LTSV - Lost & Found 6 (Patreon)

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. 

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.

Violet had had an older sister, Vesper, from her father’s first wife, who was about five years older than her and she was their father’s direct bloodline heir. Their stepmother, the third and so far final wife, had provided the Coventry line with two more children, Viola and Raoul. 

Nanny tried to gloss over it, but Viola’s age alone made it clear that she’d been conceived shortly before the second Lady Coventry died. Nanny seemed to think that the third Lady Coventry had originally been intended as the Second Lady Coventry, but then the Lord Warden was engaged to Violet’s mother at the request of someone he couldn’t refuse, but she wasn’t sure who that was. As a result, Violet’s relationship with her stepmother and half-sister was strained even before the beginning. So, really, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Viola ended up in Cecily’s faction at school. In fact, Viola Coventry wasn’t just in Cecily’s faction. She was Cecily’s best friend. 

They’d started out sharing a dorm room and soon became close. They were practically twins in both looks and temperament. She was the only NPC in the game who, along with Andrei and Violet, was impossible to avoid. All Viola’s first scenes took place in the tutorial. 

Viola functioned as the player’s main source of background information about the world of ‘Lost Daughter.’ She was a terrible gossip who always knew who in school was doing what, where, and how. ‘Chat with your Roommate’ was the primary mechanism through which the player could figure out how to place Cecily so she could net maximum face time with the right boy, avoid them when they might do something Cecily might disapprove of, or to stop the other boys from attracting her attention.

Violet, meanwhile, was an upperclassman in the first game so the player only really saw her when there was about to be an ‘accident.’ Both she and Andrei were about a year older than the heroine, but it turned out that Viola was actually more essential to the plot than even Violet was. Fortunately, they were nowhere near the time for that revelation and Mira hoped to be far away when it happened. Circumstances might not allow her to, but she did plan to try.

Around noon, Anna finally let Mira out of bed and helped her dress in a soft morning gown. The ink of her monitoring charm had set overnight and was no longer at risk of smearing or cracking, but Anna chose a dress that was loose and flowing so that nothing would rub on it.

After a late breakfast, Mira took the daily newspapers to a chaise in her private sitting room while Anna brought in a small leather pouf from the maids’ room and a basket of mending. She sat both on the ground where she could keep an eye on Mira and started sorting through her basket. Most of it appeared to be Mira’s underthings and foundation garments, all of it more worn than Mira would have expected given the quality of her top layers and nightgowns.

Well, no, actually. She could guess what had happened. Violet’s stepmother wouldn’t have been inclined to spend more money on her stepdaughter than she had to when she had her own children to look after. No one dared to slight or short Vesper. She was Lord Coventry’s heir, but Violet had likely been a different matter—especially since her fiance showed no signs of taking interest in her affairs so there was little risk of alienating the Prince Regent. She couldn’t short anything that affected the children' s outward appearances, but everything her stepdaughter wore that was out of sight would have been fair game so now Anna had to sort through Mira’s host’s backlog of worn petticoats and chemises to see what could be saved.

Normally, and Violet’s stray memories confirmed this was also true here, a personal maid could expect her mistress’s hand-me-downs as part of her pay. Mira watched her maid for a while and decided that, no, this would not do. She needed Anna’s absolute loyalty and support. She wasn’t to get that from a pair of laddered silk stockings.

“Toss out anything you don’t think is worth fixing,” Mira said, pretending to look at her papers. “When Nanny comes back, I’ll ask her for some catalogs. We can all get new underpinnings.”

“You already bought me two new casual dresses and unmentionables to go with my uniforms, Miss,” Anna said with a chuckle. “It was a day or so before your accident,” she added, a touch more gently. “Thank you for having the same nice thought twice. Auntie—I meant Matron Byrde said to go through all this to see if we can salvage anything nice enough for the charity box.”

“You may call her Auntie,” Mira mumbled, snapping the newspaper open to hide her red face. “There’s no need to be so formal in private.”

“Yes, Miss!” Anna said, sounding like she wanted to laugh again–but the amusement leached out of her tone before she finished speaking. She swallowed audibly and said, in much the same tone of someone who was trying to sneak up on a spider, “Miss, may I see that newspaper for a moment?”

Mira closed her eyes, thought about it, and decided–no, she didn’t actually want to know. Not right now. Not while she could still feel the lingering full body ache of that first seizure and had no protection against a second one yet. 

She handed the paper over.

“I trust this isn’t something that needs immediate attention?” Mira asked.

Anna shook her head. “No, miss,” she said as she folded the entire paper in half and tucked it into her apron pocket. “Just—aggravating. I would rather you didn't see it even if you were well”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Mira sighed as she rubbed her temples. Even minding her own business at home was causing her trouble. “Fetch me the fashion sheets, please. Surely there’s nothing there that can upset me.”

“Hopefully not!” Anna chuckled, but she also checked the contents of the magazines before she brought them over so maybe Mira wasn’t the only one being tested by the world that morning.