Phoenix and Ashes

Longacre Park, Warwickshire

REGGIE HAD DECIDED ON CAROLYN as the most likely to let something about Eleanor drop—she clearly was not the more intelligent of the sisters (though neither of them were a match for their mother) but he still was going to tread very cautiously around her. He didn't want to alert any of the three to the fact that he knew their stepsister was somewhere in Broom. In fact, he didn't want to alert them to the fact that he had met her more than once. It had taken a great deal of willpower not to limp down to his motor and take it right to the door of The Arrows that day when he had addressed an invitation to her, and only the fact that so very much was ringing false had kept him from doing so. There was a great deal more than met the eye going on; he had a notion that he might eventually want Lady Virginia's help on this, but not until he had investigated all other courses of action himself.

A tennis match presented the best opportunity; his mother was playing against hers, and he brought her a lemonade as a pretext for sitting next to her. After some noncommittal chat, he managed to steer the conversation towards Oxford, and asked, as if in afterthought, 'Oh—don't you have a sister there?'

She jerked as if she'd been stung by a bee, and stared at him, wide-eyed. If he hadn't known there was something wrong before this, he would have by her reaction. He knew guilt when he saw it. 'A sister?'

'Eleanor?' he prompted. 'It occurred to me that the only Robinsons in Broom had a daughter named Eleanor. Before the war, I remember talking to her about going to Oxford—she had her heart set on it, and was taking the examinations in order to qualify.'

'Oh—Eleanor!' Her brittle laugh rang entirely false. 'She's only my stepsister, not a real sister. I scarcely think of her at all, actually, we're practically strangers.' Her smile was too bright, and she looked very nervous to him. He fancied that Eleanor was nowhere near as much of a stranger as she was pretending.

He smiled slightly, or rather, stretched his lips in something like a smile. 'I suppose for form's sake we ought to invite her to the ball, too. It isn't done to leave out one sister of three. People might talk.'

Again, that brittle laugh. 'Oh, you can if you like, but I shouldn't trouble myself. She'd never come. She's a dreadful bluestocking, and she never even comes home on the vacs. I don't think she knows such things as balls exist. She certainly doesn't know how to dress. She'd never leave her—studies—for anything that frivolous.'

He leaned back in his chair. He hadn't missed that moment of hesitation when she had sought for a word to describe what Eleanor was doing. He yawned. 'Oh, well, in that case, if you think she won't feel slighted. The vicar suggested to Mater that she ought to be included on the guest list is all.'

'Oh.' The girl's voice grew hard, and just a touch cold. 'The vicar, was it? No, I really shouldn't bother if I were you. I'll make sure Mother reminds the vicar of how much Eleanor dislikes leaving Oxford. I suppose she'll be a don, once they allow such things.'

He made a sound like a laugh. 'It's not as if there won't be a surfeit of young ladies to dance with; too many of them are likely to be wallflowers as it is, unless I can bring some more cadets from the RFC up to scratch. I think we can do without her.'

'So do I.' She swiftly turned the subject to costumes, and whether he thought it would be too warm for eighteenth-century court dress. 'Wouldn't an Empire gown be cooler?' she asked.

'I should think so,' he replied. 'And besides, it'd be deuced difficult to dance in those side-things that stick out—what-you-call-'ems—'

'Panniers,' she said with immense satisfaction. 'Lauralee wouldn't hear of anything but being Madame Pompadour, but I thought Empress Josephine would be far more elegant and cooler.'

'Well, there I agree with you, but don't tell her that,' he said, in a confidential tone of voice. 'I'd rather dance with a girl who can move about in her costume than have to steer some wire contraption around the floor.' She giggled and agreed. He thought he had effectively distracted her from the subject of her sister.

As he continued talking with her to make sure she had forgotten his question in her flutter of excitement about his attentions, he digested what he had learned. Well, now he knew this much, at least. He knew that Eleanor was Alison's stepdaughter, and he knew that they were, for some reason, keeping alive a fiction that she was at Oxford. It was clear that she wasn't—but the question was, what was she doing in Broom? His assumption that she had fallen on hard times was obviously wrong, but why was she dressed like an inferior servant and clearly doing menial labor?

He worried at the problem for the rest of the day, through tea, while he dressed for dinner and all through dinner. It made for a quiet meal, but his aunt more than made up for his silence, and his mother was so full of her entertainment plans that they didn't really notice that he wasn't talking much. How was it that neither the vicar nor the doctor were aware that 'Eleanor is at Oxford' was a complete fiction? Surely, if she had been strolling around Broom, someone would have noticed and said something. And she certainly wasn't transporting herself to their meadow by magic carpet. None of this was making much sense.

After dinner he went out on the terrace with a drink; the Brigadier joined him as they watched the sun set; the sky ablaze with red, gold, and purple, the last rays of the setting sun making streaks across the horizon. It looked like a Turner painting.