Phoenix and Ashes em-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  If only some of those empty-headed dolls his mother kept dragging about could have a fraction of her intelligence and personality.

  "There will be young women you've never even seen at this weekend, Reggie," Lady Virginia said, breaking into his melancholy thoughts. "Perhaps—"

  "Or perhaps not," he said, more harshly than he had intended, and tried to soften it with a sheepish smile. "I'll keep an open mind, my lady. I won't promise more than that."

  There was one saving grace in all of this. With the weekend looming up, and all of the preparations that even Lady Virginia would have to help with, she wouldn't be pressuring him so much to take up his magic quickly.

  A silver lining of sons. These days, he would take whatever sliver of silver he could get.

  "Exactly what sort of girl interests you, Reggie?" she asked, out of the blue. "I've never been able to make you out. I must suppose you had your little flings—"

  "Quite enough, with my debts honorably discharged," he replied, flippantly. "There is one thing to be said in favor of a girl who only expects money and presents from one; you always know where you are with her, and she always has someone waiting in the wings when you tire of her."

  Lady Virginia winced. "Is that the prevailing attitude now?" she asked soberly. "In my day, there was at least a pretense of romance."

  "We haven't time to waste on romance, my lady," he said flatly. "Not when—"

  He didn't say it, but it was there, hanging in the air between them. Not when in a week or two or three you can be just another grave in Flanders.

  She brooded down on the roses. "I expect there is a great deal to be said for knowing that if the—worst—happens, your current inamorata will simply shrug and move on to another when she sees your name in the papers. But those of your generation that live through this hideousness are coming out with scars of the heart and soul as well as the body, and I do not know what that will mean in the long run."

  "Neither do I," he replied truthfully. "But you asked what sort of girl I find attractive—"

  Involuntarily, the image of Eleanor, independent, clever, intelligent, entirely unsuitable Eleanor, flashed through his mind.

  "Someone I can talk to, about anything," he said, finally. "Someone who has the brains not only to understand what I'm talking about, but to hold up her side of the conversation. When you have the wherewithal to buy as much beauty as you want, it isn't as important. Mind, I'm not saying that I don't like a girl to be pretty, but—" He shrugged helplessly. "Never mind. It's hardly relevant."

  "Surely at some point," Lady Virginia began, "you must have encountered—"

  It was time to put an end to this, so he put up the one argument he knew there would be no getting around. "My lady, there's another condition, and it's one I cannot tell Mater. I watched how father struggled to keep Mater ignorant of his Elemental work, the difficulties and even heartache it caused for both of them, and I decided a long time ago that I won't marry anyone who isn't an Elemental Master in her own right. I must have someone I don't have to keep that sort of secret from, and how likely is that?"

  There. That will silence her. He actually had sworn that—before the war—so he wasn't lying. Not that he ever expected to take up the wand of an Air Master again. Merely dropping some of his shields had been shudderingly difficult; he could not even think about working real magic again without bringing on an attack of panic.

  Lady Virginia looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Perhaps more likely than you think."

  He snorted. "They're not exactly thick on the ground," was all he said. He tried not to think of Peter Scott with raw envy. Curse the man—he had the perfect partner, a woman who was an Elemental Master, brilliant, self-sufficient, and a stunning, exotic beauty.

  Not that Mater wouldn't drop dead on the spot if I brought home a half-breed Hindu.

  She was the one woman he had ever met who could actually understand, really and truly, what the war did to a man, did to his soul. Maybe that was the biggest problem with the girls of his set. They didn't, and couldn't. None of them had volunteered as nurses or VAD girls in France or Belgium. None of them had the least idea of the things that lay inside his mind; none of them would ever want to know. They preferred to think of the war the way those first volunteers had, as a chance for glory, and if one must die, to die nobly. They didn't know and couldn't understand that there was nothing noble or glorious about those churned-over fields, the dead zones of mud and razor-wire. And if he tried to tell them, they would turn away in horror.

  Doctor Maya knew, and didn't flinch from it. But how many like her were there?

  "It has been my experience, limited though it is, that if you are really determined in that direction, the partner will find you when you are both ready," she said gravely. "But I am sure that makes me sound like some sort of mystic, so I will keep my opinions to myself. Just keep an open mind as you promised—and open eyes as well."

  She retreated to the house, leaving him staring down at the garden, wondering bitterly if anyone who hadn't experienced the Front could ever understand what it did to someone inside.

  We look, act, and talk like our old selves, but we've been damaged, each and every one of us, he thought. We're scarred inside. Like rosebuds with canker-worms at their hearts. We look the same, but even if we live, we'll never blossom. And there is nothing that will change that. Nothing at all.

  24

  July 15, 1917

  Broom, Warwickshire

  SUNSHINE AND FRESH AIR FLOODED the kitchen, and The Arrows was very peaceful without the Robinsons and Howse present. So peaceful, that Eleanor wondered what it would be like to live here like this forever—if somehow, the Robinsons would just never return.

  "I've thought and I've reasoned, and I've looked," Sarah said aloud, startling Eleanor as she concentrated on a particularly obtuse paragraph about the Hanged Man card. "And much as I hate to admit that I'm wrong—well, I'm wrong."

  Eleanor blinked, and stared at her mentor. Sarah was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the kitchen, staring down at a pile of stones with markings on them. Rune-stones, she called them, and she used them not only to try and give her some direction for the future, but to try and learn what was going on around her that might be hidden from her. If, for instance, someone was sick enough that he needed to see the medical doctor and not just depend on her herbal remedies. There were many country folk who still were suspicious of the doctor and veterinarian, and sometimes it took Sarah a deal of convincing to get them to go to either gentleman.

  "Wrong about what?" Eleanor asked. It took a lot to get Sarah to admit she was wrong about anything. She was dreadfully stubborn that way.

  Then again, she had every right to be.

  "I've always said that the big house and the village haven't got much of anything to say to each other," Sarah replied sourly, still staring down at her stones. "Still, I knew it was an Air Master that chased off the revenants; I knew it couldn't be a local witch, no matter how powerful, when you told me about it, and I was right. It turns out she's a guest up there at Longacre, though, and it seems that she's staying the summer. And that changes everything."

  "An Air Master?" Eleanor said, catching her breath. Oh, granted, it wasn't her Element, but any Master could help her—

  More to the point, unlike, say, a constable or any other authority figure, any Elemental Master would know she was telling the truth about Alison and what Alison had done to her. She wouldn't have to try and convince an Elemental Master that she wasn't mad because she was talking about magic.

  "That's what we've needed, what you've needed, to see if you can't get cut free of your stepmother and her wicked magic. And now, I've asked the cards, the bones, and the stones, and they're all saying you need to go up there and meet with that Air Master. In fact, they say if you don't, well—" she shook her head. "It'll be bad, that's all. Not just bad for you, either. The stones reckon Alison's got some wicked mischief going that's going to be a t
rouble no matter what steps are taken to stop her, but horrible bad if she isn't stopped." Sarah looked up, her face full of fear. "I can't tell what it is, but at a guess, she's let loose some kind of sickness; she's Earth, and that's the sort of thing they do when they go to the bad. Pestilence and plague." Sarah bit her lip. "Well, the stones say that if you work with that Air Master and get yourself cut free, Alison will fall, but if you don't, she'll use you somehow and put more power into whatever it is she's done, and the stones don't say how much worse it will be, but they're all showing their bad sides."

  She felt as if hope and fear were at war inside her. Hope, because here was exactly what she needed. Fear, because how could she ever get what she needed with Alison's hearth-binding still holding her? "But—I can't get as far as Longacre," she protested. "And even if I could, I can't just stroll up to even the tradesman's entrance and ask to be introduced to the Air Master!" Even if she knew the Air Master's real name. Especially not looking like a servant. She knew better than to go to the front door—she'd be turned away in a heartbeat.

  "Well, now, that's not necessarily true . . . because you only need to get inside those walls once and talk to her. After that, if she's worth anything, and the stones say she is, she'll come to you." Sarah gathered up the stones and poured them into a little leather bag. "And there is one night, coming up, when you can walk in the front door and be presented like you were to the manor born. Provided you're wearing a fancy dress." She tilted her head to one side. "Think about it. The night of that fancy dress ball. If your stepsisters are good enough to be invited, you surely are as well."

  Eleanor's hand flew to her mouth. "Good gad!" she cried. "You're right, you're exactly right! But—" As quickly as her hopes rose, they dropped again. "Where am I going to get an invitation? Or a costume? Especially one that will look as if it belongs among people like that?"

  "Ah, now, what about that attic of yours?" Sarah replied, with a lift of her brow. "I think we ought to take a look up there, first, before we think about any other possibilities. As for the invitation, you leave that up to me. I'll find a way to get you invited."

  Eleanor wanted to protest that she'd been through all of the chests and had salvaged the only usable garments up there, but Sarah was already on her feet and marching towards the steps. With a sigh of resignation, Eleanor followed.

  It was easier to move the chests with two of them, but it was rather disheartening to see what the moths and time had done to some of the once-beautiful gowns that had been inside them. Silk shattered and tore like wet tissue as they lifted gowns out; the satins had mostly discolored, beadwork fell off the bodices. But just as Eleanor turned away, even though there were older chests and clothes-presses waiting, certain that they had completely eliminated any possibility of finding anything, Sarah let out an exclamation of satisfaction.

  "What?" Eleanor blurted, turning back.

  Sarah held up a froth of flounces and lace. "I knew there should be one of these still good!" she exclaimed with satisfaction. "It's still a tale in the village, how the three girls from Broom went up to London and were the belles of the ball. The fellow who owned The Arrows before your father bought it was just as well-off; the wool-trade, d'ye see, that and The Arrows had been in his family since Great Harry's day. This is a ball-gown from the time of Victoria's coronation; all three of the daughters here went down to London on account of some aunt married a title got them all manner of invitations. She got them into all the right circles and chaperoned them about for three weeks. It must have worked, since two of them got husbands out of the journey, and but the third never could settle on anyone, and ended up back here, taking care of her parents when they got old. That's who your father bought the house of, the daughter who never married."

  Curious now, Eleanor made her way back to where Sarah was unpacking the petticoats that went with the gown. They, remarkably, were also still sound. The gown was stupefying to one used to the current narrow skirts and minimal (or in Eleanor's case, nonexistent) corseting. She couldn't imagine how much Venice lace had gone into trimming the row after row of flounces on the skirt. Twenty yards? Thirty? The neckline was low enough to make her blush; the puffy little flounced sleeves were as tiny as the skirt was huge. It was made of some sort of flounces of netting or gauzy stuff in a dark ivory tone over a slightly heavier skirt. Maybe it had once been pure white, and had aged to this color, but if so, it had done so uniformly.

  "You'll look a rare treat," Sarah said, giving the gown a good shake. "This is Indian cotton, from back in the day when it was dearer than silk."

  "I'll look a rare Guy—" Eleanor retorted. But she reached out to touch the delicate lace, anyway, wondering wistfully if she really could fit into it.

  A moment later, she found out, at Sarah's insistence. She was surprised to find that it fit her very well indeed.

  "A good thing that they didn't reckon young girls should wear much but flowers or feathers, back in the day," Sarah said, looking very pleased. " 'Cause how I should manage jewels, I haven't a clue. We'll say you're little Princess Victoria herself. Here, I've got a nice rose-colored sash off that silk that went to bits, that'll take the place of the old one that's gone, a bit of cleaning, some flowers and a domino-mask—you leave it to me. Put your hair up, and a bit of glamourie, even Alison won't recognize you."

  Eleanor looked down at herself, feeling a thrill of excitement. And it wasn't because she would finally find a possible mentor, or because this might be the chance to plead her case to an Elemental Master. No, there was only one thought in her head at the moment.

  Reggie will be there. And he'll see me like this—not shabby.

  "But how am I going to get there?" she asked, as it occurred to her that trying to walk up to Longacre in that dress was going to be in impossible proposition.

  "I'll borrow a cart and horse and put a glamorie on them, too," Sarah said dismissively. "Make them look like a carriage. Wouldn't pass in daylight, but this will be after dark. I'll be your coachman, I'll hand you out, so nobody gets close enough to see through the glamorie."

  "But—I still can't get as far as the manor!" she objected weakly. "Alison's bindings—I've tried stretching them, and they still only go as far as the meadow."

  "You will be able to. Alison will have her hands full with her girls. She'll be trying to hide her nature from that Air Master, you can count on it. She'll be distracted by the ball. For an hour or two, and working together, we'll be able to stretch those bindings just far enough that night." Sarah sounded quite sure of herself, and Eleanor just gave in.

  She had to be right. This was Eleanor's only chance to get some outside help.

  She wanted to see Reggie, even if he didn't recognize her. Maybe because he wouldn't recognize her. Just once, she wanted to talk to him, and see him look at her the way he would look at any other girl that was his social equal.

  She wanted—a memory. No matter what happened to her after that night, she wanted to have a memory of being a princess at a ball, dancing with a handsome knight, and allow herself to be just that little bit in love with him.

  "You're right," she said, with a nod. "If we don't seize this opportunity, there may never be another one; we have to make it work."

  July 11, 1917

  London

  Thanks to her friendship with Lady Devlin, the Savoy had put the Robinsons up in a better suite than usual; the girls didn't even have to share a room, which made for a little more peace and quiet. It certainly impressed Warrick Locke when he arrived on Alison's summons.

  Alison saw no need to trouble herself with secrecy today; what could be more natural than a meeting with her solicitor since they both "happened" to be in London? The girls were at fittings for their costumes; nothing could be more respectable than having him come to her hotel suite in broad daylight with a briefcase full of papers. Howse was right in the next room, though she could have been in this one, if Alison had wished, and neither seen nor heard anything but her book. It had tak
en more than a year, but now Howse was nicely obedient to Alison's will and directions, yet still had enough freedom of thought that she performed all of her duties properly.

  Just for the sake of verisimilitude, Locke had a stack of papers on the table. The fact that none of those papers concerned her was something no one else would ever find out. Some of them, however, concerned Eleanor, who was the central topic of their conversation. Eleanor was a loose end that Alison very much wanted tidied up before there was a wedding in the offing. It would be harder to dispose of her quietly when one was connected to the Fenyxes of Longacre Park.

  But Locke still had no better plan than the old one, even though he'd had weeks to think of alternatives. Alison was extremely disappointed in him; normally he was full of ideas, but he seemed terribly fixated on this one. Perhaps it was because of his own personal obsessions, but if that was indeed the case, the sooner he got them under control, the better.

  "I tell you, Warrick, no matter how much you like your plan to break that wretched girl's mind, it is too complicated," Alison objected. "What's more, it relies too much on that man of yours, as well as bringing in possible confederates. I know you trust him, but every time you add a person to a plan you double the chances of something being said or done at the wrong time and either ruining the whole thing or giving the plan away. Or worse still, you've added the danger of having your confederate decide to betray you."