Phoenix and Ashes (61 page)

But
they had run out of time. It was midafternoon by the time Lady Virginia allowed
him to go, and some instinct warned him that Alison Robinson was going to do
whatever she had planned for Eleanor very soon. He had to get down there
now
—or,
he suspected, he would lose her forever.

His
auto was waiting for him at the door, as he had requested before he went up to
the workroom. He thanked heaven that she wasn’t a temperamental beast; in
fact, she might have been sensitive to his urgency, for she fired up at the
first spark, all cylinders roaring like uncaged lions.

He
threw the auto down the drive at a reckless pace, and kept it up right to the
outskirts of Broom—but the moment he was within sight of the place, he
throttled the racing engine down, and proceeded at what seemed to his raw
nerves to be a crawl. This was not just to avoid knocking people down, it was
because things had to
seem
normal. If Alison suspected anything, she
could, and probably would, refuse him entrance.

It
made him want to scream with impatience as he dawdled down the main street,
smiling tightly, and waving at some of his cronies from the pub. Only one
thought kept him steady; Alison did not know how much Eleanor had said to him.
Nor did she know they already knew each other. So there should be no real
reason in her mind to suspect how much Reggie already knew or guessed. She
should not have felt the need to rush into a solution to the problem of
Eleanor’s escape.

Or
so he hoped and prayed. There had been one good sign, anyway—Lady
Virginia had been assiduously monitoring the area for signs of powerful magic
ever since last night, and there had been nothing.

At
long last he pulled up to the edge of the street beside The Arrows. He parked
the beast right there, took out his cane, and limped to the front doorway to
ring the bell.

It
was answered by Carolyn, who looked startled and confused the moment she set
eyes on him.

“Reggie!”
she exclaimed, pushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. “What a delightful
surprise! We didn’t expect you—”

“I
know,” he said, stretching his mouth in what he hoped was a
genuine-looking smile. “But I had to come down here today. I know how
clever you all are, and how you know just about everyone for miles around, and
I was hoping you girls could help me solve a mystery.”

“But—of
course, please come in, I can’t think what I’m doing, leaving you
standing in the door like this.” She laughed; was it his imagination, or
did it ring false? “We’re sending formal thank-you letters, of
course, but since you are here, I must tell you that your ball was wonderful; I
don’t know when I’ve had a better time!”

“Actually,
that’s why I’m here,” he said, seizing the opportunity with
both hands as he stepped into the parlor at her direction. The Arrows was at
least as old as the Broom; real, genuine Tudor construction. The place betrayed
its age, with blackened beams, white-plaster walls, and very low ceilings that
made him want to duck his head. “You see, I encountered someone at the
ball, but she left before I got a chance to find out who she was, and I hoped
you could help me with that.”

“Me?”
Carolyn turned towards him as he took a seat beside the fire, and he was sure
he was not mistaken; there was a flush of guilt on her cheeks. He felt his gut
tighten. “How could I help?”

“Indeed,
as eager as we are to assist you in any way, Reggie, I don’t know what we
could do in this case,” said Alison Robinson, gliding into the room,
soundlessly. He didn’t jump, but she had startled him, moving so quietly.
There was something altogether snakelike about the way she moved. If he’d
had hackles, they’d have been up. “There were dozens of young women
at your ball, and all of them were masked for most of the evening.”

“Ah,”
he said brightly. “But I think you might know this girl, and she has one
very distinctive characteristic. You see, she wore these gloves—”

He
held out the pink silk gloves to Alison, who examined them with a faint frown on
her face. Right until the moment when she realized that the left-hand glove had
only three fingers.

Then,
she started, and paled for a moment, and he felt his heart leap in triumph. So,
they
were
up to something! And they hadn’t known Eleanor had
left anything of herself behind.

“Actually,
I believe you are correct,” she said, recovering quickly and turning a
bland face towards him, “I do know something about the girl who wore this
glove. If you’ll wait a moment—”

“I
would wait a year if you could bring her to me,” Reggie replied, his
heartbeat quickening with nervous tension. Should he not have presented the
gloves to Alison? Now she knew something was up, but did she guess how much he
knew about Eleanor? Or rather—how little? She can’t be going to
bring Eleanor. There’s some trickery going on here.

But
before he could think of anything else to say, Alison had carried the gloves
away with her and Carolyn was babbling at him about the delights of the ball.

He
tried, unsuccessfully, to get her onto any other subject, or at least to slow
down the torrent of words. To no avail; it was clear that she was babbling out
of sheer panic now, and nothing he said was going to penetrate the wall of fear
she had around her. He sat on the edge of his seat, alive with tension, trying
to listen past Carolyn’s wall of words to what was going on in the next
rooms. Was there the creak of a door, something slamming, a muffled
exclamation? Was there the sound of a struggle?

“Here
we are!” Alison said brightly, making him jump. “Here is your
mysterious girl, Reggie—I am afraid that my Lauralee was playing a bit of
a prank on you, pretending to be a stranger to you. Girlish high spirits and
all—” She smiled thinly. “Of course, she didn’t want to
spoil the joke by allowing you to guess who she was, so she tells me she ran
away from you in the garden.”

Sure
enough, behind Alison came Lauralee—but a very pale Lauralee, with her
teeth clenched, though she tried to feign that she was completely normal. And
she was wearing both gloves.

He
stood as they both entered the room. “Lauralee!” he said,
immediately on his guard, but hoping he wasn’t showing it. “How
could I not have recognized you?”

“I
wore a wig,” she said, her voice strained, her mouth stretched in
something that looked nothing like a smile. “And I took care to disguise
my voice.” As he neared her, he saw that her pupils were very large, and
heard a faint slur to her words, as if she was drugged.

Yes,
there was no trickery; she wore the gloves. But he knew very well that the
last
time he had seen her, she had owned the usual number of fingers. Which must
mean—

The
thought made him sick. The girl must be mad. Or her mother. Or both.

Probably
both
.

He
might have spared a moment to pity her, if such an act had not simply shown him
that she was as ruthless as her mother. And fear of what they might be doing to
Eleanor made him act in a way he probably wouldn’t have, otherwise. He
reached out and seized both her hands before she could prevent it, and gave the
left one a squeeze.

She
nearly fainted. And seeping blood stained the side of the glove, where she must
have only now cut off the little finger of her left hand. He looked up at
Alison’s face, and saw that it was suffused with rage.

He
had them. “I think—” he began—

And
pain and blackness descended on him from behind.

August 12, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire

Well, Carolyn, you
have redeemed yourself in my eyes,” Alison said, as Reggie crumpled to
the floor. Carolyn stared first at him, then at her mother, wide-eyed, the
poker she had used to hit him with still clutched in her nerveless fingers.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, you haven’t the strength to
kill him! You have merely rendered him unconscious. Go and get my kit. I fear
we will have two bundles to smuggle out after dark, not one.”

She
turned to Lauralee, who had reeled against the wall, whimpering with pain,
cradling her injured left hand in her right. “I warned you to be sure
that you had cauterized the wound properly
and
that the laudanum had
taken effect before you came out of the kitchen!”

“I
couldn’t help it. He squeezed my hand, Mother,” Lauralee replied,
her voice faint and full of agony. “He broke open the wound—”

“So
he knew all along. He came here looking for Eleanor, and he
knew
it
was Eleanor behind the mask. This is worse than I thought.” She stood
rigid, rooted in thought, arms crossed over her chest, tapping one finger
against her forearm. “That’s it; the only hope we have is to take
him to the Hoar Stones and make him forget her.”

Lauralee
blinked up at her mother through tears of pain. “Can you do that?”

“Well,
I can make him forget a great deal, and her with it,” Alison admitted.
“I can erase, in general, every memory he has had since he came home.
Then when he wakes, it will be up to you to convince him that he proposed
marriage to you last night in the garden, and that he has been in love with you
all along.”

Carolyn,
who had not yet moved, put the poker aside. “But won’t that be a
problem with his mother?” she faltered. “She wants him to marry
within the peerage. That’s what everyone was saying last night. And how
do we explain that he was injured and his loss of memory?”

Alison
shrugged. “We’ll say we found him wandering and brought him back.
It isn’t as if there haven’t been rumors about the steadiness of his
mind.” She frowned. This was getting more complicated by the moment, and
dangerous, too. “We’ll have to be quick, though. If he
doesn’t come back by morning—”

“His
motorcar is here,” Lauralee pointed out. “People will know that. By
now, everyone in the village knows that.”

Alison
gave vent to her feelings with a curse. Carolyn flinched. “Then one of
us—me, I suppose—will have to drive our auto, and one of us will
have to drive his.”

“I’ll
drive it,” Warrick Locke said from the stairs. “Here’s your
kit, Alison. It was still on the hall table.” He handed her the morphia
kit and looked down at the prone form of Reggie Fenyx with a lifted brow.
“I hope you didn’t damage him, Carolyn. Things could be cursed
difficult if you have.”

“So
what if she did?” Alison retorted, filling a syringe and kneeling beside
her victim. “It will make my job easier. Bloody hell. I
hate
complications—”

“Then
let’s plan this very carefully,” Locke said, grimly, “Because
this isn’t just ‘complications,’ Alison. You’ve
physically assaulted a man, and not just any man, but a peer, and not just any
peer, but a genuine hero of the war. If he remembers what he came for, and what
happened to him, the law is going to come into it, and I very much doubt I can
get you out of it.”

She
turned to stare at him as she removed the needle from the vein in
Reggie’s arm. “You assume I haven’t been in this position
before.”

“If
you have, that was in London. In a part of London where people know better than
to be curious,” he said, coldly. “And you must have dealt with
someone who was a nonentity. This is a tiny village, where everyone knows
everyone else’s business. And this is Captain Reginald Fenyx, baron. Have
a care, Alison. This is dangerous.”

She
took a deep breath and held it to prevent herself from snapping at him. He was
right. She needed his help.

The
trouble was, it was going to cost her. Men like Warrick Locke could wait
decades for an opportunity to get their hooks set in a target—and once
they did, it was impossible to shake them off.

“So
what do you suggest?” she asked, with feigned meekness.

“After
dark, I pull Reggie’s motor around to the old stable. You bundle him up
in a blanket and bring him out; I’ll put him in the passenger’s
side and wear his coat, goggles and cap myself. Don’t try to hide him, I
want people to see that there is someone with the driver, though not who.
I’ll take him straight to the Hoar Stones, leave him there, and drive his
motor back along the route you’ll be coming, where I’ll abandon it
in a ditch.” Locke’s eyes glittered as he spoke; there was no
mistake, he enjoyed the part he was now playing, and he was going to get his
pound of flesh out of it. “You’ll bring the girl along and pick me
up. We’ll all go back to the Hoar Stones, drop the girl down the
mineshaft either before you do your work with Reggie, or afterwards, depending
on how things work out.
You
will work your spell on his memories while
I
damage his clothing to make it look like he was in an accident.
Everyone around here knows how he likes to drive like a demon. That will
explain the crack on the head
and
the amnesia afterwards.”

She
had to admit, it was a brilliant plan. “Do we leave him with the
motor?” she asked, reluctantly. She really didn’t want him out of
her sight, but—

“Yes,
but we’ll drive to that coaching-inn we stayed at, and one of us will go
rushing in there to report the accident,” Locke replied. “While
people are milling about, we’ll slip away, and there will be no
connection between us and his condition. And as for Eleanor, she figures into
the plan, too. We’ll leave Eleanor’s old coat, and perhaps a bundle
of belongings in his auto, and once he’s identified, no doubt someone
will come around to ask why he was here. We’ll say we never saw him, then
identify the coat and the clothing. That will give us the excuse to send a
search-party back in that area to look for her, once you’re sure
she’s gone quite mad! Everyone will assume she eloped with him, or he
persuaded her to go away with him, and without a doubt, everyone will assume
the worst of her.”