Phoenix and Ashes

her down the stairs into the gardens themselves, which had, as he had told her, been lit up with fairy-lanterns. The wave of perfume that washed over her told her that the roses for which Longacre was famous were in full bloom. He took her down one of the paths to a stone bench—still within sight of the terrace, but not a straight line-of-sight. She carefully arranged her skirt, and gingerly took a seat. With a sigh of relief, he sat beside her.

'I was horribly afraid I had offended you past forgiveness,' were the first words out of his mouth. 'I never meant to. When you didn't come back—'

'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 lightening around her.

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