Phoenix and Ashes (57 page)

“You
went to the meadow?” she interrupted, hit again by one of those surges of
irrational pleasure.

He
nodded. “As soon as I could. And you didn’t come back, so I thought
you were angry with me.”

“I
couldn’t—” that was all she could manage before
Alison’s coercions clamed down on her.

“Because
you had work to do—I hoped that was all it was, but I was afraid I had
been a boor.” He sighed. “I am neither fish nor fowl, Eleanor. On
the one hand, I was raised by my parents and the nannies they chose for me, who
are of the opinion that education beyond reading, writing, and a little
figuring is bad for females. On the other, I am heavily influenced by my
godmother, who is an unrepentant suffragist, and by what I learned myself at
Oxford. Sometimes, when I am not thinking, things escape from me that are
parrotings of Mater, and I am always sorry when they do. I plead forgiveness. I
never meant to slight the intelligence of women, and least of all yours.”

She
took off her domino and looked up at him gravely. “As long as you promise
to remember that,” she said. “And I hope—”

How
do I warn him about Alison and the girls
?
She couldn’t say
anything directly, but—

“I
hope you’re also remember that intelligence is a weapon of sorts, and it
isn’t always used to good ends, and that signifies for women just as well
as men. Maybe more,” she added, thoughtfully, “Since women
don’t have a great many weapons at their disposal, and they are inclined
to use the ones they have with skill and precision.”

He
blinked for a moment, as if taken aback by her words, then nodded. “Ah. I
think I know what you are hinting at. The charming Alison Robinson and her two
lovely daughters.” His mouth tightened. “Eleanor, what hold have
they over you? I cannot believe that
they
can come up here to tea and
tennis on a daily basis in gowns of the latest mode while
you
clearly
are working at manual labor and kept as shabbily as a tweenie in a
miser’s house, unless they have some power over you!”

Oh,
how she wanted to tell him! She fought the constraints of the spell, but all
she could manage to get out, through gritted teeth, was, “She’s my
guardian. I have no rights, and no say in my life.”

“Until
you come of age, and that can’t be long,” he replied, his eyes icy
for a moment. “And then—you can depend on me, Eleanor. You
can.”

She
felt her hands starting to tremble, and she clasped them together to hide it.
He reached over and took her hands.

“Eleanor,”
he said, as she stiffened. “I would like to be more than just your
friend. A great deal more.”

She
went hot, then cold, then hot again. “You don’t mean that,”
she said, half begging, half accusing. “You can’t mean that. I don’t
fit in with all this—” she took her hands out of his and waved
vaguely at the manor behind her. “and I don’t fit in with
‘your people!’ Can’t you see that?” She shook her head
violently. “You and I—it’s impossible, surely you
understand!”

He
made a little sound of mingled amusement and disgust. “There is one thing
that Mad Ross is right about. All this is going to change in the next few
years, Eleanor, and change drastically, and most of those people back there
haven’t a clue. This war is putting an end to their world as they know
it, though it was starting to crumble around the edges before that.” He
sniffed. “A bloodline isn’t worth much if you can’t keep the
roof over your head patched. And I can name you a dozen men in my circle, men
who are contemporaries of my father, who’ve married chorus beauties,
actresses, their children’s governesses—even their housekeepers!
There will be more of that—and there will be women who had no men in
their families survive this war, who will marry policemen, gardeners,
tradesmen—or never marry or remarry at all. And as for the people my
age—” he shook his head. “We’ve seen too much.
We’ve learned too much, and most of it was bitter. I’ve been
thinking about this a very great deal, ever since that big push at Ypres started.”
He took a very deep breath. “I came to the conclusion that if Mater was
going to insist that I do my family duty, it was going to be on
my
terms, with a woman I could respect, with intelligence; someone who could
talk
with me.”

Her
hands were sweating. Nervously, to save her silk gloves, she pulled them off.

He
recaptured her hands. “These hands, no matter what they work at, are not
all of you, Eleanor—not even most of what you are. You are intelligent,
kind, forgiving—I could go on for the next half hour and still not come
to the end of your good points. No, perhaps you don’t ‘fit
in’ with all of that behind me. But ‘all that’ is going to
have to change if it is going to survive at all in the coming years. I am going
to have to change. I don’t see any reason why that change shouldn’t
come in a way that accommodates you, and your own changes.”

Now
she was shaking. But it wasn’t only because of what he was saying. No,
for no reason that she could understand, Alison’s coercions were
tightening around her.

And
so were the spells binding her to the hearth-stone.

This
had come without real warning. Granted, she had spent too long searching for
the Air Master, and now they were pulling on her insistently, but she
couldn’t understand why she hadn’t had some sign before this.

She
felt them, like a corset laced too tight, squeezing off breath, and making it
hard to think. Soon, they would become uncomfortable.

Then
painful. Then maddening—

“I
won’t ask you for any kind of a decision now, Eleanor,” he was
saying, as she felt her hands growing cold. “But I would like you to
consider the possibility of seeing me as more than your friend. I would like to
know that there is a chance for me in your future.”

She
wanted to pay
attention
to his words, but she couldn’t. She felt
the spells closing in on her. It was becoming hard to breathe; the tugging at
her mind and body were growing intolerable. And she couldn’t help
herself. She began to shake, and she pulled her hands out of his and sprang to
her feet in a single convulsive movement.

“Eleanor!”
he exclaimed, as she whirled to face him, hoping he could see something of her
inner struggle in her expression. “Eleanor, what’s wrong? Please, I
haven’t offended you again—”

She
shook her head, frantically, and wrapped her own hands around her throat,
trying to force some last words out of it before she had to run—

But
the words that came were not the ones she had expected.

“Reggie—”
she heard herself gasping “—I love you!”

And
then, she turned, and ran, leaving him calling after her. She couldn’t
even understand what he was saying at that point, the spells were tightening on
her so painfully. He had no hope of catching her, lame as he was, of course.
Sarah would be waiting—

—but
she could not stop for Sarah.

No,
she could not stop for anything.

All
she could do was run, for as long as she was running in the right direction the
bands of pain around her body, around her
mind
, would ease just enough
to allow her to continue running. But if she stopped, even for a moment…

She
did not take the road. The road was too long. She fled headlong and heedless
through the grounds, across the long, empty lawn, and into the
“wilderness” which was no wilderness at all, of course, only a
carefully cultivated illusion of one. She couldn’t think; not clearly
anyway. Only fragments of thought lanced across the all-encompassing demand of
Alison’s spells.

Why
was this happening?

She
stumbled across a bridle-path that went in the right direction, and turned down
it; her rose-wreath and garland were gone, and her hair was down all one side.
Her sides ached, but the coercions were not letting up. A branch tangled with
her skirt and she yanked it free without missing a step.

How
had the coercions suddenly snapped into place?

There
was a low stone wall in the way; she scrambled over it, and found herself in a
meadow full of sheep that scattered before her, bleating indignation. She kept
going; at least here there was enough light to see—

Why
were the coercions so strong, suddenly?

Another
low, stone wall; she left more of her gown on one of the stones. Dimly, she
recognized the top of the Round Meadow where she had met Reggie so often, the
upper end, where she normally couldn’t go. At least she knew the way from
here.

If
the pain in her side and her head would let her. Her world narrowed to the pain
and the next step, each step bringing her closer to The Arrows, closer to the
end of the pain. The end of the pain—

Run
!

Her
breath rasped in her lungs, sending sharp, icy stabs into her chest. Her vision
blurred and darkened; she felt branches lashing at her as she passed. But all
she could think of was that she must,
must
get to The Arrows.

Run
!

She
felt hard, bare dirt and hard-packed gravel under her feet. She was on the road
to Broom. She didn’t remember getting over the fence.

Run,
run, run
!

She
stumbled into the side of one of the houses on High Street; caught herself,
pushed herself off, and kept running.

There
was Sarah’s cottage, just ahead. Then past.

She
tripped and fell, bruising hands and knees at the corner; shoved herself up and
kept running. Here was the Broom Tavern.

Almost
there—

She
stumbled again and fell into the fence around the garden of the Arrows. She
caught herself, and ran the last few yards completely blind, shoving open the
garden gate, and falling inside, down onto the path, as the gate swung shut
again behind her.

And
the pain stopped.

The
mental pain, anyway.

As
she lay on the ground, gasping for breath in great, aching lungfuls, she
discovered an entirely new source of very physical pain. Her palms and knees
burned, her side felt as if someone had stuck a knife in her, and whenever she
moved, she could feel deep scratches and bruises everywhere. And all she could
do was to lie there and try to get her breath back, because she couldn’t
move in her current state if her life depended on it.

But
she could think, at least—though not coherently. Whole thoughts, rather
than fragments, but they came to her in no particular order as she lay on her
back with her eyes closed, gasping.

Freed
from the coercions, her mind raced.
I have to get cleaned up and changed.
Alison and the girls will be coming home. I can’t look like this
—maybe
I can disguise some of the scratches and bruises with kitchen ash. At least
they won’t be expecting me to still be awake.

Sarah
would, she hoped, surely know when the coercions had suddenly tightened around
her, and would take the cart and horse back to its owners. Surely she
wouldn’t sit there all night.

Another
thought, a bleak one this time.
I failed. I didn’t find the Air
Master
—

Why
had there been that breath of Air Magic around Reggie?

Oh
heavens—
what did I say to Reggie? Did I really tell him I loved him?
How could I have done that? What on earth possessed me? I don’t—

But
there the thought came to an abrupt halt, because she could not, in all truth,
have finished it with “
I don’t love him
,” because it
wasn’t true.

What
was he saying to me
?
It had all gotten jumbled up in the coercions, in
the headlong flight across the countryside. She couldn’t remember any of
it clearly
.

Except
she knew very well he hadn’t said that he loved her.

But
had he implied it? He’d asked if he could be more than a friend to her,
she remembered that much.

The
pain in her side ebbed a little, and with a groan, she pushed herself up off
the ground. Her hands were tough, and little more than bruised, but her
knees—well, her stockings were surely ruined, and the way they stuck to
her knees argued for a bleeding scrape there.

I
need to start a fire. The Salamanders can help heal this enough that it
doesn’t look fresh. I should sleep in the kitchen…

In
fact, she had a good idea that she was going to have to sleep in the kitchen
whether she wanted to or not. She didn’t think she could get up the
stairs right now.

It
was just a good thing that there was still some clean clothing, laundered and
dried just yesterday, that was still waiting downstairs to be taken to her
room. Everything that wasn’t connected to the ball had been given short
shrift in the last few days, and her own business had been last on the list of
things to be done.

She
got herself to her feet, and stumbled into the kitchen, shoving open the door
with an effort. The fire leapt up to answer her unspoken call, and she put
another log on it while she stripped off the rags that were all that was left
of that wonderful gown, and, with intense regret, threw them on the fire. There
was no point in leaving any evidence for anyone to find.

She
drew a basin of water from the kitchen pump and cleaned off the dirt and the
dried blood with soap and a wet towel. Both her knees were a mess, and there
were scratches all over her body. She could hide her knees, but not the
scratches on her face and arms.

Something
had to be done about that.

When
the fire was burning brightly, she called a swarm of Salamanders to wreath
around her injuries. They’d only have burned someone who wasn’t a
Fire magician, and they couldn’t heal things up completely, but what they
could do was minimize the appearance of the scrapes and deep scratches, so that
they looked days, rather than hours old.