reach out to Mira, but in the interim Mira had to consider her housing. The hotel suited her current needs, but it wasn’t a permanent solution. The townhouse would have more space and privacy, even if moving there meant that Mira would need to hire more staff. That was a two-edged sword. Nanny and Anna shouldn’t have to keep up with the entire house by themselves, but anyone that Mira hired would be privy to what went on in her house and the newspapers were still interested in her business. Scandals sell papers, after all.

Nanny Byrde had explained a bit more about Mira’s family situation after she woke up, in hopes that hearing about them would shake loose a few more memories. Most of it was information that Mira already had from the game, though.

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Violet was the product of her father’s second, very brief marriage, which ended within a year and resulted in both a daughter and his second widowing. If he mourned his second wife, Violet’s father didn’t do it for long because he remarried right away. Mira had a sense that all three of his marriages were political matches, but his third was motivated most by his urgent need for a co-parent.