Phoenix and Ashes

instead.

'Ah,' said her ladyship, nodding wisely. 'The Robinson girls.'

'Among others.' He laughed without humor. 'They aren't the only ones by a stretch, but they are the most persistent at the moment. I think even their mother would be casting her cap at me, if she thought she could slip herself past Mater's eye.'

Lady Virginia sighed. 'I almost wish she would try; it might shake your mother's friendship with the creature. I know this is unreasonable of me, and I know that I should be happy for her to have a friend— but there is something about that woman and her girls that puts my back up.'

Reggie knew what it was, even if Lady Virginia didn't. She would never admit it, never recognize it in herself, but Lady Virginia was a snob . . . the idea of someone whose money came from trade marrying into the aristocracy secretly outraged her. Well, it probably wouldn't outrage her if the girl was also a Master—but Mastery was another sort of aristocracy.

Or perhaps, as long as it's someone else's blue-blooded family, and not hers, nor that of her friends, it wouldn't matter so much.

It was hardly her fault; it was the way she'd been raised. And he probably would not have noticed, if it hadn't been for that stupid not-quite-quarrel he'd had with Eleanor.

He sighed. He missed those conversations. He missed her company, her wit, her intelligence, and how she was kind without making him feel as if he owed her something for her kindness. He'd been down to the meadow several times, but she'd never again appeared. Either he had offended her so much that she was shunning his company, or else his timing was so exquisitely bad that she thought he was avoiding her—and as a result she had stopped coming.

Or else, and this was the likeliest, she was kept too busy for frivolous visits in the middle of the day to the meadow. It was summer, after all, and there were probably a thousand chores she was being made to do. Oh, it made him depressed to think about it, that fine, keen mind, shackled to some sort of menial work. It was like seeing a Derby winner hitched to a plow.

If only he could do something for her without insulting her further.

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.