Phoenix and Ashes (28 page)

“They’re
from a tin,” she warned.

“That’s
the only kind we could get, over there,” he replied.
“Wouldn’t remember what a proper one tasted like. We were always starved
for sweets, on account of it being so plaguey cold and never really able to get
properly warm except during summer. All tents do is keep off the rain—and
sometimes not even that.”

“Well,
have my share,” she told him generously. The rest of the afternoon went
by much as the first had; in inconsequential chatter. Any time he started to
run dry of inconsequentials, she prompted him with something else light.
Somehow she
knew
that this was what he needed. When he talked about
the war, he shouldn’t be talking about the
war
, itself, but
about things on the periphery. And above all, she was not going to ask him
about fighting.

Books,
though—that was a safe enough topic. And he had read an astonishing
variety. It seemed that once someone was done with whatever volume had been
sent him by friends, lover, or relatives, if it didn’t have sentimental
value, it became common property. A surprising amount of poetry ended up making
the rounds of the barracks—somehow he had ended up memorizing a great deal
of it, and without too much coaxing she got him to recite quite a bit of it. It
wasn’t too much of a surprise that he found Kipling to his taste; when he
recited “The Bridge-Guard at Karoo” she could almost see the scene
played out in front of her, the sound and lights of the train coming out of the
hot, dark silence of the desert night, the men on their solitary, isolated duty
grasping desperately for the few moments of civilization they were allowed, and
then the train moving on again, leaving them—“few, forgotten, and
lonely”—to their thankless post.

She
thought that he could see it, too. Perhaps that was why he recited it so
feelingly.

Then
he had her in stitches as he related the rather improbable tales found in some
of the American dime novels that had been left with his air-wing.

“How
can anyone take
any
of that seriously?” she gasped, after a
particularly funny confrontation between the hero and an entire tribe of Red
Indians, complicated by a buffalo stampede and a raid by the James Gang. It
probably hadn’t been intended to be funny, at least not by the original
author, but it was so utterly impossible that it ended up being a parody of
itself.

“I
have had men swear solemnly to me that such things, if they hadn’t
happened to
them
, personally, had certainly happened to a friend of a
friend, or a distant cousin, or some such connection,” Reggie replied, as
she held her aching side. “Great tellers of tall tales, are the Yanks.
Even the ones who never got farther west than New York City in their lives seemed
to think they should be cowboys.”

She
looked down at her rosemary sprig, and saw with disappointment that it was
starting to wilt. “Oh, bother,” she said aloud. “Reggie, I
would so like to stay here until suppertime—”

“No,
no—I quite understand. Stolen hours, and all that.” He said it with
surface lightness, but she saw the quickly veiled disappointment, and it gave
her a little thrill to realize that he had
enjoyed
being with her, and
he wanted her to stay.

“I
have to go,” she said, honestly. “I don’t have a choice. I
can be here tomorrow, but after that—I can’t tell you when the next
time I’ll be able to get away will be.”

She
was packing up the basket as she spoke. They both reached for the same item as
she finished the sentence; she flushed, and pulled back her hand. He placed the
saucer in the basket, and said, “If I had my way, you’d be a lady
of leisure—but I haven’t been getting my way very often
lately.”

“I
don’t think any of us have been,” she replied, again truthfully.
“So we muddle through however we can. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,”
he pledged.

She
couldn’t help herself; she looked back twice as she trudged away, and
each time he was watching her, and when he saw her looking, he lifted his hand
to wave.

She
carried that image with her all the way home.

Reggie
decided not to go down to the pub tonight; he returned to Longacre feeling more
alive than he had in a long time, even though his nap on the cold ground had
made his knee ache abominably. He left the motor at the stables and limped his
way up to the main house, entering by the terrace-door as the sun began to set,
only to find his mother waiting for him in the sitting-room with a letter in
her hand, and her father beside her with a scowl on his face.

“Reggie,
did you invite Brigadier Mann here to visit?” she asked abruptly, before
he could even so much as greet her.

Ah.
That’s what this is all about. I did not ask the king her father for
permission to bring a guest here
.

“As
a matter of fact, yes, I did,” he replied, “I am the head of this
household; he wrote to ask if he could come for a visit and see how I am doing,
and I of course was delighted to invite him.”

His
grandfather bristled all over at that. “Now you see here, you young
pup—”

“No,
Grandfather,
you
see here,” he interrupted, throttling down an
irrational fury that was all the worse because his good mood of the afternoon
had been spoiled entirely. “It was all very well for you to play at being
the head of this house while I was away, but I’m back now, and I’m
perfectly entitled to invite one of father’s oldest friends for a visit
if I choose.”

“And
put more work on your mother!” the old man snarled.

Well,
that was the feeblest of feeble excuses. “Oh, please,” he snorted.
“There is a house full of servants here for the three of us, and what is
more, I can distinctly recall mother entertaining forty guests for the better
part of three weeks during the hunting season with hardly more staff. Are you
suggesting she has suddenly become such a ninny-hammer that she can’t
arrange for an extra plate at meals or bear the conversation of one more old
man?”

“Please,”
his mother said in distress, putting the letter down as if it had burned her,
“don’t argue.”

“I’m
not arguing, Mater, I’m standing up for you. Your father seems to be
under the mistaken impression that you’ve regressed to the mental
capabilities of a child. I’m correcting that impression.” He looked
down his nose at the old man, who was going red in the face. “Besides, it
isn’t as if the Brigadier needs
entertaining
. He’ll
probably want to use the library for his researches, he’ll be looking
forward to the odd game of billiards, and I might persuade him to go riding. I
think we can manage that.”

“That—so-called
friend of your father’s can’t even be bothered to speak a civil
word to me!” his grandfather got out from between clenched teeth.

Yes,
and that is the real reason you object, isn’t it
?
Because he
doesn’t treat you like royalty. He outranks you, old man, in or out of
the service
.

“Perhaps
that was because you sneered at him and his military record the moment he
walked in the door,” Reggie said, with dangerous calm. “But if you
find his company so intolerable, why don’t you go back to your own home?
We are perfectly capable of managing without your advice, you know.”

The
old man lurched to his feet. “I ought to horsewhip you for that!”
he roared.

“Don’t
try it, unless you want the favor returned,” Reggie replied
contemptuously. Even though his stomach was turning at the confrontation, and
he wanted badly to retreat to his room,
this
time he was, by heaven,
going to stand his ground. And his grandfather might as well hear the
unvarnished truth for once in his life. “I’m weary of your muttered
insults, of your accusations of malingering, and your insufferable arrogance.
I’m tired of you turning mother into a spineless shrinking violet with no
will of her own. Go home, Grandfather. Go and learn some manners. Come back
when you’re fit to be company for good men like the Brigadier; until
then, go roar at your poor valet and threaten your housekeeper like the petty
tyrant you are.”

He
turned to his mother. “Mater, you’ve always liked the
Brigadier’s company in the past, and I see no reason why that should have
changed. You might see your way clear to inviting a few more people down as
well; it would do you good to have some company here. My Aunt April, perhaps;
that would give us enough for a good round of bridge of an evening.”

His
grandfather was still spluttering; his mother was distracted by the thought of
inviting someone whose company
she
enjoyed.

“Lady
Williams?” his mother faltered. “But I thought her
chattering—”

“I
should welcome her chattering, Mater,” he replied, gently. “It is
good-natured and good-hearted. It would be very pleasant to hear
good-natured
conversation around here. Perhaps if there were more of such pleasant
conversation, I would find the pub less congenial.”

By
now his grandfather was nearly purple with rage, and driven into incoherence.

“If
you were to choose to stay, Grandfather, I’ll thank you to remember
that,” he continued. “And don’t bother trying to think of a
retort. I’m going to dress for dinner. You, of course, are free to stay
or go, as you choose—but if you choose to stay, you know what you can
expect. The gloves are off, Grandfather, and they are remaining off.”

And
with that, he turned on his heel and stalked all the way to his rooms.

Once
there, however, he turned the key in the lock and locked himself into his
darkened bedroom, and sank nervelessly down onto the neatly made bed, shaking
in every limb.

I
cannot believe I just did that
.

All
his life, his mother’s father had been the one person that no one dared
to defy. Even Reggie’s own father had never openly flouted the old
man’s edicts.

But
tonight Reggie had challenged him. Whether or not he’d won remained to be
seen. But the challenge had been uttered and had not been answered.

It
should have felt like a triumph, but all that Reggie felt was a kind of sick
fear that made him curl up on the counterpane and shake. Maybe precisely
because he had overturned the old order—it had to be done, but it was one
more bit of stability gone.

And
he hadn’t even done a
good
job of defying the old man. There had
been nothing measured or politic about the way he’d laid into his
grandfather; in fact he’d probably made an enemy of the old man. He
hadn’t planned any of it, hadn’t chosen his subject, time, or
grounds, and just might have made things worse. It was only that he had been
pushed once too often and now he felt he had to push back or die.

He
felt too sick to go down to dinner now, stomach a wreck, head pounding and
aching like someone had taken a poker to it.

Well,
after what he’d just done, the old man probably wouldn’t be down to
dinner either. Still, he couldn’t leave his mother to sit at that long,
empty table alone.

So
after he got his shaking under control, he dressed, and waited for the gong,
and went down, down to a mostly-empty table, the silently rebuking presence of
his mother, and food he scarcely tasted and ate very little of.

It should have been
a triumph, but it tasted of ashes and gall. And in the end, it led to yet
another sleepless night, during which he stared at the ceiling, rigid with
fear, and was completely unable to muster a single coherent thought until dawn.

April 30, 1917
Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

I WISH THAT THESE
PLACES were somewhere more convenient. Or at least, had decent hotels
nearby.” Lauralee sighed dramatically, and pouted at the old four-poster
bed she was going to have to share with her sister. Carolyn was already
sprawled across the expanse of it, and had voiced complaints about the quality
of the mattress and the size of the room.

There
really was no reason to complain; the room was big enough by coaching-inn
standards. It was certainly solid and well-kept. The furnishings might date
back to the previous century, but they, too were solid and well-kept. Their
early dinner had been palatable, and neither under nor-over-cooked. The real
cause for discontent probably lay in the fact that it was
not
a posh
hotel and
not
in London, nor Bath, nor any other metropolis.

Alison
frowned at her offspring; it was occurring to her just now that they were
mightily spoilt. The Crown and Cushion in Chipping Norton was the nearest inn
to her goal, just outside the village of Enstone, and as such things went, was
superior to a great many places where she’d been forced to stay in the
course of her occult career. “You ought to be grateful you have a bed,
much less a room, much less a
decent
room in a good, solid inn,”
she told them, tartly. “I’ve stayed in hovels, or camped on the
ground with gypsies before this. You’re just fortunate that there
actually
is
an inn within walking distance of the Hoar Stones.”

“And
that’s another thing, Mother—” Carolyn began.

“Shut
your mouth,” Warrick Locke said, unexpectedly. “We’re not
here for your amusement. We’re here to
work
, and if that
requires a little walking on your part, so be it.
You
are the ones
ultimately benefiting from this, after all; you ought to be pleased, not
whingeing about it.”

Carolyn,
caught in mid-complaint by Locke’s surprising display, gaped at him for a
moment before closing her mouth. She still looked sullen, but at least she had
shut up.

Not
that Alison was particularly happy to be a mile and a half from the hoar stones,
but at least it
was
walking distance, and the stones were secluded in
an ancient grove of trees, which would give them privacy and security over the
course of the next three days. To her mind that privacy was worth any amount of
moderate discomfort.